Feminism and Gender: Verso Student Reading

Book strip #1

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  Set Fear on Fire

  by LASTESIS

  After the feminist art collective LASTESIS created their performance "A Rapist in Your Path" in their native Chile, it went viral across the globe, becoming the anthem of the grassroots feminist mo...
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  Democracy in the Political Present

  by Isabell Lorey

  ‘Presentist democracy is without a people and without nation. Rather than regimes of borders and migration, its borders are sexism and racism, homo- and transphobia, colonialism and extractivism.’I...
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  Abolish the Family

  by Sophie Lewis

  What if we could do better than the family?We need to talk about the family. For those who are lucky, families can be filled with love and care, but for many they are sites of pain: from abandonmen...
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  Radius

  by Yasmin El-Rifae

  In 2012, the joyful hopes of the democratic Egyptian Revolution were tempered by revelations of mass sexual assault in Tahrir Square in Cairo, the revolution’s symbolic birthplace. This is the sto...
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  The Transgender Issue

  by Shon Faye

  In this brilliant introduction to trans politics, journalist Shon Faye gives an incisive overview of systemic transphobia and argues that the struggle for trans rights is necessary to any struggle ...
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  They Call It Love

  by Alva Gotby

  They Call It Love investigates the work that makes a haven in a heartless world, examining who performs this labour, how it is organised, and how it might change. Drawing on the thought of the femi...
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  Miss Major Speaks

  by Miss Major Griffin-Gracy and Toshio Meronek

  Miss Major Griffin-Gracy is a veteran of the infamous Stonewall Riots, a former sex worker, and a transgender elder and activist who has survived Bellevue psychiatric hospital, Attica Prison, the H...
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  Working Girl

  by Sophia Giovannitti

  Working Girl explores the worlds of sex and art, asking what happens when both become subordinate to the marketplace. In this searching and provocative inquiry, Sophia Giovannitti describes her own...
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  Bodies Under Siege

  by Sian Norris

  Think today's anti-abortion ideas are rooted in religious prohibitions or arguments about where life begins? Wrong: today's anti-abortion movements is largely financed and planned by far-right extr...
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  After Work

  by Helen Hester and Nick Srnicek

  Does it ever feel like you have no free time? You come home after work and instead of finding a space of rest and relaxation, you're confronted by a pile of new tasks to complete – cooking, cleanin...
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  Free Them All

  by Gwenola Ricordeau

  Foreword by Silvia Federici

  Translated by Emma Ramadan and Tom Roberge

  How does the criminal justice system affect women's lives? Do prisons keep women safe? Should feminists rely on policing and the law to achieve women's liberation?The mainstream feminist movement h...
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  Without Apology

  by Jenny Brown

  With an anti-abortion majority on the Supreme Court, and several states with only one abortion clinic, many reproductive rights activists are on the defensive, hoping to hold on to abortion in a fe...
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  Red Valkyries

  by Kristen Ghodsee

  Through a series of lively and accessible biographical essays, Red Valkyries explores the history of socialist feminism century Eastern Europe. By examining the revolutionary careers of five promi...
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  The Rising of the Women

  by Meredith Tax

  Foreword by Sarah Jaffe

  In this landmark study of American labor history, Meredith Tax charts the actions of women in working-class, feminist, and socialist movements between 1880 and 1917 in the USA. Caught between the h...
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  Feminism or Death

  by Francoise d'Eaubonne

  Translated by Ruth Hottell

  Originally published in French in 1974, radical feminist Francoise d’Eaubonne surveyed women’s status around the globe and argued that the stakes of feminist struggle was not about equality but abo...
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  Making Space

  by Matrix

  Making Space is a pioneering work first published in 1984 which challenges us to look at how the built environment impacts on women’s lives. It exposes the sexist assumptions on gender and sexualit...
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  Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again

  by Katherine Angel

  Women are in a bind. In the name of consent and empowerment, they must proclaim their desires clearly and confidently. Yet sex researchers suggest that women’s desire is often slow to emerge. And m...
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  Burn It Down!

