Women WorldWide: June 2022

May 30, 2022

Takes up: in a groundbreaking ruling a Tokyo Court ordered Juntendo University to compensate women because they were rejected from medical school which had tampered with their exam scores and set stricter requirements for women; women in refugee camps in Somalia created their own credit lending system; Sandbach High School’s feminist club in Cheshire, UK, launched a petition calling for the government to ban sales of school uniforms in sex shops and their use in porn videos; and the girls’ track team at Albany High School in New York launched a petition to “Stop Gender Biased Dress Codes: Allow the Girls Track Team to Wear Sports Bras.”

Women WorldWide: May-June 2022

May 11, 2022

Takes up: feminist-led protesters in London hurling 1,000 rape alarms at Charing Cross police station on the first anniversary of the Clapham Common vigil for Sarah Everard; the launch of Somalia’s first all-female media house, Bilan; a worldwide roundup of actions on International Women’s Day; and Women Take the Wheel, an all-woman volunteer service driving women fleeing Ukraine to homes or shelters in Poland.

How women’s trauma is used against them

Review of ‘Sexy but Psycho’: Taylor is trying to change how institutions and the public view the effects of trauma. Drawing upon years as a feminist therapist in rape crisis, domestic violence, and child trafficking centers, she describes staff’s success calming distressed clients and helping them live their lives after abuse.

May-June 2022: Women WorldWide

April 29, 2022

Takes up: feminist-led protesters in London hurling 1,000 rape alarms at Charing Cross police station on the first anniversary of the Clapham Common vigil for Sarah Everard; the launch of Somalia’s first all-female media house, Bilan; a worldwide roundup of actions on International Women’s Day; and Women Take the Wheel, an all-woman volunteer service driving women fleeing Ukraine to homes or shelters in Poland.

Review: ‘Sexy but Psycho: How the Patriarchy Uses Women’s Trauma Against Them’

Taylor is trying to change how institutions and the public view the effects of trauma. Drawing upon years as a feminist therapist in rape crisis, domestic violence, and child trafficking centers, she describes staff’s success calming distressed clients and helping them live their lives after abuse.

Review: Spinning and Weaving

March 19, 2022

Review of ‘Spinning and Weaving: Radical Feminism for the 21st Century.’ Elizabeth Miller is the Contributing Editor and created a radical feminist anthology covering multiple topics to preserve the insightful new theory women (including international women) write daily online—from articles to social media comments.

Review: Spinning and Weaving

March 2, 2022

Review of ‘Spinning and Weaving: Radical Feminism for the 21st Century.’ Elizabeth Miller is the Contributing Editor and created a radical feminist anthology covering multiple topics to preserve the insightful new theory women (including women international) write daily online—from articles to social media comments.

Women WorldWide, Jan.-Feb. 2022

February 1, 2022

Women demonstrate at Boise State University against misogynist professor Scott Yenor; four male porn stars in France were charged with rape after 53 women performers complained; Sudanese women demonstrated in three cities against gang rapes by security forces; and in India, two men and a woman were arrested for creating a website pretending to “auction” over 100 Muslim women as slaves.

Review of: ‘Feminism for women: The Real Route to Liberation’

January 30, 2022

The author—Julie Bindel, a radical feminist writer and activist fighting violence against women since the 1970s—noticed young feminists becoming disillusioned with more recent movements posing as feminism.

Women WorldWide

December 10, 2021

Women WorldWide takes up: Afghan women MPs set up an organization in exile to help other activist women escape; the thousands who marched in Istanbul, Turkey demanding action against widespread violence against women; women in Poland marching again against restrictions on abortion; and the 7,000 women who gathered in Madrid, Spain, protesting male violence against women.

Review: Reproductive Rights as Human Rights

November 17, 2021

In ‘Reproductive Rights as Human Rights: Women of Color and the Fight for Reproductive Justice,’ Zakiya Luna discusses how SisterSong, the reproductive justice organization, was based and operates on the concept of human rights.

Review of: ‘They didn’t See Us Coming: The Hidden History of Feminism in the Nineties’ by Lisa Levenstein

September 22, 2021

Adele reviews the book “They Didn’t See Us Coming: The Hidden History of Feminism in the Nineties” by Lisa Levenstein.

A Review: ‘Men Who Hate Women…’

July 4, 2021

Adele favorably reviews “Men Who Hate Women: From Incels to Pickup Artists: The Truth About Extreme Misogyny and How It Affects Us All by Laura Bates. The book exposes the extreme damage caused to society by online misogynist communities, or the “manosphere.”

