Collection: Feminism

What story would Eve have told about picking the apple? Why is Pandora blamed for opening the box? And what about the fate of Cassandra who was blessed with knowing the future but cursed so that no one believed her? What if women had been the storytellers?

Elizabeth Lesser believes that if women's voices had been equally heard and respected throughout history, humankind would have followed different hero myths and guiding stories--stories that value caretaking, champion compassion, and elevate communication over vengeance and violence.

Cassandra Speaks is about the stories we tell and how those stories become the culture. It's about the stories we still blindly cling to, and the ones that cling to us: the origin tales, the guiding myths, the religious parables, the literature and films and fairy tales passed down through the centuries about women and men, power and war, sex and love, and the values we live by. Stories written mostly by men with lessons and laws for all of humanity. We have outgrown so many of them, and still they endure. This book is about what happens when women are the storytellers too--when we speak from our authentic voices, when we flex our values, when we become protagonists in the tales we tell about what it means to be human.

Lesser has walked two main paths in her life--the spiritual path and the feminist one--paths that sometimes cross but sometimes feel at cross-purposes. Cassandra Speaks is her extraordinary merging of the two. The bestselling author of Broken Open and Marrow, Lesser is a beloved spiritual writer, as well as a leading feminist thinker. In this book she gives equal voice to the cool water of her meditative self and the fire of her feminist self. With her trademark gifts of both humor and insight, she offers a vision that transcends the either/or ideologies on both sides of the gender debate.

Brilliantly structured into three distinct parts, Part One explores how history is carried forward through the stories a culture tells and values, and what we can do to balance the scales. Part Two looks at women and power and expands what it means to be courageous, daring, and strong. And Part Three offers "A Toolbox for Inner Strength." Lesser argues that change in the culture starts with inner change, and that no one--woman or man--is immune to the corrupting influence of power. She provides inner tools to help us be both strong-willed and kind-hearted.

Cassandra Speaks is a beautifully balanced synthesis of storytelling, memoir, and cultural observation. Women, men and all people will find themselves in the pages of this book, and will come away strengthened, opened, and ready to work together to create a better world for all people.

Based on the New York Times bestseller The Body Is Not an Apology, this is an action guide to help readers practice the art of radical self-love both for themselves and to transform our society.

Readers of The Body Is Not an Apology have been clamoring for guidance on how to do the work of radical self-love. After crowdsourcing her community, Sonya Renee Taylor found her readers wanted more concrete ideas on how to apply this work in their everyday lives. Your Body Is Not an Apology Workbook is the action guide that gives them tools and structured frameworks they can begin using immediately to deepen their radical self-love journey--such as Taylor's four pillars of practice, which help readers dismantle body shame and give them access to a lifestyle rooted in love. Taylor guides readers to move beyond theory and into doing and being radical self-love change agents in the world.

"In this book, you will be asked to draw, color, doodle, talk to friends, take risks, and perhaps step outside of what feels like your natural gifts and talents," Taylor writes. "I encourage you to release the need to be 'good' at what you are doing and instead strive to be authentic. Perfection is the enemy of radical self-love because it is an impossible illusion. When the voice of perfectionism chimes in, take a deep breath, remember that the work is about the process, not about the product, and give yourself permission to be fabulously unapologetically imperfect.

We've been thinking about sex all wrong. Mainstream media, movies, and porn have taught us that sex = penis + vagina, and everything else is just secondary. Standard penetration is how men most reliably achieve orgasm. The problem is, women don't orgasm this way. We've separated our most reliable route to orgasm--clitoral stimulation--from how we feel we should orgasm--penetration. As a result, we've created a pleasure gap between women and men:

• 50% of 18-35-year-old women say they have trouble reaching orgasm with a partner
• 64% of women vs 91% of men said they had an orgasm at their last sexual encounter
• 55% of men vs. 4% of women say they usually reach orgasm during first-time hookup sex

In Becoming Cliterate, psychology professor and human sexuality expert Dr. Laurie Mintz exposes the broader cultural problem that's perpetuating this gap, and what we can do about it. Pulling together evidence from biology, sociology, linguistics, and sex therapy into one comprehensive, accessible, and prescriptive book, Becoming Cliterate features:

• Cultural & historical analysis of female orgasm (spoiler: the problem's been going on for ages)
• An anatomy section (it's all custom under the hood)
• Proven techniques for cliterate sex (it starts with training the sex organ between your ears)
• A comprehensive final chapter for men (because you don't have to have a clitoris to be cliterate)

By dispelling the lies, misunderstandings, and myths that have been holding us back, Becoming Cliterate tackles both personal and political problems and replaces them with updated outlooks and practical skills needed to change our collective perspective on sex. It's time to finally inform women and men on how to have satisfying experiences in bed that benefit both parties.

