Boys Will Be Boys: Power, Patriarchy and the Toxic Bonds of Mateship


Clementine Ford - 2018
    No one seems to be scared that their sons might be the ones to do it … This book … is the culmination of many years of writing about power, abuse, privilege, male entitlement and rape culture. After all that, here’s what I’ve learned: we should be f*cking terrified.’ Clementine Ford, from the introductionFearless feminist heroine Clementine Ford is a beacon of hope and inspiration to hundreds of thousands of Australian women and girls. Her incendiary first book, Fight Like A Girl, is taking the world by storm, galvanising women to demand and fight for real equality and not merely the illusion of it.Now Boys Will Be Boys examines what needs to change for that equality to become a reality. It answers the question most asked of Clementine: ‘How do I raise my son to respect women and give them equal space in the world? How do I make sure he’s a supporter and not a perpetrator?’All boys start out innocent and tender, but by the time they are adolescents many of them will subscribe to a view of masculinity that is openly contemptuous of women and girls. Our world conditions boys into entitlement, privilege and power at the expense not just of girls’ humanity but also of their own. Ford demolishes the age-old assumption that superiority and aggression are natural realms for boys, and demonstrates how toxic masculinity creates a disturbingly limited and potentially dangerous idea of what it is to be a man. Crucially, Boys Will Be Boys reveals how the patriarchy we live in is as harmful to boys and men as it is to women and girls, and asks what we have to do to reverse that damage. The world needs to change and this book shows the way.

My Own Story


Emmeline Pankhurst - 1914
    Written at the onset of the First World War, My Own Story brings attention to Pankhurst's cause while defending her decision to cease activism until the end of the war. Notable for its descriptions of the British prison system, My Own Story is an invaluable document of a life dedicated to others, of a historical moment in which an oppressed group rose up to advocate for the simplest of demands: equality.Born in a politically active household, Emmeline Pankhurst was introduced to the women's suffrage movement at a young age. In 1903, she founded the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), an organization dedicated to the suffragette movement. As their speeches, rallies, and petitions failed to make headway, they turned to militant protest, and in 1908 Emmeline was arrested for attempting to enter Parliament to deliver a document to Prime Minister H.H. Asquith. Imprisoned for six weeks, she observed the horrifying conditions of prison life, including solitary confinement. This experience changed her outlook on the struggle for women's suffrage, and she increasingly saw imprisonment as a means of radical publicity. Over the next several years, she would be arrested seven times for rioting, destroying property, and assaulting police officers, and while in prison staged hunger strikes in order to gain the attention of the press and political establishment. My Own Story is a record of one woman's tireless advocacy for the sake of countless others.With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Emmeline Pankhurst's My Own Story is a classic of English literature reimagined for modern readers.

The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence


Rachel Simmons - 2009
    Unerringly nice, polite, modest, and selfless, the Good Girl is a paradigm so narrowly defined that it's unachievable. When girls inevitably fail to live up- experiencing conflicts with peers, making mistakes in the classroom or on the playing field-they are paralyzed by self-criticism, stunting the growth of vital skills and habits. Simmons traces the poisonous impact of Good Girl pressure on development and provides a strategy to reverse the tide. At once expository and prescriptive, The Curse of the Good Girl is a call to arms from a new front in female empowerment. Looking to the stories shared by the women and girls who attend her workshops, Simmons shows that Good Girl pressure from parents, teachers, coaches, media, and peers erects a psychological glass ceiling that begins to enforce its confines in girlhood and extends across the female lifespan. The curse of the Good Girl erodes girls' ability to know, express, and manage a complete range of feelings. It expects girls to be selfless, limiting the expression of their needs. It requires modesty, depriving the permission to articulate their strengths and goals. It diminishes assertive body language, quieting voices and weakening handshakes. It touches all areas of girls' lives and follows many into adulthood, limiting their personal and professional potential. Since the popularization of the Ophelia phenomenon, we have lamented the loss of self-esteem in adolescent girls, recognizing that while the doors of opportunity are open to twenty-first-century American girls, many lack the confidence to walk through them. In The Curse of the Good Girl, Simmons provides a catalog of tangible lessons in bolstering the self and silencing the curse of the Good Girl. At the core of Simmons's radical argument is her belief that the most critical freedom we can win for our daughters is the liberty not only to listen to their inner voice but also to act on it. Watch a Video

The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future (Updated With a New Epilogue)


Riane Eisler - 1987
    The Chalice and the Blade tells a new story of our cultural origins. It shows that warfare and the war of the sexes are neither divinely nor biologically ordained. It provides verification that a better future is possible—and is in fact firmly rooted in the haunting dramas of what happened in our past.

Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism


Mary Daly - 1978
    '75; Beyond God the Father, '73) has written "an extremist book...on the edge of a culture that is killing itself." Conceived as a radical feminist "Voyage" of woman becoming herself, it's made up of three "Passages." The 1st denounces the reversals & deceptions ("mind pollution") of patriarchal disciplines (including "Godfather" theology) & exuberantly sets out to "discover" the true "Croneology" behind that male mystification. The 2nd, "the most somber part of the Journey," analyzes Goddess-murder (and the murder of the Goddess in every woman) thru the "Sado-Rituals" of five specific historic atrocities: Indian suttee, Chinese footbinding, African genital mutilation, European witchburning, & American gynecology & psychotherapy (gynecology of the mind practiced by the-rapists). Following this "exorcism," the Voyager moves in the 3rd Passage to the Otherworld of lesbian-feminist Spinsters who successfully scorn patriarchal intimidation ("Spooking"), stir "the fire of female friendship" ("Sparking"), &--after a rip-roaring "Unraveling" gotterdammerung--joyously spin on as Revolting Hags. En route Daly purposefully busts out of some traditional (male) forms & language. Altho the word-work of the "living/verbing writer" sometimes gets in the way/weigh of flashing in-sights, a painstaking indictment of scholarly "erasure" of historic events & some bone-chilling facts of women's story, Daly's excursion is bound to inspire Spinsters/Spider Women everywhere & to leave just about everyone else haggard & in-fury-ated.--Kirkus (edited)

But Some of Us Are Brave: All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men: Black Women's Studies


Akasha Gloria Hull - 1986
    "Important and innovative."--Feminist Bookstore News

Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women


Geraldine Brooks - 1994
    Yet for her, headline events were only the backdrop to a less obvious but more enduring drama: the daily life of Muslim women. Nine Parts of Desire is the story of Brooks' intrepid journey toward an understanding of the women behind the veils, and of the often contradictory political, religious, and cultural forces that shape their lives. Defying our stereotypes about the Muslim world, Brooks' acute analysis of the world's fastest growing religion deftly illustrates how Islam's holiest texts have been misused to justify repression of women, and how male pride and power have warped the original message of a once liberating faith.

Feminists Don't Wear Pink (And Other Lies): Amazing Women on What the F-Word Means to Them


Scarlett Curtis - 2018
    By bridging the gap between feminist hashtags and scholarly texts, these essays bring feminism into clear focus.Published in partnership with Girl Up, the UN Foundation's adolescent girl campaign, contributors include Hollywood superstars like Saoirse Ronan, activists like Alicia Garza, a founder of Black Lives Matter, and even fictional icons such as Bridget Jones.Every woman has a different route to their personal understanding of feminism. This empowering collection shows how a diverse group of women found their voice, and it will inspire others to do the same.

Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women are Worth


Marilyn Waring - 1988
    A pollution-free environment counts for nothing. Even some people - namely women - count for nothing. This is the case, at least, according to the United Nations System of National Accounts. Author Marilyn Waring, former New Zealand M.P., now professor, development consultant, writer, and goat farmer, isolates the gender bias that exists in the current system of calculating national wealth.As Waring observes, in this accounting system women are considered 'non-producers' and as such they cannot expect to gain from the distribution of benefits that flow from production. Issues like nuclear warfare, environmental conservation, and poverty are likewise excluded from the calculation of value in traditional economic theory. As a result, public policy, determined by these same accounting processes, inevitably overlooks the importance of the environment and half the world's population.Counting for Nothing, originally published in 1988, is a classic feminist analysis of women's place in the world economy brought up to date in this reprinted edition, including a sizeable new introduction by the author. In her new introduction, the author updates information and examples and revisits the original chapters with appropriate commentary. In an accessible and often humorous manner, Waring offers an explanation of the current economic systems of accounting and thoroughly outlines ways to ensure that the significance of the environment and the labour contributions of women receive the recognition they deserve.

