Recommendations based on "Dialectic of Sex : The Case for Feminist Revolution"

We talk about sex more and more, but are we more liberated?The first part of Michel Foucault's landmark account of our evolving attitudes in the west shows how the nineteenth century, far from suppressing sexuality, led to an explosion of discussion about sex as a separate sphere of life for study and examination. As a result, he argues, we are making a science of sex which is devoted to the analysis of desire rather than the increase of pleasure.

Misogyny is a hot topic, yet it's often misunderstood. What is misogyny, exactly? Who deserves to be called a misogynist? How does misogyny contrast with sexism, and why is it prone to persist - or increase - even when sexist gender roles are waning? This book is an exploration of misogyny in public life and politics by the moral philosopher and writer Kate Manne. It argues that misogyny should not be understood primarily in terms of the hatred or hostility some men feel toward all or most women. Rather, it's primarily about controlling, policing, punishing, and exiling the "bad" women who challenge male dominance. And it's compatible with rewarding "the good ones," and singling out other women to serve as warnings to those who are out of order. It's also common for women to serve as scapegoats, be burned as witches, and treated as pariahs.Manne examines recent and current events such as the Isla Vista killings by Elliot Rodger, the case of the convicted serial rapist Daniel Holtzclaw, who preyed on African-American women as a police officer in Oklahoma City, Rush Limbaugh's diatribe against Sandra Fluke, and the "misogyny speech" of Julia Gillard, then Prime Minister of Australia, which went viral on YouTube. The book shows how these events, among others, set the stage for the 2016 US presidential election. Not only was the misogyny leveled against Hillary Clinton predictable in both quantity and quality, Manne argues it was predictable that many people would be prepared to forgive and forget regarding Donald Trump's history of sexual assault and harassment. For this, Manne argues, is misogyny's oft-overlooked and equally pernicious underbelly: exonerating or showing "himpathy" for the comparatively privileged men who dominate, threaten, and silence women.

In the third volume of his acclaimed examination of sexuality in modern Western society, Foucault investigates the Golden Age of Rome to reveal a decisive break from the classical Greek version of sexual pleasure. Exploring the moral reflections of philosophers and physicians of the era, he identifies a growing anxiety over sexual activity and its consequences. At the core of this transformation Foucault found the principles of the 'care of the self': the belief that the self is an object of knowledge to be cultivated over time, and the implications this has for ethics and behaviour.

Trans People In Britain Today Have Become A Culture War 'issue'. Despite Making Up Less Than 1% Of The Country's Population, They Are The Subjects Of A Toxic And Increasingly Polarised 'debate', Which Generates Reliable Controversy For Newspapers And Talk Shows. This Media Frenzy Conceals A Simple Fact: That We Are Having The Wrong Conversation, A Conversation In Which Trans People Themselves Are Reduced To A Talking Point And Denied A Meaningful Voice. In This Powerful New Book, Shon Faye Reclaims The Idea Of The 'transgender Issue' To Uncover The Reality Of What It Means To Be Trans In A Transphobic Society. In Doing So, She Provides A Compelling, Wide-ranging Analysis Of Trans Lives From Youth To Old Age, Exploring Work, Family, Housing, Healthcare, The Prison System, And Trans Participation In The Lgbtq+ And Feminist Communities, In Contemporary Britain And Beyond. The Transgender Issue Is A Landmark Work That Signals The Beginning Of A New, Healthier Conversation About Trans Life. It Is A Manifesto For Change, And A Call For Justice And Solidarity Between All Marginalised People And Minorities. Trans Liberation, As Faye Sees It, Goes To The Root Of What Our Society Is And What It Could Be; It Offers The Possibility Of A More Just, Free And Joyful World For All Of Us.

Male entitlement takes many forms. To sex, yes, but more insidiously to admiration, bodily autonomy, knowledge, power, even care. In this urgent intervention, philosopher Kate Manne offers a radical new framework for understanding misogyny.In clear-sighted, powerful prose, she ranges widely across the culture to show how the idea that a privileged man is tacitly deemed to be owed something is a pervasive problem. Male entitlement can explain a wide array of phenomena, from mansplaining and the undertreatment of women's pain to mass shootings by incels and the seemingly intractable notion that women are 'unelectable'. The consequences for girls and women are often devastating.As Manne shows, toxic masculinity is not just the product of a few bad actors; we are all implicated, conditioned as we are by the currents of our time. With wit and intellectual fierceness, she sheds new light on gender and power and offers a vision of a world in which women are just as entitled as men to be cared for, believed and valued.

In Teaching Critical Thinking, renowned cultural critic and progressive educator bell hooks addresses some of the most compelling issues facing teachers in and out of the classroom today. In a series of short, accessible, and enlightening essays, hoo

Part philosophical meditation, part cultural critique, The Body in Pain is a profoundly original study that has already stirred excitement in a wide range of intellectual circles. The book is an analysis of physical suffering and its relation to the numerous vocabularies and cultural forces--literary, political, philosophical, medical, religious--that confront it.Elaine Scarry bases her study on a wide range of sources: literature and art, medical case histories, documents on torture compiled by Amnesty International, legal transcripts of personal injury trials, and military and strategic writings by such figures as Clausewitz, Churchill, Liddell Hart, and Kissinger, She weaves these into her discussion with an eloquence, humanity, and insight that recall the writings of Hannah Arendt and Jean-Paul Sartre.Scarry begins with the fact of pain's inexpressibility. Not only is physical pain enormously difficult to describe in words--confronted with it, Virginia Woolf once noted, "language runs dry"--it also actively destroys language, reducing sufferers in the most extreme instances to an inarticulate state of cries and moans. Scarry analyzes the political ramifications of deliberately inflicted pain, specifically in the cases of torture and warfare, and shows how to be fictive. From these actions of "unmaking" Scarry turns finally to the actions of "making"--the examples of artistic and cultural creation that work against pain and the debased uses that are made of it. Challenging and inventive, The Body in Pain is landmark work that promises to spark widespread debate.

Draws on de Sade's embodiments of women's two roles, Justine and Juliette, and on more contemporary models to argue that sexuality is a mode of power politics as well as a vital way to advance relationships admitting of neither conqueror nor conquered. Reprint.

A new edition of a classic work of history, revealing the anti-homosexual purges of midcentury Washington.In The Lavender Scare, David K. Johnson tells the frightening story of how, during the Cold War, homosexuals were considered as dangerous a threat to national security as Communists. Charges that the Roosevelt and Truman administrations were havens for homosexuals proved a potent political weapon, sparking a “Lavender Scare” more vehement and long-lasting than Joseph McCarthy’s Red Scare. Drawing on declassified documents, years of research in the records of the National Archives and the FBI, and interviews with former civil servants, Johnson recreates the vibrant gay subculture that flourished in midcentury Washington and takes us inside the security interrogation rooms where anti-homosexual purges ruined the lives and careers of thousands of Americans. This enlarged edition of Johnson’s classic work of history—the winner of numerous awards and the basis for an acclaimed documentary broadcast on PBS—features a new epilogue, bringing the still-relevant story into the twenty-first century.

Powers of Horror is an excellent introduction to an aspect of contemporary French literature which has been allowed to become somewhat neglected in the current emphasis on para-philosophical modes of discourse."