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.
Adele
‘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, 2020Adele’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, 2020Review 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, 2020Readers’ 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, 2020Review 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, 2019Report 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, 2019A 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, 2019Adele 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, 2019Adele reviews “Birth Strike: The Hidden Fight Over Women’s Work,” by Jenny Brown.
Review: ‘Politically Incorrect Feminist’
March 10, 2019Feminist 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, 2019Adele 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, 2018Readers’ 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, 2018Adele 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, 2018Review of the book “Reproductive Justice: An Introduction” by Loretta Ross and Rickie Solinger.
Transgender Children
May 2, 2018Review 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, 2018Adele’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, 2017Readers’ 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, 2017Readers’ 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, 2017Review 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, 2017Adele’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, 2017Review 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, 2016Review 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, 2016Review 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, 2016A 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, 2016Readers’ 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, 2016A 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, 2016Review 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, 2015A 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, 2015A 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, 2015Unspeakable 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.
Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights — a review
November 22, 2014From the November-December 2014 issue of News & Letters
Pro by Katha Pollitt is a wake-up call to the pro-choice movement to reclaim abortion as a positive social good. Ever since Roe v. Wade legalized abortion, we have allowed religious Right rhetoric to sneak into our own discussions so that even we now [=>]
‘Generation Roe’
July 7, 2014Review of “Generation Roe: Inside the Future of the Pro-Choice Movement” by Sarah Erdreich