HYSTERICAL

A sharp examination of life in “a culture where men speak and women shut up.”

In her impassioned debut memoir, essayist and humor writer Bassist rails against the systemic misogyny and patriarchy that silence women’s voices and, for her, became embodied as pain. For more than a year, she searched for medical help for a persistent headache and backache, blurred vision, and stomach problems only to be told repeatedly that nothing was wrong with her. “I had what millions of American women had,” she writes, “pain that didn’t make sense to doctors, a body that didn’t make sense to science, a psyche that didn’t make sense to mankind in general.” Like many women throughout history, she was deemed hysterical, and she was prescribed sedatives and mood stabilizers, some of which made her symptoms worse. When an acupuncturist suggested that her pain was caused by “caged fury,” Bassist felt a sudden sense of clarity. She examines many sources of her anger, including her overbearing father, emotionally and physically violent boyfriends, and a culture that defines outspoken women as “crazy psycho bitches.” In TV and movies, women are victims of extreme violence; in the media, and in her writing classes, men’s voices and opinions dominate. “Men’s writing was ‘writing,’ ” she learned when working in publishing, “and women’s writing was ‘women’s writing,’ ” or “chick lit.” Instead of learning to stand up for herself, she admits, she got better “at acclimating. At expecting abuse.” “To cope with being silenced in my twenties,” she writes, “I choose silence in my thirties.” Obsessively fearful of saying the wrong thing or of being retaliated against, she refused to share her experiences on social media, and she plummeted into self-doubt. “I hated myself and other women as much as the world hated us,” she writes, “because when hatred is environmental, anyone can catch it, then perpetuate it, until women are misogynistic masochists with toxic masculinity.” Her memoir stands as proof of an arduous process of healing.

A fiery cultural critique.