Ranging widely across the culture, from Harvey Weinstein and the Brett Kavanaugh hearings to “Cat Person” and the political misfortunes of Elizabeth Warren, Manne’s book shows how privileged men’s sense of entitlement—to sex, yes, but more insidiously to admiration, care, bodily autonomy, knowledge, and power—is a pervasive social problem with often devastating consequences.In clear, lucid prose, Manne argues that male entitlement can explain a wide array of phenomena, from mansplaining and the undertreatment of women’s pain to mass shootings by incels and the seemingly intractable notion that women are “unelectable.” Moreover, Manne implicates each of us in toxic masculinity: It’s not just a product of a few bad actors; it’s something we all perpetuate, conditioned as we are by the social and cultural mores of our time. The only way to combat it, she says, is to expose the flaws in our default modes of thought while enabling women to take up space, say their piece, and muster resistance to the entitled attitudes of the men around them.With wit and intellectual fierceness, Manne sheds new light on gender and power and offers a vision of a world in which women are just as entitled as men to our collective care and concern.

    As Pluckrose and Lindsay warn, the unchecked proliferation of these anti-Enlightenment beliefs present a threat not only to liberal democracy but also to modernity itself. While acknowledging the need to challenge the complacency of those who think a just society has been fully achieved, Pluckrose and Lindsay break down how this often-radical activist scholarship does far more harm than good, not least to those marginalized communities it claims to champion. They also detail its alarmingly inconsistent and illiberal ethics. Only through a proper understanding of the evolution of these ideas, they conclude, can those who value science, reason, and consistently liberal ethics successfully challenge this harmful and authoritarian orthodoxy—in the academy, in culture, and beyond.

    Astounded by the response she received and the wide range of stories that came pouring in from all over the world, she quickly realised that the situation was far worse than she'd initially thought. Enough was enough. From being leered at and wolf-whistled on the street, to aggravation in the work place and serious sexual assault, it was clear that sexism had been normalised. Bates decided it was time for change. This bold, jaunty and ultimately intelligent book is the first to give a collective online voice to the protest against sexism. This game changing book is a juggernaut of stories, often shocking, sometimes amusing and always poignant - it is a must read for every inquisitive, no-nonsense modern woman.

    Magazine, Bitch was launched in the mid-nineties as a Xerox-and-staple zine covering the landscape of popular culture from a feminist perspective. Both unabashed in its love for the guilty pleasures of consumer culture and deeply thoughtful about the way the pop landscape reflects and impacts women's lives, Bitch grew to be a popular, full-scale magazine with a readership that stretched worldwide. Today it stands as a touchstone of hip, young feminist thought, looking with both wit and irreverence at the way pop culture informs feminism--and vice versa--and encouraging readers to think critically about the messages lurking behind our favorite television shows, movies, music, books, blogs, and the like. BITCHFest offers an assortment of the most provocative essays, reporting, rants, and raves from the magazine's first ten years, along with new pieces written especially for the collection. Smart, nuanced, cranky, outrageous, and clear-eyed, the anthology covers everything from a 1996 celebration of pre-scandal Martha Stewart to a more recent critical look at the "gayby boom"; from a time line of black women on sitcoms to an analysis of fat suits as the new blackface; from an attempt to fashion a feminist vulgarity to a reclamation of female virginity. It's a recent history of feminist pop-culture critique and an arrow toward feminism's future.

    Exploring themes such as global gender relations and the practical uses of masculinity research, this text looks at the implications for the field, particularly with regard to understanding current world issues.

