Along with such titles as Robin Lakoff's Language and Woman's Place or Deborah Cameron's Feminism and Linguistic Theory, this book is on the essential reading list of students of language/sex research. Her claim is rather bold: "English language is "literally" man made and it's been in male control since the beginning." Its uncompromising adherence to the simple thesis, to the extent of being crude, makes this book comparable to one of the classics in the women in literature studies, that is, Kate Millet's Sexual Politics: both are constrained in their approach and methodology, but yet both are thought provoking and read well.

Although there are some unconvincing claims even to people with no linguistic training, Man Made Languae will certainly raise the awareness about how language can be sexist by those who intend to keep it that way. One of the sexist rules of English Spender examines is 'semantic derogation of women', through which any terms related to women eventually go through a change in meaning that makes them derogatory to women. There are many interesting examples, and unlike most of Ph. D. dissertations, it is readily accessible to non-specialists.

Why is an academic book funny? This book is written by a angry feminist and some of her comments about the sexual bias in academic criticism are very funny (to other feminists that is)! When this book first came out, it was really important because there was almost no easily accessable information on early women writers. We now have tons of better and more accurate books on earlier women writers, but this one is still fascinating for its down-to-earth, "I'm not going to take this anymore" tone. Also the pictures add interest!

This book made my blood boil! I'd give it no stars if I could.

Dale Spender presents her own biased observations as fact, wrapped up in the "women as victim" agenda. Just like the early scientists who used the emerging evolutionary theory to support the "primacy of white man", this is an arrogant and badly one-sided "history" that presents cyberspace and technology as yet another male bastion built to keep the women-folk out.

As a woman who was in on the net before anyone but uni students had heard of it, I have to say that she is badly, badly mistaken. But she wouldn't know that because she didn't talk to any of the men and women involved, she just projected her own assumptions and uses raw participation numbers to support them. Since she attacks the intent as well as the result, this is unconscionable.

If the contents of this book were presented as a research project at any university in the world, it would be knocked back for the lack of validation/triangulation to support the conclusions drawn.

In the four years since this book was published Spender has been proven very wrong. Access to cyberspace was and is now still, not determined by gender, but by economics!

I definitely expected something different, but was not entirely disappointed with this book. Basically, Spender spends 95% of this book making sure the reader knows that women have seldom been dealt a fair hand when it comes to technological advances that involve the spread of information. A good introduction for people who've been living in a cave for thousands of years. She basically uses a brief chapter on the implications of cyberspace for women - how it is paramount that they be taught to use computers, etc., if they are to survive in the world of men - to bring her argument full-circle. A good read, but I expected more cyber-goodness.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, which is not at all a how-to manual, but a philosophical yet lively, easy-to-read analysis of women and the internet: how the new medium affects how they relate to men, each other and the technology itself. Highly recommended for anyone interested in feminism, whether or not they have on-line experience.