Feminism against Progress


Book Description

Modern feminism increasingly benefits only a small class of professional women. There is no reason to sacrifice everyone else's happiness for their sake. Mary Harrington shows that women's liberation was less the result of moral progress than an effect of the material consequences of the Industrial Revolution. We've now left the industrial era for the digital age, in which technology is liberating us from natural limits and embodied sex differences. This shift may benefit the elites, but it also makes it easier to commodify women's bodies, human intimacy, and female reproductive abilities. "Feminism" has been captured by well-off white-collar women, who use it to advance their own economic and political interests under the pretense that these are the interests of all women—all the while wielding the term like a club against anyone, male or female, who dissents. Feminism against Progress is a stark warning against a dystopian future in which poor women become little more than convenient sources of body parts to be harvested and wombs to be rented by the rich. "Progress" no longer benefits the majority of women, and only a feminism that is skeptical of it can truly defend their interests in the twenty-first century.




After the Rise and Stall of American Feminism


Book Description

It is more than fifty years since Betty Friedan diagnosed malaise among suburban housewives and the National Organization of Women was founded. Across the decades, the feminist movement brought about significant progress on workplace discrimination, reproductive rights, and sexual assault. Yet, the proverbial million-dollar question remains: why is there still so much to be done? With this book, Lynn S. Chancer takes stock of the American feminist movement and engages with a new burst of feminist activism. She articulates four common causes—advancing political and economic equality, allowing intimate and sexual freedom, ending violence against women, and expanding the cultural representation of women—considering each in turn to assess what has been gained (or not). It is around these shared concerns, Chancer argues, that we can continue to build a vibrant and expansive feminist movement. After the Rise and Stall of American Feminism takes the long view of the successes and shortcomings of feminism(s). Chancer articulates a broad agenda developed through advancing intersectional concerns about class, race, and sexuality. She advocates ways to reduce the divisiveness that too frequently emphasizes points of disagreement over shared aims. And she offers a vision of individual and social life that does not separate the "personal" from the "political." Ultimately, this book is about not only redressing problems, but also reasserting a future for feminism and its enduring ability to change the world.




Olive Schreiner and the Progress of Feminism


Book Description

Olive Schreiner and the Progress of Feminism explores two key areas: first, the debates taking place in England during the last two decades of the nineteenth century about the position of women; and, second, the volatile events of the 1890s in South Africa, which culminated in war between the British Empire and the Boer republics in 1899. Through a detailed reading of the fictional and non-fictional writing of one extraordinary woman, Olive Schreiner, it traces the complex relations between gender and empire in a modernizing world.




Feminism Against Progress


Book Description

'An exhilarating read' New Statesman In Feminism Against Progress, Mary Harrington argues that the industrial-era faith in progress is turning against all but a tiny elite of women. Women's liberation was less the result of human moral progress than an effect of the material consequences of the Industrial Revolution. We've now left the industrial era for the age of AI, biotech and all-pervasive computing. As a result, technology is liberating us from natural limits and embodied sex differences. Although this shift benefits a small class of successful professional women, it also makes it easier to commodify women's bodies, human intimacy and female reproductive abilities. This is a stark warning against a dystopian future whereby poor women become little more than convenient sources of body parts to be harvested and wombs to be rented by the rich. Progress has now stopped benefiting the majority of women, and only a feminism that is sceptical of it can truly defend female interests in the 21st century.




A Feminist Critique


Book Description

Includes Susan Faludi's Backlash, are discussed in relation to abortion, equal pay for equal work, and other political, social, and cultural issues. The book assesses the highly charged sexual politics of the 1990s using the writings of Camilla Paglia, Naomi Wolf, and Katie Roiphe to analyze different levels of postfeminism. With examples from the mass media, film, literature, popular culture, art, and art criticism, this book surveys the impact of the American feminist.




