Men Who Hate Women and Women Who Kick Their Asses

Stieg Larsson was an unabashed feminist in his personal and professional life and in the fictional world he created, but The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest are full of graphic depictions of violence against women, including stalking, sexual harassment, child abuse, rape, incest, serial murder, sexual slavery, and sex trafficking, committed by vile individual men and by corrupt, secretive institutions. How do readers and moviegoers react to these depictions, and what do they make of the women who fight back, the complex masculinities in the trilogy, and the ambiguous gender of the elusive Lisbeth Salander? These lively and accessible essays expand the conversation in the blogosphere about the novels and films by connecting the controversies about gender roles to social trends in the real world.

Auteur
Carrie Lee Smith is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Millersville University of Pennsylvania.

Donna King, Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, is author of Doing Their Share to Save the Planet: Children and Environmental Crisis and coeditor of Men Who Hate Women and Women Who Kick Their Asses: Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy in Feminist Perspective (also published by Vanderbilt).

Contenu

CONTENTS

Introduction

Donna King and Carrie Lee Smith

Misogyny and Mayhem

Always Ambivalent: Why Media Is Never Just Entertainment

Abby Ferber

KickAss Feminism: Violence, Resistance, and Feminist Avengers in Larsson's Trilogy

Kristine De Welde

Lisbeth Salander as the "Final Girl" in the Swedish "Girl Who" Films

Karen Ritzenhoff

Accounts of Violence against Women: The Potential of Realistic Fiction

Roberta Villalon

State Complicity in Men's Violence against Women

Patricia Yancey Martin

Gender and Power in the New Millennium

The Gender Ambiguity of Lisbeth Salander: ThirdWave Feminist Hero?

Judith Lorber

Third-Wave Rebels in a Second-Wave World: Polyamory, Gender, and Power

Mimi Schippers

Men Who Love Women: Profeminist Masculinities in the Millennium Trilogy

Michael Kimmel

Tiny, Tattooed, and Tough as Nails: Representations of Lisbeth Salander's Body

Catherine (Kay) G. Valentine

Hacker Republic: Cyberspace and the Feminist Appropriation of Technology

Sophie Statzel BjorkJames

Is This What Equality Looks Like? Working Women in the Millennium Trilogy

Diane Levy

Swedish Perspectives

Corporations, the Welfare State, and Covert Misogyny in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Anna Westerstahl Stenport and Cecilia Ovesdotter Alm

Lisbeth Salander and Her Swedish Crime Fiction "Sisters": Stieg Larsson's Hero in a Genre Context

Kerstin Bergman

Is Mikael Blomkvist the Man of the Millennium?

Sara Karrholm

Readers' Responses

An Open Letter to the Next Stieg Larsson

LeeAnn Kriegh

Pippi and Lisbeth: Fictional Heroes across Generations

Meika Loe

Feminist Bloggers Kick Larsson's Ass: Reading Resistance Online

Jessie Daniels

Feminist Avenger or Male Fantasy? Reading the Reception of the Millennium Trilogy

Caryn Murphy