Once confident in the potential of feminism to create a more equitable and just society, Daphne Patai persuasively demonstrates in Heterophobia how the efforts of some feminists - members of what she calls the "sexual harassment industry" - have created an environment that stifles healthy and natural interactions between the sexes. The tremendous growth of sexual harassment legislation represents feminism's greatest contemporary success, but this victory has dubious consequences - a world where kindergarten boys face legal action for kissing female classmates and men are sued by coworkers for offenses such as unwanted hugs, uninvited compliments, or glances that last too long.

This book challenges the belief that female virginity can be reliably and unambiguously defined, tested and verified. Kelly analyses a variety of medieval Western European texts - including medical treatises and their Classical antecedents - and historical and legal documents. The main focus is the representation of both male and female virgins in saints' legends and romances. The author also makes a comparative study of examples from contemporary fiction, television and film in which testing virginity is a theme. Performing Virginity and Testing Chastity in the Middle Ages presents a compelling and provocative study of the parodox of bodily and spiritual integrity as both presence and absence.

The common theme in this collection is rejection of assimilation, an embrace of boundary living, and a commitment to women's invention of women at and beyond the limits of patriarchy.

In this compellingly honest collection of her writings, renowned feminist philosopher Claudia Card courageously explores the complex ethical and political questions lesbians face, considering these issues in regard to their identities and relationships both within and outside of lesbian communities. Lesbian Choices is written with a grace and clarity that readers inside and outside academia will appreciate. Claudia Card's lucid presentation of complicated philosophical and ethical concepts offers a better understanding of the explosive issue of gender construction in our society. Lesbian Choices is recommended reading for anyone interested in lesbianism, feminism, ethics, and philosophy.

Noting that though Christian thought has consistently held virginity to be purer than married life, a virgin woman has always queer been in social terms, Jankowsky (English, Washington State U.) explores the tensions behind the many representations of virgin women in English stage plays from 1590 to about 1670 and how those representations can be considered queer. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR

What drives young women and what drives them mad? Twentysomething women talk about their feminism. What they do, how they do it and why they choose to do it as feminists. Exploring a range of personal and political experiences, this collection defines the landscape in which young women stake their claim to feminism. The private collides with the public, anger with humour, desire with ideals. Writing themselves into the debate, these young women are 'talking up'. Covering a diversity of themes including relationships between older and younger women (and feminists), experiences of young migrant women, feminist activism, the marginalisation of non-white and lesbian women, the emerging role of young women in corporate, legal and educational institutions. Although young women have been publicly silent, they are neither indifferent, nor dispassionate about feminism. This book shows the diversity and depth of young women's ideas.

This volume of essays examines early, primarily nineteenth-century, examples of science. fiction. The essays focus particularly on how this fiction engages with such contemporary issues as exploration, the development of science and social planning. Several of the writers discussed (Mary Shelley, Poe, Verne, Wells) have been proposed by literary historians as the founders of science fiction. The aim in these essays, however, is not to privilege one individual, but rather to look at the gradual convergence of a number of different genres and at the process of continuing influence of one writer on his/her successor. The collection strikes a balance between a discussion of the established names within the field and less well known works such as Symzonia and The Battle of Darking. The volume concludes with a consideration of the utopias and dystopias of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

White Self-Criticality beyond Anti-racism powerfully emphasizes the significance of humility, vulnerability, anxiety, questions of complicity, and how being a “good white” is implicated in racial injustice. This collection sets a new precedent for critical race scholarship and critical whiteness studies to take into consideration what it means specifically to be a white problem rather than simply restrict scholarship to the problem of white privilege and white normative invisibility. Ultimately, the text challenges the contemporary rhetoric of a color-blind or color-evasive world in a discourse that is critically engaging and sophisticated, accessible, and persuasive.

In this book, Jacquelyn N. Zita questions the assumptions of heterosexual society, queer theory, postmodernism, and lesbian feminism in order to investigate the relationship between power, knowledge, identity formation, and the body.

This valuable book for teens and their parents offers vivid portraits by 150 women, who tell of their "first time". By sharing their stories, they offer a much-needed woman's perspective and impart a heartfelt widsom that can lead to positive, healthy discussions of sexuality between parents and teens.