Regardless of whether or not Dorothy Sayers called herself a feminist, these essays perfectly sum up my own thoughts on gender issues. But if I were to throw away a word every time it was used to express something different from what I mean by it, I’d have to revise the whole dictionary every few weeks. Feminism is obviously not a monolith, and I have indeed seen the term be used to describe theories that are only thinly disguised versions of the ancient belief that boys-are-from-Mars-and-girls-are-from-Venus (hello, Carol Gilligan). I don’t know whether it was any more accurate in the 1930’s than it is now, but I do know that in our days this line of thinking certainly does not describe the majority of those who call themselves feminists. This is a common misconception about feminism even today – in fact, my teenage self felt the same as Sayers. Therefore, she’s wary of anything that strengths or tries to naturalise these supposed differences. She believes that we are first and foremost human beings, that men and women are a lot more alike than they are different, and that our different achievements have merely to do with different opportunities and forms of socialisation, rather than with different abilities. Her problem with the term “feminism” has to do with the fact that she thinks it overemphasises the differences between the sexes instead of questioning them. But it was interesting to notice that the reasons she gives for not being a feminist are the very same reasons why I do call myself one. Sayers begins the first essay by rejecting the term “feminism” – this didn’t surprise me (Virginia Woolf did the same, after all), nor did it lessen my appreciation for what she had to say. These essays are still as relevant today as they were in 1938.

Sadly, a lot of what she describes hasn’t really changed in over seven decades. But, as Sayers points out, in countless ways the world is still structured as if they weren’t. Naturally everybody “knows” that women are human. The question the title of this collection asks is and yet is not tongue-in-cheek. Are Women Human? collects two essays by Dorothy Sayers on gender and women’s roles in society: the first, self-titled, was an address given to a Women’s Society in 1938 the second, “The Human-Not-Quite-Human”, deals with women’s rights within the Catholic church.

Are women human sayers