Full Description
A brilliant overview of the oppression all women face - the system of male domination - and how feminists have fought back against it. Sheila Jeffreys provides a sometimes startling, always incisive, picture of the struggles she and other radical feminists have faced to protect the rights of women and girls over decades of activism. As well as outlining the many recognisable forms of oppression faced by women today - including pornography, violence, reproductive slavery and domestic servitude - Jeffreys highlights others that are sometimes ignored, such as the subordination of women through the cultural imposition of femininity and sexual harassment.
She dares to challenge the modern orthodoxy that 'equality' should be a goal of feminism. She points out how men's power and status is acquired from the subordination of women, and nothing less than a radical transformation of society is required for women to achieve liberation. Sheila Jeffreys takes on the men's sexual rights movement. She considers the new cult of gender ideology: the insult of transgenderism with its promotion of 'womanface' - the fetish of imitating and insulting women as comparable to blackface. She calls out the threat posed by men pretending to be women which risks reversing the hard-won gains made by feminists in the last 50 years.
Jeffreys develops a lesbian feminist critique of queer politics and celebrates the glories of lesbian community, friendship, art, literature, culture and ethics.
This four-pronged book - on feminist theory, on industries that exploit women like surrogacy and prostitution, on men's sexual rights movement, and on lesbian feminism - provides an essential handbook for every woman who dares to dream of a better future for women and girls. Read it in book clubs and consciousness-raising groups and discuss.
Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Contents
Introduction
Fighting for Justice
1 Award Ceremony Speech Madrid (2023)
The Nuts and Bolts of Male Domination
2 Femininity as the Behaviour of Subordination (2024)
3 What Is Wrong with Equality? 2023
4 The Problem of Free Speech. 2023
5 Why Is It So Hard to Talk About Sexuality? (2024)
The Prostitution and Reproductive Technology Industries
6 The Racism of the Global Sex Industry (2011)
7 Pornography in the Global Sex Industry (2020)
8 The Pornography Revolution (2024)
9 The New Concubines (2024)
Challenging Gender Identity Politics
10 The Erasure of Women (2018)
11 From a Sexual Perversion to a Human Right:
The Extraordinary Trajectory of Transvestism (2022)
12 Womanface: The Insult of Transgenderism (2022)
13 The History of Radical Feminist Struggle against
Gender Identity Politics (2023)
14 Sex-based Sexual Harassment of Women in the
Workplace that Is Caused by the Expression
of 'Gender Identity' (2025)
Lesbian Feminist Politics
15 Why Men Should Not Be in Lesbian Spaces (2024)
16 Lesbian Ethics (2016)
17 Queer Politics (2020)
18 Lesbian Feminism Now and Then (2021)
Index
