Ties That Bind: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences


Sarah Schulman - 2009
    In the same way that Susan Brownmiller’s Against Our Will transformed our understanding of rape by moving the stigma from the victim to the perpetrator, Schulman’s Ties That Bind calls on us to recognize familial homophobia. She invites us to understand it not as a personal problem but a widespread cultural crisis. She challenges us to take up our responsibilities to intervene without violating families, community, and the state. With devastating examples, Schulman clarifies how abusive treatment of homosexuals at home enables abusive treatment of homosexuals in other relationships as well as in society at large.Ambitious, original, and deeply important, Schulman’s book draws on her own experiences, her research, and her activism to probe this complex issue—still very much with us at the start of the twenty-first century—and to articulate a vision for a more accepting world.

The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender


Nancy J. Chodorow - 1978
    The Reproduction of Mothering was chosen by Contemporary Sociology as one of the ten most influential books of the past twenty-five years. With a new preface by the author, this updated edition is testament to the formative effect that Nancy Chodorow's work continues to exert on psychoanalysis, social science, and the humanities.

Fat Is a Feminist Issue


Susie Orbach - 1978
    Reflecting on our increasingly diet and body-obsessed society, Susie Orbach's new introduction explains how generations of women and girls are growing up absorbing the eating anxieties around them. In an age where women want to be sexy, nurturing, domestic goddesses, confident at work, and feminine too, the twenty-first-century woman is poorly armed for survival. Never before has the Fat Is A Feminist Issue revolution been more in need of revival.Exploring our love/hate relationship with food, Susie Orbach describes how fat is about so much more than food. It is a response to our social situation; the way we are seen by others and ourselves. Too often food is a source of anguish, as are our bodies. But Fat Is A Feminist Issue discusses how we can turn food into a friend and find ways to accept ourselves for who and how we are. Following the step-by-step guide, and you too can put an end to food anxieties and dieting.

The Little Book of Feminist Saints


Julia Pierpont - 2018
    These women broke ground, broke ceilings, and broke molds--includingMaya Angelou - Jane Austen - Ruby Bridges - Rachel Carson - Shirley Chisholm - Marie Curie & Irene Joliot Curie - Isadora Duncan - Amelia Earhart - Artemisia Gentileschi - Grace Hopper - Dolores Huerta - Frida Kahlo - Billie Jean King - Audre Lorde - Wilma Mankiller - Toni Morrison - Michelle Obama - Sandra Day O'Connor - Sally Ride - Eleanor Roosevelt - Margaret Sanger - Sappho - Nina Simone - Gloria Steinem - Kanno Sugako - Harriet Tubman - Mae West - Virginia Woolf - Malala YousafzaiOpen to any page and find daily inspiration and lasting delight.

For the Love of Men: A New Vision for Mindful Masculinity


Liz Plank - 2019
    Men grow up being told that boys don’t cry and dolls are for girls. They learn they must hide their feelings and anxieties, that their masculinity must constantly be proven. They must be the breadwinners. They must be the romantic pursuers. This hasn’t been good for the culture at large: 99% of school shooters are male; men in fraternities are 300% more likely to rape; a woman serving in uniform has a higher likelihood of being assaulted by a fellow soldier than to be killed by enemy fire.In For the Love of Men, author Liz Plank offers a smart, insightful, and deeply researched guide for what we're all going to do about toxic masculinity. For both women looking to guide the men in their lives and men who want to do better and just don’t know how, For the Love of Men will lead the conversation on men's issues in a society where so much is changing but gender roles have remained strangely stagnant.What are we going to do about men? Plank has the answer--and it has the possibility to change the world for men and women alike.

Period Power: A Manifesto for the Menstrual Movement


Nadya Okamoto - 2018
    They’re taboo. They’re embarrassing. They’re gross. And due to a crumbling or nonexistent national sex ed program, they are misunderstood. Because of these stigmas, a status quo has been established to exclude people who menstruate from the seat at the decision-making table, creating discriminations like the tampon tax, medicines that favor male biology, and more.Power to the Period aims to explain what menstruation is, shed light on the stigmas and resulting biases, and create a strategy to end the silence and prompt conversation about periods.

