You keep using Humanism. I do not think it means what you think it means.

I have written this rant a thousand times. My children can recite it word for word. Heck, given the power of speech, I bet the first words out the cat's mouth would be: For the love of catnip, stop squawking about humanism.

Nothing annoys me more than people disavowing the political theory of feminism because they want to be "humanists". Honestly, does no one google anymore? Humanism has an actual political definition which is predicated on the notion of rational thought; and that "rational thought" excluded women because we're all emotional and hysterical and shit. In fact, dating of the humanist movement usually starts around the Renaissance which is a period not known for its feminist writers. How anyone who grew up in a "Western" country with access to free secondary school education can get confused about the definition of humanism is completely beyond me.

For the last freaking time, and the welfare of my children:

HUMANISM DOES NOT MEAN EQUALITY BETWEEN THE SEXES.

It just doesn't. It doesn't matter what celebrity is babbling on about how they aren't feminists because they are humanists and humanists believe in equality. They are wrong. And, frankly, their agents need to have a chat with them about their knowledge of history. 

These are the very basic definitions as outlined in Collins' School Dictionary which I've borrowed from my primary school child:  

• Humanism is the belief in mankind's ability to achieve happiness and fulfilment without the need for religion.

• Feminism is the belief that women should have the same rights and opportunities as men.

See: THEY ARE NOT THE SAME THING

Not even close. 

This is the definition of humanism as taken from the Oxford Dictionaries Online:

A rationalist outlook or system of thought attaching prime importance to human rather than divine or supernatural matters.

• (often Humanism) a Renaissance cultural movement which turned away from medieval scholasticism and revived interest in ancient Greek and Roman thought.

• (among some contemporary writers) a system of thought criticized as being centred on the notion of the rational, autonomous self and ignoring the conditioned nature of the individual.

If you feel the need to quibble with this definition of humanism, do feel free to google yourself. Wikipedia's got a pretty decent history of humanism. Or check out the British Humanist Association definition:

• trusts to the scientific method when it comes to understanding how the universe works and rejects the idea of the supernatural (and is therefore an atheist or agnostic)


• makes their ethical decisions based on reason, empathy, and a concern for human beings and other sentient animals

• believes that, in the absence of an afterlife and any discernible purpose to the universe, human beings can act to give their own lives meaning by seeking happiness in this life and helping others to do the same.

Not a word about feminism anywhere on their website.

Because humanism is NOT feminism.

Feminism, at least liberal feminism, is about equality between men and women. If you don't want to use the word feminist, use equalist. That term sets my teeth on edge but by using you won't be publicly embarrassed of your poor knowledge of history. [My feminism is about the liberation of women from male violence since we technically already have equality before the law in the UK but those laws are never enforced].

To be clear, you can be a feminist and a humanist but not a humanist because you're afraid someone might think you hate men if you call yourself a feminist. And, come on, if feminism is about equality between men and women, then men who think feminists are "man-haters" are clearly misogynistic losers.

Do you really want to be taking the advice on your political beliefs from a man who thinks women are inherently inferior to men and lie about rape? 

Really?

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What about the women? The existence of Brothels in Nazi Concentration Camps

This is a response to a post at Everyday Whorephobia called "When the State Traffics Women". I posted a brief response on the blog itself [which is currently in moderation]* but I wanted to write a longer response. Women's history is something I am very passionate about and this particular topic is something I am quite familiar with. Whilst I am glad more women are writing about this topic, I do have some reservations about some of the conclusions within this piece.

Sexual violence and rape were common during the Holocaust. The fact that these experiences are not common knowledge is because of sexist constructions of a specific Holocaust narrative which privileged testimonies of male survivors like Elie Wiesel over women, Gay men, people with disabilities, and children, to name a few. Partly, this was because of the historical context in which Holocaust narratives became well-known as very little academic research was done until the 1960s. Testimonies published in the immediate post-war era, of which there are many, had very small publishing runs as many people were simply not interested in analysing the full spectrum of violence perpetrated during World War Two. Holocaust history was written during, and is historically situated by, the Cold War. The political desires of the US and the USSR impact how Holocaust history was written and who it was being written for. Racism was a motivating factor of the crimes against humanity during the war as much as it was a motivating factor for how the history of the war was written.

