Key feminist texts for me to read and leave lying about the house for dd?

[HRHQueenElizabethII]

Spurred on by musings from another thread: I've read almost no feminist writings, and was one of those women in my early 20s who rejected the term; through not understanding it.

I've been extraordinarily lucky - I've had strong female role models, but find myself more feminist than them, and have married a man who's clearly a "natural" feminist - though he hasn't read the literature either. But so much of what I read and see makes me want to buy some key texts, past and current, so that dd will have access to them as she grows up, and so understand the contexts and conditions which will influence the choices she makes in the future, and those made by people she comes into contact with.

Anyone fancy giving me a reading list?

yes it is leningrad.(i think QE has gone to bed so i'm ok)

very intelligent women are victims of domestic abuse..that was my point...it doesn't matter how many books you read...how well educated you are, you can suffer in relationships...it's men who need to change.

No, I haven't bloody well gone to bed. I was quite enjoying reading about the other books, but hell, daftpunk, you have it. It's all yours. You wait for that man of yours to change all you like, with no insistence from you. I'll carry on teaching my daughter self-respect, and start another thread tomorrow.

Oh, I know, dittany. I'm supremely irritated with myself for getting wound up by this - it's not very like me, and maybe I'm just tired. Just feel very over-protective of my dd just now, I guess. It's just all so stupid, and I'm frustrated in daftpunk's refusal to actually engage in discussion - I'd normally bugger off from threads at this juncture, but it was MY thread and I was enjoying it and Thinking and Learning.

his father left the family when dh was 6...he has nothing but respect for women, his mother worked hard to bring up 3 dc on her own...he knows women are the strong...he's a fantastic husband.

QE..i really am very sorry, please don't start another thread...i will leave ok.

You know what bothered me, daftpunk? You wouldn't answer my questions, you wouldn't consider the thoughts and opinions of others, plus their situations, and wonder whether they challenged yours. You just kept trotting out the same old unfounded assertions - if that's how you read books and engage with ideas, then I'm not surprised that your readings of feminist texts have had no impact on your life.

But please, please, don't assume that those of us on this thread - or your own daughters - have such blinkered and narrow approaches to thinking and understanding the world around them. Your opinion may be firmly rooted, but you have to know that no more makes it fact than if you were to carve it in stone.

That's what made me mad. I like talking to people on MN with wildly different ideas to mine - Swedes, Quattro, even Xenia to an extent have caused me to reassess and reframe what I think. That approach is something I value, and has served me well both professionally and personally. But talking to you isn't like that - it's like talking to a robot who isn't programmed to assimilate and consider new information, but who just repeats the same thing over and over again. I don't know what to say to you - you say your piece, you don't change it, but you also don't let the discussion just move on. What do you WANT?

I think everyone is being rather mean to daftpunk.

I wasn't though, Voltaire - I tried very hard to engage her in discussion - to get into more detail about her thoughts and opinions, but it was like hitting a brick wall, and the thread just stayed in this stupid rut.

Anyway, now I am going to bed. Apologies for all for hissy fit/picking up thread/ball and threatening to go home. Am clearly lacking in equanimity today!

Regrettably, it is often women who prove the most hostile foes of feminism.

What is that saying about slaves making the best proponents of their masters' ideology?

It's not as though DP's opinions are the minority view out there in the big wide world. She sounds resigned to the way things are rather than actively seeking to perpetuate.

DP - We want your daughters (and all daughters) to have a life free of unnecessary stuggles and I'm sure you want that too. Who cares what books you've read.

dittany - and perhaps a different part of the progress is down to women being kind and encouraging to one another?

That is a good point, Voltaire. And I expect, for the most part, the people on this thread are encouraging and kind in RL. But dp came onto this thread, which was full of comment and thought, of personal anecdote and reflection, and didn't herself seem to reflect on any of it. The encouragment and kindness has to be mutual.

Oops: encouragement! (Am typing in the dark...).

Fair point, SF.

Still, Voltaire's point is worth reflecting on, I think.

Way up there there are a couple of votes for The Whole Woman, and one for Natasha Walter, The New Feminism.

I read The New Feminism, and then very swiftly afterwards went to see Germaine Greer in a Q&A session in which I managed to ask a question which got the best response of the night .

I got a signed copy of The Whole Woman, and reading it revealed what a load of post-modernist, relativist crap the New Feminism book was. Pussy footing around within the patriarchal status quo instead of making radical changes.