    Once a dirty word brushed away with a grimace, "feminist" has been rebranded as a shiny label sported by movie and pop stars, fashion designers, and multi-hyphenate powerhouses like Beyoncé It drives advertising and marketing campaigns for everything from wireless plans to underwear to perfume, presenting what's long been a movement for social justice as just another consumer choice in a vast market. Individual self-actualization is the goal, shopping more often than not the means, and celebrities the mouthpieces. But what does it mean when social change becomes a brand identity? Feminism's splashy arrival at the center of today's media and pop-culture marketplace, after all, hasn't offered solutions to the movement's unfinished business. Planned Parenthood is under sustained attack, women are still paid 77 percent -- or less -- of the man's dollar, and vicious attacks on women, both on- and offline, are utterly routine. Andi Zeisler, a founding editor of Bitch Media, draws on more than twenty years' experience interpreting popular culture in this biting history of how feminism has been co-opted, watered down, and turned into a gyratory media trend. Surveying movies, television, advertising, fashion, and more, Zeisler reveals a media landscape brimming with the language of empowerment, but offering little in the way of transformational change. Witty, fearless, and unflinching, We Were Feminists Once is the story of how we let this happen, and how we can amplify feminism's real purpose and power.

     Elinor Cleghorn became an unwell woman ten years ago. She was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease after a long period of being told her symptoms were anything from psychosomatic to a possible pregnancy. As Elinor learned to live with her unpredictable disease she turned to history for answers, and found an enraging legacy of suffering, mystification, and misdiagnosis.In Unwell Women, Elinor Cleghorn traces the almost unbelievable history of how medicine has failed women by treating their bodies as alien and other, often to perilous effect. The result is an authoritative and groundbreaking exploration of the relationship between women and medical practice, from the wandering womb of Ancient Greece to the rise of witch trials across Europe, and from the dawn of hysteria as a catchall for difficult-to-diagnose disorders to the first forays into autoimmunity and the shifting understanding of hormones, menstruation, menopause, and conditions like endometriosis.Packed with character studies and case histories of women who have suffered, challenged, and rewritten medical orthodoxy--and the men who controlled their fate--this is a revolutionary examination of the relationship between women, illness, and medicine. With these case histories, Elinor pays homage to the women who suffered so strides could be made, and shows how being unwell has become normalized in society and culture, where women have long been distrusted as reliable narrators of their own bodies and pain. But the time for real change is long overdue: answers reside in the body, in the testimonies of unwell women--and their lives depend on medicine learning to listen.

    On election night, after Obama was announced the winner, a distressed Bill O’Reilly lamented that he didn’t live in "a traditional America anymore.” He was joined by others who bellowed their grief on the talk radio airwaves, the traditional redoubt of angry white men. Why were they so angry? Sociologist Michael Kimmel, one of the leading writers on men and masculinity in the world today, has spent hundreds of hours in the company of America’s angry white men from white supremacists to men's rights activists to young students in pursuit of an answer. Angry White Men presents a comprehensive diagnosis of their fears, anxieties, and rage.Kimmel locates this increase in anger in the seismic economic, social and political shifts that have so transformed the American landscape. Downward mobility, increased racial and gender equality, and a tenacious clinging to an anachronistic ideology of masculinity has left many men feeling betrayed and bewildered. Raised to expect unparalleled social and economic privilege, white men are suffering today from what Kimmel calls "aggrieved entitlement": a sense that those benefits that white men believed were their due have been snatched away from them.Angry White Men discusses, among others, the sons of small town America, scarred by underemployment and wage stagnation. When America’s white men feel they’ve lived their lives the 'right' way, worked hard and stayed out of trouble, and still do not get economic rewards, then they have to blame somebody else. Even more terrifying is the phenomenon of angry young boys. School shootings in the United States are not just the work of "misguided youth" or "troubled teens"—they’re all committed by boys. These alienated young men are transformed into mass murderers by a sense that using violence against others is their right.The future of America is more inclusive and diverse. The choice for angry white men is not whether or not they can stem the tide of history: they cannot. Their choice is whether or not they will be dragged kicking and screaming into that inevitable future, or whether they will walk openly and honorably—far happier and healthier, incidentally—alongside those they’ve spent so long trying to exclude.

    But this is not the whole story.Shedding light on controversial research and investigating the ferocious gender wars in biology, psychology and anthropology, Angela Saini takes readers on an eye-opening journey to uncover how women are being rediscovered. She explores what these revelations mean for us as individuals and as a society, revealing an alternative view of science in which women are included, rather than excluded.