As with all history, the Holocaust was complicated. Mass genocide does not simply occur because a few men in one nation order it. The Holocaust required the participation, active and passive, of much of Europe. That is a fact which very few are willing to acknowledge but it is something we need to remind ourselves of daily.

"When the State traffics women" does raise awareness of just how prolific sexual violence was during the Holocaust. This point cannot be emphasised enough; sexual violence was ignored by mainstream historians until well into the 1990s. Feminist historians were writing about in the early 1970s but this researched was dismissed, as women's history frequently is. Since the 1990s, there have been numerous collections of essays on the experience of women published as well as numerous conferences which dealt specifically with the gendered experiences of women. There also been an explosion in the sheer number of women's testimonies being (re)published. In 2010, an anthology specifically about sexual violence against Jewish women was published. As I write this, there are a multitude of PhDs, essays and books being written about sexual violence during the Holocaust. Women's experiences are being written back into the history of the Holocaust and the extant of sexual violence against all peoples is finally being questioned.

My personal belief is that there cannot be enough research and writing on the Holocaust. The Soviet archives, which were only recently opened, have demonstrated just how much we did not know. 10 years ago, a group of scholars decided to establish the official number of slave labour and concentration camps. It was double what was previously believed and includes at least 500 brothels. So many records still need to be archived. What we thought we knew has turned out to be only a brief snapshot of what actually happened.

This piece had the potential to increase public awareness of the existence of brothels and the treatment of prostituted women. Unfortunately, there are several problems with the essay. First, it occasionally  conflates the experience of prostituted women within Nazi Germany with the experience of all women within the concentration, death and slave labour camps. This conflation is not helpful when researching sexual violence. The treatment of individuals within the camp system depended on their nationality, race, age, sex, sexuality, criminal activity, disability and skill. During the 1930s, the Nazis deliberately targeted prostituted women under the category of 'asocial'** for incarceration, however we do not know how many women incarcerated as 'asocials' were prostituted women as the category included convicted criminals, women with disabilities, and those who are still othered in the UK now. The category of 'asocial' included anyone accused of moral degeneracy. It is also included women who were Lesbians. Lesbianism, unlike homosexuality, was not illegal under the Nazi regime. Lesbian women were still incarcerated but they were charged as 'asocials' rather than for the crime of homosexuality. This category was specifically about women living within Nazi Germany before the outbreak of war and at the beginning.

Secondly, the number of prostituted women who were incarcerated in concentration, slave-labour and death camps which had brothels is open to debate because of this issue of identification. We know, for the camps where records were not destroyed, how many women were incarcerated as 'asocials' but that does not give us an accurate record of women incarcerated for prostitution. This is a very important point when addressing the issue of brothels and which women were required to "work" in them because women incarcerated for the crime of prostitution were by no means the only women forced to "work" in the brothels.

The establishment of the brothels, as the piece correctly points out, were in direct response to two issues: Heinrich Himmler's "incentivisation" program for male inmates working within the armaments factories in the slave-labour camps and homosexuality within the camps. Brothels were obviously the answer to both problems. I have some personal reservations about the brothels being developed to combat homosexuality within the camp system since the men who were incarcerated for the crime of homosexuality were subjected to sexual violence and medical experimentation. Being a known homosexual was much more likely to result in death than a pass to the brothel. The problem within the camps was sexual relationships between men who were not homosexuals and the rape of teenage boys by adult men. Both issues need far more research.  

The women who were raped in the brothels included lesbian women as punishment for being lesbians and Jewish women; the laws of Rassenschade were generally ignored in the camps. "Working" in the brothel did involve better food rations. The women were also allowed to bathe and had access to better clothes. They also got to work inside which was an important consideration for many women. Women's testimonies vary on how women were "chosen" to work in the brothels but most involve the women themselves "volunteering" to be raped in the brothel and women being forced to parade naked in front of SS guards and the most beautiful being chosen. Stories of women "volunteering" to work in the brothel include women who made the "choice" in order to access extra rations to smuggle to their sisters, which may or may not have included biological sisters as the benefits of sisterhood and the importance of women's relationships are a common theme in women's testimonies. There are also stories of women who were incarcerated for prostitution "volunteering" for the brothels in order to spare other women the degradation of being raped. 

