In a Day's Work: The Fight to End Sexual Violence Against America’s Most Vulnerable Workers


Bernice Yeung - 2018
    But it takes a lot. It takes a lot.” —Dolores Huerta, United Farm Workers co-founderApple orchards in bucolic Washington state. Office parks in Southern California under cover of night. The home of an elderly man in Miami. These are some of the workplaces where female workers have suffered brutal sexual assault and shocking harassment at the hands of their employers, often with little or no official recourse. In this harrowing yet often inspiring tale, investigative journalist Bernice Yeung exposes the epidemic of sexual violence levied against women farmworkers, domestic workers, and janitorial workers and charts their quest for justice in the workplace.Yeung takes readers on a journey across the country, introducing us to women who came to America to escape grinding poverty only to encounter sexual violence in the United States. In a Day’s Work exposes the underbelly of economies filled with employers who take advantage of immigrant women’s need to earn a basic living. When these women find the courage to speak up, Yeung reveals, they are too often met by apathetic bosses and underresourced government agencies. But In a Day’s Work also tells a story of resistance, introducing a group of courageous allies who challenge dangerous and discriminatory workplace conditions alongside aggrieved workers—and win. Moving and inspiring, this book will change our understanding of the lives of immigrant women.

What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat


Aubrey Gordon - 2020
    In What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat, Aubrey Gordon unearths the cultural attitudes and social systems that have led to people being denied basic needs because they are fat and calls for social justice movements to be inclusive of plus-sized people's experiences. Unlike the recent wave of memoirs and quasi self-help books that encourage readers to love and accept themselves, Gordon pushes the discussion further towards authentic fat activism, which includes ending legal weight discrimination, giving equal access to health care for large people, increased access to public spaces, and ending anti-fat violence. As she argues, I did not come to body positivity for self-esteem. I came to it for social justice.By sharing her experiences as well as those of others--from smaller fat to very fat people--she concludes that to be fat in our society is to be seen as an undeniable failure, unlovable, unforgivable, and morally condemnable. Fatness is an open invitation for others to express disgust, fear, and insidious concern. To be fat is to be denied humanity and empathy. Studies show that fat survivors of sexual assault are less likely to be believed and less likely than their thin counterparts to report various crimes; 27% of very fat women and 13% of very fat men attempt suicide; over 50% of doctors describe their fat patients as awkward, unattractive, ugly and noncompliant; and in 48 states, it's legal--even routine--to deny employment because of an applicant's size.Advancing fat justice and changing prejudicial structures and attitudes will require work from all people. What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat is a crucial tool to create a tectonic shift in the way we see, talk about, and treat our bodies, fat and thin alike.

Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy


Barbara Ehrenreich - 2003
    But for every female executive racking up frequent flier miles there are multitudes of women whose journeys go unnoticed. Each year, millions leave Mexico, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and other third world countries to work in the homes, nurseries, and brothels of the first world. This broad-scale transfer of labor associated with women's traditional roles results in an odd displacement. In the new global calculus, the female energy that flows to wealthy countries is subtracted from poor ones, often to the detriment of the families left behind. The migrant nanny — or cleaning woman, nursing-care attendant, maid — eases a "care deficit" in rich countries, while her absence creates one back home. Confronting a range of topics, from the fate of Vietnamese mail-order brides to the importation of Mexican nannies in Los Angeles and the selling of Thai girls to Japanese brothels, a diverse and distinguised group of writers offer an unprecedented look at a world shaped by mass migration and economic exchange. Collected and introduced by bestselling authors Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild, these fifteen essays — of which only four have been previously published — reveal a new era in which the main resource extracted from the third world is no longer gold or silver, but love. Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of New York Times bestsellers Nickel and Dimed and The Worst Years of Our Lives, as well as Blood Rites. She lives near Key West, Florida. Arlie Russell Hochschild is the author of national bestsellers The Time Bind and The Second Shift. She live in San Francisco, California.

The Geek Feminist Revolution


Kameron Hurley - 2016
    The Geek Feminist Revolution also features several entirely new essays written specifically for this volume.Unapologetically outspoken, Hurley has contributed essays to The Atlantic, Locus, Tor.com, and elsewhere on the rise of women in genre, her passion for science fiction and fantasy, and the diversification of publishing.

