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Beneath the world-destroying violence of male dominion, a morbid terror churns. Man's is a Kingdom of Fear, and madness reigns, for what has men so spooked is something they cannot run from: their own bodies. The ruling fathers have historically reacted to this predicament by scorning biological material reality and chasing after the consolations of domination, delusional transcendence, and, when desperation sets in, revenge against the rejected real world. Man Against Being traces body horror as the through line that unifies manmade society's hallmark oppressions and atrocities. Moving from the mind/body separation that is patriarchal doctrine's starting point to the brutal subjugation of all creatures scapegoated as bad bodies so men can play at being pure minds, from 'born in the wrong body' to the transhumanists' dreamt-of ascent into bodiless virtuality. Drawing on a holistic ecofeminist analysis of male dominion's cascading devastations, Aurora Linnea argues with poetic insight that, if men are determined to do away with bodies and biological life, the antidote to patriarchy's apocalyptic charter must necessarily involve a return to the flesh and blood of matter, a reintegration of body and mind and living earth.

Feminists speak about important political issues because the lives of women are complex. Recognising how power works and in whose favour underlies many of these discussions. In this compelling and clear account of political structures, Betty McLellan asks the important questions. What is truth and how do we understand it, especially when some say, "That's not my truth." Are there competing truths?Modern and postmodern approaches to democracy impinge on issues of power and truth, especially with increasingly individualistic as opposed to collective approaches to politics. Populism has been used by politicians to shore up votes and sway entire sections of the voting public while identity politics has fractured that same voting public. Is democracy dead or are there ways of fruitfully salvaging democracy. Could feminism be the answer?

A history of feminist and lesbian thinking from the 1970s to the presentAcross almost 50 years of writing, Susan Hawthorne's essays on lesbian culture and politics take the reader on a journey through the concerns of radical feminists engaged in the Women's Liberation Movement. Not only does she trace the experiments of lesbians creating a vibrant woman-loving culture, but she also traces the backlash against lesbians and a history of violence perpetrated by the state, corporations and individual men. She begins with a recollection of a rape in her pre-feminist days, followed by a critique of the institution of heterosexuality and the role of lesbian feminism as a strategy. She is soon asking questions about lesbian existence. The essays span reflections on lesbian literature and the development of lesbian culture, including the politics of physical expression in circus. Susan Hawthorne writes about cultural appropriation, depoliticisation and the erasure of lesbian inventiveness. She researches violence against lesbians including rape, torture and murder and the way in which this violence is ignored and often distorted by the media. Her investigations include lesbian refugees, lesbian economics, violation of lesbian human rights and the impact of the transgender industrial complex on the existence of lesbians as a political force.

The concept of gender is central to a vaguely progressive-looking set of ideas based on the maxim that people possess a so-called ' gender identity' . The real problem arises when this nebulous concept, bandied about with different and even incompatible meanings by different groups, is used as a prop to introduce policies that mark a huge setback for the rights of women and girls. The general public, watching the controversy from the sidelines, is confused by conflicting claims about whose rights are being infringed. In this incisive book, Laura Lecuona sets the record straight by reviewing the origin of the current uses of the key term gender and exploring the main theories of transgenderism. She discusses what lies behind the claims about pronoun usage and warns about the consequences of promoting the recognition of so-called transgender children. She points out the collateral damage arising from this activism, from the perpetuation of sexist roles to limitations on freedom of speech. She dares to confront the accusations of transphobia that inhibit those who this ideology and shows the devastating effects transactivism is having on women, both socially and politically.

What do you do when you fall in love with your next-door neighbour? You peer at each other through a hole in the fence and eventually climb over. Sybil is a member of The Good-Hearted Gardeners, a Society for Well-Meaning Efforts for the Betterment of Language and the Salvation of the Planet, which her lover, Demo, is allowed to join. It's funded by MI5, who ask them to monetise and weaponise the English language. Soon afterwards they discover that English is even more widespread than anyone had thought. Even the birds and the fish, the cows and the kangaroos can speak it - when they choose. The Good-Hearted Gardeners set about trying to talk to anyone - crows, magpies, robins, goldfish, cows, horses, rats, mice - who will talk to them. With climate change and technology gone mad, what's in store is a frightening scenario that threatens everyone - humans, animals, plants. Can the headlong rush to extinction be halted? When the birds, and the cows and the horses and the mice and all the rest come together, much is made possible. But at what cost? Will the planet and its inhabitants be saved? A comedic allegory for our future.