The women "working" in brothels generally represented in women's testimonies in two ways: as debased women or as true sisters helping other women. Much more research needs to be done into the experience of women who worked in the brothels: who they were and, for those who "volunteered", why did they make the "choice".

The third, and in my opinion, the biggest problem with "When the State traffics women" is that it focuses on men and their feelings, effectively erasing the humanity of the women "working" within the brothels. Men were given tokens for 'good behaviour'. The tokens were bartered around the camp for food and other extras. Women's bodies were bartered as objects and then the women were raped but not just by male inmates, and certainly not Jewish men. SS guards also raped the women within the brothels, as they did with women in all the slave-labour, concentration and death camps. Jewish women were allowed to be raped by men but Jewish men were not allowed in the brothels.

As the piece states, the men were given tokens to the brothels were subject to "humiliating genital examination and a prophylactic injection before being taken to the room". The piece fails to mention that the women within the brothels were also subject to humiliating genital examinations. SS guards certainly did watch in some camps but not in others. In some camps, SS guards were the only people allowed to rape the women in the brothels.  The women were also raped by dozens of men every day but no mention is made of the effect of this on the women's bodies. The article also suggests that women who were infected with STIs were sent back to the main camps. It does not mention that this was frequently followed by a death sentence. It is also important to note that the campaign against STIs, as with the campaign against lice, was actually about the "safety" of the SS officers within the camps rather than concern about the male prisoners. The women, obviously, did not count. And, yes, the pregnancies which followed mass rapes were frequently aborted. Depending on the camp, this abortion could simply involve the murder of the women or the women dying from the abortion. It is certainly not quite as easy as the article implies.

This is the piece of text with which I have the most reservations: 

What motivated the men who used the service? The need to relieve sexual frustration was one motivation but survivor testimonies also refer to many men wanting to talk or simply feel the physical closeness of a woman. In the pitiless world of the concentration camp they simply sought a few minutes of tenderness. They were as much victims as the women.

Whilst the men were as much victims of the women, it wasn't for the reasons stated above. After all, the women weren't exactly in a position to decide whether or not they wanted to talk or just feel the physical closeness of a male body. The women were being raped dozens of times a day by dozens of men. The men had a choice. The women did not and to ignore this point is to ignore the experience and trauma of the women. This failure to acknowledge the very gendered nature of the Holocaust has led to women's lives being written out of history. 

The issue of brothels within the camps is complicated because it does "challenge prevailing orthodoxies about the nature of Nazi oppression", but, and this is very important, race was a key factor in the privilege to access to the brothels. Polish resistance fighters, German criminals and western POWs were allowed access to the brothels. Jewish men were banned and Soviet POWs were considered suspect. For the women, race was generally irrelevant. Once women were incarcerated in the camp systems, they were victims of sexual violence from all men*** without the added factor of being incarcerated in the brothel. For women out with the camp system, race also impacted on their experience of sexual violence. German soldiers raped whomever they wanted and the rape and murder of Jewish women in the ghettos guarded by regular German troops. The mass rapes by the Soviet army as the moved west is well-known, less so is the mass rapes committed by Allied forces. The stories of rape of women in Western Europe have not been fully explored. 

I do agree that the story of sexual violence needs to be historically situated within the wider context of Nazism, however the article refers to a now questionable construction of womanhood in Nazi Germany that was based on Nazi propaganda rather than the reality of the lives of Aryan women [and the conflation of *all* women with Aryan women here is telling]. This, however, is another essay for another time.