    Debra Soh uses a research-based approach to address this hot-button topic, unmasking popular misconceptions about the nature vs. nurture debate and exploring what it means to be a woman or a man in today’s society. Both scientific and objective, and drawing on original research and carefully conducted interviews, Soh tackles a wide range of issues, such as gender-neutral parenting, gender dysphoric children, and the neuroscience of being transgender. She debates today’s accepted notion that gender is a social construct and a spectrum, and challenges the idea that there is no difference between how male and female brains operate. The End of Gender is a conversation-starting work that will challenge what you thought you knew about gender, identity, and everything in between. Timely, informative, and provocative, it will arm you with the facts you need to come to your own conclusions about gender identity and its place in the world today.

    They’re also fearful about opening up a dialogue. Not Orenstein. A contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine and the New York Times best-selling author of books like Cinderella Ate My Daughter, Orenstein spoke to psychologists, academics, and other experts in the field and yes, 70 young women, to offer an in-depth picture of “girls and sex” today.

    And the numbers prove it. Using a combination of demographics, statistics, game theory, and number-crunching, Date-onomics tells what every single, college-educated, heterosexual, looking-for-a-partner woman needs to know: The “man deficit” is real. It’s a fascinating, if sobering read, with two critical takeaways: One, it’s not you. Two, knowledge is power, so here’s what to do about it. The shortage of college-educated men is not just a big-city phenomenon frustrating women in New York and L.A. Among young college grads, there are four eligible women for every three men nationwide. This unequal ratio explains not only why it’s so hard to find a date, but a host of social issues, from the college hookup culture to the reason Salt Lake City is becoming the breast implant capital of America. Then there’s the math that says that a woman’s good looks can keep men from approaching her—particularly if they feel the odds aren’t in their favor.Fortunately, there are also solutions: what college to attend (any with strong sciences or math), where to hang out (in New York, try a fireman’s bar), where to live (Colorado, Seattle, “Man” Jose), and why never to shy away from giving an ultimatum.

    This book investigates not only how feminists understand pornography, but also how feminists do porn—that is, direct, act in, produce, and consume one of the world's most lucrative and growing industries. With original contributions by Susie Bright, Candida Royalle, Betty Dodson, Nina Hartley, Buck Angel, and more, The Feminist Porn Book updates the debates of the porn wars of the 1980s, which sharply divided the women's movement, and identifies pornography as a form of expression and labor in which women and other minorities produce power and pleasure.Tristan Taormino is an award-winning author, columnist, editor, sex educator, and feminist pornographer. She is the author of seven books including The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women and Opening Up. She runs the adult film production company Smart Ass Productions and is an exclusive director for Vivid Entertainment.Celine Parreñas Shimizu is an associate professor of film and performance studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and founding editor of Camera Obscura. She is the author of Straitjacket Sexualities and the 2009 Cultural Studies Book Award winning, The Hypersexuality of Race.Mireille Miller-Young is assistant professor of feminist studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her forthcoming book, A Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women, Sex Work, and Pornography (Duke University Press) examines African American women’s sex work in the porn industry.

    A collection of her speeches and writings which address the political and social changes of the past decade as they are concerned with the struggle for racial, sexual, and economic equality.