This book is a radical critique of gender ideology and transhuman design. Silvia Guerini shows how the TQ+ rights agenda is being pushed by eugenicist capitalist technocrats at the top of Big Business, Big Philanthropy, Big Tech and Big Pharma companies. She argues that dissociation from our sexed bodies leads to dissociation from reality, with the human body transformed into a permanent construction site besieged by synthetic and artificial interventions. Erasure of the material dimension of bodies and sexual difference is an erasure of women. She explains how fundamental struggles such as the fight against genetic engineering and the fight against artificial reproduction can only advance in conjunction with an opposition to gender ideology. By linking ' gender identity' to the genetic modification of bodies, she warns that humanity itself is at risk of becoming a synthetic life form with synthetic emotions within a virtual, fluid, deconstructed metaverse. Today, being revolutionary means preserving everything that makes us human. It means defending the living world and nature as entities to be respected, not as parts that can be broken down and redesigned in a laboratory world.

All I've ever wanted is the deep sense of belonging associated with knowing and being connected with who and where I've come from. Penny Zagarelou-Mackieson always knew she was adopted. But she didn't know she was swapped at birth. After a lifetime grappling with issues of identity and belonging, outlined in her earlier book Adoption Deception, Penny discovered that her natural mother, according to her adoption records, is genetically unrelated to her. Penny's family reunion of two decades was based on falsehoods. Her ancestry is Greek, not Celtic-Anglo as she was led to believe. So begins Penny's new quest to learn about her origins. She confronts a shocking legacy of babies misidentified in the heyday of Australia's forced and closed adoptions and appalling medical record-keeping - meaning many adoptees may never know their true origins. Penny's quest leads her to court seeking legal recognition of her true identity, involving her ' de-adoption' - termination of the Adoption Order imposed on her in infancy. This remarkable story of one woman's determination to uncover the truth and restore her dignity reveals human rights violations inherent in adoption. Penny questions continuing laws and practices that cement stigmatising secrecy and harm adopted people, arguing for wide-reaching reforms. We share Penny's rollercoaster of emotions as facts are revealed, court orders made, records sought and corrected, and travel planned and thwarted. We see Penny persist in the face of numerous hurdles and learn about those who help her. This inspiring, heartfelt book is gripping to read and impossible to ignore. " it is neither logical nor fair that the natural identity and name of a child adopted in Victoria is legally cancelled and replaced with fictitious kin relationships years before they are in a position to make an informed choice about their preferred identity and the ramifications for their descendants."

'You ask too many questions, Matilda. It's not becoming in a girl.' But Matilda is full of questions. It's the late 1800s in rural New South Wales and Matilda, as the oldest daughter, is expected to cook, clean and help Mama with her brothers and sisters. But her inquiring mind will not be stilled nor her rebellious spirit tamed. When frustration overcomes her, she finds escape in the land she loves and in her imagination, nourished by books. In the rust red landscape, both striking and harsh, and against the backdrop of World Wars and a changing Australia, Matilda is torn by her desire for freedom and allegiance to her growing family. With their never-ending demands, and crises of poverty, drought and illness, what Matilda really wants seems further from her reach. Will she ever see the sea? Have a vocation and earn her own money? Have the time to read? This sweeping novel brings to life the injustices faced by women in the 1800s and 1900s. Punctuated with betrayal and loyalty, hope and despair, love and loss, Matilda and her family come alive showing how the grip of patriarchy tried to strangle the ambitions of women, but there were women who refused to give up.

