Women Writing the Neo-Victorian Novel: Erotic "Victorians" focuses on the work of British, Irish, and Commonwealth women writers such as A.S. Byatt, Emma Donoghue, Sarah Waters, Helen Humphreys, Margaret Atwood, and Ahdaf Soueif, among others, and their attempts to re-envision the erotic. Kathleen Renk argues that women writers of the neo-Victorian novel are far more philosophical in their approach to representing the erotic than male writers and draw more heavily on Victorian conventions that would proscribe the graphic depiction of sexual acts, thus leaving more to the reader's imagination. This book addresses the following questions: Why are women writers drawn to the neo-Victorian genre and what does this reveal about the state of contemporary feminism? How do classical and contemporary forms of the erotic play into the ways in which women writers address the Victorian "woman question"? How exactly is the erotic used to underscore women's creative potential?

In this provocative new book, France's leading feminist theorist launches a broadside against the way in which feminism has evolved since the 1990s. After the victories of the previous decades, during which women had made some real advances in social and political life, a new sensibility began to emerge in the 1990s which led to a reversal in the hierarchy of values. The cult of victimhood has become widespread and has affected feminism. Women are viewed as defenceless and oppressed, social violence and sexual violence are treated as the same and a finger is pointed at the guilty one: man in all his guises. But by conflating real and false victims, feminism runs the risk of misunderstanding the battles that need to be waged and of losing all credibility with the younger generation, which doesn't see things see things this way. Preoccupied by putting men on trial, the feminism of the last few years has reactivated old stereotypes and left behind the very battles that have long been its raison d'etre - this, argues Badinter, is a dead end.

A huge bestseller in France, this book will be essential reading for anyone interested in the changing relations between the sexes and our ways of thinking about sex and gender today.

As Gender Violence and Autonomy: Resistance and Resilience through Practices of Self-Defense argues, countering threat of harm through practices of self-defense is a key move to fostering autonomy within a culture of gender violence. In often mundane, but sometimes quite obvious ways, persons belonging to groups routinely threatened with harm on the basis of gender or sexuality often adjust or restrict behavior and action to avoid possibility of harm. Such restrictions to autonomy are typically connected to taking on a passive victim role. Developing self-confidence can significantly counteract such harms to autonomy for those living within a culture of gender violence. Building on decades of research philosophically interrogating autonomy, and with a martial arts background spanning over 25 years, Sylvia Jane Burrow shifts the theoretical focus from passive victimhood to agency, developing a novel analysis of autonomy development under everyday threat of gender violence. With the support of empirical research on fear and vulnerability, the theory presented in this book establishes that cultivating self-confidence through self-defense training is significant to both resistance and resilience.

The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) has a unique role in post-war peace activism. It is the longest-surviving international women's peace organization and one of the oldest peace organizations in the West. Founded in 1915, when a group of women from neutral and belligerent nations in World War I met at The Hague to formulate proposals for ending the war, WILPF sent delegations of women to several countries to plead for peace, and their final resolutions are often credited with influencing Woodrow Wilson's 14 Points. Today, the organization counts several thousand members in 36 countries, on five continents. Since 1948, it has enjoyed consultative status with the UN, and it was instrumental in bringing about recent United Nations Security Council Resolutions on Women, Peace and Security.
Beginning in 1945, WILPF began identifying the limitations of its ideological foundations in relation to the international liberal order. Catia Cecilia Confortini argues that this period ushered in a turn in the organization's policies and activism, one that culminated in the mid-70s and served as an important antecedent to feminist activism that continues today. In Intelligent Compassion, she traces the organization's changing strategies and ideas over a thirty-year period, focusing on three key areas of its work-disarmament, decolonization, and the conflict in Israel/Palestine.
By analyzing the shifting ideas and policies of the longest-living international women's peace organization, Intelligent Compassion finds answers to IR questions about the possibility of emancipatory agency in the theoretical methodology of women peace activists and the extent to which activists can transcend the prevailing practices, rules and relations of their eras.