Why I Am Not a Feminist: A Feminist Manifesto


Jessa Crispin - 2017
    . . or so the feminists keep insisting. But somewhere along the way, the movement for female liberation sacrificed meaning for acceptance, and left us with a banal, polite, ineffectual pose that barely challenges the status quo. In this bracing, fiercely intelligent manifesto, Jessa Crispin demands more.Why I Am Not A Feminist is a radical, fearless call for revolution. It accuses the feminist movement of obliviousness, irrelevance, and cowardice—and demands nothing less than the total dismantling of a system of oppression.

Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza


Gloria E. Anzaldúa - 1987
    Writing in a lyrical mixture of Spanish and English that is her unique heritage, she meditates on the condition of Chicanos in Anglo culture, women in Hispanic culture, and lesbians in the straight world. Her essays and poems range over broad territory, moving from the plight of undocumented migrant workers to memories of her grandmother, from Aztec religion to the agony of writing. Anzaldua is a rebellious and willful talent who recognizes that life on the border, "life in the shadows," is vital territory for both literature and civilization. Venting her anger on all oppressors of people who are culturally or sexually different, the author has produced a powerful document that belongs in all collections with emphasis on Hispanic American or feminist issues.

Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought


Beverly Guy-Sheftall - 1995
    The first comprehensive collection to trace the development of African-American feminist thought.

Girl Up


Laura Bates - 2016
    They told you to wear longer skirts, avoid going out late at night and move in groups - never accept drinks from a stranger, and wear shoes you can run in more easily than heels. They told you to wear just enough make-up to look presentable but not enough to be a slut; to dress to flatter your apple, pear, hourglass figure, but not to be too tarty. They warned you that if you try to be strong, or take control, you'll be shrill, bossy, a ballbreaker. Of course it's fine for the boys, but you should know your place. They told you 'that's not for girls' - 'take it as a compliment' - 'don't rock the boat' - 'that'll go straight to your hips'. They told you 'beauty is on the inside', but you knew they didn't really mean it. Well screw that. I'm here to tell you something else. Hilarious, jaunty and bold, GIRL UP exposes the truth about the pressures surrounding body image, the false representations in media, the complexities of a sex and relationships, the trials of social media and all the other lies they told us. 'Bates takes a myth-busting approach to body image, food, sex and advertising, and is particularly good at boiling down feminist language into a snappy, everyday vernacular without diluting its power.' Metro 'Essential reading for young women and girls, Girl Up is set to become a key guiding text for the next generation like The Beauty Myth and The Feminine Mystique have for preceding generations. Morning Star Online It's hardly headline news that feminism can be funny. But, heavens, is it refreshing to see it done as well as it is [in this book]. Telegraph 'Girl Up is something between a self-help book and a bracing love letter to today's teenage girls...I wish I'd had Girl Up when I was growing up. I could have used such no-nonsense survival g

Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights


Katha Pollitt - 2014
    Wade ruling, "abortion" is still a word that is said with outright hostility by many, despite the fact that one in three American women will have terminated at least one pregnancy by menopause. Even those who support a woman's right to an abortion often qualify their support by saying abortion is a "bad thing," an "agonizing decision," making the medical procedure so remote and radioactive that it takes it out of the world of the everyday, turning an act that is normal and necessary into something shameful and secretive. Meanwhile, with each passing day, the rights upheld by the Supreme Court are being systematically eroded by state laws designed to end abortion outright.In this urgent, controversial book, Katha Pollitt reframes abortion as a common part of a woman's reproductive life, one that should be accepted as a moral right with positive social implications. In Pro, Pollitt takes on the personhood argument, reaffirms the priority of a woman's life and health, and discusses why terminating a pregnancy can be a force for good for women, families, and society. It is time, Pollitt argues, that we reclaim the lives and the rights of women and mothers.