Robin Morgan's latest collection is a tour-de force: poetry that thrills the intellect and stirs the emotions. Robin shares her joys and intimacies which take centre stage and laments 'the ringmaster's desertion' as death hovers in the wings and aging unfolds, 'while laughing at the pain / through the gridlocked traffic in my brain.' Light and shadow, sleep and wakefulness, holding tight and letting go, regret and contentment, order and chaos, battle it out simultaneously through the interplanetary and domestic worlds.

In the village where Chinongwa lives, her family, displaced from their lands, are very poor. One desperate solution to hunger is to trade young daughters into marriage. At first, to their shame, her father's and aunt's attempts to marry off their youngest child fail. No one is interested in this small, thin girl. Eventually, a childless woman, Amai Chitsva, offers Chinongwa as a second wife to her own husband who is old enough to be the girl's grandfather. Chinongwa is forced to grow up very fast and rely on her survival instincts. She does her best to do what is expected of her and become a good wife and mother, but being very young, very alone, and a girl, the odds are stacked against her. Eventually, after spending her whole life doing the bidding of others, all Chinongwa wants is her independence. But how can one gain such a thing as a woman? Will she ever truly be free?

Decolonizing feminism always prioritizes the collective liberation of Indigenous and other women and names patriarchy as the central component of women's oppression. In Not Sacred, Not Squaws, Cherry Smiley analyses colonization and proposes a decolonized feminism enlivened by Indigenous feminist theory. Building on the work of grassroots radical feminist theorists, Cherry Smiley outlines a female-centered theory of colonization and describes the historical and contemporary landscape in which male violence against Indigenous women in Canada and New Zealand is the norm. She calls out ' sex work' as a patriarchal colonizing practice and a form of male violence against women. Questioning her own uncritical acceptance of the historical social and political status of Indigenous women in Canada - which she now recognizes as male-centred Indigenous theorizing - she examines the roles of culture and tradition in the oppression of Indigenous women and constructs an alternative decolonizing feminist methodology.

Lé vi-Strauss tried to convince women that we are spoken, exchanged like words; Lacan tried to teach women we can't speak, because the phallus is the original signifier; and then Derrida says that it doesn't matter, it's just talk. Foucault, Derrida, Lacan, Nietzsche: the chant resonates through universities around the world. Have you ever tried to untangle the words of postmodernist theorists? How to find your way through the labyrinth to sense and clarity? If so, this is the book for you.

A brilliant examination of the intellectually incoherent and anti-feminist character of gender identity theory. In this groundbreaking book, Swedish feminist and Marzist, Kajsa Ekis Ekman, traces the ideological roots of the new definition of woman. She shows how biological determinism is back - but minus the biology. So too are stereotypes: womanhood is no longer about having a vagina, but pink ribbons and dolls. Masculinity is no longer synonymous with having a penis but with war and machines. We are told being a woman is a gender identity that anyone can claim and that can only be determined by one's own feelings. Gender, we are told, is a spectrum, and it resides in the mind. In countries such as Norway, Canada, Argentina and Australia, laws have been enacted that give anyone the right to change his or her legal sex, irrespective of whether the person has had a medical procedure. At the same time, the industry for gender reassignment surgery is growing at an unprecedented pace. Seven out of 10 teenagers who seek treatment are now girls. The new definition of sex has been hailed as progressive, But is it really? What ideology is expressed by it? What consequences will it have? And for whom?

From racialised police brutality to climate change, #MeToo, 'trans rights, ' COVID-19, the prospect of nuclear war, and the prevalence of trauma--we are constantly bombarded with high stakes problems that we are expected to speak out about and act on. On closer inspection, the popular solutions to each of these problems aren't easy to reconcile. Black Lives Matter activists demand prison abolition, while #MeToo feminists want rapists in jail--and while our objections to war and police brutality make us suspicious of state institutions in general, our responses to climate change and COVID-19 reinforce our dependency on them. Out of the Fog cuts through the confusion. Renée Gerlich suggests that readers move beyond feeling overwhelmed and emotionally manipulated.