Readers’ Views: July-August 2021, part one

July 2, 2021

Readers’ Views on: What Is Socialism?; What Is Marxist-Humanism?; Nuclear Socialism?; Nuclear Capitalism; Flat Earth Society; Indigenous Genocide; Indigenous Liberation; Racism Takes its Toll; Rape Culture; Coming Out in Sports; Colonialism and Liberation

Review: #ChurchToo

May 8, 2021

Author Emily Joy Allison created the hashtag #ChurchToo to share her story of an adult youth group leader’s attempt to groom her into being raped when she was a teenager. By the next morning, thousands had used #ChurchToo to tell their stories of abuse within the Church.

Review: ‘Sisters in Hate’

March 11, 2021

Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism, by Seyward Darby, is an important contribution towards comprehending why people join right-wing movements, and how to encourage them to leave while inoculating society against hateful and authoritarian thinking.

Review: ‘Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America’

February 2, 2021

In her book, Ijeoma Oluo discusses the serious damage caused when we expect white men to have all the leadership roles in a society. The damage is not only to women and people of color whose voices are not heard, and to society, which loses their input, but to white men themselves.

Review: Women Are Blamed for Everything

November 29, 2020

A feminist review of a book by Jessica Taylor, ‘Women Are Blamed for Everything: Exploring the Victim Blaming of Women Subjected to Violence and Trauma’ that explores how and why each victim of abuse was always blamed in some way although it was never her fault, even internalizing self-blame.

Readers’ views, September-October 2020, part one

August 29, 2020

Readers’ Views takes up: Black revolt and racism; dialectics of liberation; school battles; election victories; history and freedom; class struggles; and fighting the Right wing.

‘Power Worshippers’

July 1, 2020

“The Power Worshippers” by Katherine Stewart explains the religious Right as a “Christian nationalist” movement. This is not a grassroots movement but one deliberately designed by ultra-rich businessmen and families to impose complete political, social, and economic control.

Review of ‘Full Surrogacy Now’

April 30, 2020

Adele’s critical review of the book “Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family” by Sophie Lewis as “a disappointing attempt to find a radical path to a just society of new human relationships by way of commercial surrogacy.”

‘Leftover Women’

March 17, 2020

Review of ‘Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China’ by Leta Hong Fincher, which debunks the Chinese government’s propaganda that the status of women has been soaring since the introduction of corporate capitalism.

Readers’ Views: January-February 2020, Part One

January 22, 2020

Readers’ Views on Capitalism and climate; Mideast upheaval; Trump the Mullah?; war crime hero; Trump’s judges; detransition debate; and women’s liberation.

Review: ‘Without Apology’

January 21, 2020

Review of ‘Without Apology: The Abortion Struggle Now’, on the history of the women’s liberation movement’s struggle for full reproductive justice.

Detransitioners and Lesbians speak out

November 17, 2019

Report on a speech by Charlie Evans, a Detransitioner and Bisexual woman, about issues affecting specifically Lesbians and Detransitioners within the LGBTQI movement.

‘Last Days at Hot Slit’

August 31, 2019

A review of “Last Days at Hot Slit: The Radical Feminism of Andrea Dworkin,” edited by Johanna Fateman and Amy Scholder.

Review: ‘Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men’

June 27, 2019

Adele reviews Caroline Criado Perez’s book, “Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men,” which explains how the notion that all of humanity can be represented as “man” or “mankind” has caused devastating, worldwide harm to all women and all of society.

Review: Birth Strike: The Hidden Fight Over Women’s Work

April 23, 2019

Adele reviews “Birth Strike: The Hidden Fight Over Women’s Work,” by Jenny Brown.

Review: ‘Politically Incorrect Feminist’

March 10, 2019

Feminist Adele reviews Phyllis Chesler’s book “A Politically Incorrect Feminist: Creating a Movement with Bitches, Lunatics, Dykes, Prodigies, Warriors, and Wonder Women,” seeing in it an important first-person history that can help today’s movement.

Review: ‘Lesbian Revolution’

January 24, 2019

Adele reviews “The Lesbian Revolution: Lesbian Feminism in the UK 1970–1990,” by Sheila Jeffreys, the first book documenting the history of British Lesbian feminism.

Readers’ Views, September-October 2018: Part 1

September 29, 2018

Readers’ Views takes up: attacks on immigrants; Syria and the Left’s failure; Democratic Party’s selling out women; Women’s Liberation; Serena Williams; ending money bail the right way; Trump-Kim “peace”; genocide and war heroes; and a discussion on sex crimes and their fallout.

Review: How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics

September 27, 2018

Adele reviews “How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics: From Welfare Reform to Foreclosures to Trump,” by Laura Briggs, which discusses “reproductive labor,” “the work necessary to the reproduction of human life.”

