The Bonobo Sisterhood: Revolution Through Female Alliance

by Diane Rosenfeld

Overview

Foreword by Ashley Judd

“Rosenfeld’s tour-de-force takes the power of female alliances to a higher level, giving us a road map for a new vision of women’s equality through the relationships and bonds we form among one another. The gift of this book is that it gives us hope.”—Valerie Jarrett, New York Times bestselling author of Finding My Voice, and former senior advisor to President Barack Obama

The Bonobo Sisterhood is a revolutionary call to action for women and their allies to protect one another from patriarchal violence. Internationally recognized legal expert Diane L. Rosenfeld introduces us to a groundbreaking new model of female solidarity; one that promises to thwart sexual coercion.

Urgent, timely, and original, The Bonobo Sisterhood harnesses the power of the #MeToo movement into a road map for sex equality in humans. Our closest evolutionary cousins, the bonobos have a unique social order in which the females protect one another from male aggression. The takeaway? Evolutionarily, bonobos have eliminated sexual coercion and enjoy a more peaceful, cooperative, and playful existence. We have much to learn from them.

Rosenfeld explores the implications of the bonobo model for human societies and systems of governance. How did law develop to elude women’s rights so consistently? What difference does it make that we live in a patriarchal democracy? And what do bonobos have to offer as living proof that patriarchy is not inevitable? Most important, how can women break down barriers among themselves to unleash their power as a unified force? Rosenfeld has answers.

The Bonobo Sisterhood takes us through real-life stories from the courtroom to the classroom and beyond, charting a new vision of a collective self-defense among women and their allies. It offers an action plan accessible to everyone immediately. This is an open invitation to anyone who wants to challenge the status quo. It starts with the power inherent in each of us knowing that we have selves worth defending, and awakening that power for ourselves and for our sisters. We now have a new model for real change, Rosenfeld reminds us. It’s time to use it.

The Bonobo Sisterhood forges a path to create and discover a new meaning of equality, liberty, and justice for all.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780063085077
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	09/20/2022
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Diane L. Rosenfeld, JD, LLM, is a lecturer on law and the founding director of the Gender Vio­lence Program at Harvard Law School, where she has taught since 2004. Rosenfeld has appeared in major media outlets, including ABC’s Nightline; Deadline: Crime with Tamron Hall; Katie (with Katie Couric); CNN Headline News; Fox and Friends; the New York Times; the Washington Post; the Boston Globe; the Chi­cago Tribune; and NPR’s All Things Considered and Morning Edition. She is featured in the award winning documentaries The Hunting Ground; It Happened Here; and Rape Is . . . .

Rosenfeld served as the first senior counsel to the Office on Violence Against Women at the US Department of Justice and as an executive assistant attorney general in Illinois. She is the recipient of multiple awards for her teaching, mentoring, and change-making legal policy work.

She lives outside Boston with her husband and their dog.

Table of Contents

Foreword ix

Introduction xv

Part 1 The Problem

Chapter 1 Answer the Call 1

Chapter 2 Men's Castles, Women's Shelters 27

Chapter 3 The Phallacy of the Male Protection Racket 58

Chapter 4 Patriarchal Violence 84

Chapter 5 Compliance Sex 109

Part 2 The Pivot

Chapter 6 A Self Worth Defending 145

Part 3 The Promise

Chapter 7 Building the Bonobo Sisterhood 175

Chapter 8 Law in Bonoboland 212

Chapter 9 Be Bonobo! 228

Acknowledgments 245

Notes 249

Index 265

Editorial Reviews

06/27/2022

Rosenfeld, founding director of the Gender Violence Program at Harvard Law School, debuts with an innovative yet underdeveloped analysis of the legal and social structures that enable gender-based violence and how to overcome them. Tracing the roots of gender inequality to the “patriarchal order,” she uses the example of the bonobo, a species of great ape with whom humans share 98.7% of their DNA, as an alternative model. Bonobo society, Rosenfeld explains, is peaceful and egalitarian, with females banding together to protect each other in the rare instance of male aggression. In human society, however, male alliances are prioritized, resulting in a system that fails to protect women. For example, Rosenfeld details Supreme Court decisions prohibiting Congress from “giv women a civil right to be free from gender-based violence” and dismissing a woman’s lawsuit against a police department for failing to enforce a restraining order against her estranged husband—who kidnapped and murdered their three daughters. Through these and other harrowing stories, Rosenfeld builds a persuasive case that the law is slanted against women, but her call for women to “Be Bonobo!” and form alliances to protect themselves, foster self-worth, and fight misogyny fails to fully reckon with the social forces at play. This well-intentioned call for change falls short. Agent: Gail Ross, Ross Yoon Agency. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Rosenfeld’s tour-de-force takes the power of female alliances to a higher level, giving us a road map for a new vision of women’s equality through the relationships and bonds we form among one another. The gift of this book is that it gives us hope.”  — Valerie Jarrett, New York Times bestselling author of Finding My Voice, and former senior advisor to President Barack Obama