Widowed after a long marriage, Dorelia MacCraith swaps the family home for a house with a tower, and there, raised above the run of daily life, sets out to rewrite the stories of old women poorly treated by literature. Throughout this winding story, Dorelia and the elderly artist Elizabeth Bunting are sustained by a friendship that reaches back to their years at art school, and bonded by the secrets of a six-month period when they painted together in France. The loneliness of not belonging, of being cut adrift by grief, betrayal, or old age, binds these twelve connected stories into a dazzling composite novel. Within its complex crossings and connections, young and old inhabit separate yet overlapping firmaments; grown children, though loved and loving, cannot imagine their parents' young lives. For most, the past is not past, but exerts a magnetic pull, while future happiness hinges on retreat, or escape.

Sex dolls and robots in the female form function as an endorsement of mens sexual rights, with women and girls positioned as sexual objects. The production of these products further cements women's second class status. Lifelike, replica women and girls produced for mens sexual use, sex dolls and robots represent the literal objectification of women. They are marketed as companions, the means for men to create their 'ideal' woman, and as the perfect girlfriend that can be stored away after its use. Advocates claim the development of sex dolls and robots should be actively encouraged and will have many benefits but for who? SEX DOLLS, ROBOTS AND WOMAN HATING exposes the inherent misogyny in the trade in sex dolls and robots modelled on the bodies of women and girls for mens unlimited sexual use. From doll owners enacting violence and torture on their dolls, men choosing their dolls over their wives, dolls made in the likeness of specific women and the production of child sex abuse dolls, sex dolls and robots pose a serious threat to the status of women and girls.

Shattering the popular myth that porn is harmless, the personal accounts of 25 brave women in He Chose Porn over Me reveal the real-life trauma experienced by women at the hands of their porn-consuming partners - men who were supposed to care for them. This confronting but necessary book dares to tell the truth about pornography's destructive impact - about the men who habitually use it and the women and children who are mistreated and discarded as a result. The women in this book were collateral damage in their partner's insatiable greed for porn. Their stories tell of the crushing of intimacy, respect, connection, love. Porn colonised their families, leaving women rejected and scarred. They were subjected to sexual terrorism in their own homes. The men, turbo-charged by pornography, were intoxicated by sexualised power. They didn't care if they lost everything including their partners. In this haunting expose, pornography is rightfully situated as an insidious tool of violence against women. The contributors, now working to re-build their lives, found a confidante in Melinda Tankard Reist who supported them in the sharing of their experiences in these pages, and to warn other women - don't date men who use porn ...

In this blisteringly persuasive and piercingly intelligent book, Sheila Jeffreys argues that women live under penile imperialism, a regime in which men are assumed to have a sex right of access to the bodies of women and girls. She reasons that the sexual revolution that began in the 1960s unleashed an explicit male sexual liberation and that even now, under current laws and cultural mores, women do not have the right to self-determination in relation to their bodies. Sheila Jeffreys argues that the exercise of the male sex right has mainstreamed misogynist attitudes and so-called sexual freedom has meant the freedom of men to use women and children with impunity. The power dynamics of sex, rather than being eliminated, has been eroticised, supported by state regulations and structures that have further entrenched male domination. And while mens sexual fetishisms such as BDSM and transvestism have been normalised, women now have to fight as their spaces are being erased and their voices silenced in a faux inclusivity that has naturalised sexual harassment. Sheila Jeffreys contends that womens human rights are profoundly harmed and sexual violence is used more than ever to enforce social control of women. This is a sobering and brilliant analysis of the modern predicament of women that is impossible to ignore. There can be no liberation of women without a complete transformation of the way that male sexuality is constructed. Whilst the eroticising of womens subordination remains the basis of what is seen as sex, women cannot escape coercion in the bedroom, sexual harassment on the streets and at work, and the requirement to service mens excitements in the way they dress and behave.