Simone de Beauvoir made her own distinctive contribution to existentialism in the form of an ethics which diverged sharply from that of Jean-Paul Sartre. In her novels and philosophical essays of the 1940s she produced not just a recognizably existentialist ethics, but also a character ethics and an ethics for violence. These concerns, stemming from her own personal philosophical background, give a vital, contemporary resonance to her work. De Beauvoir's feminist classic The Second Sex reflects her earlier philosophical interests, and is considerably strengthened by this influence. This book defends her existentialist feminism against the many reproaches which have been levelled against it over several decades, not least the criticism that it is steeped in Sartrean masculinism.

Feminist Philosophy: An Introduction provides a comprehensive coverage of the core elements of feminist philosophy in the analytical tradition. Part 1 examines the feminist issues and practical problems that confront us as ordinary people. Part 2 examines the recent and historical arguments surrounding the subject area, looking into the theoretical frameworks we use to discuss these issues and applying them to everyday life. With contemporary and lively debates throughout, Elinor Mason provides a rigorous and yet accessible overview of a rich array of topics including: feminism in a global context work and care reproductive rights sex work sexual violence and harassment sexism, oppression, and misogyny intersectionality objectification consent ideology, false consciousness, and adaptive preferences. An outstanding introduction which will equip the reader with a thorough knowledge of the fundamentals of feminism, Feminist Philosophy is essential reading for those approaching the subject for the first time.

"The idea of feminism being everywhere and nowhere is a perfect description of the contemporary movement. Jo Reger provides badly needed new data on a movement that is still very much alive. By looking at three contemporary communities of feminists, Reger shows how feminism is practiced and shaped within different political and cultural contexts. This book is an extremely welcome addition to the literature on contemporary feminism. "-Suzanne Staggenborg, Professor of Sociology, University of Pittsburgh "Contesting multiple myths circulating in popular culture, Everywhere and Nowhere documents the nuances and diverse contexts of feminism in the contemporary era. Exploring the factors that contribute to its flourishing and the manifold forms feminism takes, Jo Reger paints a rich portrait of vibrant modes of activism that transform identities, communities, and cultural values."-Mary Hawkesworth, Professor, Department of Women's and Gender Studies, Rutgers University Challenging the idea that feminism in the United States is dead or in decline, Everywhere and Nowhere examines the contours of contemporary feminism. Through a nuanced investigation of three feminist communities, Jo Reger shows how contemporary feminists react to the local environment currently shaping their identities, tactics, discourse, and relations with other feminist generations. By moving the analysis to the community level, Reger illustrates how feminism is simultaneously absent from the national, popular culture-"nowhere"-and diffused into the foundations of American culture-"everywhere." Reger addresses some of the most debated topics concerning feminists in the twenty-first century. How do contemporary feminists think of the second-wave generation? Has contemporary feminism succeeded in addressing racism and classism, and created a more inclusive movement? How are contemporary feminists dealing with their legacy of gender, sex, and sexuality in a world of fluid identity and queer politics? The answers, she finds, vary by community. Everywhere and Nowhere offers a clear, empirical analysis of the state of contemporary feminism while also revealing the fascinating and increasingly complex development of community-level feminist groups in the United States.

The essays in this book examines such topics as the autobiographical basis of Nadine Gordimer's fiction, her relationship to feminism, the place of the white woman in black Africa, the ambiguity of revolutionary politics, her ambivalent relationship to Judaism, her use of irony, the symbolism of landscape, and the ways in which she has revised recurring topics throughout her career as a writer. There are essays on "The Conservationist", "Burger's Daughter", "July's People", "A Sport of Nature" and "My Son's Story" and the later short fiction. The editor provides an introduction to the reasons why Gordimer's work has changed so radically.

'War is a man's game,' or so goes the saying. Whether this is true or not, patriarchal capitalism is certainly one of the driving forces behind war in the modern era. So can we end war with feminism? This book argues that this is possible, and is in fact already happening. Each chapter provides a solution to war using innovative examples of how feminist and queer theory and practice inform pacifist treaties, movements and methods, from the international to the domestic spheres. The contributors propose a range of solutions that include arms abolition, centring Indigenous knowledge, economic restructuring, and transforming how we 'count' civilian deaths. Ending war requires challenging complex structures, but the solutions found in this edition have risen to this challenge. By thinking beyond the violence of the capitalist patriarchy, this book makes the powerful case that the possibility of life without war is real.