The revolution is cuming--and Becoming Cliterate offers a radical, simple solution to progress and pleasure for all.

"A fresh feminist appraisal of the pop culture canon." --Publishers Weekly

How bitches, trainwrecks, shrews, and crazy women have taken over pop culture and liberated women from having to be nice.

Female characters throughout history have been burdened by the moral trap that is likeability. Any woman who dares to reveal her messy side has been treated as a cautionary tale. Today, unlikeable female characters are everywhere in film, TV, and wider pop culture. For the first time ever, they are being accepted by audiences and even showered with industry awards. We are finally accepting that women are--gasp--fully fledged human beings. How did we get to this point?

Unlikeable Female Characters traces the evolution of highly memorable female characters, examining what exactly makes them popular, how audiences have reacted to them, and the ways in which pop culture is finally allowing us to celebrate the complexities of being a woman. Anna Bogutskaya, film programmer, broadcaster, and co-founder of the horror film collective and podcast The Final Girls, takes us on a journey through popular film, TV, and music, looking at the nuances of womanhood on and off-screen to reveal whether pop culture--and society--is finally ready to embrace complicated women.

Praise for Unlikeable Female Characters:

"Fascinating, insightful, and kick-ass." --Emma Jane Unsworth, internationally bestselling author of Grown Ups and Animals

"Beautifully written." --Chelsea G. Summers, author of A Certain Hunger

"Part-cultural exposé, part-Taylor Swift album." --Clarisse Loughrey, Chief Film Critic at The Independent

"Brilliant masterpiece breaking down the tired tropes of TV and beyond." --Aparna Shewakramani, author of She's Unlikeable and star of Indian Matchmaking

The first comprehensive undercover look at the terrorist movement no one is talking about.

Delve into the gripping and eye-opening world of Men Who Hate Women, as acclaimed feminist writer Laura Bates presents an unflinching examination of the pervasive misogyny that plagues our society.

In this thought-provoking and meticulously researched book, Bates fearlessly uncovers the dark underbelly of a deeply entrenched issue, shining a spotlight on the various manifestations of misogyny that continue to harm women worldwide. With razor-sharp insight, she navigates the complex web of toxic masculinity, gender biases, and harmful stereotypes that reinforce damaging attitudes toward women.

Through extensive interviews, real-life stories, and compelling statistics, Men Who Hate Women unveils the deeply disturbing prevalence of sexism in everyday life, challenging us to confront uncomfortable truths and reevaluate our collective responsibility in fostering a more equitable world.

This powerful work not only serves as an eye-opener but also as a call to action. Bates thoughtfully explores ways we can all contribute to dismantling the patriarchal structures that enable misogyny to thrive. By empowering readers with knowledge and understanding, she paves the path for meaningful change.

Key Topics Explored:

• Toxic masculinity and its consequences
• Online harassment and cyberbullying
• Sexist tropes in media and entertainment
• Workplace discrimination and the gender pay gap
• Rape culture and victim-blaming
• Intersectionality and its impact on marginalized communities

Men Who Hate Women is an essential read for anyone seeking to comprehend the deep-rooted issues affecting women's lives and striving to build a more inclusive, just and equal future.

Praise for Men Who Hate Women:

"Laura Bates is showing us the path to both intimate and global survival."--Gloria Steinem

"Well-researched and meticulously documented, Bates's book on the power and danger of masculinity should be required reading for us all."--Library Journal

"Men Who Hate Women has the power to spark social change."--Sunday Times

This "electrifying debut" (Los Angeles Times) arms women of color with the tools and knowledge they need to find success on their own terms

For generations, Brown girls have had to push against powerful forces of sexism, racism, and classism, often feeling alone in the struggle. By founding Latina Rebels, Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez has created a community to help women fight together. In For Brown Girls with Sharp Edges and Tender Hearts, she offers wisdom and a liberating path forward for all women of color. She crafts powerful ways to address the challenges Brown girls face, from imposter syndrome to colorism. She empowers women to decolonize their worldview, and defy "universal" white narratives, by telling their own stories. Her book guides women of color toward a sense of pride and sisterhood and offers essential tools to energize a movement.

May it spark a fire within you.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

In Ejaculate Responsibly, Gabrielle Blair offers a provocative reframing of the abortion issue in post-Roe America.