Sexual violence was an integral experience of the Holocaust for many women and I will write further about the experience of Jewish women in the camps. What I will say is that current research into sexual violence in the Holocaust has shown just how integral sexual violence is to genocide and human rights violations. The fact that rape was not mentioned once during the Nuremberg trials is disgraceful. The fact that neither "forced prostitution" nor rape were considered war crimes until 2002 is a crime in and of itself. When writing women's histories we need to be careful that we do not use their life-stories to reinforce a narrative based on our political leanings. The experience of women during the Holocaust has already been erased from history once to met a male political narrative. This cannot happen again.

*And, before anyone assumes anything. I only posted the comment yesterday. I'm sure they have a moderation policy which is run by volunteers. Moderating is a time consuming process and not one that anyone should have to do on a Saturday night.

** I have placed a number of terms in quotation marks because they are deeply problematic and outlining why they are problematic is an essay for another day.

***Clearly, not all men in the camps were involved in the rape of women and teenage boys but the threat was there for women. 

There is more research on the experience of women available here:

The Holocaust at Women Under Siege
New Holocaust findings highlight larger gap in conflict and rape research at Women Under Siege
Remember the Women Institute

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Women and the Holocaust: A cyberspace of Their Own

(I meant to post this during Women's History Month. Clearly, I'm a bit late. Anyway. )

I love the Woman and the Holocaust: A Cyberspace of Their Own site. This is what woman's history is: academic scholarship, personal testimonies, poetry, literature and art. It is the multiplicity of representation that allow us to find the history of women which is elided, ignored and erased from mainstream history. The experience of women Holocaust survivors has demonstrated this over and over again; notably in the work of Lawrence Langer who claimed that women's experiences weren't substantially different to men. This fails to consider the very real biological differences between men and women which did result in their experiences being gendered. After all, although a few men were also victims, sexualised violence was predominantly an experience of women and children; as was caring for children, elderly and disabled family members. 

The dedication of Women and the Holocaust: A Cyberspace of Their Own reads:

Who were murdered while pregnant.  Holding little hands of children or carrying infants in their arms on the way to be gassed.  In hiding.  To the mothers who gave their children to be hidden, many never to find them again.  To the righteous gentile mothers and the nuns in convents, who were hiding and protecting the children in their care.

Or as fighters in the resistance:  in ghettos, forests, partisan units.

And to the lives of those few who survived and bravely carried on.

This site is an amazing resource and one which I highly recommend. 

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Angela Bourkes' The Burning of Bridget Cleary

Angela Bourke's The Burning of Bridget Cleary is a social history of the use of fairies and other myths to control people's behaviour in Ireland in the 19th century. She traces the history of these myths to contextualise the brutal torture and murder of Bridget Cleary by her husband and kinsmen. It is very powerful but equally horrifying. What impressed me the most is that Bourke places the murder of Bridget firmly within a narrative of domestic violence. There are no excuses for male violence so, whilst the murder is contextualised with a history of faeries, changelings, power struggles, and jealousy  Bourke holds the murderers accountable. Bourke then situates the trial of Bridget's murderers within the political context of British Home Rule of Ireland and the British construction of Irish people as savages.

The Burning of Bridget Cleary is one of the most fascinating and well-researched books I have ever read. Bourke traces multiple layers of  history and myth to tell the story of the murder of Bridget Cleary. It's rather like Kate Summerscale's The Suspicions of Mr Whicher* but from a feminist perspective rather than a comprehensive social history. 

I honestly can not recommend this book enough. It is brilliant, insightful, frightening and, above all, a true picture of the complicated processes required to tell the history of women. 

*The Suspicions of Mr Whicher is worth a read too as it contextualises the origins of detectives in British society within the literature of the day particularly in relation to the work of Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens.

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Helen Castor's She-Wolves:The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth

I couldn't put this book down. Helen Castor has a real gift for prose; a rare gift among historians. The hours I've wasted reading badly written historical texts in my life are extensive so this was a joy to read. I also knew next to nothing about the 5 queens that Castor profiled: Matilda, Eleanor of Aquitaine,  Isabella of France, Margaret of Anjou and Mary Tudor. She-Wolves: The Queens who Ruled England Before Elizabeth is a fascinating and quick read. There are some problems with the text; notably the complete lack of footnotes and sources. I understand this was written as a piece of "popular fiction" but the inclusion of the bibliography at the back was not enough. I want to read more about these four women but it's hard to tell which would be the best texts for me to read next. 

