"Gender Rebels" explores the largely hidden history of women wanted to live their lives freely, and did so by masquerading as men. Each anecdote condensed the women's lives into a highlight real that was both informative and entertaining. Though the humor seems a little forced at times, I enjoyed listening to the book.

DNF

This is tripe.

They just called Joan of Arc the "Justin Bieber of France."

Like, could you possibly be more dismissive of what women have gone through historically because we are female?

Honestly, this is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever read:

"Joan almost continuously wore men's clothing. It seemed that for whatever reason, she made up her mind that they were her and they were going to help her progress with her master plan. Perhaps she thought she would be taken more seriously [...]."

If only there were some kind of analysis that we could use to explain why Joan of Arc (referred to as "J of A" by the author) felt the need to hide her female sex?

Also, according to the author, the "reason" we "know" Joan of Arc has "made it" is that she "inspired the bob haircut."

I don't know how much longer I can do this.

The girl was burned at the stake by angry, frightened men, but yeah, what matters is her haircut. You know, the one she needed to hide that she was female so she wouldn't be RAPED.

Between this and the glossing over of actual history, give this book a big fat miss. You're better served reading the wikipedias of these women.

The narration was fine, but spoiled by the "I'm hip and cool and edgy" explosions of nonsense in the writing.

Also, Hatshepsut was not a king, she was a pharaoh, which is a GENDER-NEUTRAL term.

I received a copy of this audiobook for free from NetGalley and W.F. Howes Ltd in exchange for an honest, voluntary review.

I was so excited when I read the description of this book because I absolutely love learning about powerful women throughout history. While this book has an excellent list of fifty women I will read up on, I found that the actual substance was a bit lacking. Each chapter was very short and very casual, making jokes about the women it claimed to revere. Ultimately, I would have liked a more empowering voice for this collection.

It was a fun little book about historical figures of people who were considered women by their contemporaries, but in one way or another transgressed what was considered feminine at the time.
It was a vast selection of voices and stories and I enjoyed the fact that well-known stories were mixed with ones I have never heard about.
The author is witty and clearly enthusiastic about the topic. The amount of research done in order to complete this book shows in every biography.
The only issue I have with this book is that the line between a cis woman opposing patriarchal restraints and a transgender man seems to be blurred. In all cases, the author describes them as women, while many times, I felt that approach wasn't appropriate (e.g. in case of a monk who lived their whole life as a man). I know the author really wanted to describe badass women. Historical figures are no longer here to talk about their identity, so we simply don't know, do we? That's why I think using the pronoun "they" would be more considerate. We don't want to repeat the mistakes of their contemporaries, do we?

I love the narraters of this book. I truly think they brought the stories to live. I am so glad that this book exist. At some part I lost track because the stories are so short and there are so many. But I'm really glad I have read this.

The Gender Rebels audiobook was a fun, easy listen for me. My only complaint is that I expected it to be a little more intellectual rather than general summaries making up each biography section. That was an assumption I made though rather than an actual anything actually negative about the book.I still think the book is definitely worth a listen or read. I would just recommend it more to younger people looking to get started in feminist and queer history rather than people who may have heard a lot of these stories before or who are looking to dive a little deeper. The narration was entertaining, and it was a nice touch to have multiple narrators as it helped delineate between stories.

This audiobook features a wealth of stories from Gender Rebels throughout time, The multitude of people are covered in short clips by a range of different voices. I felt like I was listening to a friend as each narrator had a sense of humour and a relaxed approach to their retelling of their stories.

The structure of the book, with each story segmented means that you can listen to this on the go or in short bursts, I enjoyed being able to dip in and dip out.

I enjoyed this audiobook thoroughly. It’s a snapshot of 50 women who, for some period of time in their lives, lived as men. The narration was fun and the pace was good. However, audio-wise, the ALC from NetGalley was missing several chapters - I think 9 in all? - and the book would just randomly stop playing. That’s a problem that needs fixing!

My biggest gripe was that while I enjoy the occasional authorial interjection, it often pulled me out of the story of the women being lifted up. I am wary of a lot of contemporary commentary here; five years from now it’s going to sound outdated, and I think that does a disservice to the immense amount of work and love that went into this book. Also puns tend to annoy me so that part wasn’t up my alley.

I wish we had more meat to a lot of these stories. Not much is known about these women beyond snippets, and that is a damned shame.

Sadly I had to give up on this book. And this is not because it is bad but because the app is messing up. I made it about 1/3 of the way in until the app didn't want to play different chapter or just didn't want to start.

Of what I listen to this was fine. Nothing new and there are many books like this. There where a few new women that I hadn't heard about before but many have been featured in other similar books previously. If I hadn't read them I would probably have enjoyed this book more.

This book relied far too much on the cringeworthy jokes than actually focusing on the subject matter, so much so that I think it ended up achieving the opposite of what it was trying to achieve. The writing style reminded me of someone who was trying extremely hard to relate to the younger generation, and even I, a bitter thornback, could feel the second-hand embarrassment radiating out of my phone.
The audiobook narrator tried her best with the material she had been given, but I'm afraid nothing was saving this mess.

I wanted to like this book. Gender rebels? My genderfluid heart was ready for this one. I received the audiobook version (thank you NetGalley for the ARC). I couldn’t concentrate on the interesting gender rebels because there were too many distracting sentences. It wasn’t the informal use of language, but rather the digressions from the main topic that bothered me. I want to learn more about each of the people in this book but from a different source.