Book picks similar to
The Hite Report by Shere Hite
non-fiction
feminism
sexuality
nonfiction
Vagina: A Re-education
Lynn Enright - 2019
In Vagina: A Re-Education, acclaimed journalist Lynn Enright charts the story of this crucial organ, encompassing fertility and hormones, pain and arousal, sex education and more, with the goal of empowering women with vital knowledge about their bodies.As women all over the world join together in conversations about consent and power, this investigation into the history, biology and politics of the vagina will be a valuable and urgent addition to the discussion.
Learning Good Consent: On Healthy Relationships and Survivor Support
Cindy Crabb - 2016
Building ethical relationships is one of the most important things we can do, but sex, consent, abuse, and support can get complicated. This collection is an indispensable guide to both preventing sexual violence and helping its survivors to heal. Includes a foreword by Kiyomi Fujikawa and Jenna Peters-Golden.“Whether or not you think you need it, whether or not you’re a survivor, or dating a survivor, or even having sex, you would probably benefit from reading this book. And the people you choose to be intimate with will probably thank you for making their safety a priority.” —Nomy Lamm, Feminist Review “Learning Good Consent … offers powerful, complicated information (instead of shallow questions and uncomplicated answers). This book speaks to those who are unlearning silence as a safety/communication strategy.” —Jen Cross, make/shift“Essential reading.” —Colin Atrophy Hagendorf, author of Slice Harvester “What this book does is to stress consent: not ‘no means no,’ or even ‘yes means yes,’ but ‘Do you want me to stay here with you?’ ‘Are you here?’ ‘I thought I wanted this, but I’m not sure now.’ ‘Do you think we should take this farther?’ I’m moved that this book is here. It matters.” —Alison Piepmeier, author of Girl Zines: Making Media, Doing Feminism Cindy Crabb is an author of the influential, feminist, autobiographical ‘zine Doris, which has been anthologized into two books: The Encyclopedia of Doris: Stories, Essays and Interviews and Doris: An Anthology 1991–2001. Her essays and analyses of the impact of her writing have appeared in numerous books and magazines, including: The Riot Grrrl Collection; Stay Solid! A Radical Handbook for Youth; Girl Zines: Making Media, Doing Feminism; and We Don’t Need Another Wave: Dispatches from the Next Generation of Feminists.
Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest
Anne McClintock - 1995
Spanning the century between Victorian Britain and the current struggle for power in South Africa, the book takes up the complex relationships between race and sexuality, fetishism and money, gender and violence, domesticity and the imperial market, and the gendering of nationalism within the zones of imperial and anti-imperial power.
Radical Hope: Letters of Love and Dissent in Dangerous Times
Carolina De RobertisCherrie Moraga - 2017
Provocative and inspiring, Radical Hope offers readers a kaleidoscopic view of the love and courage needed to navigate this time of upheaval, uncertainty, and fear, in view of the recent US presidential election.
The End of Men: And the Rise of Women
Hanna Rosin - 2012
“Anchored by data and aromatized by anecdotes, [Rosin] concludes that women are gaining the upper hand." – The Washington Post Men have been the dominant sex since, well, the dawn of mankind. But Hanna Rosin was the first to notice that this long-held truth is, astonishingly, no longer true. Today, by almost every measure, women are no longer gaining on men: They have pulled decisively ahead. And “the end of men”—the title of Rosin’s Atlantic cover story on the subject—has entered the lexicon as dramatically as Betty Friedan’s “feminine mystique,” Simone de Beauvoir’s “second sex,” Susan Faludi’s “backlash,” and Naomi Wolf’s “beauty myth” once did. In this landmark book, Rosin reveals how our current state of affairs is radically shifting the power dynamics between men and women at every level of society, with profound implications for marriage, sex, children, work, and more. With wide-ranging curiosity and insight unhampered by assumptions or ideology, Rosin shows how the radically different ways men and women today earn, learn, spend, couple up—even kill—has turned the big picture upside down. And in The End of Men she helps us see how, regardless of gender, we can adapt to the new reality and channel it for a better future.