  by Breanne Fahs

  Burn It Down! is a testament to what is possible when women are driven to the edge. Collecting over seventy-five manifestos from around the world, Burn It Down! is a rallying cry and a call to acti...
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  SCUM Manifesto

  by Valerie Solanas

  Introduction by Avital Ronell

  “Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the...
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  Girl Online

  by Joanna Walsh

  The unwritten contract of the internet, that a user is what is used, extends from the well-examined issue of data privacy and consent to the very selves women are encouraged to create in order to a...
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  Revolutionary Feminisms

  by Brenna Bhandar and Rafeef Ziadah

  Edited by Brenna Bhandar and Rafeef Ziadah

  In a moment of rising authoritarianism, climate crisis, and ever more exploitative forms of neoliberal capitalism, there is a compelling and urgent need for radical paradigms of thought and action....
• 

  Revolting Prostitutes

  by Juno Mac and Molly Smith

  How the law harms sex workers - and what they want insteadDo you have to endorse prostitution in order to support sex worker rights? Should clients be criminalized, and can the police deliver justi...
• 

  The Verso Book of Feminism

  Edited by Jessie Kindig

  Throughout written history and across the world, women have protested the restrictions of gender and the limitations placed on women’s bodies and women’s lives. People—of any and no gender—have pro...
• 

  A Kick in the Belly

  by Stella Dadzie

  The forgotten history of women slaves and their struggle for liberation.Enslaved West Indian women had few opportunities to record their stories for posterity. In this riveting work of historical r...
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  Females

  by Andrea Long Chu

  “Everyone is female, and everyone hates it.”So begins Andrea Long Chu’s genre-defying investigation into sex and lies, desperate artists and reckless politics, the smothering embrace of gender and ...
• 

  Fortunes of Feminism

  by Nancy Fraser

  Second Wave feminism emerged as a struggle for women’s liberation and took its place alongside other radical movements. But feminism’s subsequent immersion in identity politics coincided with a dec...
• 

  The Feminist and The Sex Offender

  by Judith Levine and Erica R. Meiners

  With analytical clarity and narrative force, The Feminist and the Sex Offender contends with two problems that are typically siloed in the era of #MeToo and mass incarceration: sexual and gender vi...
• 

  The Xenofeminist Manifesto

  by Laboria Cuboniks

  The Xenofeminist Manifesto is an attempt to articulate a feminism fit for the twenty-first century. Unafraid of exploring the potentials of technology, exploring both oppressive and emancipatory po...
• 

  Full Surrogacy Now

  by Sophie Lewis

  "Rooted in historical, site-based, narrative, and political accounts, Full Surrogacy Now is the seriously radical cry for full gestational justice that I long for. This kind of gestation depends on...
• 

  Feminism for the 99%

  by Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya and Nancy Fraser

  Unaffordable housing, poverty wages, healthcare, climate change, border policing; not the issues you ordinarily hear feminists talking about. But don’t these issues impact the vast majority of wome...
• 

  Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World

  by Kumari Jayawardena

  Foreword by Rafia Zakaria

  For twenty-five years, Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World has been an essential primer on the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century history of women’s movements in Asia and the Midd...
• 

  De Colores Means All of Us

  by Elizabeth Sutherland Martînez

  Foreword by Angela Davis

  Introduction by Karma R. Chavez

  Elizabeth Martínez’s unique Chicana voice arises from over thirty years of experience in the movements for civil rights, women’s liberation, and Latina/o empowerment. In De Colores Means All of Us,...
• 

  Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman

  by Michele Wallace

  Foreword by Jamilah Lemieux

  Originally published in 1978, Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman caused a storm of controversy. Michele Wallace blasted the masculine biases of the black politics that emerged from the si...
• 

  Feminist Antifascism

  by Ewa Majewska

  In this exciting, innovative work, Polish feminist philosopher Ewa Majewska maps the creation of feminist counterpublics around the world—spaces of protest and ideas, community and common struggle,...
• 

  Feminist International

  by Verónica Gago

  Translated by Liz Mason-Deese

  Recent years have seen massive feminist mobilizations in virtually every continent, overturning social mores and repressive legislation. In this brilliant and original look at the emerging feminist...

