Just at chapter 3, but I can highly recommend Rebecca Traister’s All the Single Ladies.
A few bits…
“…as the legal scholar Rachel Moran argues, while the feminist movement of the 1970s was in part a ‘direct response to these conditions of early and pervasive marriage,’ the ironic side effect was that single women had almost no place in the underpinnings of the movement” (20). Yes!
“Le Bon conceded that ‘Without a doubt there exist some distinguished women, very superior to the average man, but they are as exceptional as the birth of any monstrosity, as, for example, of a gorilla with two heads; consequently, we may neglect them entirely'” (53). Had not heard that one.
Oh, and this lovely tidbit: “Chambers-Schiller reports that in the medical establishment, ‘a painful menopause was the presumed consequence of reproductive organs that were not regularly bathe din male semen'” (54).