Castor's respect and admiration for these five women, however flawed they were is evident, but this is still a military history of battles and men. Yes, this testifies to the paucity of primary source material on the lives of these women but the book is still focused mainly on military history, dynastic squabbles and male temper tantrums. There is very little about the women themselves and much of what Castor writes focuses on their military and political battles. In many ways, this is a very traditional "history" text, albeit one written about women.  Castor simply doesn't make enough of the social and cultural milieu in which the women lived. She focuses on the military history to the exclusion of the households and courts of the women themselves. They are all defined in relation to the men they married or birthed.

Castor also leaves numerous questions unexamined. She claims from the start that these 5 women were prevented from becoming true queens because of their inability to lead armies. Her first evidence of this is Matilda's inability to lead an army to fight Stephen who ousted her from her thrown. Yet, less than 20 pages later, Castor claims that Stephen's wife lead an army against Matilda's troops. Why could King Stephen's wife, a queen consort, lead an army whilst the ousted Queen Matilda could not? These women also lived across 4 centuries and Castor makes very little of the changing political and social structures which dramatically changed the women's ability to claim the thrown. After all, Matilda was English -born [but the granddaughter of William the Conquerer] whilst Isabella, Eleanor and Margaret were all foreign-born. Mary become queen by dint of being properly English [and a Tudor]. That makes a significant difference.

I did enjoy this book as Castor's gift for writing compensates for any problems within the text. It isn't the best text for learning more about these 5 Queens of England though. What She-Wolves does demonstrate, more than anything I've read in a long time, is cultural femicide: the complete erasure of women from culture. The fact that there is simply not enough evidence of the lives of these 5 women to write a history without basing it on their relationships with men is cultural femicide.

As ever, I would love recommendations for histories of these women!

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Jewly Hight's Right By Her Roots: Americana Women and Their Songs

The problem with this book is that it is just one book. It should be nine separate books: the eight singer-songwriters that Hight adores so much:

• Lucinda Williams
• Julie Miller
• Victoria Williams
• Michelle Shocked
• Mary Gauthier
• Ruthie Foster
• Elizabeth Cook
• Abigail Washburn

And, Jewly Hight herself; because Hight might claim to be writing the stories of these eight women singers-songwriters and their examination of "their geographical, cultural, familial, and religious roots in their music" but Hight's actually written herself into the text. I want to know more about the 8 female artists and Hight.  A longer book would have allowed the inclusion of more of the lyrics by these talented women but also more of Hight herself. Right by Her Roots is a love affair with these talented women singer-songwriters and it's love-affair that just isn't long enough.

It's all fascinating but at 200 pages, there simply isn't enough space to really examine these issues and fully explore the back catalogues of the music of these women. I want to know more about all 8 women but equally I want to know about Hight. I want to know about how Hight traces her roots and I want more of Hight's personal responses to these women. 

I definitely recommend this book but with fingers crossed that Hight writes more in-depth books about these women (and herself).

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Barbara Black Koltuv's The Book of Lilith

I'm in two minds about Barbara Black Koltuv's The Book of Lilith. I found the history of the myths surrounding Lilith, and her previous incarnations in other cultural traditions, utterly fascinating. This is a history of women and myth that I knew nothing about. Koltuv's choice to quote large sections of original text were of immense value. On the other hand, I was less fond of Koltuv's use of psychoanalysis because I felt it involved an essentialist construction of women as being either Eve or Lilith. This is obviously an odd criticism considering Koltuv is a well-respected psychoanalyst but the constant reference to the power of modern women's sexuality detracted from the origin myths of Lilith. 

Prior to reading this, I knew nothing of Lilith and I will have to reread this book as there is just so much information packed into such a short text that I feel I have missed out on pieces of Lilith's story.  I knew Lilith was the first woman in one version of the Christian tradition but I did not know about Lilith's construction within Jewish texts. I certainly did not know that Lilith is purported to be one of the two "mothers" of the infant in the Biblical story the Judgement of Solomon. I want to know more but I found myself distracted by Koltuv's inclusion of her current patients. Koltuv's use of psychoanalysis to read the stories of Lilith throughout history was really powerful and riveting but the references to her modern practise were simply not. 