“On the Harvard campus, Diane is known by many names: Harvard Law Lecturer, angel, bonobo. In the darkest hours after a rape, survivors learn from a whisper network about an angel of the law. That angel is Diane. I know because I was one of the Harvard rape survivors who found hope and help from Diane. This book describes that network, affectionately called by Diane, The Bonobo Sisterhood. It is a sisterhood to whom I owe my justice, success, and healing today.”  — Amanda Nguyen, founder of Rise and 2022 TIME Woman of the Year 

“With The Bonobo Sisterhood, everyone—including the men she invites in as allies—can get a taste of Rosenfeld’s signature fusion of passionate advocacy for survivors along with an activist-scholar’s command of legal theory and practice. This book should be widely read by anyone who is rightly tired of the status quo and wants both revolutionary insight and practical suggestions for change.”  — Jackson Katz, PhD, author of The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help 

“The Bonobo Sisterhood shows us that the way to disrupt patriarchy is by demonstrating that safety, security, and strength can exist among women—an idea that is both simple and radical all at once. When we strengthen our bonds with one another, rather than relying on the unstable promise of protection under patriarchy, a whole new direction is possible, and, indeed, better for all.”  — Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center and cofounder of the TIME’S UP Legal Defense Fund

“Rosenfeld’s gripping indictment of the inadequacy of society’s responses to sexual violence makes her call for a social and legal awakening urgent and persuasive. The Bonobo Sisterhood suggests how the world really can become less patriarchal.”  — Richard Wrangham, author of The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution, and Ruth B. Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard University

“An innovative analysis of the legal and social structures that enable gender-based violence and how to overcome them. Rosenfeld builds a persuasive case.” — Publishers Weekly

“How to fight patriarchy . . . well-informed, insightful, and, sadly, timely.” — Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

★ 08/01/2022

Through the study and inspiration of bonobo monkeys—humans share 98.7 percent of their DNA—Rosenfeld (founding dir., Gender Violence Program; Harvard Law Sch.) calls for a women revolution and societal reform. In this book, she describes the monkeys' strong, female coalitions, found in forests south of the Congo River, and how they band together to fight off male aggressors of their species. The author presents decades of bonobo research by evolutionary biologists and primatologists, cross-sectioned with statistics, firsthand accounts, and legal history. By addressing human campaigns for self-defense, the status quo of a male-dominated society, and promoting the physical and psychological benefits of an alliance through sisterhood, Rosenfeld imagines a world where women somewhat mimic the female bonobos by answering each other's call for protection against male supremacy, separation assault, sexual violence, street harassment, and what the author calls the "male protection racket." Completely original, thoroughly researched, and as heartbreaking as it is inspiring, this book ushers in a new age of women alliance by spotlighting women's true strength and power in numbers. VERDICT Recommend to readers of Soraya Chemaly's Rage Becomes Her and Deborah Tuerkheimer's Credible.—Alana R. Quarles

Library Journal

2022-07-07
How to fight patriarchy.

In her debut book, legal scholar and lawyer Rosenfeld, founding director of Harvard Law School’s Gender and Violence Program, paints a dark and dispiriting picture of a patriarchal society that subjects women to abuse and coercion, denying them recourse to protection under the law. In contrast, she celebrates the female alliances demonstrated by bonobos, humans’ close cousins, who successfully thwart male sexual aggression. By emulating what she calls a Bonobo Sisterhood, Rosenfeld argues, women can undermine patriarchy. Drawing on myriad legal cases, testimony, and anecdotes, the author identifies the male temper syndrome and assumption of male entitlement as primary causes of women’s victimization. Men rarely face consequences for domestic violence, while women must surmount considerable obstacles even to get an order of protection, which abusers easily evade. “Under US law,” she points out, “you have no right to enforcement of your order of protection, even if you live in a state that has a specific law mandating such enforcement.” Too often, a woman cannot find a way to hide from her aggressor; battered women’s shelters, even when available, are inadequate and disruptive. “When a woman leaves her abuser,” the author writes, “we know that he will stalk her, reassault her, and do everything in his power to bring her back under his control.” Rosenfeld examines the history of marriage and rape laws, crafted by and favoring men. For centuries, women could not bring charges of marital rape because wives were deemed the property of their husbands. The author also considers the consequences of hook-up culture, which normalizes compliance sex, “in which verbal and nonverbal cues go ignored and the woman acquiesces” and which often follow sexual scripts—including choking—that men have gleaned from pornography. Self-defense training, Rosenfeld asserts, should be part of an inclusive, empowering sisterhood in which women will stand up for and with one another.

Well-informed, insightful, and, sadly, timely.

Kirkus Reviews