Book picks similar to
We Too: Essays on Sex Work and Survival by Natalie West
non-fiction
feminism
nonfiction
essays
Era of Ignition: Coming of Age in a Time of Rage and Revolution
Amber Tamblyn - 2019
Through her fierce op-eds in media outlets such as the New York Times, Glamour, and Hollywood Reporter and her work as a founder of the Time’s Up organization, Tamblyn has tackled subjects including discrimination, sexual assault, reproductive rights, and pay parity, among others.Now, Tamblyn examines the very paradigm our society is built on, pulling at the threads of the ingrained patriarchal and misogynistic fabric. Tamblyn presents her insightful and pointed take on the current state of feminism and expertly weaves together her own experiences and opinions with the larger movement. In her late twenties and early thirties, Tamblyn experienced a crisis of character and a gradual awakening–her own era of ignition–that enabled her to take back the power in her own life and find her own voice as a bold, outspoken, and respected advocate for women’s rights. Using the same galvanizing voice that helped her recent op-eds go viral, Tamblyn delivers an incisive call-to-arms that will capture the heart of the movement as it educates and inspires readers.
Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements
Charlene Carruthers - 2018
Her debut book upends mainstream ideas about race, class and gender and sets forth a radically inclusive path to collective liberation. Her inclusive story about Black struggle draws on Black intellectual and grassroots organizing traditions including the Haitian Revolution, U.S. Civil Rights, and Black and LGBTQ Feminist Movements. Bold and honest, Unapologetic is an inside look from an on-the-ground activist and movement leader about how to move people from the margins to the center of political strategy and practice.
Inside This Place, Not of It: Narratives from Women's Prisons
Robin Levi - 2011
prisons are routinely subjected to physical, sexual, and mental abuse. While this has been documented in male prisons, women in prison often suffer in relative anonymity. Women Inside addresses this critical social justice issue, empowering incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women to share the stories that have previously been silenced. Among the narrators:•Irma Rodriguez, in prison on drug charges. While in prison in 1990, Irma was diagnosed HIV positive, but after a decade and a half of aggressive and toxic treatment, Irma learned that she never had HIV.•Sheri Dwight, a domestic violence survivor who was sent to prison for attempting to kill her batterer. While in prison, she underwent surgery for abdominal pain and learned more than four years later that she had been sterilized without her consent.
The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century
Amia Srinivasan - 2021
Yet consent is a blunt tool. To grasp sex in all its complexity—its deep ambivalences, its relationship to gender, class, race and power—we need to move beyond yes and no, wanted and unwanted.We do not know the future of sex—but perhaps we could imagine it. Amia Srinivasan’s stunning debut helps us do just that. She traces the meaning of sex in our world, animated by the hope of a different world. She reaches back into an older feminist tradition that was unafraid to think of sex as a political phenomenon. She discusses a range of fraught relationships—between discrimination and preference, pornography and freedom, rape and racial injustice, punishment and accountability, students and teachers, pleasure and power, capitalism and liberation.The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century is a provocation and a promise, transforming many of our most urgent political debates and asking what it might mean to be free.
We Can Do Better Than This: 35 Voices on the Future of LGBTQ+ Rights
Amelia Abraham - 2021
. . A must-read' Gay TimesWe talk about achieving 'LGBTQ+ equality', but around the world, LGBTQ+ people are still suffering discrimination and extreme violence. How do we solve this urgent problem, allowing queer people everywhere the opportunity to thrive?In We Can Do Better Than This, 35 voices explore this question. Through deeply moving stories and provocative new arguments on safety and visibility, dating and gender, care and community, they present a powerful manifesto for how - together - we can start to create a better future.Edited by journalist and author Amelia Abraham, with writing from:Peppermint - Wolfgang Tillmans - Olly Alexander - Jonathan Anderson - Pabllo Vittar - Naoise Dolan - Amrou Al-Kadhi - Shura - Beth Ditto - Owen Jones - Riyadh Khalaf - Tom Rasmussen - Mykki Blanco - Phyll Opoku-Gyimah - Travis Alabanza - Yasmin Benoit - Mazharul Islam - Kate Bornstein - Adam Eli - Shon Faye - Fox Fisher - Hanne Gaby Odiele - Sasha Kazantseva - Andrew Gurza - Holland - Levi Hord - Juliet Jacques - Leticia Opio - madison moore - Matthew Riemer (@LGBT_History) - Vincent Desmond - Juno Roche - Bobbi Salvör Menuez - Carl Siciliano
Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-first Century
Alice WongChristie Thompson - 2020
Some disabilities are visible, others less apparent—but all are underrepresented in media and popular culture. Now, just in time for the thirtieth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, activist Alice Wong brings together this urgent, galvanizing collection of contemporary essays by disabled people.From Harriet McBryde Johnson’s account of her debate with Peter Singer over her own personhood to original pieces by authors like Keah Brown and Haben Girma; from blog posts, manifestos, and eulogies to Congressional testimonies, and beyond: this anthology gives a glimpse into the rich complexity of the disabled experience, highlighting the passions, talents, and everyday lives of this community. It invites readers to question their own understandings. It celebrates and documents disability culture in the now. It looks to the future and the past with hope and love.