Shameless: A Sexual Reformation


Nadia Bolz-Weber - 2019
    And that's why in Shameless, Pastor Nadia sets out to reclaim the conversation for a new generation. In the spirit of Martin Luther, Bolz-Weber calls for a reformation of the way believers understand and express their sexuality. To make her case, Bolz-Weber draws on experiences from her own life as well as her parishoners', then puts them side by side with biblical narrative and theology to explore what the church has taught and about sex, and the harm that has often come as a result. Along the way, Bolz-Weber reexamines patriarchy, gender, and sexual orientation with candor but also with hope--because, as she writes, "I believe that the Gospel can heal the pain that even the church has caused."

Trans Like Me: A Journey for All of Us


C.N. Lester - 2017
    Lester, academic and activist, takes us on a journey through some of the most pressing issues concerning the trans debate: from pronouns to Caitlyn Jenner; from feminist and LGBTQ activists, to the rise in referrals for gender variant children -- all by way of insightful and moving passages about the author's own experience. Trans Like Me shows us how to strive for authenticity in a world which often seeks to limit us by way of labels.

Girls Will Be Girls: Dressing Up, Playing Parts and Daring to Act Differently


Emer O'Toole - 2015
    With all the revolutionary zeal, laugh-out-loud humour and intelligence of Laura Bates, Caitlin Moran and Bell Hooks, Emer O'Toole explores what it really means to 'act like a girl'.Being a woman is, largely, about performance - how we dress and modify our bodies, what we say, the roles we play, and how we conform to expectations. Gender stereotypes are still deeply embedded in our society, but Emer O'Toole is on a mission to re-write the old script and bend the rules of gender - and she shows how and why we should all be joining in.With game-changing ideas and laugh-out-loud humour, this book will open your mind and revolutionise the way that you think about gender.

Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture


Ariel Levy - 2005
    In her groundbreaking book, New York magazine writer Ariel Levy argues that, if male chauvinist pigs of years past thought of women as pieces of meat, Female Chauvinist Pigs of today are doing them one better, making sex objects of other women – and of themselves. Irresistibly witty and wickedly intelligent, Female Chauvinist Pigs makes the case that the rise of raunch does not represent how far women have come; it only proves how far they have left to go.

Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation


Anne Helen Petersen - 2020
    While burnout may seem like the default setting for the modern era, in Can’t Even, BuzzFeed culture writer and former academic Anne Helen Petersen argues that burnout is a definitional condition for the millennial generation, born out of distrust in the institutions that have failed us, the unrealistic expectations of the modern workplace, and a sharp uptick in anxiety and hopelessness exacerbated by the constant pressure to “perform” our lives online. The genesis for the book is Petersen’s viral BuzzFeed article on the topic, which has amassed over eight million reads since its publication in January 2019.Can’t Even goes beyond the original article, as Petersen examines how millennials have arrived at this point of burnout (think: unchecked capitalism and changing labor laws) and examines the phenomenon through a variety of lenses—including how burnout affects the way we work, parent, and socialize—describing its resonance in alarming familiarity. Utilizing a combination of sociohistorical framework, original interviews, and detailed analysis, Can’t Even offers a galvanizing, intimate, and ultimately redemptive look at the lives of this much-maligned generation, and will be required reading for both millennials and the parents and employers trying to understand them.

Beauty and Misogyny: Harmful Cultural Practices in the West


Sheila Jeffreys - 2005
    However, in the last two decades the brutality of western beauty practices seems to have become much more severe, requiring the breaking of skin, spilling of blood and rearrangement or amputation of body parts. Beauty and Misogyny seeks to make sense of why beauty practices are not only just as persistent, but in many ways more extreme. It examines the pervasive use of makeup, the misogyny of fashion and high-heeled shoes, and looks at the role of pornography in the creation of increasingly popular beauty practices such as breast implants, genital waxing and surgical alteration of the labia. It looks at the cosmetic surgery and body piercing/cutting industries as being forms of self-mutilation by proxy, in which the surgeons and piercers serve as proxies to harm women s bodies, and concludes by considering how a culture of resistance to these practices can be created.This essential work will appeal to students and teachers of feminist psychology, gender studies, cultural studies, and feminist sociology at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and to anyone with an interest in feminism, women and beauty, and women s health.