"Surrogacy is not liberty. It is a crime. Women will not settle for junk liberty. We want real freedom - the substance, not just the appearance. We want real nourishment for our spirits. We want human dignity. We want it for all of us. We want it for women in Thailand and Bangladesh and Mexico as well as for the women who have not yet been born." -- Gena Corea. In this eloquent and blistering rejection of surrogacy, a range of international activists and experts in the field outline the fundamental human rights abuses that occur when surrogacy is legalised and reject neoliberal notions that the commodification of women's bodies can ever be about the 'choices' women make. Yoshie Yanagihara shows how feminist ideas have been twisted to extend men's freedom and their rights to access surrogacy. Catherine Lynch rails against surrogacy as the creation of babies for the express purpose of removal from their mothers, outlining the tragic outcomes for adopted people. Phyllis Chesler argues that commercial surrogacy is matricidal, "slicing and dicing biological motherhood" into egg donor, 'gestational' mother and adoptive mother. Melissa Farley debunks the myth of 'choice' in surrogacy, arguing that in a male-dominated and racist system, the exploitative sale of women in surrogacy, like in prostitution, is inherently harmful --rich women do not make the choice to become surrogates or prostitutes. "Harm cannot be regulated, because this would mean spreading and universalising it. - Silvia Guerini"" -- from publisher's website.

The history of Coogee's McIver's Ladies Baths - Australia's only ocean pool reserved for women - is eloquently told in these stories from women who have found friendship, sanctuary and sheer pleasure as they have gathered and swum at 'the Women's Pool'. Humorously told tales of encounters at the pool sit together with stories of sorrow and regret. Older women tell of the history of the pool and the famed 'Thursday Married Ladies Club'; younger women detail their delight at the natural beauty, the safety and the sense of freedom that the pool offers. No aquatic manspreading here. In this book, women from a diverse range of cultures reveal the role that the women's pool has played in their lives. From the '365ers' who brave the elements all year round to the younger women who seek summer sun on the rocks, a picture emerges of a place of natural beauty and a space for women to simply be themselves. The ancient seasonal cycles find their own rhythm at our pool, at our place of 'women's business'. In the vastness of the largest Continent on Earth, it is a tiny space of companionship if wanted, or solitude if needed.--Mary Goslett

no pot holders, felt hats, quilt rugs or sourdough > grand projects done, just these humble haikus that tell > lived through this virus its existential despair > During the pandemic, Melbourne became the most locked down city in the world, restricting five million people largely to the confines of their homes for months on end. Poet and mental health advocate Sandy Jeffs was one of them. This diary, written in haiku form, takes the reader through the daily grind of lockdown, with Sandy's humorous and sharp insights on local and national politics, as well as international events like the US election, all written from her study, aka haiku central. On the coronacoaster with Sandy, she takes us from humour to despair, counting syllables and case numbers, marking birthdays in lockdown, as sewing machines come into demand, the Arts industry goes into freefall, and Melbourne experiences a black summer followed by the pandemic, a super storm and an earthquake. Her poems mark the changing moods.

In an age when falsehoods are commonly taken as truth, Janice Raymonds new book illuminates the doublethink of a transgender movement that is able to define men as women, women as men, he as she, dissent as heresy, science as sham, and critics as fascists. Meanwhile, trans mobs are treated as gender patriots whose main enemy is feminists and their dissent from gender orthodoxies. The medicalization of gender dissatisfaction depicted by Raymond in her early visionary book, The Transsexual Empire, has today expanded exponentially into the transgender industrial complex built on big medicine, big pharma, big banks, big foundations, big research centers, some attached to big universities. And the current rise of treating young children with puberty blockers and hormones is a widespread scandal that has been named a medical experiment on children. Whereas transsexualism was mainly a male phenomenon in the past with males undertaking cross-sex hormones and surgery, today it is notably young women who are self-declaring as men in large numbers. The good news is that these young women who formerly identified as trans men or gender non-binary, are now de-transitioning. In this book, they speak movingly about their severances from themselves and other women, their escape from compulsive femininity, their sexual assaults, the misogyny they experienced growing up, and their journeys in recovering their womanhood. Doublethink: A Feminist Challenge to Transgenderism makes us aware of the consequences of a runaway ideology and its costs among them what is at stake when males are allowed to compete in female sports and when parents are not aware of school curricula that confuse sex with gender and that can facilitate a childs hormone treatments without parental consent.

A reworking of fairy tales from the East and West.