I recommend these two books [both by Jessica Valenti] because, not only are they interesting and infuriating, but I gave them to a friend who didn’t really see the point of feminism today. These two books set her on the path of patriarchy blaming.

This book list was a great idea! I look forward to reading some of the ones others have suggested.

Also: OurBodies OurSelves. Again, for burgeoning blamers, this volume (while mayhap invoking nervous giggles) successfully allows the concept that one’s body is not, in fact, vile.

+++ All Atwood titles, Deborah Tannen’s early work on communication (for those interested in such), Greer’s “Female Eunuch”

Reading this atm and it’s a- mazing. I think Twisty should write an updated, relevant- to- today version of something like this! At the moment we have ‘Noughty Girls’ on the shelves. Yes, *barf*

Witchcraze, by Anne Llewellyn Barstow. This one’s for anyone who thinks women as a group have never been the target of genocide.

Anyway, I recommend Transforming a Rape Culture, edited by Emilie Buchwald, Pamela Fletcher, and Martha Roth. (I always feel like, when ever name-your-favorite-feminist-book lists come up, that I’m the only one who’s ever heard of it.)

It’s a collection of essays, many by recognizable names, about the existing rape culture and hoping for its demise.

For children’s books, there’s no better source than Letterbox Library, run by a co-operative of women who started up some 25 years ago when then could not find good books for their children. If you’re UK based, please shop there instead of at Medusa.com. Maybe postage would discourage imports to USA, but a unique reference all the same.
http://www.letterboxlibrary.com/acatalog/index.html

Just found your blog. There goes another hour a week.

I definitely agree with Meghan and some others who mentioned The Handmaid’s Tale, works of fiction are really important too! One of the most awesome papers I’ve written yet for school was on Handmaid’s Tale and LHoD. I would also look up the short fiction of one Meghan McCarron, especially “The Flying Woman.”

In addition to having been pleasantly enlightened by “Dialectics of Sex” (thanks for finally getting me to read it, Twisty) I agree with TwissB that Ehrenreich and English’s “For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts’ Advice to Women” is pretty eye opening. Alexandra says read Germaine Greer’s “The Female Eunuch” and I thought it was fantastic. I just read Amanda Marcotte’s “It’s a Jungle” which has the usual straight-ahead razor-sharp analysis you expect from her combined with awesomely snarky survival suggestions.

Some other books that haven’t been mentioned:
Rachel Maines’ “The Technology of Orgasm: ‘Hysteria,’ the Vibrator, and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction (Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology)” is a serious sleeper that digs deeper into the same medical sexism Erenreich and English do, plus a seriously painful-if-you’re-a-man dissection of heteronormativity, phallocentrism, and plain old dude-itude.

Then there’s Stephanie Coontz’s “Marriage, a History,” which pretty thoroughly dismantles… well… *everybody’s* stereotypes of what “traditional” marriage even was, assuming there ever was such a thing. (Startling but supported claim: the ancient Greeks, while obviously not at all anti-patriarchs, switched to democracy in part to break the hold of then-dominant patterns of alliances through patriarchal marriage. Go figure!)

I’m not sure Joan Sewell’s “I’d Rather Eat Chocolate” would meet the Twisty separatist standard but it’s a pretty cool, very personal analysis of the “what’s wrong with us/you women’s libido” industry and offers some interesting experiments in asexuality as an alternative to separatism.

bell hooks’ “Feminism is for Everyone” is great because it’s short, it uses small words, and its pretty accessible to people who want or need a first-time introduction to the variety of ways to get into feminism.

I don’t know if “Fat is a Feminist Issue” is still respected but when I read it back in the 1980s the unapologetic connection they made between weight, space, presence, and power gave me a heck of a lot to think about.

And by the way, just before I found this post, Twisty, I mentioned over at my place that I was interested in feminist books that would be suitable for my eight-year-old daughter and, for that matter, eleven-year-old son and their elementary-school classmates. So far I’ve got one person who said her mom gave her easy-reader biographies of first-wave feminists, which is actually a pretty great idea, but other than that it’s been other people saying “hey if you hear of any good ones let me know.” So anyway, even though it’s not necessarily down a spinster aunt’s alley I’m wondering can you recommend some good books or authors for young people?