Not Another Substack

This is a quick list of some of my favorite feminist and gender theory texts which have shaped how I think about the impact that the patriarchy has on me (and the impact which I can have on it).

The core idea for guys to grok: The two books below explore the devil’s bargain of the patriarchy: that men are granted agency by giving up their emotional flexibility and sensitivity. Undoing this takes work from both men and women:

• The Will to Change, bell hooks
• I don’t want to talk about it, Terry Real

On the construction of femininity: These two books kicked off the global “second-wave” feminist revolution of the 1960s and are critical for understanding where we are and how we got here:

• The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir
• The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan

Third-wave feminism builds off the previous work by acknowledging that the second-wave feminists were mostly straight white women, and that there are additional structural challenges faced by BIPOC and trans women:

• Thick, Tressie McMillan-Cottom
• Black Feminist Thought, Patricia Hill Collins

On the construction of desire:

• Does Anyone have the Right to Sex?, Amia Srinivasan – quick essay
• Come As You Are, Emily Nagoski
• Pleasure Activism, adrienne marie brown
• Boys and Sex, Sue Ottman
• The History of Sex, Michel Foucault

On androcentrism and the patriarchy:

• Unbound, Kasia Urbaniuk
• I Hate Men, Pauline Harmange – quick essay

Honorable mentions:

• The courage to Raise Good Men, Olga Silverstein
• Mating in Captivity, Esther Perel – not explicitly feminist, but actually very feminist
• Gender Trouble, Judith Butler
• Sexual Personae, Camille Paglia – a spicy countervailing opinion