“I was looking for an event and activity to commemorate Women’s History Month, but I grow weary of doing the same thing over and over again,” says Logan, who’s owned the bookstore for more than 20 years. “Just reading from great pieces of literature didn’t seem participatory enough, and this activity doesn’t require anything.”
Logan says that the spines to the wall method isn’t her invention, but she’s never heard of anyone putting this sort of feminist/political awareness spin on it.
“My staff is entirely female here, but we have a lot of books written by women and about women, and we go out of our way to get them,” Logan says.
Already she says that customers have been confused by the new sorting system.
“Truly, this is a metaphor of silencing the male voice,” Logan says. “At least for this month.”
And when it comes to celebrating Women’s History Month, Logan says that awareness always comes first, and action seems to follow. One way to do that is to read voices by women and patronize women’s business, she says.
Loganberry Books offers a few more Women’s History Month events throughout the month, including next Wednesday’s International Women’s Day.
This article appears in Mar 1-7, 2017.
This is ridiculous. Sorry, but it is. Luckily there are lots of other book stores to shop at in the greater Cleveland area.
I can’t wait to silence all of the female resumes that come across my desk this month!
Nice to see that my comment was deleted. Class act, Clevescene!
It is 100 percent hilarious that Joe and Jordan here are losing it over this one tiny act at one tiny bookstore. What are the words that get used against women when we demand equality or point out inequality? We’re whiners, complainers, special snowflakes. We’re too emotional. We’re “butthurt.”
Well, guys, LOLOL, with all seriousness, your comments embody all those words — especially the word “butthurt” — better than anything I’ve ever read on the internet in the last decade. Bravo. BRAVO, I say!
All I’m here to say is, “Right on, Kelly!”
It may have been a tedious task….but if it increases customer traffic into the bookstore — the work successfully delivered unique advertisement.
She just lost a customer doing that.
“losing it over this one tiny act at one tiny bookstore.”
To use snowflake logic, then it’s one tiny bookstore that leads to the slippery slope of further denial of male voices and not just bookstores but elsewhere. You’re saying certain voices are authorized to speak and not others, which itself is oppressive.
To use your own arguments, you’re invalidating the lived experiences of men by doing this.
Wow, the male ego really IS fragile. And, in the case of the “silence all of the female resumes that come across my desk this month” dude, petty and vindictive. The point, o ye of little imagination, is to get a sense of how thoroughly women’s voices have been silenced throughout history. I’m sure if you went to buy a book at Loganberry and you couldn’t figure out their complex and devious plan to silence all men’s voices (snort), they’d be happy to locate the book for you.
And seriously, what world do you live to imagine that the published male voiced could be suppressed by anything, let alone a Women’s History Month action by a small book store? In the real world, nothing that a bookstore — or hell, that over a million women marching on Washington — could do would suppress men’s voices and their sense that they’re entitled to make laws controlling women’s bodies, right to fair pay, and so many other things you take for granted. The inconvenience of a book turned spine-in is nothing compared to the increasing body of laws which limit women’s lives and voices.
Oh, please @kellystarr. Point to where, by law, you aren’t equal. Because you are, regardless of what you want to believe; and sure, you can point to other things that have nothing to do with law, but so can men. And yes, this is bs; it’s disrespect towards author just because of their gender.
All the shattered porcelain male egos here just crunching underfoot. My goodness. What was that about snowflakes again?
But I thought feminism wasn’t about negative action against men? I’m sure African American men are gonna love being demonized by White women.
I second the comment about this being a demonstration which illustrates the historical silencing of women’s voices.
How many books weren’t published due to the inability of misogynists to see writing by women as valuable? Ever heard of George Sand?
This goes beyond books. It’s about what happens when we allow large groups of us to be gagged. Everyone is impoverished when half of us are not allowed our full humanity.
I was confused, I thought this was some sort of protest against the silencing of the male voice. Not clear at all that she is silencing the male voice to better hear the female one.
Sorry boys, I can’t discuss anything with you when you’re being so emotional! Let me explain this to you, sometimes men don’t like things that happen because they feel that their voices are being erased. That’s too bad. I mean, it’s not like the books were removed from the store and not able to be sold! Oh, my. Are you guys at that time of the month? Why do you blow everything out of proportion? You just move along now. We’ll let you know when we care to hear from you again. Now go be a good boy and fix me a sandwich.