A Curious History of Sex
Kate Lister - 2020
Rather, this is a drop in the ocean, a paddle in the shallow end of sex history, but I hope you will get pleasantly wet nonetheless.The act of sex has not changed since people first worked out what went where, but the ways in which society dictates how sex is culturally understood and performed have varied significantly through the ages. Humans are the only creatures that stigmatise particular sexual practices, and sex remains a deeply divisive issue around the world. Attitudes will change and grow – hopefully for the better – but sex will never be free of stigma or shame unless we acknowledge where it has come from.
The Beauty Myth
Naomi Wolf - 1990
In today's world, women have more power, legal recognition, and professional success than ever before. Alongside the evident progress of the women's movement, however, writer and journalist Naomi Wolf is troubled by a different kind of social control, which, she argues, may prove just as restrictive as the traditional image of homemaker and wife. It's the beauty myth, an obsession with physical perfection that traps the modern woman in an endless spiral of hope, self-consciousness, and self-hatred as she tries to fulfill society's impossible definition of "the flawless beauty."
GenderQueer: Voices From Beyond the Sexual Binary
Joan NestleLucas Dzmura - 2002
The questions go beyond the nature of male/female to a yet-to-be-traversed region that lies somewhere between and beyond biologically determined gender. In this groundbreaking anthology, three experts in gender studies and politics navigate around rigid, societally imposed concepts of two genders to discover and illuminate the limitless possibilities of identity. Thirty first-person accounts of gender construction, exploration, and questioning provide a groundwork for cultural discussion, political action, and even greater possibilities of autonomous gender choices. Noted scholar Joan Nestle is joined by internationally prominent gender warrior Riki Anne Wilchins and historian Clare Howell to provide a societal, cultural, and political exploration of gender identity.Marketing Plans: National Advertising: The Advocate Academic mailing to gender studies and queer studies professors Media campaign hilighting authors Nestle and WilchinsJoan Nestle is the cofounder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives in New York and the writer and editor of six books including the groundbreaking Women on Women series. Riki Anne Wilchins is the executive director of GenderPAC, the national gender advocacy group, and the cofounder of the Gender Identity Project of New York City's Lesbian and Gay Center. She is the author of Read My Lips: Sexual Subversion and the End of Gender. Clare Howell is a senior librarian at the Brooklyn Public Library.
White Feminism: From the Suffragettes to Influencers and Who They Leave Behind
Koa Beck - 2021
She also examines overlooked communities—including Native American, Muslim, transgender, and more—and their ongoing struggles for social change. With “intellectually smart and emotionally intelligent” (Patrisse Cullors, New York Times bestselling author and Black Lives Matter cofounder) writing, Beck meticulously documents how elitism and racial prejudice have driven the narrative of feminist discourse. Blending pop culture, primary historical research, and first-hand storytelling, she shows us how we have shut women out of the movement, and what we can do to correct our course for a new generation. Combining a scholar’s understanding with hard data and razor-sharp cultural commentary, White Feminism “is a rousing blueprint for a more inclusive ‘new era of feminism’” (The Boston Globe).
The Ethical Slut: A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities
Dossie Easton - 1997
Experienced ethical sluts Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy dispel myths and cover all the skills necessary to maintain a successful and responsible polyamorous lifestyle--from self-reflection and honest communication to practicing safe sex and raising a family. Individuals and their partners will learn how to discuss and honor boundaries, resolve conflicts, and to define relationships on their own terms. "I couldn't stop reading it, and I for one identify as an ethical slut. This is a book for anyone interested in creating more pleasure in their lives . . . a complete guide to improving any style of relating, from going steady to having an extended family of sexual friends." --Betty Dodson, PhD, author of Sex for One
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.
Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick
Maya Dusenbery - 2018
In addition to offering a clear-eyed explanation of the root causes of this insidious and entrenched bias and laying out its effects, she suggests concrete steps we can take to cure it.
The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities
Ching-In ChenBran Fenner - 2011
We wanted to hear about folks’ experiences confronting abusers, both with cops and courts and with methods outside the criminal justice system."The Revolution Starts at Home collectiveLong demanded and urgently needed, The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities finally breaks the dangerous silence surrounding the secret” of intimate violence within social justice circles. This watershed collection of stories and strategies tackles the multiple forms of violence encountered right where we live, love, and work for social changeand delves into the nitty-gritty on how we might create safety from abuse without relying on the state. Drawing on over a decade of community accountability work, along with its many hard lessons and unanswered questions, The Revolution Starts at Home offers potentially life-saving alternatives for creating survivor safety while building a movement where no one is left behind.
Ching-In Chen is the author of The Heart's Traffic.
Kundiman Fellow Jai Dulani is an interdisciplinary storyteller and activist/educator.
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is the author of Consensual Genocide.
Andrea Smith is the author of Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide.
Everybody: A Book about Freedom
Olivia Laing - 2021
In her ambitious, brilliant sixth book, Olivia Laing charts an electrifying course through the long struggle for bodily freedom, using the life of the renegade psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich to explore gay rights and sexual liberation, feminism, and the civil rights movement.Drawing on her own experiences in protest and alternative medicine, and traveling from Weimar Berlin to the prisons of Joseph McCarthy’s America, Laing grapples with some of the most significant and complicated figures of the past century—among them Nina Simone, Christopher Isherwood, Andrea Dworkin, Sigmund Freud, Susan Sontag, and Malcolm X. Arriving at a moment in which basic bodily rights are once again imperiled, Everybody is an investigation into the forces arranged against freedom and a celebration of how ordinary human bodies can resist oppression and reshape the world.