Anti-porn feminism is back. Countering the ongoing 'pornification' of Western culture and society, with lads' mags on the middle shelf and lap-dancing clubs in residential areas, anti-porn movements are re-emerging among a new generation of feminist activists worldwide. This essential new guide to the problems with porn starts with a history of modern pro and anti political stances before examining the ways in which the new arguments and campaigns around pornography are articulated, deployed and received. Drawing on original ethnographic research, it provides an in-depth analysis of the groups campaigning against the pornography industry today, as well as some eye-opening facts about the damage porn can do to women and society as a whole. This unique and inspiring book explains the powerful comeback of anti-porn feminism, and it controversially challenges liberal perspectives and the mainstreaming of a porn culture that threatens to change the very nature of our intimate relationships.

From Adelaide in "Guys and Dolls" to Nina in "In the Heights" and Elphaba in "Wicked," female characters in Broadway musicals have belted and crooned their way into the American psyche. In this lively book, Stacy Wolf illuminates the women of American musical theatre - performers, creators, and characters -- from the start of the cold war to the present day, creating a new, feminist history of the genre. Moving from decade to decade, Wolf first highlights the assumptions that circulated about gender and sexuality at the time. She then looks at the leading musicals to stress the key aspects of the plays as they relate to women, and often finds overlooked moments of empowerment for female audience members. The musicals discussed here are among the most beloved in the canon--"West Side Story," "Cabaret," "A Chorus Line," "Phantom of the Opera," and many others--with special emphasis on the blockbuster "Wicked." Along the way, Wolf demonstrates how the musical since the mid-1940s has actually been dominated by women--women onstage, women in the wings, and women offstage as spectators and fans.

The Metaphysics of Gender is a book about gender essentialism: What it is and why it might be true. It opens with the question: What is gender essentialism? The first chapter distinguishes between essentialism about kinds of individuals (e.g. women and men as groups) and essentialism about individuals (e.g. you and me). Successive
chapters introduce the ingredients for a theory of gender essentialism about individuals, called uniessentialism. Gender uniessentialism claims that a social individual's gender is uniessential to that individual. It is modeled on Aristotle's essentialism in which the form or essence of an individual is the principle of unity of that individual. For example, the form or essence of an artifact, like a house, is what unifies the material parts of the house into a new individual (over and above a sum of parts). Since an individual's gender is a social role (or set of social norms), the kind of unity in question is not the unity of material parts, as it is in the artifact example. Instead, the central claim of gender uniessentialism is that an individual's gender provides that individual with a principle of normative unity-a principle that orders and organizes all of that individual's other social roles. An important ingredient in gender uniessentialism concerns exactly which individuals are at issue-human organisms, persons, or social individuals? The Metaphysics of Gender argues that a social individual's gender is uniessential to it. Gender uniessentialism expresses the centrality of gender in our lived experiences and explores the social normativity of gender in a way that is useful for feminist theory and politics.

'Rough sex' has been at the forefront of criminal law in recent years following several high-profile murders of women killed during alleged consensual sex 'gone wrong', leading to widespread calls for reform to prevent the use of what has been termed the 'rough sex defence.' Situated in a global context in which violence against women is one of the leading preventable contributors to death and illness for women aged 18-44 worldwide, this timely collection examines the rough sex defence and responds to some of the wider debates around sex and the law. Drawing on a range of empirical and theoretical standpoints, chapters delve into a range of topics including the female experience of 'unwanted' slapping, choking and spitting during sex, the BDSM community, the impacts of pornography, the normalization and sexualization of violence against women, early depictions of BDSM involving the eroticization of non-consensual relations, problematic perceptions of BDSM as inherently violent, and more. Bows and Herring expertly collate a wide-reaching mix of perspectives to contribute to a powerful feminist investigation of this critical issue. It is a compelling read for scholars interested in the intersection of sex, the law, and the criminal justice system.