In a series of 28 brief arguments, Blair deftly makes the case for moving the abortion debate away from controlling and legislating women's bodies and instead directs the focus on men's lack of accountability in preventing unwanted pregnancies.

Highly readable, accessible, funny, and unflinching, Blair builds her argument by walking readers through the basics of fertility (men are 50 times more fertile than women), the unfair burden placed on women when it comes to preventing pregnancy (90% of the birth control market is for women), the wrongheaded stigmas around birth control for men (condoms make sex less pleasurable, vasectomies are scary and emasculating), and the counterintuitive reality that men, who are fertile 100% of the time, take little to no responsibility for preventing pregnancy.

The result is a compelling and convincing case for placing the responsibility--and burden--of preventing unwanted pregnancies away from women and onto men.

How do we make social justice the most pleasurable human experience? How can we awaken within ourselves desires that make it impossible to settle for anything less than a fulfilling life? Author and editor adrienne maree brown finds the answer in something she calls "pleasure activism," a politics of healing and happiness that explodes the dour myth that changing the world is just another form of work. Drawing on the black feminist tradition, she challenges us to rethink the ground rules of activism. Her mindset-altering essays are interwoven with conversations and insights from other feminist thinkers, including Audre Lorde, Joan Morgan, Cara Page, Sonya Renee Taylor, and Alexis Pauline Gumbs. Together they cover a wide array of subjects--from sex work to climate change, from race and gender to sex and drugs--building new narratives about how politics can feel good and how what feels good always has a complex politics of its own.

Building on the success of her popular Emergent Strategy, brown launches a new series of the same name with this volume, bringing readers books that explore experimental, expansive, and innovative ways to meet the challenges that face our world today. Books that find the opportunity in every crisis!

adrienne maree brown, author of Emergent Strategy and co-editor of Octavia's Brood, is a social justice facilitator focused on black liberation, a doula/healer, and a pleasure activist. She lives in Detroit.

PRAISE for Pleasure Activism:

"[brown] demonstrates how we can tap into our emotional and erotic desires to organize against oppression." --Colorlines

"adrienne maree brown...continues to stake her claim as one of our most critical thinkers and strategists by intentionally combining the power of story-telling with practical applications to help readers conjure their own definition of pleasure and how it is inextricably linked to every part of our existence." --Monica Simpson, SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective

"adrienne marie brown is back, again dropping wisdom about alternative ways to live at this deeply fucked-up moment ... Let this book be the best Valentine's Day gift you've ever given yourself." --Vice/Broadly

"adrienne maree brown dives deep, head first, into a fast swirling pool of pleasure-related topics. She swims her way from one end of the pool to the other with some help from her body-wise, experienced, friends. This book is all at once so cool, and so hot, with a rainbow of glorious compleXXXities. Pleasure Activism is bound to make a huge splash!" --Annie Sprinkle, author of Explorer's Guide to Planet Orgasm--For Every Body

"Engaging with politics and social justice issues, whether it's climate change, race, or gender, can feel like work (and it is). Adrienne maree brown makes the case that you can feel good while doing so ... [Pleasure Activism] will challenge you to rethink your approach to changing the world." --Mashable

"Pleasure Activism is an invitation to know ourselves and be in conversation with the desire of our lustful imaginations... [I]t makes our personal liberation irresistible." --Jasmine Burnett, activist and anti-oppression consultant

"adrienne maree brown elucidates a philosophy of Pleasure Activism to transform individuals and so the world. Her explicit instructions encourage orgasms of the body, mind and spirit. First, in support of our own authentic lives, then so that we can live in loving community with others. It's like a wise and juicy black goddess reopened Eden and said, 'Okay, everybody, let's try this again.'" --Veronica Vera, author & founder of Miss Vera's Finishing School For Boys Who Want to Be Girls

Take an enthralling and richly illustrated trip through the official real-world story of the Barbie(TM) doll--from groundbreaking toy to beacon of female empowerment.

Created in partnership with Mattel to celebrate Barbie doll's 65th anniversary and featuring rare images from their archives, Barbie: Her Inspiration, History, and Legacy is a stunning tribute to the beloved pop culture icon that has echoed the taste, style, and events of every decade she has experienced.