Book strip #2

Book strip #11

• 

  Revolutionary Feminisms

  by Brenna Bhandar and Rafeef Ziadah

  Edited by Brenna Bhandar and Rafeef Ziadah

  In a moment of rising authoritarianism, climate crisis, and ever more exploitative forms of neoliberal capitalism, there is a compelling and urgent need for radical paradigms of thought and action....

Book strip #12

• 

  Revolting Prostitutes

  by Juno Mac and Molly Smith

  How the law harms sex workers - and what they want insteadDo you have to endorse prostitution in order to support sex worker rights? Should clients be criminalized, and can the police deliver justi...

Book strip #13

• 

  The Verso Book of Feminism

  Edited by Jessie Kindig

  Throughout written history and across the world, women have protested the restrictions of gender and the limitations placed on women’s bodies and women’s lives. People—of any and no gender—have pro...

Book strip #14

Book strip #15

• 

  Females

  by Andrea Long Chu

  “Everyone is female, and everyone hates it.”So begins Andrea Long Chu’s genre-defying investigation into sex and lies, desperate artists and reckless politics, the smothering embrace of gender and ...

Book strip #16

• 

  Fortunes of Feminism

  by Nancy Fraser

  Second Wave feminism emerged as a struggle for women’s liberation and took its place alongside other radical movements. But feminism’s subsequent immersion in identity politics coincided with a dec...

Book strip #17

• 

  The Feminist and The Sex Offender

  by Judith Levine and Erica R. Meiners

  With analytical clarity and narrative force, The Feminist and the Sex Offender contends with two problems that are typically siloed in the era of #MeToo and mass incarceration: sexual and gender vi...

Book strip #18

• 

  The Xenofeminist Manifesto

  by Laboria Cuboniks

  The Xenofeminist Manifesto is an attempt to articulate a feminism fit for the twenty-first century. Unafraid of exploring the potentials of technology, exploring both oppressive and emancipatory po...

Book strip #19

• 

  Full Surrogacy Now

  by Sophie Lewis

  "Rooted in historical, site-based, narrative, and political accounts, Full Surrogacy Now is the seriously radical cry for full gestational justice that I long for. This kind of gestation depends on...

Book strip #20

• 

  Feminism for the 99%

  by Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya and Nancy Fraser

  Unaffordable housing, poverty wages, healthcare, climate change, border policing; not the issues you ordinarily hear feminists talking about. But don’t these issues impact the vast majority of wome...

Book strip #21

• 

  Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World

  by Kumari Jayawardena

  Foreword by Rafia Zakaria

  For twenty-five years, Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World has been an essential primer on the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century history of women’s movements in Asia and the Midd...

Book strip #22

• 

  De Colores Means All of Us

  by Elizabeth Sutherland Martînez

  Foreword by Angela Davis

  Introduction by Karma R. Chavez

  Elizabeth Martínez’s unique Chicana voice arises from over thirty years of experience in the movements for civil rights, women’s liberation, and Latina/o empowerment. In De Colores Means All of Us,...

Book strip #23

• 

  Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman

  by Michele Wallace

  Foreword by Jamilah Lemieux

  Originally published in 1978, Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman caused a storm of controversy. Michele Wallace blasted the masculine biases of the black politics that emerged from the si...

Book strip #24

• 

  Feminist Antifascism

  by Ewa Majewska

  In this exciting, innovative work, Polish feminist philosopher Ewa Majewska maps the creation of feminist counterpublics around the world—spaces of protest and ideas, community and common struggle,...

Book strip #25

• 

  Feminist International

  by Verónica Gago

  Translated by Liz Mason-Deese

  Recent years have seen massive feminist mobilizations in virtually every continent, overturning social mores and repressive legislation. In this brilliant and original look at the emerging feminist...