Review of ‘Reproductive Justice: An Introduction’

July 24, 2018

Review of the book “Reproductive Justice: An Introduction” by Loretta Ross and Rickie Solinger.

Transgender Children

May 2, 2018

Review of Heather Brunskell-Evans’ and Michele Moore’s book Transgender Children and Young People: Born in Your Own Body.

A review: Regretting Motherhood

February 2, 2018

Adele’s review of Orna Donath’s book “Regretting Motherhood: A Study” takes up Donath’s study of 27 Israeli women who regretted becoming mothers; some who had never wanted children and others who had, only to find the reality was not what they expected.

Readers’ Views: November-December 2017, Part 1

November 12, 2017

Readers’ Views on: Puerto Rico:Trump’s Katrina; LGBTQ in Australia; Transgender in Texas; Women’s Liberation; Racism in Canada; Detroit and “Detroit”; Labor and Robots; Haitian Revolt; Why Read N&L?; and a Correction.

Readers’ Views: September-October 2017, Part 1

September 5, 2017

Readers’ Views: facing far right’s threat; don’t scapegoat; Canadian strike; Transgender troops; women’s liberation; homeless in Los Angeles; defend dissidents; why read N&L.

Review: Pimp State

June 30, 2017

Review by Adele of the book “Pimp State: Sex, Money and the Future of Equality”, by Kat Banyard, which challenges the notion that
the sex industry should be either legalized or decriminalized.

‘The Disappearing L’

March 17, 2017

Adele’s review of Bonnie Morris’ “The Disappearing L,” which takes up why the Lesbian culture of the 1970s through the 1990s is disappearing and what was worthwhile in it.

Review: Wombs in Labor

January 29, 2017

Review of “Wombs in Labor: Transnational Commercial Surrogacy in India,” by Amrita Pande. Pande references divergent feminist viewpoints but studies surrogacy as a form of labor so that she goes beyond moral questions to the question of how a labor market in wombs is created and how the laborers experience this market.

Review: Nature’s God

November 26, 2016

Review of Nature’s God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic by Matthew Stewart, showing how the founders of the U.S. wanted democracy and not a theocracy.

Review: We were feminists once

September 6, 2016

Review by feminist Adele of Andi Zeisler’s book, We Were Feminists Once: from Riot Grrrl to Covergirl®, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement, exploring how a once revolutionary feminism is being taken over by “marketplace feminism.”

In 1995 Andi Zeisler

Push Back: Guilt in the Age of Natural Parenting

April 27, 2016

A review of the book Pushback: Guilt in the Age of Natural Parenting which speaks against the supposedly radically-feminist natural parenting movement and exposes the pseudoscience natural parenting advocates put forward in attempting to persuade parents to practice it.

Readers’ Views: March-April 2016, Part 1

March 30, 2016

Readers’ Views on: Environment, Labor, Race and Philosophy; Queer Liberation; Black Lives Matter; Bolivian Social Movements; Trumpery’s Fascism & Racism.

Review: Headscarves and Hymens

March 10, 2016

A Review of “Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution” by Mona Eltahawy, reviewed by Adele an expert on the theocratic Right.

Review: Out In The Union: A Labor History of Queer America

January 24, 2016

Review of Review: Out In The Union: A Labor History of Queer America, by feminist anti-religious right activist Adele who writes an appreciative look at Miriam Frank’s important book.

To transition or not to transition?

December 10, 2015

A review of an anthology on the pros and cons of transitioning including intense, painful, personal stories of young butch and “gender non-conforming” (GNC) Lesbians who experienced great pressure from society, their own LGBTQ communities, and medical and therapy professions to identify as Transgender men.

Review of Feminism Unfinished

August 30, 2015

A review by Adele of “Feminism Unfinished: A Short, Surprising History of American Women’s Movements,” by Dorothy Sue Cobble, Linda Gordon, and Astrid Henry (W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.: New York, 2014). This book is a brief overview of the history of the feminist movement in the U.S. from the period after women’s right to vote was won in 1920 until the present.

Review of Unspeakable Things

March 7, 2015

Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies and Revolution by Laurie Penny (Bloomsbury Publishing Plc., 2014) describes how neoliberalism is the new face of capitalist patriarchy. Even feminism has been repackaged once again as the opportunity for middle-class women to climb the corporate ladder and earn more money with which to buy more products.

Men Explain Things to Me — a review

January 28, 2015

“Men Explain Things to Me” by Rebecca Solnit is a book of seven essays that eloquently describe how patriarchy attempts to distract us from the fact that seemingly isolated incidents and seemingly separate oppressions are part of a system of profound and devastating violence.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License