Recall the joy of opening a brand-new Barbie box with this sumptuously designed book chronicling every step in the beloved doll's journey, from entrepreneurial pioneer Ruth Handler's creation of Barbie in 1959 to the record-breaking film in 2023, and beyond, including:

• The Birth of Barbie - Learn how Ruth Handler came up with the idea of a doll that allowed little girls to play at being women, then overcame a parade of challenges--including disbelief from her male colleagues that mothers would buy their daughters an adult doll with full-grown breasts--and persevered to create the wildly successful Barbie doll and prove her doubters wrong.
• Breaking Boundaries - Follow the path that Barbie took from teenage fashion model to over 200 different careers, including trailblazing roles like astronaut in 1965, beating the first American woman, Sally Ride, into space by nearly 20 years, to surgeon in 1973, at a time when the total number of women physicians in the US was around 5 percent, to other male-dominated roles like Marine Corps sergeant, a business executive, and President of the United States.
• Reflecting Diversity - See how a doll that started with a choice of either blonde or brunette hair now boasts 35 skin tones, 97 hair styles, and 9 body types, with those numbers growing each year.
• Barbie in Fashion and Art - Explore how the fashion and art worlds have influenced and been influenced by Barbie, from limited edition Barbie fashions from premiere designers like Christian Dior and Michael Kors to a portrait of Barbie by Andy Warhol.
• Barbie in Pop Culture - Discover all the ways that Barbie has influenced pop culture, from Barbie bloggers and collectors to how her movie smashed records as the highest-grossing domestic release in history, granting its female director, Greta Gerwig, the prize for the highest-grossing film directed by a woman.

Barbie: Her Inspiration, History, and Legacy reveals how Barbie is more than a toy--she is an ideal that lives forever, encouraging girls to persist through to become whatever they dream to be.

'Phenomenal ... Offers us possibilities for rescuing the concept of democracy from its fatal entanglement with racial, heteropatriarchal capitalism' -- Angela Y. Davis

'Embraces the unruliness of collective struggle, and recognizes freedom not as a destination but practice--an abolitionist, feminist, anticapitalist, antiracist, radically inclusive practice' -- Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams

'A compelling and inspiring book that belongs in our movements and our classrooms' -- Chandra Talpade Mohanty, author of Feminism Without Borders

'An elegantly written masterpiece' -- Barbara Ransby, author of Making All Black Lives Matter

Become Ungovernable is a provocative new work of political thought setting out to reclaim "freedom", "justice", and "democracy", revolutionary ideas that are all too often warped in the interests of capital and the state. Revealing the mirage of mainstream democratic thought and the false promises of liberal political ideologies, H.L.T. Quan offers an alternative approach: an abolition feminism drawing on a kaleidoscope of refusal praxes, and on a deep engagement with the Black Radical Tradition and queer analytics.

With each chapter anchored by episodes from the long history of resistance and rebellions against tyranny, Quan calls for us to take up a feminist ethic of living rooted in the principles of radical inclusion, mutuality and friendship as part of the larger toolkit for confronting fascism, white supremacy, and the neoliberal labor regime.

H.L.T. Quan is a political theorist, award-winning filmmaker and Associate Professor of Justice and Social Inquiry in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. Quan is the author of Growth Against Democracy and editor of Cedric J. Robinson.

How the law harms sex workers--and what they want instead

Do you have to endorse prostitution in order to support sex worker rights? Should clients be criminalized, and can the police deliver justice?

In Revolting Prostitutes, sex workers Juno Mac and Molly Smith bring a fresh perspective to questions that have long been contentious. Speaking from a growing global sex worker rights movement, and situating their argument firmly within wider questions of migration, work, feminism, and resistance to white supremacy, they make it clear that anyone committed to working towards justice and freedom should be in support of the sex worker rights movement.

"Moving, multifaceted, and deeply human...as eye-opening as it is compelling" --Cecile Richards, author of Make Trouble

At a time where reproductive rights are at risk, these vital stories of diverse individuals serve as a reminder of the importance of empathy, finding community and motivating advocacy

For a long time, when people asked Dr. Meera Shah, Chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood Hudson Peconic, what she did, she would tell them she was a doctor and leave it at that. But when she started to be direct about her work as an abortion provider an interesting thing started to happen: one by one, people would confide that they'd had an abortion themselves. The refrain was often the same: You're the only one I've told.

This book collects these stories as they've been told to Shah to humanize abortion and to combat myths that persist in the discourse that surrounds it. A wide range of ages, races, socioeconomic factors, and experiences shows that abortion always occurs in a unique context.

Today, a healthcare issue that's so precious and foundational to reproductive, social, and economic freedom for millions of people is exploited by politicians who lack understanding or compassion about the context in which abortion occurs. Stories have the power to break down stigmas and help us to empathize with those whose experiences are unlike our own.