    To put things simply: If women today were happy, "Ally McBeal" would not be such a huge TV hit — a television phenomenon that not only provokes endless discussion nationwide but also has the distinction of mention in a Time Magazine cover story addressing the state of feminism.The anxiety-riddled character "Ally McBeal" has tapped into something simmering beneath the surface of today's professional, "successful" women. It's called misery. Worse, it's called misery without a comprehensible origin. It is this odd, pervasive unhappiness that Danielle Crittenden confronts in her fascinating, enlightening book What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us.The premise of What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us is that with all of the success of feminism — all of the doors that have been opened, all of the new freedoms women of this generation enjoy — "we may have inadvertently also smashed the foundations necessary for our happiness." Crittenden does not in any way suggest women revert back to the pre-Feminine Mystique days of suburban housewife malaise, but she does confront the possibility that there might have been some crucial good in many of the old patterns of living that women today reject entirely. Crittenden explains that women in the '90s have "heeded their mother's advice: Do something with your life; don't depend upon a man to take care of you; don't make the same mistakes I did. So they have made different mistakes. They are the women who postponed marriage and childbirth to pursue their careers only tofindthemselves at 35 still single and baby-crazy, with no husband in sight. They are the unwed mothers who now depend on the state to provide what the fathers of their children won't — a place to live and an income to raise their kids on. They are the eighteen-year-old girls who believed they could lead the unfettered sexual lives of men, only to have ended up in an abortion clinic or attending grade twelve English while eight months pregnant. They are the new brides who understand that when a couple promises to stay together 'forever,' they have little better than a 50-50 chance of sticking to it. They are the female partners at law firms who thought they'd made provisions for everything about their career — except for that sudden, unexpected moment when they find their insides shredding the first day they return from maternity leave, having placed their infants in a stranger's arms."What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us examines the new problems in today's society and outlines the erroneous ways of thinking that created these problems. With a lighthearted tone and good humor throughout, Crittenden intelligently leads readers through an exploration of love, marriage, motherhood, and even aging. Her examination of dating among women in their 20s and 30s is fascinating, harsh — and yes, depressing. She paints a stark portrait of women in their 20s who brush aside sincere suitors because they believe they're too young to consider marriage, only to discover in their mid-30s that the crowd beating down their door has thinned considerably — and perhaps irrevocably. There is perhaps no more salient truth in Crittenden's book than her statement, "It is usually at precisely this moment — when a single woman looks up from her work and realizes she's ready to take on family life — that men make themselves most absent." Further, it is impossible to deny that in terms of sexual appeal, men have a longer shelf life. A successful man can attract women of any age well into his 50s, 60s...or beyond. They can father children well into old age. And according to Crittenden, "this disparity in sexual staying power is something feminists rather recklessly overlooked when they urged women to abandon marriage and domesticity in favor of autonomy and self-fulfillment outside the home."According to Crittenden, even when a young woman today manages to get married, she is most likely not headed down the path to wedded bliss. In striving so furiously not to be taken for granted as wives were in previous generations, women today often err too far in the opposite direction. Crittenden makes ironic mention of Gloria Steinem's remark that women have become "the husbands we wanted to marry"; Crittenden suggests that perhaps women today are more likely to resemble the husbands we left behind: "balky, self-absorbed, and supremely sure that our needs should come before anyone else's." Crittenden warns that a sense of entitlement devoid of compromise is not likely to lead women into enduring, happy unions.But the most significant arena of mixed messages is the realm of motherhood. Crittenden is unflinching in her look at the tug of war between work responsibility and the job of motherhood. She explores the myriad decisions and conflicts that arise upon the birth of a child. Some women are eager to return to work but feel guilty leaving their child. Some women are desperate to remain at home with their child but cannot afford to do so. Other women would prefer to remain home with their child, and can afford to do so, but are wary of leaving their jobs because if they ever need to return to the workforce they will have lost their foothold. Crittenden is critical of our culture's pervasive attitude that suggests a woman is not "doing anything" once she steps out of the workforce — an attitude that could only hold weight in a society such as ours in which "the virtues of work have been so inflated that we can no longer appreciate anything that's not accompanied by a paycheck." And as for the idea that work is a liberating alternative to the drudgery of housework and childrearing, Crittenden suggests that the number of people who have interesting, fulfilling jobs are in the great minority. Crittenden calls for women to reevaluate what they have been socialized to believe — that work offers a more defining sense of self than raising children.So, what did our mothers never tell us? Maybe they did not tell us what Crittenden explains very carefully: Women can't have it both ways. They probably can't have "it all." Life, relationships, careers...all are full of compromises that are natural and not necessarily a threat to who we are as individuals. Crittenden asserts that "If we wish to live for ourselves and think only about ourselves, we will manage to retain our independence but little else."What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us offers a revised perspective on womanhood that is truly liberating. — Isabel Rifkin