Lilith's rewriting as mother and whore, as the moon but also a deity fascinates me. So, if anyone has any excellent recommendations to read on the story of Lilith [and written by women!], please let me know.

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Bristol Women's Literature Festival: Or, Where Stewie Would Rather Be this Weekend.

(Image from here)

Anyone who is familiar with this blog will know why I'd rather be at the Women's Literature Festival this weekend. A whole weekend dedicated to celebrating women writers and combatting cultural femicide: what's not to love? Unfortunately, and after consulting several maps, I am led to believe that Bristol is located not only nowhere near my house but also not on a single non-environmentally destructive form of public transport. (sulks)

Anyway, for those of you lucky enough to live in Bristol or within traveling distance, do check it out. The whole weekend looks fabulous.

The information below is taken directly from the Women's Literature Festival website:

Bristol Women’s Literature Festival brings together the country’s best women writers, academics and feminist commentators to the Watershed for a weekend of thought-provoking discussion, debate and activity.

Buy your tickets for the festival today.

The festival has three aims:

1. To celebrate the diversity and creativity of women writers
2. To counter the male dominance of literature and cultural festival line-ups
3. To promote women’s writing and literary history

Across the weekend of 16th-17th March, we’ll be hosting three panel discussions at the Watershed, along with a talk and film screening:

Out of the Ivory Tower: writing feminism for a non-academic audience

Women’s Writing today: contemporary women writers discuss their fiction

Bluestockings and Muses: a history of women’s writing

Bringing women’s issues to a mainstream TV audience + film

The Bristol Women’s Literature festival is entirely unfunded. If you would like to support this event, then please donate to us via the PayPal donate button.

Tickets still available!

Tickets have been going as fast as hot cakes and as a result Watershed has moved Saturday’s talks to a bigger room. Isn’t that great news? So if you’ve been worrying about getting tickets worry no more. We advise booking in advance to avoid disappointment but you are still probably fine to buy on the door. 

You can book your tickets by calling 0117 927 5100 or going online to Watershed. 

Book for Feminism on the Small Screen

Book for Women Writing Today

Book for Bluestockings and Muses

Book for Out of the Ivory Tower

So, what will you be booking?

A weekend ticket is available if you want to catch all four fascinating talks – to order yours just call  Watershed on 0117 927 5100 or go directly to the Box Office.

If you would like to hear renowned screenwriter Emilia di Girolamo talk about her career writing for Law and Order:UK and dramas like The Poison Tree, and how she brings women’s issues to a primetime audience you can book online now. Her talk takes place on 16 March, 11am along with a screening of Line Up.

To hear Stella Duffy, Helen Dunmore, Beatrice Hitchman and Selma Dabbagh read from their work and talk about Women Writing Today with Bidisha, you can book online now. They’ll be on at 3.30pm on Saturday 16th March.

Then, there’s Sunday. To book your tickets to discover the fascinating and often hidden history of women’s literature with Kate Williams, Dr Charlotte Crofts, Dr Marie Mulvey-Roberts, Professor Joan Adim-Addo and Professor Helen Taylor, you can go online now. This talk is happening at 2pm on Sunday 17 March.

And the festival finishes with a discussion on how writers today are bringing feminism to a new audience with Kristin Aune, Debi Withers and Josephine Tsui. Book your ticket now for 4pm on Sunday 17 March.