A portion of proceeds will be donated to promote reproductive health access.

A guide to invocations, rituals, and histories at the intersection of magic and feminism, as informed by history's witches--and the sociopolitical culture that gave rise to them.

When you start looking for witches, you find them everywhere. As seekers and practitioners reclaim and restore magic to its rightful place among powerful forces for social, personal, and political transformation, more people than ever are claiming the identity of "Witch." But our knowledge of witchcraft and magic has been marred by erasure, sensationalism, and sterilization, the true stories of history's witches left untold.

Through meditations, stories, and practices, authors Risa Dickens and Amy Torok offer an intersectional, contemporary lens for uncovering and reconnecting with feminist witch history. Sharing traditions from all over the world--from Harlem to Haiti, Oaxaca to Mesopotamia--Missing Witches introduces readers to figures like Monica Sjoo, HP Blavatsky, Maria Sabina, and Enheduanna, shedding light on their work and the cultural and sociopolitical contexts that shaped it. Structured around the 8 sabbats of the Wheel of the Year, each chapter includes illustrations by Amy Torok, as well as invocations, rituals, and offerings that incorporate the authors' own wisdom, histories, and journeys of trauma, loss, and empowerment. Missing Witches offers an inside look at the vital stories of women who have practiced--and lived--magic.

Electrifying, provocative, and controversial when first published thirty years ago, Donna Haraway's "Cyborg Manifesto" is even more relevant today, when the divisions that she so eloquently challenges--of human and machine but also of gender, class, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and location--are increasingly complex. The subsequent "Companion Species Manifesto," which further questions the human-nonhuman disjunction, is no less urgently needed in our time of environmental crisis and profound polarization.

Manifestly Haraway brings together these momentous manifestos to expose the continuity and ramifying force of Haraway's thought, whose significance emerges with engaging immediacy in a sustained conversation between the author and her long-term friend and colleague Cary Wolfe. Reading cyborgs and companion species through and with each other, Haraway and Wolfe join in a wide-ranging exchange on the history and meaning of the manifestos in the context of biopolitics, feminism, Marxism, human-nonhuman relationships, making kin, literary tropes, material semiotics, the negative way of knowing, secular Catholicism, and more.

The conversation ends by revealing the early stages of Haraway's "Chthulucene Manifesto," in tension with the teleologies of the doleful Anthropocene and the exterminationist Capitalocene. Deeply dedicated to a diverse and robust earthly flourishing, Manifestly Haraway promises to reignite needed discussion in and out of the academy about biologies, technologies, histories, and still possible futures.

In Living a Feminist Life Sara Ahmed shows how feminist theory is generated from everyday life and the ordinary experiences of being a feminist at home and at work. Building on legacies of feminist of color scholarship in particular, Ahmed offers a poetic and personal meditation on how feminists become estranged from worlds they critique-often by naming and calling attention to problems-and how feminists learn about worlds from their efforts to transform them. Ahmed also provides her most sustained commentary on the figure of the feminist killjoy introduced in her earlier work while showing how feminists create inventive solutions-such as forming support systems-to survive the shattering experiences of facing the walls of racism and sexism. The killjoy survival kit and killjoy manifesto, with which the book concludes, supply practical tools for how to live a feminist life, thereby strengthening the ties between the inventive creation of feminist theory and living a life that sustains it.

Upper-middle-class white women have long been heralded as "experts" on feminism. They have presided over multinational feminist organizations and written much of what we consider the feminist canon, espousing sexual liberation and satisfaction, LGBTQ inclusion, and racial solidarity, all while branding the language of the movement itself in whiteness and speaking over Black and Brown women in an effort to uphold privilege and perceived cultural superiority. An American Muslim woman, attorney, and political philosopher, Rafia Zakaria champions a reconstruction of feminism in Against White Feminism, centering women of color in this transformative overview and counter-manifesto to white feminism's global, long-standing affinity with colonial, patriarchal, and white supremacist ideals.

Covering such ground as the legacy of the British feminist imperialist savior complex and "the colonial thesis that all reform comes from the West" to the condescension of the white feminist-led "aid industrial complex" and the conflation of sexual liberation as the "sum total of empowerment," Zakaria follows in the tradition of intersectional feminist forebears Kimberlé Crenshaw, Adrienne Rich, and Audre Lorde. Zakaria ultimately refutes and reimagines the apolitical aspirations of white feminist empowerment in this staggering, radical critique, with Black and Brown feminist thought at the forefront.