Who's Afraid of Feminism?: Seeing Through the Backlash - Hardcover

3.45

20 ratings by Goodreads

9781565843844: Who's Afraid of Feminism?: Seeing Through the Backlash

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1565843843 ISBN 13: 9781565843844

Publisher: New Pr, 1997

Has the situation of women improved significantly since the outpouring of activism in the 1960s and '70s? Has what's come to be known as the "backlash" erased women's gains and turned back the clock? Ann Oakley and Juliet Mitchell have assembled a distinguished, international group of feminist thinkers to tackle the issues confronting the contemporary women's movement. They challenge the myth that women are enjoying equal privilege to men in the workplace and in the home, and examine the resurgence of determinist thinking.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:

Feminism was never intended to be monolithic or totalitarian, but all too often it gets cast that way. Who's Afraid of Feminism? takes a weighty, tough-minded look at backlash within--and outside of--the feminist movement, and its international contributors don't pull punches. Margaret Walters delivers scathing commentary on the mirror-image melodrama of Camille Paglia and Catharine MacKinnon squaring off over pornography. She notes dryly that the demonizing rhethoric spouted in this fight "offers far more excitement than the slow slog to get a better deal for women in the workplace, at home, in politics, or the equally slow struggle to explore the ambiguities of our own sexual feelings..." Susan Heath puts the lie to advances made by lesbians that are too often shredded by day-to-day homophobic realities. The book is no dirge, however, but a healthy shake-up that carefully examines and in some instances affirms what feminist values are and how they've sped and slowed our journey. --Francesca Coltrera

About the Author:

Ann Oakley is a professor of sociology at the University of London. Her previous books include Gender on Planet Earth and Experiments in Knowing (both published by The New Press), The Men’s Room, The Captured Womb, Subject Women, Becoming a Mother, Woman’s Work, The Sociology of Housework, and Sex, Gender and Society.

Juliet Mitchell is a psychoanalyst and currently A.D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University. She is also a university lecturer at Cambridge University and Fellow of Jesus College.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.