Women and other oppressed and deprived people sometimes collude with the forces that perpetuate injustice against them. Women's acceptance of their lesser claim on household resources like food, their positive attitudes toward clitoridectemy and infibulations, their acquiescence to violence at the hands of their husbands, and their sometimes fatalistic attitudes toward their own poverty or suffering are all examples of "adaptive preferences," wherein women participate in their own deprivation.
Adaptive Preferences and Women's Empowerment offers a definition of adaptive preference and a moral framework for responding to adaptive preferences in development practice. Khader defines adaptive preferences as deficits in the capacity to lead a flourishing human life that are causally related to deprivation and argues that public institutions should conduct deliberative interventions to transform the adaptive preferences of deprived people. She insists that people with adaptive preferences can experience value distortion, but she explains how this fact does not undermine those people's claim to participate in designing development interventions that determine the course of their lives. Khader claims that adaptive preference identification requires a commitment to moral universalism, but this commitment need not be incompatible with a respect for culturally variant conceptions of the good. She illustrates her arguments with examples from real-world development practice.
Khader's deliberative perfectionist approach moves us beyond apparent impasses in the debates about internalized oppression and autonomous agency, relativism and universalism, and feminism and multiculturalism.

In Of Woman Born, originally published in 1976, influential poet and feminist Adrienne Rich examines the patriarchic systems and political institutions that define motherhood. Exploring her own experience-as a woman, a poet, a feminist and a mother-she finds the act of mothering to be both determined by and distinct from the institution of motherhood as it is imposed on all women everywhere. A "powerful blend of research, theory, and self-reflection" (Sandra M. Gilbert, Paris Review), Of Woman Born revolutionised how women thought about motherhood and their own liberation. With a stirring new foreword from National Book Critics Circle Award-winning writer Eula Biss, the book resounds with as much wisdom and insight today as when it was first written.

Queer Precarities in and out of Higher Education looks at queer scholars pushing against institutional structures, and the queer knowledge that gets pushed out by universities. It provides insight into the work of, in and beyond academia as it is un-done in the contemporary (post)Covid moment, not least by queer academic-activists. This radical un-doing represents cycles of queer precarity, pragmatism and participation both situating and questioning the 'queer arrival' of institutionalized programmes and presences (e.g. queer and gender studies degrees, prominent and public feminist academics). In this book, the contributors push back against contemporary educational precarity, mobilizing queer insight and insistence; and push back against confinement of the University, socially and spatially. The collection brings together academic-activist perspectives to extend understandings of experiences of marginalization and inequality in higher education. It also documents the diversity of tactics with which queers negotiate and resist the various, shifting and interconnected forms of precarity and privilege found on the edges of academia. Contributors consider these issues from inside/outside academia and across career course, challenging the 'queer arrival' as emanating outward from the university to the community, from the academic to the activist, or from a state of privilege to a place of precarity.

The angel of the house is a critical commonplace in studies of the 19th-century woman. Through readings of Victorian gothic and sensation fiction, this book interrogates current feminist assumptions about the relation of women to the private sphere, and reveals the unexpectedly radical potential of this association. It is argued that this potential is an intrinsic aspect of the female gothic tradition traceable back to Ann Radcliffe. A new typology of male and female gothic is shown to be relevant to contemporary French feminist debates about sexual difference.

This book explores the capacities and desires of academic women to reimagine and transform academic cultures. Embracing and championing feminist scholarship, the research presented by the authors in this collection holds space for a different way of being in academia and shifts the conversation toward a future that is hopeful, kind and inclusive. Through exploring lived experiences, building caring communities and enacting an ethics of care, the authors are reimagining the academy's focus and purpose. The autoethnographic and arts-based research approaches employed throughout the book provide evocative conceptual content, which responds to the symbolic nature of transformation in the academy. This innovative volume will be of interest and value to feminist scholars, as well as those interested in disrupting and rejecting patriarchal academic structures.

