Who are the young feminists?

[GrimDamnFanjo]

Soooo at 16 I was already defining myself as a radical feminist and by the end of university I'd already read the usual books.
I now have two girls, the eldest is 18 and studying politics at university. I'd like to buy her a couple of accessible books about feminism, partly for her to read around her studies.
Anything from my generation seems to be termed Terfy (I know!), but I don't really know who are the rad fems for the younger generation? Are there any?

Just marking place as I'd like to buy something similar for my DC.

I think the mainstream media has co-oped feminism to promote anal sex and pornography to girls. It's very insidious.

Feminism has been mainstreamed and made meaningless.

Has Magdalen Burns written anything because love her YouTube videos.

I don't know about books, but meghan murphy does feministcurrent.com and she's great.

Hi, I recently read an amazing book called The Means of Reproduction: Sex, power & the future of the world. By Michelle Goldberg

She’s an investigative journalist with the NY Times now I believe and the book is a compilation of years of research she did. It doesn’t overtly state a particular feminist angle, although it hammers home through its content that women’s problems (and humankind as a result) are massively caused by our biology and society’s attitudes towards curtailing our autonomy of our bodies and therefore our lives.

Therefore would be acceptable to someone who was scared of reading one of the second wavers for fear of them being currently unfashionable with lib fems.

It’s very well paced, punchy and gripping. It’s also shocking and breathtakingly brutal at times. It’s very topical now as it was written literally just before Obama came to power in 2008 so at the end of the Bush republican presidency. Reading it now, just 8 years later, the content is still very current and topical

Also, Cordelia Fine: Delusions of Gender
A scientific exposé of the biases loaded against women.
Not quite as readable as the previous book I mentioned but definitely not a difficult read. It’s quite humourously written despite the quite depressing content.
I haven’t finished it yet but am hoping she presents some potential solutions at the end!

This is so helpful - thank you!
Its so hard not to push my own opinions - I want her to really appreciate and identify as a feminist, but she needs to make up her own mind.
She's also gay, if that helps to identify some more options?

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - we are all feminists now

Oops sorry, we should all be feminists. Am on the wine!

Do you really think that it is wise to encourage her into these beliefs just because they are current? As a woman slightly older than your daughter I find modern day mainstream feminism downright unacceptable. It is more about making mountains out if mole hills (like leg shaving) and creating a victim profile (because every bad thing that happens to you is a result of your sex) than ensuring that women's rights are preserved (yes, we really are at that stage) and actually empowering women (as opposed to covering up systemic failures with positive discrimination). It's better for her to start from the beginning so that she can understand the origins of femenism and decide for herself where to draw the line between women's liberation and down right silliness.

Hahahahahahaha

Resting I'm not encouraging anything - just asking for some good starters that could help her figure out feminism for herself - while avoiding all the crappy "we're all equal now and gender rulez" crap.

Grim - I think that the difference between 'our' generation and your daughters is that our feminism came from within. We were feminists because we were personally aware of, or experienced, injustice because we were women. As someone said above, mainstream media and the internet has done a snow job on girls now so that a lot of what we saw as oppression (women reduced to tits on P.3, being expected to be a lady in the living room and a whore in the bedroom, unrealistic expectations around beauty etc.) has been sold to girls as being about empowerment, choice and indeed 'feminism'. I guess what we experienced was a form of identity politics, but consciousness-raising and the idea that the personal is politically allowed us to expand these horizons and argue for systemic and legal change, etc. (I think we were less successful in the private sphere, but that's another topic). What I am getting at is that I'm not sure a book per se will work where your daughter appears not to have yet 'peaked' (as they say these days) about the inadequacy and idiocy of modern fun-feminism. Grinch's post above is illustrative of this. Clearly, she understands very little about second-wave feminism and thinks it's all irrelevant. I think the time to act as it were (provide support while inwardly thinking 'told you so' :)) is when something triggers her to question. I don't think you can necessarily trigger the questioning. Having said that, a couple of good books on feminism can't hurt.

I started with Caitlin Moran, and Good Night stories for Rebel Girls, for dd (15) it’s not perfect, they still crave male attention. But they are courios, and will see through it eventually

Animal by Sara Pascoe is a really good read for young women with feminist themes.

I read RestingGrinchFace's comment as a critique of 3rd wave.

I read RestingGrinchFace's comment as a critique of 3rd wave.

But surely third wavers think leg shaving is empowering and nothing bad that happens is due to our biological sex...

I dunno, Grinch goes on to say that the priority should be preserving women's rights and empowering women because systematic failures are being disguised. Which does make leg shaving seem trivial in comparison I guess. And also sounds a bit second wavy to me. Although I agree that minimising sex-based oppression as creating a victim profile is quite 3rd wave.

Maybe I'm a bit hard of reading comprehension today (quite possible, been up since 4). Grinch, care to clarify?

Men explain things to me is on my wishlist.

As a man I find myself agreeing a lot more with the earlier feminists than with the current wave. For example, I'd be more inclined to agree with Christina Hogg Sommers than Misandry Mermaid or Jessica Valenti.

Hoff

Christina Hoff Sommers isn't a feminist. She might call herself one but her work is far too focussed on men and men's rights to be classed as what most people understand feminism to be (e.g. about women).
I'm sure men find Hoff Sommers a lot more palatable however.

I remember a speech in which she was talking about how feminists used to break boundaries and how they had an indomitable spirit, and how this was a far cry from today's fragile feminists who need safe spaces and get triggered at the smallest things/opinions.

It was harsh but I couldn't help agree with some of it. I used to work in a fairly senior office job and most of my colleagues were female. I respected these women for being strong and taking no shit, but they weren't the victim types I see so often. A different type of feminist perhaps.