Listen Up: Voices From the Next Feminist Generation


Barbara Findlen - 1995
    Exploring and revealing the lives of today's young feminists--the Third Wave--a collection of essays by thirty diverse members of the twenty-something generation covers a wide range of topics including racism, sex, identity, AIDS, revolution, and abortion.

Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV


Jennifer L. Pozner - 2009
    In Reality Bites Back, media critic Jennifer L. Pozner aims a critical, analytical lens at a trend most people dismiss as harmless fluff. She deconstructs reality TV’s twisted fairytales to demonstrate that far from being simple “guilty pleasures,” these programs are actually guilty of fomenting gender-war ideology and significantly affecting the intellectual and political development of this generation’s young viewers. She lays out the cultural biases promoted by reality TV about gender, race, class, sexuality, and consumerism, and explores how those biases shape and reflect our cultural perceptions of who we are, what we’re valued for, and what we should view as “our place” in society. Smart and informative, Reality Bites Back arms readers with the tools they need to understand and challenge the stereotypes reality TV reinforces and, ultimately, to demand accountability from the corporations responsible for this contemporary cultural attack on three decades of feminist progress.

Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape


Susan Brownmiller - 1975
    In lucid, persuasive prose, Brownmiller has created a definitive, devastating work of lasting social importance.Chosen by THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW as One of the Outstanding Books of the Year

As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl


John Colapinto - 2000
    The case would become one of the most famous in modern medicine—and a total failure. As Nature Made Him tells the extraordinary story of David Reimer, who, when finally informed of his medical history, made the decision to live as a male. A macabre tale of medical arrogance, it is first and foremost a human drama of one man's—and one family's—amazing survival in the face of terrible odds.

The Stonewall Reader


New York Public Library - 2019
    Drawing from the New York Public Library's archives, The Stonewall Reader is a collection of first accounts, diaries, periodic literature, and articles from LGBTQ magazines and newspapers that documented both the years leading up to and the years following the riots. Most importantly the anthology spotlights both iconic activists who were pivotal in the movement, such as Sylvia Rivera, co-founder of Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries (STAR), as well as forgotten figures like Ernestine Eckstein, one of the few out, African American, lesbian activists in the 1960s. The anthology focuses on the events of 1969, the five years before, and the five years after. Jason Baumann, the NYPL coordinator of humanities and LGBTQ collections, has edited and introduced the volume to coincide with the NYPL exhibition he has curated on the Stonewall uprising and gay liberation movement of 1969.

The Descent of Man


Grayson Perry - 2016
    Now, in this funny and necessary book, he turns round to look at men with a clear eye and ask, what sort of men would make the world a better place, for everyone?What would happen if we rethought the old, macho, outdated version of manhood, and embraced a different idea of what makes a man? Apart from giving up the coronary-inducing stress of always being 'right' and the vast new wardrobe options, the real benefit might be that a newly fitted masculinity will allow men to have better relationships - and that's happiness, right?Grayson Perry admits he's not immune from the stereotypes himself - as the psychoanalysts say, 'if you spot it, you've got it' - and his thoughts on everything from power to physical appearance, from emotions to a brand new Manifesto for Men, are shot through with honesty, tenderness and the belief that, for everyone to benefit, upgrading masculinity has to be something men decide to do themselves. They have nothing to lose but their hang-ups.

Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters


Abigail Shrier - 2020
    Teenage girls are taking courses of testosterone and disfiguring their bodies. Parents are undermined; experts are over-relied upon; dissenters in science and medicine are intimidated; free speech truckles under renewed attack; socialized medicine bears hidden consequences; and an intersectional era has arisen in which the desire to escape a dominant identity encourages individuals to take cover in victim groups. Every person who has ever had a skeptical thought about the sudden rush toward a non-binary future but been afraid to express it—this book is for you.

Travesti: Sex, Gender, and Culture among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes


Don Kulick - 1998
    Travestis are males who, often beginning at ages as young as ten, adopt female names, clothing styles, hairstyles, and linguistic pronouns. More dramatically, they ingest massive doses of female hormones and inject up to twenty liters of industrial silicone into their bodies to create breasts, wide hips, and large thighs and buttocks. Despite such irreversible physiological changes, virtually no travesti identifies herself as a woman. Moreover, travestis regard any male who does so as mentally disturbed. Kulick analyzes the various ways travestis modify their bodies, explores the motivations that lead them to choose this particular gendered identity, and examines the complex relationships that they maintain with one another, their boyfriends, and their families. Kulick also looks at how travestis earn their living through prostitution and discusses the reasons prostitution, for most travestis, is a positive and affirmative experience. Arguing that transgenderism never occurs in a "natural" or arbitrary form, Kulick shows how it is created in specific social contexts and assumes specific social forms. Furthermore, Kulick suggests that travestis—far from deviating from normative gendered expectations—may in fact distill and perfect the messages that give meaning to gender throughout Brazilian society and possibly throughout much of Latin America. Through Kulick's engaging voice and sharp analysis, this elegantly rendered account is not only a landmark study in its discipline but also a fascinating read for anyone interested in sexuality and gender.

Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China


Leslie T. Chang - 2008
    But while these workers, who leave their rural towns to find jobs in China's cities, are the driving force behind China's growing economy, little is known about their day-to-day lives or the sociological significance of this massive movement. In Factory Girls, Leslie T. Chang tells the story of these workers primarily through the lives of two young women whom she follows over the course of three years. Chang vividly portrays a world where you can lose your boyfriend and your friends with the loss of a cell phone; where lying about your age, your education, and your work experience is often a requisite for getting ahead; where a few computer or English lessons can catapult you into a completely different social class. Throughout this affecting portrait of migrant life, Chang also interweaves the story of her own family's migrations, within China and to the West, providing a historical frame of reference for her investigation. At a time when the Olympics will have shifted the world's focus to China, Factory Girls offers a previously untold story about the immense population of unknown women who work countless hours, often in hazardous conditions, to provide us with the material goods we take for granted. A book of global significance, it demonstrates how the movement from rural villages to cities is remaking individual lives and the fates of families, transforming our world much as immigration to America's shores remade our own society a century ago.

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.

Colonize This!: Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism


Bushra Rehman - 2002
    Now a new generation of brilliant, outspoken women of color is speaking to the concerns of a new feminism, and their place in it. Daisy Hernandez of Ms. magazine and poet Bushra Rehman have collected a diverse, lively group of emerging writers who speak to their experience—to the strength and rigidity of community and religion, to borders and divisions, both internal and external—and address issues that take feminism into the twenty-first century. One writer describes herself as a “mixed brown girl, Sri-Lankan and New England mill-town white trash,” and clearly delineates the organizing differences between whites and women of color: “We do not kick ass the way the white girls do, in meetings of NOW or riot grrl. For us, it’s all about family.” A Korean-American woman struggles to create her own identity in a traditional community: “Yam-ja-neh means nice, sweet, compliant. I’ve heard it used many times by my parents’ friends who don’t know shit about me.” An Arab-American feminist deconstructs the “quaint vision” of Middle-Eastern women with which most Americans feel comfortable. This impressive array of first-person accounts adds a much-needed fresh dimension to the ongoing dialogue between race and gender, and gives voice to the women who are creating and shaping the feminism of the future.

Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud


Thomas W. Laqueur - 1990
    It tells the astonishing story of sex in the West from the ancients to the moderns in a precise account of developments in reproductive anatomy and physiology. We cannot fail to recognize the players in Thomas Laqueur's story--the human sexual organs and pleasures, food, blood, semen, egg, sperm--but we will be amazed at the plots into which they have been woven by scientists, political activists, literary figures, and theorists of every stripe.Laqueur begins with the question of why, in the late eighteenth century, woman's orgasm came to be regarded as irrelevant to conception, and he then proceeds to retrace the dramatic changes in Western views of sexual characteristics over two millennia. Along the way, two "master plots" emerge. In the one-sex story, woman is an imperfect version of man, and her anatomy and physiology are construed accordingly: the vagina is seen as an interior penis, the womb as a scrotum, the ovaries as testicles. The body is thus a representation, not the foundation, of social gender. The second plot tends to dominate post-Enlightenment thinking while the one-sex model is firmly rooted in classical learning. The two-sex story says that the body determines gender differences, that woman is the opposite of man with incommensurably different organs, functions, and feelings. The two plots overlap; neither ever holds a monopoly. Science may establish many new facts, but even so, Laqueur argues, science was only providing a new way of speaking, a rhetoric and not a key to female liberation or to social progress. Making Sex ends with Freud, who denied the neurological evidence to insist that, as a girl becomes a woman, the locus of her sexual pleasure shifts from the clitoris to the vagina; she becomes what culture demands despite, not because of, the body. Turning Freud's famous dictum around, Laqueur posits that destiny is anatomy. Sex, in other words, is an artifice.This is a powerful story, written with verve and a keen sense of telling detail (be it technically rigorous or scabrously fanciful). Making Sex will stimulate thought, whether argument or surprised agreement, in a wide range of readers.