Gender and Discourse


Deborah Tannen - 1994
    Clearly, Tannen's insights into how and why women and men so often misunderstand each other when they talk has touched a nerve. For years a highly respected scholar in the field of linguistics, she has now become widely known for her work on how conversational style differences associated with gender affect relationships. Her life work has demonstrated how close and intelligent analysis of conversation can reveal the extraordinary complexities of social relationships--including relationships between men and women. Now, in Gender and Discourse, Tannen has gathered together six of her scholarly essays, including her newest and previously unpublished work in which language and gender are examined through the lens of sex-class-linked patterns, rather than sex-linked patterns. These essays provide a theoretical backdrop to her best-selling books--and an informative introduction which discusses her field of linguistics, describes the research methods she typically uses, and addresses the controversies surrounding her field as well as some misunderstandings of her work. (She argues, for instance, that her cultural approach to gender differences does not deny that men dominate women in society, nor does it ascribe gender differences to women's essential nature.) The essays themselves cover a wide range of topics. In one, she analyzes a number of conversational strategies--such as interruption, topic raising, indirection, and silence--and shows that, contrary to much work on language and gender, no strategy exclusively expresses dominance or submissiveness in conversation--interruption (or overlap) can be supportive, silence and indirection can be used to control. It is the interactional context, the participants' individual styles, and the interaction of their styles, Tannen shows, that result in the balance of power. She also provides a fascinating analysis of four groups of males and females (second-, sixth-, and tenth-grade students, and twenty-five year olds) conversing with their best friends, and she includes an early article co-authored with Robin Lakoff that presents a theory of conversational strategy, illustrated by analysis of dialogue in Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage. Readers interested in the theoretical framework behind Tannen's work will find this volume fascinating. It will be sure to interest anyone curious about the crucial yet often unnoticed role that language and gender play in our daily lives.

What We Talk About When We Talk about Rape


Sohaila Abdulali - 2018
    Indignant at the silence on the issue in India, she wrote an article for an Indian women’s magazine questioning how we perceive rape and rape victims. Thirty years later her story went viral in the wake of the 2012 fatal gang rape in Delhi and the global outcry that followed. In 2013, Abdulali published an op-ed in the New York Times called “After Being Raped, I Was Wounded; My Honor Wasn’t” that was widely circulated. Now, as the #metoo and #timesup movements blow open the topic of sexual assault and rape, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape is a brilliant and entirely original contribution to our understanding.Drawing on her own experience, her research, her work with hundreds of survivors as the head of a rape crisis center in Boston, and three decades of grappling with the issue as a feminist intellectual and writer, Abdulali examines the contemporary discourse about rape and rape culture, questioning our assumptions and asking how we want to raise the next generation. She interviews survivors whose moving personal stories of hard-won strength, humor, and wisdom collectively tell the larger story of how societies may begin to heal.Abdulali also explores what we don’t say. Is rape always a life-defining event? Does rape always symbolize something? Is rape worse than death? Is rape related to desire? Who gets raped? Is rape inevitable? Is one rape worse than another? How does one recover a sense of safety and joy? How do we raise sons? Is a world without rape possible? Both deeply personal and meticulously researched, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape is a rallying cry and required reading for us all.

Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism: And Other Arguments for Economic Independence


Kristen R. Ghodsee - 2018
    The response was tremendous — clearly she articulated something many women had sensed for years: the problem is with capitalism, not with us.Ghodsee, an acclaimed ethnographer and professor of Russian and East European Studies, spent years researching what happened to women in countries that transitioned from state socialism to capitalism. She argues here that unregulated capitalism disproportionately harms women, and that we should learn from the past. By rejecting the bad and salvaging the good, we can adapt some socialist ideas to the 21st century and improve our lives.She tackles all aspects of a woman's life - work, parenting, sex and relationships, citizenship, and leadership. In a chapter called "Women: Like Men, But Cheaper," she talks about women in the workplace, discussing everything from the wage gap to harassment and discrimination. In "What To Expect When You're Expecting Exploitation," she addresses motherhood and how "having it all" is impossible under capitalism.Women are standing up for themselves like never before, from the increase in the number of women running for office to the women's march to the long-overdue public outcry against sexual harassment. Interest in socialism is also on the rise -- whether it's the popularity of Bernie Sanders or the skyrocketing membership numbers of the Democratic Socialists of America. It's become increasingly clear to women that capitalism isn't working for us, and Ghodsee is the informed, lively guide who can show us the way forward.

Language and Gender


Penelope Eckert - 2002
    It covers the main topics, beginning with a clear discussion of gender and of the resources that the linguistic system offers for the construction of social meaning. The body of the book offers unprecedented breadth and depth in its coverage of the interaction between language and social life. It is the ideal textbook for students in language and gender courses in several disciplines, including linguistics, gender studies, women's studies, sociology, and anthropology.