I'm Afraid of Men


Vivek Shraya - 2018
    Throughout her life she's endured acts of cruelty and aggression for being too feminine as a boy and not feminine enough as a girl. In order to survive childhood, she had to learn to convincingly perform masculinity. As an adult, she makes daily compromises to steel herself against everything from verbal attacks to heartbreak.With raw honesty, Shraya delivers an important record of the cumulative damage caused by misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia, releasing trauma from a body that has always refused to assimilate. I'm Afraid of Men is a journey from camouflage to a riot of color and a blueprint for how we might cherish all that makes us different and conquer all that makes us afraid.

Misogyny: The World's Oldest Prejudice


Jack Holland - 2006
    Misogyny encompasses the Church, witch hunts, sexual theory, Nazism, pro-life campaigners, and finally, today's developing world, where women are increasingly and disproportionately at risk because of radicalized religious beliefs, famine, war, and disease. Extensively researched, highly readable and provocative, this book chronicles an ancient, pervasive and enduring injustice. The questions it poses deal with the fundamentals of human existence — sex, love, violence — that have shaped the lives of humans throughout history, and ultimately limn an abuse of human rights on a nearly unthinkable scale.

Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World


Rutger Bregman - 2014
    A 15-hour workweek. Open borders. Does it sound too good to be true? One of Europe's leading young thinkers shows how we can build an ideal world today. "A more politically radical Malcolm Gladwell."—The New York Times After working all day at jobs we often dislike, we buy things we don't need. Rutger Bregman, a Dutch historian, reminds us it needn't be this way—and in some places it isn't. Rutger Bregman's TED Talk about universal basic income seemed impossibly radical when he delivered it in 2014. A quarter of a million views later, the subject of that video is being seriously considered by leading economists and government leaders the world over. It's just one of the many utopian ideas that Bregman proves is possible today. Utopia for Realists is one of those rare books that takes you by surprise and challenges what you think can happen. From a Canadian city that once completely eradicated poverty, to Richard Nixon's near implementation of a basic income for millions of Americans, Bregman takes us on a journey through history, and beyond the traditional left-right divides, as he champions ideas whose time have come. Every progressive milestone of civilization—from the end of slavery to the beginning of democracy—was once considered a utopian fantasy. Bregman's book, both challenging and bracing, demonstrates that new utopian ideas, like the elimination of poverty and the creation of the fifteen-hour workweek, can become a reality in our lifetime. Being unrealistic and unreasonable can in fact make the impossible inevitable, and it is the only way to build the ideal world.

The Women's Suffrage Movement


Sally Roesch Wagner - 2019
    This one-of-a-kind intersectional anthology features the writings of the most well-known suffragists, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, alongside accounts of those often overlooked because of their race, from Native American women to African American suffragists like Ida B. Wells and the three Forten sisters. At a time of enormous political and social upheaval, there could be no more important book than one that recognizes a group of exemplary women--in their own words--as they paved the way for future generations. The editor and introducer, Sally Roesch Wagner, is a pre-eminent scholar of the diverse backbone of the women's suffrage movement, the founding director of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation, and serves on the New York State Women's Suffrage Commission.

Fifty Shades of Feminism


Lisa Appignanesi - 2013
    There are many more shades than that and here are fifty women to explore them. Fifty years after the publication of The Feminine Mystique, have women really exchanged purity and maternity to become desiring machines inspired only by variations of sex, shopping and masochism - all coloured a brilliant neuro-pink?In this volume, fifty women young and old - writers, politicians, actors, scientists, mothers - reflect on the shades that inspired them and what being woman means to them today.Contributors include: Tahmima Anam, Joan Bakewell, Bidisha, Lydia Cacho, Nina Power, Shami Chakrabarti, Lennie Goodings, Linda Grant, Natalie Haynes, Siri Hustvedt, Jude Kelly, Kathy Lette, Kate Mosse, Bee Rowlatt, Elif Shafak, Ahdaf Soueif, Shirley Thompson, Natasha Walter, Jeanette Winterson - alongside the three editors.