Reconstructing Gender: A Multicultural Anthology


Estelle Disch - 1996
    Drawing from a wide range of sources including research articles, essays, and personal narratives, Disch has chosen accessible, engaging, and provocative readings that represent a plurality of perspectives and experiences. Eleven part introductions briefly identify important issues in the general eld of study, describe the readings, identify the central themes emerging throughout the book, and raise questions for students to consider.Contents:Part I: It's not just about Gender 1. The Puerto Rican Dummy and the Merciful Son, Marti;n Espada2. From Nothing, A Consciousness, Helen Zia3. The Past is Ever Present: Recognizing the New Racism, Patricia Hill Collins4. Angry Women Are Building: Issues and Struggles Facing American Indian Women Today, Paula Gunn Allen5. “J.A.P.”-Slapping: The Politics of Scapegoating, Ruth Atkin and Adrienne Rich6. White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, Peggy McIntosh7. Controlled or Autonomous: Identity and the Experience of the Network, Women Living Under Muslim Laws, Farida Shaheed8. Theorizing Difference from Multiracial Feminism, Maxine Baca Zinn and Bonnie Thornton Dill9. Patriarchy, Allan Johnson10. Reflections on Global Governance and Transnational Feminist Movements in an Era of Infinite War, Rosalind PetcheskyPart II: Gender Socialization11. The Social Construction of Gender, Judith Lorber12. Boyhood, Organized Sports, and the Construction of Masculinities, Michael A. Messner13. Who's the Fairest of Them All?, Jill Nelson14. The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Mari;a, Judith Ortiz Cofer15. He Defies You Still: The Memoirs of a Sissy, Tommi Avicolli16. Growing Up Hidden, Linnea DuePart III: Embodiment17. Beauty Is the Beast: Psychological Effects of the Pursuit of the Perfect Female Body, Elayne A. Saltzberg and Joan C. Chrisler18. Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit, Leslie Marmon Silko19. “A Way Outa No Way”: Eating Problems among African-American, Latina, and White Women, Becky W. Thompson20. Just Walk on By: A Black Man Ponders His Power to Alter Public Space, Brent Staples21. Taking It, Leonard Kriegel22. Do You Remember Me?, Barbara Macdonald23. I’m Not Fat, I’m Latina, Christy Haubegger24. The Tyranny of the Esthetic: Surgery’s Most Intimate Violation, Martha A. CoventryPart IV: Communication25. For the White Person Who Wants to Know How to Be My Friend, Pat Parker26. You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation, Deborah Tannen27. Real Men Don’t Cry . . . and Other “Uncool” Myths, Phil W. Petrie28. The New Momism, Susan J. Douglas and Meredith W. Michaels29. Claiming Jezebel: Black Female Subjectivity and Sexual Expressions in Hip-Hop, Ayana Byrd30. Virtual Organizing, Global Activism, Shireen Lee31. Where are the women? The strange case of the missing feminists. When was the last time you saw one on TV?, Laura ZimmermanPart V: Sexuality32. How Men Have (a) Sex, Jon Stoltenberg33. The Myth of the Sexual Athlete, Don Sabo34. Reproductive Rights: A Disability Rights Issue, Marsha Saxton35. The Impact of Multiple Marginalization, Paula C. Rust36. Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power, Audre Lorde Part VI: Families37. The Transformation of Family Life, Lillian B. Rubin38. Bloodmothers, Othermothers, and Women-Centered Networks, Patricia Hill Collins39. Dilemmas of Involved Fatherhood, Kathleen Gerson40. Man Child: A Black Lesbian Feminist’s Response, Audre Lorde41. I Am a Man, Raul E. Ybarra42. What is marriage for?, E.J. Graff Part VII: Education43. Missing in Interaction, Myra and David Sadker44. "What About the Boys?" What the Current Debates Tell Us--and Don't Tell Us--About Boys in Schools, Michael S. Kimmel45. Conflict within the Ivory Tower, Ruth Sidel46. Black and Female: Reflections on Graduate School, bell hooksPart VIII: Paid Work and Unemployment47. The "Success" of Welfare Reform, Sharon Hays48. Sixty Cents to a Man’s Dollar, Ann Crittenden49. Why Are There No Male Asian Anchormen on TV?, Ben Fong-Torres50. The Effects of Affirmative Action on Other Stakeholders, Barbara Reskin51. "Global Woman" by Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild52. America's Dirty Work: Migrant Maids and Modern-Day Slavery, Joy M. Zarembka53. The Globetrotting Sneaker, Cynthia EnloePart IX: Violence54. Women, Violence, and Resistance, Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz55. The Ultimate Growth Industry: Trafficking in Women and Girls, Jan Goodwin56. Where Race and Gender Meet: Racism, Hate Crimes, and Pornography, Helen Zia57. Homophobia in Straight Men, Terry A. Kupers58. Stopping Sexual Harassment: A Challenge for Community Education, Robert L. Allen59. How Safe Is America?, Desiree Taylor60. Wielding Masculinity inside Abu Ghraib: Making Feminist Sense of an American Military Scandal, Cynthia Enloe61. Gender in a Time of Holy War, Stephen DucatPart X: Health and Illness62. Masculinities and Men’s Health: Moving toward Post—Superman Era Prevention, Don Sabo63. Health, Social Class and African-American Women, Evelyn L. Barbee and Marilyn Little64. Reproductive Issues Are Essential Survival Issues for the Asian-American Communities, Connie S. Chan65. Why the Precautionary Principle? A Meditation on Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) and the Breasts of Mothers, Sandra Steingraber66. Does Silencio = Muerte? Notes on Translating the AIDS Epidemic, Rafael Campo67. To Be Poor and Transgender, Kai Wright Part XI: A World That Is Truly Human68. Statement of Principles, National Organization for Men Against Sexism69. The Blow Up…A Clash of Realities, Gloria Anzaldúa70. American Indian Women: At the Center of Indigenous Resistance in Contemporary North America, M. Annette Jaimes with Theresa Halsey71. Toward a New Civic Leadership: The Africana Criminal Justice Project, Geoff K. Ward and Manning Marable72. Organizing for Peace in Israel: Why Israeli Women Want a Peace Movement of Their Own, Gila Svirsky73. Women and Human Rights, Rita Arditti

Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex (Revised)


Alice Domurat Dreger - 1998
    Alice Dreger focuses on events in France and Britain in the late nineteenth century, a moment of great tension for questions of sex roles. While feminists, homosexuals, and anthropological explorers openly questioned the natures and purposes of the two sexes, anatomical hermaphrodites suggested a deeper question: just how many human sexes are there? Ultimately hermaphrodites led doctors and scientists to another surprisingly difficult question: what is sex, really?Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex takes us inside the doctors' chambers to see how and why medical and scientific men constructed sex, gender, and sexuality as they did, and especially how the material conformation of hermaphroditic bodies--when combined with social exigencies--forced peculiar constructions. Throughout the book Dreger indicates how this history can help us to understand present-day conceptualizations of sex, gender, and sexuality. This leads to an epilogue, where the author discusses and questions the protocols employed today in the treatment of intersexuals (people born hermaphroditic). Given the history she has recounted, should these protocols be reconsidered and revised?A meticulously researched account of a fascinating problem in the history of medicine, this book will compel the attention of historians, physicians, medical ethicists, intersexuals themselves, and anyone interested in the meanings and foundations of sexual identity.

Gender Neutral Parenting: Raising Kids with the Freedom to Be Themselves


Paige Lucas-Stannard - 2013
    But what about kids who fall outside the boundaries of prescribed roles? This book is a guide for parents in the practical application of Gender Neutral Parenting - a parenting style based on respect for a child's self-identity and providing latitude in exploring their own version of gender and gender expressions. In Gender Neutral Parenting you'll learn the Five Skills Essential for GNP:Skill #1: Become Aware of GenderizationSkill #2: Become Aware of Your Gender BiasSkill #3: Create a Gender Diverse EnvironmentSkill #4: Start a Dialog About GenderSkill #5: Dealing With Family and Friends and Dispelling MythsWith practical examples and real world scenarios, this book will give you the strong foundation needed to implement GNP in your home and with your children. You'll learn about gender stereotypes for boys and girls and how to counteract them as a parent. Stereotypes covered include;Girl Genderization Stereotypes:Stereotype: Girls Are More Social and Less PhysicalStereotype: Girls Are PrincessesStereotype: Girls Are Boy Crazy, Sexual TemptressesStereotype: Girls Are Pure and VirginalBoy Genderization Stereotypes:Stereotype: Boys Are Physically Active But Behind Socially and VerballyStereotype: Boys Are Emotionally StuntedStereotype: Boys Are Slaves To Their Sex DriveStereotype: Boys Will Be BoysYou'll also learn how to deal with family and friends (and strangers) that don't understand your parenting approach. I'll answer questions like;“Are you trying to make her androgynous?”“Won’t that make him gay?”“Why are you so anti-feminine/anti-masculine?”“Do you think she’s trans*?”“You’re raising a person not a social experiment.”“She’s going to hate you and need therapy.” Or, “He’ll be bullied.”“I can’t believe you let her play with Barbies! Don’t you even care about her future?”This book is for any parent, grandparent, or childcare teacher that wants a guide to raising kids without the strict limitations of gender roles and who wants to engage kids in conversations that will make them savvy media consumers and critical problem solvers around issues or gender and equality.