Mumsnet Talk

Sorry to target you personally but I have noticed your name on a few threads of interest and you seem to know your stuff

Basically I am trying to stir up an interest in feminism and feminist thinking/discussion in my bookclub. I am tired of the usual 'chic lit' that gets recommended, the type that revolves around romance and needing a man (yawn). I also want to stretch my brain a bit after a long period of domesticity and motherhood (I feel chained to the kitchen sink!)

I have recommended Sheila Jeffreys Beauty and Misogyny and they seem to be keen. One is an English Literature lecturer, who is widely read in feminist literature. She hasn't read this though. Do you think this is a good recommendation? Is it maybe too hard hitting for a first venture into feminism (I haven't read much myself other than stuff about the medicalization of chilbirth to allow male control of pregnant women as part of my degree).

Hope you don't mind me asking. Your comments on the thread about pornography were a defining moment for me. I had no idea, and I wept for my baby daughter and vowed I would educate myself more so that I can teach her to respect herself and never be controlled by men.

Female Chauvinist Pigs by Ariel Levy is good, I think, and very current and readable. It's in paperback now and available quite cheaply from Amazon etc.

New Feminism by Natasha Walter is a good read, possibly not book club material though.

Apparently Walter has conceded that she was being wildly optimistic in that one, Ewe, and the new one, Living Dolls is more circumspect. I haven't read it yet though.

You can't beat some of the second-wave stuff to get a real feel for the history and hopes of theu movement though. I read Betty Freidan's 'The Feminine Mystique' first, I think, and it's still relevant. As a novel, you really need to try Marilyn French's 'The Women's Room'- it is a rollicking good read, and gives a real flavour of the times and the psychological changes women went through as they moved from fifties suburbia to radicalising in the sixties and seventies. I'm tempted to re-read it actually- I've got really good memories of it.

Oooh, what a nice question Roseability, thank you for asking. I love recommending books, particularly feminist ones.

Beauty and Misogyny is very hard hitting - its basic argument is that women's beauty practices and femininity are a sexual corvee (unapid labour required by superiors from subordinates) that women give to men. Also that they are harmful cultural practices. It depends on the group and how far they want logic and argument to take them - if you end up with people claiming "men are objectified too" it won't be much fun, but on the other hand it will get everybody talking. It also depends how defensive people are about it, whether they take it as a criticism of themselves for using makeup or following fashion or whatever (which it isn't) or criticism of our culture and how it affects women (which it is).

If I was going to recommend a few I'd say Gloria Steinem's Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions, because she's a good writer and she's the feminist no-one can hate, then there's Robin Morgan The Burning Time and any novel by Alice Walker - not overtly feminist but women's novels written with the feminist point of view in the background, Germaine Greer's the Whole Woman is good too, because it's a more British point of view.

If you want the really intellectually challenging stuff there's Catharine MacKinnon's Are Women Human?, which deals amongst other things with pornography, women's rights as human rights, and also prostitution. And as everybody hates her even though they haven't actually read her - Andrea Dworkin's Heartbreak, A Memoir of a Militant Feminist is a good place to start to understand her but some of what happened to her is very disturbing though. There's also her on-line library which has a good chunk of her work on it here

Finally, if the strong stuff is too much for the group Ariel Levy's Female Chauvinist Pigs critiques raunch culture, although the analysis isn't that great because she ends up blaming a whole lot of it on women.

I hope you weren't too upset about what I said about pornography. I suppose I take this stuff for granted - knowing about it at least, not accepting its existence. It is very shocking what is happening at the moment. I think the more of us who say "No more" the more chance we have to make a change.

I think leafing through any teen girl magazine with your book club and reading tripe like "Be yourself - the thing guys most like about you is your self-confidence" (oh the irony) would be very revealing, very thought-provoking.

I suggest Reviving Ophelia by Mary Pipher. If any of the members have DDs, it's a sobering book, a good consciousness-raiser.