Bluebird: Women and the New Psychology of Happiness
Ariel Gore - 2010
Where twentiethcentury psychology focused on depression and illness, in the new millennium scientists have begun focusing on "positive psychology"--the study of happiness. Ariel Gore first became intrigued by this subject when she discovered that Positive Psychology was the most popular course on the Harvard campus. As she read deeper into the topic, she noticed something disturbing: everyone in this happy land was a man. Worse still, some of these new "experts" seemed hell-bent on proving that women with traditional values and breadwinning husbands--those who had made "an effort to expect less," according to one sociologist--were more content than women with feminist values. The more she read the more she wondered: Can a woman be smart, empowered, "and "happy? Determined to find out, Gore began her own "study in living"-- a journey into the feminine history, science, and experience of happiness. Her results, chronicled with humor and curiosity in "Bluebird," are by turns fascinating and enriching. A woman's happiness may not come easy, and it may not take the forms prescribed by popular culture. But, as Gore discovers, it is not only possible but necessary. "Bluebird "is a smart, no-nonsense, uplifting study of the "real "secret of joy, and whether it's truly at odds with the goals of modern women.
x + y: A Mathematician's Manifesto for Rethinking Gender
Eugenia Cheng - 2020
In x + y, Cheng argues that her mathematical specialty -- category theory -- reveals why. Category theory deals more with context, relationships, and nuanced versions of equality than with intrinsic characteristics. Category theory also emphasizes dimensionality: much as a cube can cast a square or diamond shadow, depending on your perspective, so too do gender politics appear to change with how we examine them. Because society often rewards traits that it associates with males, such as competitiveness, we treat the problems those traits can create as male. But putting competitive women in charge will leave many unjust relationships in place. If we want real change, we need to transform the contexts in which we all exist, and not simply who we think we are.
Live Alone and Like It
Marjorie Hillis - 1936
Though it was 1936 when the Vogue editor first shared her wisdom with her fellow singletons, the tome has been passed lovingly through the generations, and is even more apt today than when it was first published. Hillis, a true bon vivant, was sick and tired of hearing single women carping about their living arrangements and lonely lives; this book is her invaluable wake-up call for single women to take control and enjoy their circumstances. Hillis takes readers through the fundamentals of living alone, including the importance of creating a hospitable environment at home, cultivating hobbies that keep her there ("for no woman can accept an invitation every night without coming to grief"), the question of whether single ladies may entertain men at home (the answer may surprise you!), and many more. Who can resist a book with chapters such as "A Lady and Her Liquor," "Pleasures of a Single Bed," and "Solitary Refinement?" A priceless gem from a more genteel age.
Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women
Susan Faludi - 1991
Now, the book that reignited the feminist movement is back in a fifteenth anniversary edition, with a new preface by the author that brings backlash consciousness up to date. When it was first published, Backlash made headlines for puncturing such favorite media myths as the “infertility epidemic” and the “man shortage,” myths that defied statistical realities. These willfully fictitious media campaigns added up to an antifeminist backlash. Whatever progress feminism has recently made, Faludi’s words today seem prophetic. The media still love stories about stay-at-home moms and the “dangers” of women’s career ambitions; the glass ceiling is still low; women are still punished for wanting to succeed; basic reproductive rights are still hanging by a thread. The backlash clearly exists.With passion and precision, Faludi shows in her new preface how the creators of commercial culture distort feminist concepts to sell products while selling women downstream, how the feminist ethic of economic independence is twisted into the consumer ethic of buying power, and how the feminist quest for self-determination is warped into a self-centered quest for self-improvement. Backlash is a classic of feminism, an alarm bell for women of every generation, reminding us of the dangers that we still face.
Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights
Katha Pollitt - 2014
Wade ruling, "abortion" is still a word that is said with outright hostility by many, despite the fact that one in three American women will have terminated at least one pregnancy by menopause. Even those who support a woman's right to an abortion often qualify their support by saying abortion is a "bad thing," an "agonizing decision," making the medical procedure so remote and radioactive that it takes it out of the world of the everyday, turning an act that is normal and necessary into something shameful and secretive. Meanwhile, with each passing day, the rights upheld by the Supreme Court are being systematically eroded by state laws designed to end abortion outright.In this urgent, controversial book, Katha Pollitt reframes abortion as a common part of a woman's reproductive life, one that should be accepted as a moral right with positive social implications. In Pro, Pollitt takes on the personhood argument, reaffirms the priority of a woman's life and health, and discusses why terminating a pregnancy can be a force for good for women, families, and society. It is time, Pollitt argues, that we reclaim the lives and the rights of women and mothers.
Vagina Problems: Endometriosis, Painful Sex, and Other Taboo Topics
Lara Parker - 2020
But I was getting there. I wanted the world to know that all of this pain I had been feeling…that it was related to my vagina. Thus, Vagina Problems was born. It was a cutesy name. It was my way of taking this pain and saying, “Whatever. I’m here. I have it. It sucks. Let’s talk about it.”In April 2014, Deputy Editorial Director at BuzzFeed Lara Parker opened up to the world in an article on the website: she suffers from endometriosis. And beyond that? She let the whole world know that she wasn’t having any sex, as sex was excruciatingly painful. Less than a year before, she received not only the diagnosis of endometriosis, but also a diagnosis of pelvic floor dysfunction, vulvodynia, vaginismus, and vulvar vestibulitis. Combined, these debilitating conditions have wreaked havoc on her life, causing excruciating pain throughout her body since she was fourteen years old. These are her Vagina Problems. It was five years before Lara learned what was happening to her body. Five years of doctors insisting she just had “bad period cramps,” or implying her pain was psychological. Shamed and stigmatized, Lara fought back against a medical community biased against women and discovered that the ignorance of many doctors about women’s anatomy was damaging more than just her own life. One in ten women have endometriosis and it takes an average of seven years before they receive an accurate diagnosis—or any relief from this incurable illness’ chronic pain. With candid revelations about her vaginal physical therapy, dating as a straight woman without penetrative sex, coping with painful seizures while at the office, diet and wardrobe malfunctions when your vagina hurts all the time, and the depression and anxiety of feeling unloved, Lara tackles it all in Vagina Problems: Endometriosis, Painful Sex, and Other Taboo Topics with courage, wit, love, and a determination to live her best life."
Unladylike: A Field Guide to Smashing the Patriarchy and Claiming Your Space
Cristen Conger - 2018
Unladylike explains the history and larger political context of the issues that face women in our patriarchal culture--such as the wage gap, white vs. intersectional feminism, gendered beauty standards, body image, and rape culture--and offers prescriptive, practical advice for how to handle the personal implications of being a feminist today. Drawing upon examples from herstory and the best of contemporary feminist theory, Unladylike provides guidance for how to live a woke, feminist life, and addresses the feminist questions women grapple with in their daily lives--How can I live my politics? How should I handle dating and sex? How do I support and not compete with my female friends? Are these high heels feminist? Should I change my name if I get married? How do I deal with money? How can I get over my imposter syndrome? Unladylike answers all of these questions and more, empowering women and readying the world for a female future.
The War Against Women
Marilyn French - 1992
In this stunning work of resarch, Ms. French creates a devastating portrait of today's male-dominated global society, with its underlying aim of destroying, subjugating, or mutilating women. Here is a devastating indictment of our values and an important step toward an urgent public discussion of human morality.
Choice: True Stories of Birth, Contraception, Infertility, Adoption, Single Parenthood, and Abortion
Karen E. BenderK.A.C. - 2007
In addressing a wide range of women’s choices—from using birth control to taking the morning-after pill, from adopting a child to putting a child up for adoption, from having an abortion to bringing a pregnancy to full term—Choice explores the complexities inherent in every reproductive decision.Including twenty-four honest, heartrending essays from established writers such as Francine Prose, Jacquelyn Mitchard, Pam Houston, Ann Hood, and Sarah Messer and emerging talents such as Kimi Faxon Hemingway, Stephanie Anderson, and Ashley Talley, Choice will allow you to truly understand the meaning of the word “choice”—regardless of what side of the debate you stand on.
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.