Women Don't Owe You Pretty


Florence Given - 2020
    In a world that tells women we're either not enough or too much, it's time we stop directing our anger and insecurities onto ourselves, and start fighting back to re-shape the toxic structures of our patriarchal society.Florence's book will help you to tackle and challenge the limiting narrative you have been bombarded with your whole life, and determine feminism on your own terms. After all, you are the love of your own life.

In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose


Alice Walker - 1983
    Among the contents are essays about other writers, accounts of the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the antinuclear movement of the 1980s, and a vivid memoir of a scarring childhood injury and her daughter's healing words.

Man Made Language


Dale Spender - 1980
    Often imitated, never replaced, Man-Made Language has become a cornerstone of modern feminist thought.

The Fifties: A Women's Oral History


Brett Harvey - 1993
    In fact, it was a time of great fear, especially for women, and especially the fear of not fitting in. As a woman, you were odd if you graduated from college without being married; if you were married you were odd if you didn't immediately have children; if you had children you were odd if you also wanted to work. Before the feminist movement, women were treated as second-class citizens whose roles were utterly restricted, and The Fifties: A Women's Oral History fully explores those roles, the women who lived them, and the women who broke the molds.

Cassandra Speaks: When Women Are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes


Elizabeth Lesser - 2020
    Cassandra Speaks is about the stories we tell and how those stories become the culture. It’s about the stories we still blindly cling to, and the ones that cling to us: the origin tales, the guiding myths, the religious parables, the literature and films and fairy tales passed down through the centuries about women and men, power and war, sex and love, and the values we live by. Stories written mostly by men with lessons and laws for all of humanity. We have outgrown so many of them, and still they endure. This book is about what happens when women are the storytellers too—when we speak from our authentic voices, when we flex our values, when we become protagonists in the tales we tell about what it means to be human.Lesser has walked two main paths in her life—the spiritual path and the feminist one—paths that sometimes cross but sometimes feel at cross-purposes. Cassandra Speaks is her extraordinary merging of the two. The bestselling author of Broken Open and Marrow, Lesser is a beloved spiritual writer, as well as a leading feminist thinker. In this book she gives equal voice to the cool water of her meditative self and the fire of her feminist self. With her trademark gifts of both humor and insight, she offers a vision that transcends the either/or ideologies on both sides of the gender debate.Brilliantly structured into three distinct parts, Part One explores how history is carried forward through the stories a culture tells and values, and what we can do to balance the scales. Part Two looks at women and power and expands what it means to be courageous, daring, and strong. And Part Three offers “A Toolbox for Inner Strength.” Lesser argues that change in the culture starts with inner change, and that no one—woman or man—is immune to the corrupting influence of power. She provides inner tools to help us be both strong-willed and kind-hearted.Cassandra Speaks is a beautifully balanced synthesis of storytelling, memoir, and cultural observation. Women, men and all people will find themselves in the pages of this book, and will come away strengthened, opened, and ready to work together to create a better world for all people.better world for all.

Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her


Susan Griffin - 1978
    Starting from Plato’s fateful division of the world into spirit and matter, her analysis of how patriarchal Western philosophy and religion have used language and science to bolster their power over both women and nature is brilliant and persuasive, coming alive in poetic prose.Griffin draws on an astonishing range of sources—from timbering manuals to medical texts to Scripture and classical literature—in showing how destructive has been the impulse to disembody the human soul, and how the long separated might once more be rejoined. Poet Adrienne Rich calls Woman and Nature “perhaps the most extraordinary nonfiction work to have merged from the matrix of contemporary female consciousness—a fusion of patriarchal science, ecology, female history and feminism, written by a poet who has created a new form for her vision. ...The book has the impact of a great film or a fresco; yet it is intimately personal, touching to the quick of woman’s experience.”