There's Being Married, Doing Gender by Caroline Dryden which is interesting, it's based on interviews of married couples and examines how they talk about gender roles etc.

Also Ann Wetherall is an interesting read if you're interested in the role language plays in keeping women "in their place". The book is Gender, Language and Discourse

BoF - I've just finished Living Dolls and really enjoyed it. I thought it was very balanced (talking about the impact of hypersexualisation on boys as well as girls) and I would definitely recommend it.

It didn't hurt that a bloke who was pestering me on the train home one night asked me what I was reading. I showed him the front cover and he moved seats!

A book I liked very much was The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood. From my memory of the introduction/blurb, Atwood wrote the book (her first) as feminism was beginning to take hold but before it really got started. She never intended it to be viewed as a feminist work, although I think it now is.

I found it gripping and very thought provoking. Just as a novel it is excellent, and I would highly recommend it on that alone. But it sounds like it might be what your book club is after.

I really enjoyed Pure Lust by Mary Daly. An intellectual study of language and culture with regard to gender relations.

My favourite 'feminist' book is 'Woman on the Edge of Time'. I love it. It makes me feel so happy. It questions a lot of expectations of gender.

Dittany - I will try your recommendations too. I hope you don't mind me saying that I find you 100% right and 100% infuriating in equal measure (I mean that in a positive way )

I will take that in the spirit you are offering it Orm.

Good.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood - it actually scares the shit out of me, I can't read it again.

How about The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood? Or maybe (warning, obscure and some might find it heavy-going and hard work but I loved it) Native Tongue by Suzette Hayden Elgin or its sequel The Judas Rose - the author is a professor of linguisitcs and the books are sci-fi, very episodic novels which are fundamentally about language and reality.

Wifework by Susan Malhausen(? spelling) is interesting too.

The Women's Room

I envy the women of the 6o's and early 70's. They got to have consciousness raising groups - we get cupcake parties. I am a total feminist and think there is still a lot of work to be done. You only have to pick up any tabloid to know it's true.

Brahms: X-post, sorry.

Also would like to secong Woman on the Edge of time.

Oh, and I forgot Benefits by Zoe Fairbairns - it's about 40 years old but still creepily resonant although some bits do come across as very dated now.

And if your book group start bleating and panicking that it's all too hairy-legged and too much like hard work, and you want to subtly shake them up a bit, Sara Paretsky's later Warshawski novels are great reading and rammed with angry political awareness.

Thanks guys! Some good recommendations to think over. Dittany the pornography thread did upset me, but in a good way. I always considered myself quite liberal about pornography but I realise now I was just accepting a harmful norm without challenging it. I would have been the first to say 'but those women choose to do it and they are consenting adults - I have no problem with it'. Not now though or ever again. I have a long way to go before I would call myself a feminist (grew up with a mysogynist father and have always tried to please men) but I look forward to educating myself and maybe reaching more of my potential.

Also The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte. No one ever reads any of hers, gets overshadows by Charlotte and Emily, but TTOWH is amazing in how it tackles so many issues like domestic violence and unhappy marriages in a period when no one talked about it

this kind of feminist stuff kinda scares me!! something gentle to start with? anyone recommend?

I want to challenge myself and others SGB. I am realising that so much of my life has been about pleasing men. I had an adoptive father who used to call me fat, a slut and told me off for not ironing my dh shirts! As a result I disrespected myself in my teens and early twenties. Ended up being used sexually. Have wasted an awful lot of hours dieting, grooming, flirting and pleasing. Why? Who for? I have a brain and I want to use it. I feel frustrated by domesticity and motherhood. I even feel a bit resentful that dh gets to have a great career and be a good father. Don't get me wrong I love my kids and they will always come first but I want to use my brain, reach my potential

Has anyone suggested "The WOmen's Room" by Marilyn French? It was a eureka book dfor lots of 70's feminists like me, and although it's a bit dated now it still fantasticc, and an eyepoener for younger women.

If you want fiction, have you tried any Margaret Atwood?