Book picks similar to
Historical Romance Fiction: Heterosexuality and Performativity by Lisa Fletcher
feminism
sexuality
non-fiction
gender
Misogyny: The World's Oldest Prejudice
Jack Holland - 2006
Misogyny encompasses the Church, witch hunts, sexual theory, Nazism, pro-life campaigners, and finally, today's developing world, where women are increasingly and disproportionately at risk because of radicalized religious beliefs, famine, war, and disease. Extensively researched, highly readable and provocative, this book chronicles an ancient, pervasive and enduring injustice. The questions it poses deal with the fundamentals of human existence — sex, love, violence — that have shaped the lives of humans throughout history, and ultimately limn an abuse of human rights on a nearly unthinkable scale.
The Secret History of Wonder Woman
Jill Lepore - 2014
A cultural history of Wonder Woman traces the character's creation and enduring popularity, drawing on interviews and archival research to reveal the pivotal role of feminism in shaping her seven-decade story.Examines the life of Wonder Woman creator William Moulton Marston and his polyamorous relationship with wife Elizabeth Holloway and mistress Olive Byrne, both of whom inspired and influenced the comic book character's creation and development.-Abstract from WorldCat
Masters of Sex: The Life and Times of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the Couple Who Taught America How to Love
Thomas Maier - 2009
This critically acclaimed biography offers an unprecedented look at William Masters and Virginia Johnson, their pioneering studies on intimacy, and their lasting impact on the love lives of today's men and women.
Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies and Revolution
Laurie Penny - 2014
Unspeakable Things is a book that is eye-opening not only in the critique it provides, but also in the revolutionary alternatives it imagines.
The Season: A Social History of the Debutante
Kristen Richardson - 2019
In this brilliant history of the phenomenon, Richardson shares debutantes’ own words—from diaries, letters, and interviews—throughout her vivid telling, beginning in Henry VIII’s era, sweeping through Queen Elizabeth I’s court, crossing back and forth the Atlantic to colonial Philadelphia, African American communities, Jane Austen’s England, and Mrs. Astor’s parties, ultimately arriving at the contemporary New York Infirmary and International balls.Whether maligned for its archaic attitude and objectification of women or praised for raising money for charities and providing a necessary coming-of-age ritual, the debutante tradition has more to tell us in this entertaining and illuminating book.
Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Issues in Canada
Chelsea Vowel - 2016
Sixties Scoop. Bill C-31. Blood quantum. Appropriation. Two-Spirit. Tsilhqot’in. Status. TRC. RCAP. FNPOA. Pass and permit. Numbered Treaties. Terra nullius. The Great Peace…Are you familiar with the terms listed above? In Indigenous Writes, Chelsea Vowel, legal scholar, teacher, and intellectual, opens an important dialogue about these (and more) concepts and the wider social beliefs associated with the relationship between Indigenous peoples and Canada. In 31 essays, Chelsea explores the Indigenous experience from the time of contact to the present, through five categories – Terminology of Relationships; Culture and Identity; Myth-Busting; State Violence; and Land, Learning, Law, and Treaties. She answers the questions that many people have on these topics to spark further conversations at home, in the classroom, and in the larger community.Indigenous Writes is one title in The Debwe Series.
Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty
Nancy L. Etcoff - 1999
Etcoff, a faculty member at Harvard Medical School and a practicing psychologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, skewers the enduring myth that the pursuit of beauty is a learned behavior.Etcoff puts forth that beauty is neither a cultural construction, an invention of the fashion industry, nor a backlash against feminism, but instead is in our biology. It's an essential and ineradicable part of human nature that is revered and ferociously pursued in nearly every civilizatoin--and for good reason. Those features to which we are most attracted are often signals of fertility and fecundity. When seen in the context of a Darwinian struggle for survival, our sometimes extreme attempts to attain beauty--both to become beautiful ourselves and to acquire an attractive partner--become understandable. Moreover, if we come to understand how the desire for beauty is innate, then we can begin to work in our interests, and not soley for the interests of our genetic tendencies.
Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism
Seyward Darby - 2020
Trump, journalist Seyward Darby went looking for the women of the so-called alt-right--really just white nationalism with a new label. The mainstream media depicted the alt-right as a bastion of angry white men, but was it? As women headlined resistance to the Trump administration's bigotry and sexism, most notably at the women's marches, Darby wanted to know why others were joining a movement espousing racism and anti-feminism. Who were these women, and what did their activism reveal about America's past, present, and future? Darby researched dozens of women across the country before settling on three: Corinna Olsen, Ayla Stewart, and Lana Lokteff. Each was born in 1979 and became a white nationalist in the post-9/11 era. Their respective stories of radicalization upend much of what we assume about women, politics, and political extremism.
For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts' Advice to Women
Barbara Ehrenreich - 1976
Authors Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English have never lost faith in science itself, but insist that we hold those who interpret it to higher standards. Women are entering the medical and scientific professions in greater numbers but as recent research shows, experts continue to use pseudoscience to tell women how to live. This edition of For Her Own Good provides today's readers with an indispensable dose of informed skepticism.
Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America
Lillian Faderman - 1991
Using journals, unpublished manuscripts, songs, news accounts, novels, medical literature, and numerous interviews, she relates an often surprising narrative of lesbian life. "A key work...the point of reference from which all subsequent studies of 20th-century lesbian life in the United States will begin."—San Francisco Examiner.
Courtesans: Money, Sex and Fame in the Nineteenth Century
Katie Hickman - 2003
In doing so they took control of their lives -- and those of other people -- and made the world do their will.Extremely accomplished, well-educated, and unusually literate, courtesans exerted an incredible influence as leaders of society. They were not received at court, but inhabited their own parallel world -- the demimonde -- complete with its own hierarchies, etiquette, and protocol. They were queens of fashion, linguists, musicians, accomplished at political intrigue, and, of course, possessors of great erotic gifts. Even to be seen in public with one of the great courtesans was a much-envied achievement.
Witches, Sluts, Feminists: Conjuring the Sex Positive
Kristen J. Sollee - 2017
This innovative primer highlights sexual liberation as it traces the lineage of “witch feminism.” Juxtaposing scholarly research on the demonization of women and female sexuality that has continued since the witch hunts of the early modern era with pop occulture analyses and interviews with activists, artists, scholars, and practitioners of witchcraft, this book enriches our contemporary conversations about reproductive rights, sexual pleasure, queer identity, pornography, sex work, and more.Kristen J. Sollee is instructor at The New School and founding editrix of Slutist, an award-winning sex positive feminist website."
Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940
George Chauncey - 1994
Drawing on a rich trove of diaries, legal records, and other unpublished documents, George Chauncey constructs a fascinating portrait of a vibrant, cohesive gay world that is not supposed to have existed. Called "monumental" (Washington Post), "unassailable" (Boston Globe), "brilliant" (The Nation), and "a first-rate book of history" (The New York Times), Gay New Yorkforever changed how we think about the history of gay life in New York City, and beyond.
Wayward Women: Sexuality and Agency in a New Guinea Society
Holly Wardlow - 2006
Focusing on Huli “passenger women,” (women who accept money for sex) Wayward Women explores the socio-economic factors that push women into the practice of transactional sex, and asks how these transactions might be an expression of resistance, or even revenge. Challenging conventional understandings of “prostitution” and “sex work,” Holly Wardlow contextualizes the actions and intentions of passenger women in a rich analysis of kinship, bridewealth, marriage, and exchange, revealing the ways in which these robust social institutions are transformed by an encompassing capitalist economy. Many passenger women assert that they have been treated “olsem maket” (like market goods) by their husbands and natal kin, and they respond by fleeing home and defiantly appropriating their sexuality for their own purposes. Experiences of rape, violence, and the failure of kin to redress such wrongs figure prominently in their own stories about becoming “wayward.” Drawing on village court cases, hospital records, and women’s own raw, caustic , and darkly funny narratives, Wayward Women provides a riveting portrait of the way modernity engages with gender to produce new and contested subjectivities.
Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters
Anne Boyd Rioux - 2018
In Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy, Anne Boyd Rioux brings a fresh and engaging look at the circumstances leading Louisa May Alcott to write Little Women and why this beloved story of family and community ties set in the Civil War has resonated with audiences across time.