Feminists Under Fire

This wide-ranging anthology compares the social, political, and economic situations of women during the civil wars in Sri Lanka and the former Yugoslavia

This wide-ranging anthology compares the social, political, and economic situations of women during the civil wars in Sri Lanka and the former Yugoslavia

"Mothers Under Fire: Mothering in Conflict Areas" examines the experiences of women mothering in conflict areas. The aim of this collection is to engage with the nature and meaning of motherhood and mothering during times of war and/or in zones experiencing the threat of war. The essays in the collection reflect diverse disciplinary perspectives through which scholars and field practitioners reveal how conflict shapes mothering practices. One of the unique contributions of the collection is that it highlights not only the particular difficulties mothers face in various geographic locations where conflict has been prevalent, but also the ways in which mothers display agency to challenge and negotiate the circumstances that oppress them. The collection raises awareness of the needs of women and children in areas affected by military and/or political violence worldwide, and provides a basis for developing multiple policy frameworks aimed at improving existing systems of support in local contexts. --Kristen P. Williams, Clark University

A radically inclusive, intersectional, and transnational approach to the fight for women’s rights. Upper-middle-class white women have long been heralded as “experts” on feminism. They have presided over multinational feminist organizations and written much of what we consider the feminist canon, espousing sexual liberation and satisfaction, LGBTQ inclusion, and racial solidarity, all while branding the language of the movement itself in whiteness and speaking over Black and Brown women in an effort to uphold privilege and perceived cultural superiority. An American Muslim woman, attorney, and political philosopher, Rafia Zakaria champions a reconstruction of feminism in Against White Feminism, centering women of color in this transformative overview and counter-manifesto to white feminism’s global, long-standing affinity with colonial, patriarchal, and white supremacist ideals. Covering such ground as the legacy of the British feminist imperialist savior complex and “the colonial thesis that all reform comes from the West” to the condescension of the white feminist–led “aid industrial complex” and the conflation of sexual liberation as the “sum total of empowerment,” Zakaria follows in the tradition of intersectional feminist forebears Kimberlé Crenshaw, Adrienne Rich, and Audre Lorde. Zakaria ultimately refutes and reimagines the apolitical aspirations of white feminist empowerment in this staggering, radical critique, with Black and Brown feminist thought at the forefront.

Young feminists today are becoming activists on behalf of many causes beyond the classic—and indispensable--feminist ones of reproductive rights and equal pay for equal work. In The Fire This Time, Dawn Martin, one of four founders of The Third Wave Foundation--a multiracial, multi-issue, and multicultural activist organization--and Vivien Labaton, its first executive director, offer an exciting cross section of feminist voices that express new directions in activism, identity, and thought. Ayana Bird dissects the role of black women in hip-hop; Joshua Breitbart and Ana Noguiera demonstrate how Indimedia can break the hold of the corporate media over the news; and Jennifer Bleyer reviews the exhilarating power unleashed by the GirlZine movement. Anna Kirkland’s analysis of transsexual and transgendered people and the law is deeply thoughtful, and Shireen Lee's piece on women, technology, and feminism envisions empowering prospects for women.. Ranging from media and culture to politics and globalization, The Fire This Time is a call to new frontiers of activism, and helps reinvent feminism for a new generation.

When Katie Roiphe arrived at Harvard in the fall of 1986, she found that the feminism she had been raised to believe in had been radically transformed. The women's movement, which had once signaled such strength and courage, now seemed lodged in a foundation of weakness and fear. At Harvard, and later as a graduate student at Princeton, Roiphe saw a thoroughly new phenomenon taking shape on campus: the emergence of a culture captivated by victimization, and of a new bedroom politics in the university, cloaked in outdated assumptions about the way men and women experience sex. Men were the silencers and women the silenced, and if anyone thought differently no one was saying so. Twenty-four-year-old Katie Roiphe is the first of her generation to speak out publicly against the intolerant turn the women's movement has taken, and in The Morning After she casts a critical eye on what she calls the mating rituals of a rape-sensitive community. From Take Back the Night marches (which Roiphe terms "march as therapy",and "rhapsodies of self-affirmation") to rape-crisis feminists and the growing campus concern with sexual harassment, Roiphe shows us a generation of women whose values are strikingly similar to those their mothers and grandmothers fought so hard to escape from - a generation yearning for regulation, fearful of its sexuality, and animated by a nostalgia for days of greater social control. At once a fierce excoriation of establishment feminism and a passionate call to our best instincts, The Morning After sounds a necessary alarm and entreats women of all ages to take stock of where they came from and where they want to go.

A fiery feminist manifesto from the Chilean performance collective who led the rallying cry for today's mass feminist movement across South America After the feminist art collective LASTESIS created their performance “A Rapist in Your Path” in their native Chile, it went viral across the globe, becoming the anthem of the grassroots feminist movements in South America and around the world. This is their manifesto, an angry, unrepentant tour-de-force that moves through rage, femicide, abortion, homophobia, feminist art, and the oppression of the state to argue for a feminist world based on collective struggle and a visionary political art.Translated by Camila Valle.

Klein (philosophy, U. of Northern Florida-Jacksonville) offers an analysis of modern-day feminism and a personal memoir of coming of age and coming to terms with feminism as it relates to university politics and teaching. She presents a critique of contemporary feminism, discussing feminist and nonfeminist philosophy, feminist nonphilosophy, and feminist epistemology and pedagogy. She exposes the dogmas and fallacies of feminism, and argues that feminism is oppressive to women. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR