Trigger Warning: My Lesbian Feminist Life
“I am in the very fortunate position of having been able to contribute to two waves of feminism: The Women’s Liberation Movement and the new wave that is taking place now.”
Trigger Warning: My Lesbian Feminist Life is both an engaging autobiography and a fascinating account of feminist history. From the heady days of the Women’s Liberation Movement through to the backlash against radical feminism as neoliberal laissez-faire attitudes took hold. Fast forward to the current re-examination of feminism in light of the #MeToo movement and an emerging new wave of radical feminism.
Sheila Jeffreys' bold account makes it clear that the feminism and lesbianism she has championed for decades is needed more than ever. With honesty and frankness, she tells of victories and setbacks in her unrelenting commitment to women’s freedom from men’s violence, especially the violence inherent in pornography and prostitution. We also learn what her steadfastness has cost her in terms of personal and professional rewards.
Trigger Warning places radical feminism within a cultural, social and intellectual context while also taking us on a personal journey. Sheila Jeffreys has tirelessly crossed the globe to advance radical feminist theory and practice and we are invited to share in the intellectual and political crossroads she has encountered during her life.
Accessible yet detailed and rigorous, this landmark volume is essential reading for everyone who has ever wondered what radical feminism really is.
SEPTEMBER 2020 | ISBN 9781925950205 | Paperback | 234 x 153mm | 240 pages
Endorsements
Written in clear and trenchant prose with a decent dose of the author’s great sense of irony, Sheila Jeffreys’ Trigger Warning is an autobiography of intellectual honesty and political courage. Reading this book provides a whole education in lesbian feminism through the eyes and life of one of our leading scholar-activists.
—Janice G. Raymond, author of A Passion for Friends, Women as Wombs and Not a Choice, Not a Job
Trigger Warning: My Lesbian Feminist Life is a compelling account of Sheila Jeffreys’ heroic service in the revolutionary feminist movement. This is the story of a life powered by ideas, which means a life filled with adversity, exhilaration, and the most profound setbacks. The book is a treasure because it accurately describes the evolution of feminist thought in her time. Future generations can rely upon it. It is bound to inspire them. Brava, Sheila, Brava!
—Phyllis Chesler, author of Women and Madness, Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman and A Politically Incorrect Feminist
This is a wonderful account of activism over the last 50 or more years that puts the struggles for women’s liberation into perspective and provides information to many younger women of the background of current arguments about sex versus so-called gender.
—Linda Bellos OBE, socialist, lesbian separatist, campaigner for the rights of women and black political activist
From the sleepy Maltese village of her childhood to the wild beauty of Australian Christmases among the sand dunes, via the ferment of the Women’s Liberation Movement and back again, Sheila Jeffreys takes you on an exhilarating journey through a lesbian feminist life where the personal has been truly political. One of the world’s most important and influential radical feminist thinkers, Jeffreys now reveals herself to be a gifted, thoroughly engaging and sometimes quite hilarious storyteller. No trigger warning from me, rather the ‘Oyez, oyez!’ of the town crier - women, read this book and re-imagine what is possible!
—Julia Long, author of Anti-Porn: The Resurgence of Anti-Pornography Feminism and lesbian feminist scholar and activist
With this engaging, authentic autobiography, Sheila Jeffreys takes us on an extraordinary ride through the ups and downs, the successes and frustrations, of her life as a revolutionary feminist. Have no doubt that her voice will resonate through feminist history for decades to come.
—Betty McLellan, author of Beyond PsychOppression, Unspeakable and Ann Hannah
Sheila Jeffreys' generosity in sharing entertaining personal anecdotes and insights was always a hallmark of her teaching at The University of Melbourne and is fondly remembered by many students. It is wonderful to see so many of these stories reproduced in print. A powerful reminder, not only that the personal is political, but that the political is personal.
—Meagan Tyler, co-editor of Freedom Fallacy and contributor to Big Porn Inc and Prostitution Narratives
Trigger Warning with its inherent double entendre of having one's radical feminism treated as a threat while the reality of women's life stories reveals its power to restore women to their own lives is what Sheila Jeffreys gives us in her own life story. No better use can be found of the personal is political.
—Kathleen Barry, author of Female Sexual Slavery, The Prostitution of Sexuality and Unmaking War, Remaking Men
Watch the Trigger Warning: My Lesbian Feminist Life book launch in conjunction The Women Human Rights Campaign.
Watch this hugely entertaining and inspiring chat with Sheila Jeffreys
There's a new Sheila Jeffreys book in town: Trigger Warning. Her ideas are so triggering, we had to warn our listeners! Godlessness forbid you heard about women's liberation or other frivolous ideas without mental preparation. In this FiLiA podcast, you'll learn about Sheila Jeffreys's life as an activist and her opinions on religion (hint: it's a patriarchal institution), lesbianism, animal liberation and more. She is interviewed by Yağmur Uygarkızı.
“A new wave of feminism is taking place and I never thought I would see one.” Read more on the FiLiA blog.
Reviews
Are we women ready to wake up? Trigger Warning: My Lesbian Feminist Life takes you to the revolutionary feminism of the 1970s to the lush Australian nature, down through the desert of the early 2000s all the way to today. But if you think that this time and space travel will make for a light read, you’ve come to the wrong feminist. As always, Sheila Jeffreys tackles major controversies right on. Trigger warning is an occasion for us all to take stock on our achievements and most importantly where we have regressed. So if instead, you want to know why we women must wake up, why our lives depend on a feminist movement, why we must continue the struggle, read this book.
Read the full review here.
— Yağmur Uygarkızı 30 August 2020 FILIA
Trigger Warning: My Lesbian Feminist Life (2020) is an autobiography that marks Sheila Jeffreys twelfth single-authored book. In it she acknowledges that the radical lesbian feminism she spent decades promoting has been recast beyond recognition as “unsafe,” less by the “moral majority” than by “progressives” who claimed the mantle of feminism for themselves. As an unabashed feminist who exposed this identity theft and the eroticization of women’s inequality, her political opponents demand she be denounced as a risk to their safety. They clamor for her cancelation. Spoiler alert— Jeffreys is more Sapphic than Socratic and thus has no intention of drinking from their poisoned chalice.
Read the full review here.
— R. Amy Elman, Dignity, A Journal on Sexual Exploitation and Violence