Individual tickets are £7/£6 and weekend tickets are £25/20. You can book via Watershed website or by calling the Box Office on 0117 927 5100

Book for Feminism on the Small Screen

Book for Women Writing Today

Book for Bluestockings and Muses

Book for Out of the Ivory Tower

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"Books We've Read"

I just found this list entitled Books We've Read in my sticky notes. I have no idea what website it's from or even when I saved it in my sticky notes. I only found when I decided that it was probably time to edit the 40 or so sticky notes saved on my laptop. Wherever it has come from, it's a fascinating list. I've bolded the ones I've already read and italicised those I own but still need to read. I'm adding others to my wish list!*

• Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions by Gloria Steinem
• 
  
• Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
• 
  
• What Do Women Want? by Luise Eichenbaum and Susie Orbach
• 
  
• One Dimensional Woman by Nina Power
• 
  
• Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present by Lillian Faderman

• The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women by Naomi Wolf
• 
  
• The Equality Illusion: The Truth About Women and Men Today by Kat Banyard
• 
  
• Suffragettes: A Story of Three Women by Gertrude Colmore
• 
  
• Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism by Natasha Walter
• 
  
• From Homebreakers to Jailbreakers: Southall Black Sisters by Helena Kennedy (Foreword) and Rahila Gupta (Editor)
• 
  
• Beyond God the Father by Mary Daly
• 
  
• Self-made Man: My Year Disguised as a Man by Norah Vincent
• 
  
• The Spinster and Her Enemies: Feminism and Sexuality, 1880-1930 by Sheila Jeffreys
• 
  
• Black British Feminism: A Reader by Heidi Safia Mirza
• 
  
• Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour by Maria Mies
• 
  
• Small Expectations: Society’s Betrayal of Older Women by Leah Cohen
• 
  
• Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga
• 
  
• Virgin: The Untouched History by Hanne Blank
• 
  
• Provoked by Kiranjit Ahluwalia and Rahila Gupta
• 
  
• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
• 
  
• The Myth of Women’s Masochism by Paula Caplan
• 
  
• Beauty and Misogyny: Harmful Cultural Practices in the West by Sheila Jeffrey
• 
  
• The Johns: Sex for Sale and the Men Who Buy It by  Victor Malarek
• 
  
• Ireland’s Hidden Diaspora: The ‘Abortion Trail’ and the Making of a London-Irish Underground, 1980-2000 by Ann Rossiter
• 
  
• Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy edited by Barbara Ehrenreich
• 
  
• The Bitch in the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth About Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood, and Marriage edited by Cathi Hanauer
• 
  
• Bodies by Susie Orbach
• 
  
• The Industrial Vagina by Sheila Jeffreys
• 
  
• Back off! How to Confront and Stop Sexual Harassment and Harassers by Martha J. Langelan
• 
  
• The Creation of Patriarchy by Gerda Lerner
• 
  
• Women as Revolutionary Agents of Change by Shere Hite
• 
  
• Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing by Jill Radford and Diana E.H. Russell
• 
  
• Herland and the Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
• 
  
• Women of Ideas And What Men Have Done to Them by Dale Spender
• 
  
• That Takes Ovaries! Bold Females and Their Brazen Acts by Rivka Solomon
• 
  
• Encounters with Strangers: Feminism and Disability by Jenny Morris
• 
  
• Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde
• 
  
• The Politics of Reality by Marilyn Frye
• 
  
• Woman: An Intimate Geography by Natalie Angier
• 
  
• Right Wing Women: The Politics of Domesticated Females by Andrea Dworkin
• 
  
• Walk to the End of the World and Motherlines (The Holdfast Chronicles, Books 1 & 2 – also known as The Slave and The Free) by Suzy McKee Charnas
• 
  
• From Where We Stand: War, Women’s Activism and Feminist Analysis by Cynthia Cockburn
• 
  
• Not for Sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution and Pornography edited by C. Stark and Rebecca Whisnant
• 
  
• The Idea of Prostitution by Sheila Jeffreys
• 
  
• Femininity by Susan Brownmiller
• 
  
• The SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas
• 
  
• The Female Man by Joanna Russ
• 
  
• Intercourse by Andrea Dworkin
• 
  
• The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
• 
  
• The Creation of Feminist Consciousness from the Middle Ages to Eighteen-Seventy by Gerda Lerner
• 
  
• Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi
• 
  
• My Mother My Self by Nancy Friday
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• Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women by Susan Faludi
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• Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture by Ariel Levy
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• The Women’s Room by Marilyn French
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• Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues by Catharine A MacKinnon

*If this is your list, let me know so I can credit you!

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