Oh, boys. I can’t listen to you when you’re being so emotional! Is it that time of the month? Why are you so upset? I mean, it’s not like they removed the books or put them in a special section and titled it “male authors of literature”. You’re male privilege is showing. And yes, it appears to be made out of porcelain. Now, go make me a sandwich and I’ll let you know when I want you to speak again. Oh, and also, you’ll need to get 3 doctors and your wife/girlfriend to all agree you need Viagra. You think you are entitled to say what happens to your body, too? Oh, my. You want soooo much.
Interesting. Striking visual representation of the everyday silencing of non-dominant voices… including those who comprise the majority, which is female.
Maybe instead of silencing the male voice you simply make the women’s “louder” by advertising those books more,make a little section where people can find books on women’s history and famous women through out America.I personally don’t think too much about who writes the book I read,so long as it does its job in educating or entertaining me. Women’s History month shouldn’t be about silencing men it should be about celebrating women and all they have accomplished in America.
Instead of lifting up female authors, she silenced male authors. And why would we as men be upset about this? As barely emotional, hyper logical beings, this female “logic” is like an askew picture frame to an ocd person. Male ego is somehow fragile for being angry about suppression, but female ego isn’t for the same thing? Women who’ve obtained the rights to everything a man can do, and only use it to the detriment of their families and society. Yes, you can vote, but why become politically knowledgeable? Just be a female lemming and vote for the nearest vagina-kissing sunshine-up-the-ass-blowing politician who’ll give you free stuff. It’s not to say that such ideology is confined to the female, or even to the left, but unfortunately women, particularly leftist ones, do not take interest in politics and economics, and if they do, rarely in the fact based realm of data. And since they find no interest, there’s more Jane Austins discussing the finer points of love, than Ayn Rands discussing economic and political warfare and reality. If you can’t handle reality, stop trying to be men.
silencing the male voice? That sounds like equality.
I think I saw this same thing done on an episode of Portlandia…..
Shows the true man-hating colors of third-wave feminism. Progressive SJW third-wave feminists will continue to get people like Trump elected and continue to diminish the influence of the Democratic Party. Obviously, to any reasonable person, this act is extremely silly. If women are equal, there should be no need to waste time turning books around.
The Women’s March website tells women what they should do (Orwellian):
1) Women take the day off, from paid and unpaid labor
2) Avoid shopping for one day (with exceptions for small, women- and minority-owned businesses).
3) Wear RED in solidarity with A Day Without A Woman
Translation:
1) Lose money if you don’t get paid days off and wonder why there is an income gap (not a wage gap)
2) Don’t shop at businesses owned by white men.
3) Wear Communist colors. (kind of a tongue-in-cheek funny one)
Awesome stuff for equality! As we know, there are no rights that men have in the United States that women do not have. It’s complete nonsense. Trump has done nothing that hurts women whatsoever.
The argument by the SJW that males are being “snowflakes” is insanely stupid. Pointing out the hypocrisy and idiocy of this movement does not mean I am a snowflake. It means I am voicing my opinion that this is stupid.
Since in reality the majority of people think SJW antics are stupid, this will hurt business more than anything. Ivanka Trump’s sales are higher than ever.
Personally I’ve been listening to a cacophony of male voices for 60 years and I’m damned sick and tired of it. The male voices coming form Washington DC recently have been especially loathsome.
You go Loganberry!
Interesting how it isn’t considered petty for the bookstore to parody the silencing of male voices and yet it’s somehow petty for someone to point out the blatant hypocrisy of doing so. All I can say… is LOL
“My staff is entirely female here, but we have a lot of books written by women and about women, and we go out of our way to get them,” Logan says.
If a store then flipped all books by female authors so you couldn’t find them and then said…
“My staff is entirely Male here, but we have a lot of books written by men and about men, and we go out of our way to get them,”
Just how loud would the protest be? Gender discrimination! Etc. If all else fails flip it. Yes it IS sexist because precisely the book store is shoving one sex over the other. Change the Women/men to White male or Black, and yeah it is discrimination. They are supposed to be a book store, neutral place to buy books and not be preached at unless we open a book about that.
After seeing this gimmick, and that’s purely what it was, as I don’t believe they where intentionally trying to be sexist, all I could think of was if I came in there looking for a specific book, and the author of the book happened to be male… what a pain in the ass to flip the books over to find it. If I knew it would be like that ahead of time, I would go down to the next book store where they aren’t beating me over the head with someone’s agenda, and I could find what I wanted/needed faster.
While this got their store on the website and noticed, and I live up near there and had never even heard of them so its a toss of a dice to see if that free advertising gimmick gets seen as sexist or pulls in individuals who don’t really understand the term and what that they did was very politically incorrect.