Feminist Interpretation


Book Description

In the hundred years since The Women's Bible, giant strides have been made in feminist interpretation of the Bible. Now comes the first comprehensive overview of the whole field. The authors systematically recount those efforts to describe the story of women in both testaments, to uncover tendencies not supportive of women, and to describe biblical traditions that empower women. The book unfolds in three parts: -- Historical, Hermeneutical, and Methodological Foundations-- Toward a Feminist Reconstruction of the History of Israel-- Toward a Feminist Reconstruction of Early Christianity




Feminism Unfinished: A Short, Surprising History of American Women's Movements


Book Description

Reframing feminism for the twenty-first century, this bold and essential history stands up against "bland corporate manifestos" (Sarah Leonard). Eschewing the conventional wisdom that places the origins of the American women’s movement in the nostalgic glow of the late 1960s, Feminism Unfinished traces the beginnings of this seminal American social movement to the 1920s, in the process creating an expanded, historical narrative that dramatically rewrites a century of American women’s history. Also challenging the contemporary “lean-in,” trickle-down feminist philosophy and asserting that women’s histories all too often depoliticize politics, labor issues, and divergent economic circumstances, Dorothy Sue Cobble, Linda Gordon, and Astrid Henry demonstrate that the post-Suffrage women’s movement focused on exploitation of women in the workplace as well as on inherent sexual rights. The authors carefully revise our “wave” vision of feminism, which previously suggested that there were clear breaks and sharp divisions within these media-driven “waves.” Showing how history books have obscured the notable activism by working-class and minority women in the past, Feminism Unfinished provides a much-needed corrective.




Data Feminism


Book Description

A new way of thinking about data science and data ethics that is informed by the ideas of intersectional feminism. Today, data science is a form of power. It has been used to expose injustice, improve health outcomes, and topple governments. But it has also been used to discriminate, police, and surveil. This potential for good, on the one hand, and harm, on the other, makes it essential to ask: Data science by whom? Data science for whom? Data science with whose interests in mind? The narratives around big data and data science are overwhelmingly white, male, and techno-heroic. In Data Feminism, Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren Klein present a new way of thinking about data science and data ethics—one that is informed by intersectional feminist thought. Illustrating data feminism in action, D'Ignazio and Klein show how challenges to the male/female binary can help challenge other hierarchical (and empirically wrong) classification systems. They explain how, for example, an understanding of emotion can expand our ideas about effective data visualization, and how the concept of invisible labor can expose the significant human efforts required by our automated systems. And they show why the data never, ever “speak for themselves.” Data Feminism offers strategies for data scientists seeking to learn how feminism can help them work toward justice, and for feminists who want to focus their efforts on the growing field of data science. But Data Feminism is about much more than gender. It is about power, about who has it and who doesn't, and about how those differentials of power can be challenged and changed.




Subverted


Book Description

Contraception and abortion were not originally part of the 1960s women's movement. How did the women's movement, which fought for equal opportunity for women in education and the workplace, and the sexual revolution, which reduced women to ambitious sex objects, become so united? In Subverted, Sue Ellen Browder documents for the first time how it all happened, in her own life and in the life of an entire country. Trained at the University of Missouri School of Journalism to be an investigative journalist, Browder unwittingly betrayed her true calling and became a propagandist for sexual liberation. As a long-time freelance writer for Cosmopolitan magazine, she wrote pieces meant to soft-sell unmarried sex, contraception, and abortion as the single woman's path to personal fulfillment. She did not realize until much later that propagandists higher and cleverer than herself were influencing her thinking and her personal choices as they subverted the women's movement. The thirst for truth, integrity, and justice for women that led Browder into journalism in the first place eventually led her to find forgiveness and freedom in the place she least expected to find them. Her in- depth research, her probing analysis, and her honest self-reflection set the record straight and illumine a way forward for others who have suffered from the unholy alliance between the women's movement and the sexual revolution.




White Feminism


Book Description

A timely and impassioned exploration of how our society has commodified feminism and continues to systemically shut out women of color—perfect for fans of White Fragility and Good and Mad. Join the important conversation about race, empowerment, and inclusion in the United States with this powerful new feminist classic and rousing call for change. Koa Beck, writer and former editor-in-chief of Jezebel, boldly examines the history of feminism, from the true mission of the suffragettes to the rise of corporate feminism with clear-eyed scrutiny and meticulous detail. She also examines overlooked communities—including Native American, Muslim, transgender, and more—and their difficult and ongoing struggles for social change. In these pages she meticulously documents how elitism and racial prejudice has driven the narrative of feminist discourse. She blends pop culture, primary historical research, and first-hand storytelling to show us how we have shut women out of the movement, and what we can do to course correct for a new generation—perfect for women of color looking for a more inclusive way to fight for women’s rights. Combining a scholar’s understanding with hard data and razor-sharp cultural commentary, White Feminism is a witty, whip-smart, and profoundly eye-opening book that challenges long-accepted conventions and completely upends the way we understand the struggle for women’s equality.