Public appearance
Part of the purpose of this book is to connect the dots for men between their perception of the public and the perception of women. The imagery of the public seems obvious to men; if you need to go out, you just throw on clothes and go out. For women, there are a number of threats ranging from minor annoyances to threat of death, with a whole myriad of frustration and humiliation in between. Women are urged to comply with gender norms that disparage them by suggesting that women in public are objects for attention and judgment.
Male opinion
The invisible imagery of male opinion is a critical part of this book. Men who say, "You should smile," are indicating to women that they care more about enjoying the woman's energy than they do about the woman's own autonomy or emotional license. In other words, it is very common for men to have an opinion about women which is condescending, manipulative, controlling, or objectifying. The concrete imagery for this is the competition among women to be highly favored. Although this imagery is concerning, it is clearly a warped version of sexual selection which makes this issue very serious because misogyny and sexual selection mix very badly.
Society and custom
In order to make progress with the social norms that our societies accept today, Naomi Woods suggests analyzing the shape of cultural assumption more closely. To her, society seems to be in dire need of renaissance, but that is often hard to manufacture from scratch. However, she explains the basic idea of cultural inheritance, showing how people automatically trust what they are taught. This makes the imagery into an ongoing cycle of teaching boys and girls how to think of their gender and identity, and so she expresses a desire to break the cycle of misogyny.
Radical feminism
This book offers a portrait of radical feminism. That sounds critical, but it is a technical sociological term that just means that Naomi Woods shows a passionate zeal to change the status quo in a radical manner. The need for radical change stems from the radical nature of misogyny. Because of the evolutionary background of humankind, there is a horrendous imbalance between the sexes due to ancient ideas stemming from physical dominance. She wants to completely overhaul those archaic ideas.