This book is about understanding feminist theories and feminist economics through a multi-paradigmatic approach. For this purpose, the book starts with a discussion of four most diverse worldviews or paradigms (i.e., functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, radical structuralist). Then, it discusses six relevant social aspects (i.e., human nature, feminist theories, family, patriarchy, discrimination, feminist economics) from the viewpoints of the four most diverse worldviews or paradigms. Next, the book looks at some of the writings in the feminist theories and feminist economics literature (such as: feminist research, feminist education, economics versus sociology, and men versus women) from the point of view of the multi-paradigmatic approach to gain a better understanding of the differences. The book concludes by recommending paradigm diversity. This book crosses two existing lines of literature: social philosophy and feminism. The book maintains that social theory can usefully be conceived in terms of four broad paradigms: functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, and radical structuralist. The book emphasizes that the four paradigms are equally scientific and informative; each looks at a given phenomenon from a certain paradigmatic viewpoint. An understanding of different paradigms leads to a broader and balanced understanding of the phenomenon. Overall, the book advocates paradigm diversity.

*Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2018*

Sohaila Abdulali was gang-raped as a teenager in Bombay. Indignant at the silence on the issue in India, she wrote an article for a woman's magazine questioning how we perceive rape and rape victims. Thirty years later her story went viral. Drawing on her own experience, her work with survivors as the head of a rape crisis centre in Boston, her research, and three decades of grappling with the issue personally and professionally, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape is about changing the conversation around rape culture, questioning our assumptions, and deciding how we want to raise the next generation.

"This book is a true love letter, not only to Jha's own son but also to all of our sons and to the parents--especially mothers--who raise them." -Ijeoma Oluo, author of So You Want to Talk About Race and Mediocre Beautifully written and deeply personal, this book follows the struggles and triumphs of one single, immigrant mother of color to raise an American feminist son. From teaching consent to counteracting problematic messages from the media, well-meaning family, and the culture at large, the author offers an empowering, imperfect feminism, brimming with honest insight and actionable advice. Informed by Jha's work as a professor of journalism specializing in social justice movements and social media, as well as by conversations with psychologists, experts, other parents and boys--and through powerful stories from her own life--How to Raise a Feminist Son shows us all how to be better feminists and better teachers of the next generation of men in this electrifying tour de force. Includes chapter takeaways, and an annotated bibliography of reading and watching recommendations for adults and children. "A beautiful hybrid of memoir, manifesto, instruction manual, and rumination on the power of story and possibilities of family." -Rebecca Solnit, author of The Mother of All Questions

What happens if we read nineteenth-century and Victorian texts not for the autonomous liberal subject, but for singularity-for what is partial, contingent, and in relation, rather than what is merely "alone"? Feminine Singularity offers a powerful feminist theory of the subject-and shows us paths to thinking subjectivity, race, and gender anew in literature and in our wider social world. Through fresh, sophisticated readings of Lewis Carroll, Christina Rossetti, Charles Baudelaire, and Wilkie Collins in conversation with psychoanalysis, Black feminist and queer-of-color theory, and continental philosophy, Ronjaunee Chatterjee uncovers a lexicon of feminine singularity that manifests across poetry and prose through likeness and minimal difference, rather than individuality and identity. Reading for singularity shows us the ways femininity is fundamentally entangled with racial difference in the nineteenth century and well into the contemporary, as well as how rigid categories can be unsettled and upended. Grappling with the ongoing violence embedded in the Western liberal imaginary, Feminine Singularity invites readers to commune with the subversive potentials in nineteenth-century literature for thinking subjectivity today.

What Pornography Knows offers a new history of pornography based on forgotten bawdy fiction of the eighteenth century, its nineteenth-century republication, and its appearance in 1960s paperbacks. Through close textual study, Lubey shows how these texts were edited across time to become what we think pornography is-a genre focused primarily on sex. Originally, they were far more variable, joining speculative philosophy and feminist theory to sexual description. Lubey's readings show that pornography always had a social consciousness-that it knew, long before anti-pornography feminists said it, that women and nonbinary people are disadvantaged by a society that grants sexual privilege to men. Rather than glorify this inequity, Lubey argues, the genre's central task has historically been to expose its artifice and envision social reform. Centering women's bodies, pornography refuses to divert its focus from genital action, forcing readers to connect sex with its social outcomes. Lubey offers a surprising take on a deeply misunderstood cultural form: pornography transforms sexual description into feminist commentary, revealing the genre's deep knowledge of how social inequities are perpetuated as well as its plans for how to rectify them.