The Radfem Starter Library (5 books)

Jennifer Lahl

Melinda Tankard Reist

Renate Klein (eds.)

Celebrity couple Kim Kardashian and Kanye West and their sweet new baby Chicago. Tom Daley and Dustin Lance Black and their cute little baby Robert. And thousands of other couples and single people around the world who obtain babies through surrogacy arrangements. The general public is compassionate to their plight and supportive of their 'right' to a baby.

But who are the faceless, nameless women who nurture and give birth to these babies? These women who are left with empty arms and leaking breasts after delivery? Surrogacy-dealing companies call them ‘special angels’ who ‘make miracles possible’, giving ‘an extraordinary gift’. IVF clinics call them ‘gestational surrogates’. The intended parents have promised them healthcare, full reimbursement, and ongoing contact with the baby. What could possibly go wrong?

Everything. Because surrogacy violates the human rights of the women whose bodies are used, and the children who are born. Because it is a fundamentally flawed and misogynist concept to imagine that women are interchangeable. And it is wishful thinking that watertight legal contracts and counselling can fix this.

In this book, strong and courageous women from the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia, India, Austria and Russia share their true stories of becoming 'surrogate' mothers out of kindness and compassion (or need for money), only to be deceived, neglected, abused, harassed, or abandoned by ‘baby buyers’, clinics, and lawyers. Their stories are tragic, shocking, and revelatory of a profit-driven industry that preys on desperation and women’s compassion. 

It becomes clear that it is not the occasional dysfunctional relationship or unreasonable surrogate causing problems in the surrogacy industry. Rather, it is the very nature of surrogacy as well as the surrogacy industry to use and abuse and discard. This book throws down a challenge to Big Fertility and its minions: women are not ovens or suitcases, babies are not products. Love is not to be bought.

2019 | ISBN 9781925581553 | Paperback | 215 x 137 mm | 142 pp

THIS BOOK IS PART OF THE RADFEM STARTER LIBRARY

Caroline Norma , Melinda Tankard Reist (eds)

For too long the global sex industry and its vested interests have dominated the prostitution debate repeating the same old line that sex work is just like any job. In large sections of the media, academia, public policy, Government and the law, the sex industry has had its way. Little is said of the damage, violation, suffering, and torment of prostitution on the body and the mind, nor of the deaths, suicides and murders that are routine in the sex industry.

Prostitution Narratives: Stories of Survival in the Sex Trade refutes the lies and debunks the myths spread by the industry through the lived experiences of women who have survived prostitution. These disturbing stories give voice to formerly prostituted women who explain why they entered the sex trade. They bravely and courageously recount their intimate experiences of harm and humiliation at the hands of sex buyers, pimps and traffickers and reveal their escape and emergence as survivors.

Edited by Caroline Norma and Melinda Tankard Reist, Prostitution Narratives documents the reality of prostitution revealing the cost to the lives of women and girls.

Prostitution Narratives: Stories of Survival in the Sex Trade will strengthen and support the global campaign to abolish prostitution, provide solidarity and solace to those who bear its scars and hopefully help women and girls exit this dehumanising industry.

2016 | ISBN 9781742199863 | Paperback | 200 pp

THIS BOOK IS PART OF THE RADFEM STARTER LIBRARY

Abigail Bray

Misogyny Re-loaded is an explosive manifesto against the resurgent sexual fascism of the new world order. By exposing the casual acceptance of snuff pornography in gore culture through to the framing of rape as slapstick, Abigail Bray links the celebration of sexual sadism to the rise of an authoritarian culture of militarised violence. Arguing that a meaningful collective resistance has been scattered by the mass destruction of genuine social and economic security for ordinary women, Misogyny Re-loaded presents a scathing critique of the political drool of mainstream billionaire-friendly feminism.

Drawing on a wide range of resources from popular culture, literature, economics, psychiatry, psychology, philosophy and environmental science, this book offers a warning about the growing social and environmental threat of an out-of-control military industrial complex.

2013 | 9781876756901 | Paperback | 215 x 138 mm | 161 pp

THIS BOOK IS PART OF THE RADFEM STARTER LIBRARY

Abigail Bray

Melinda Tankard Reist

It is now widely acknowledged that the unprecedented mainstreaming of the global pornography industry is transforming the sexual politics of intimate and public life, popularising new forms of hardcore misogyny, and strongly contributing to the sexualisation of children. Yet challenges to the pornography industry continue to be dismissed as uncool, anti-sex and moral panics.

With contributions from leading world experts and activists, Big Porn Inc offers a cutting edge exposé of the hidden realities of a multi-billion dollar global industry that promotes itself as a fashionable life-style choice.

Unmasking the lies behind the selling of porn as ‘just a bit of fun’ Big Porn Inc reveals the shocking truths of an industry that trades in violence, crime and degradation. This fearless book will change the way you think about pornography forever.

Contributors include: (Australia) Maggie Hamilton, Nina Funnell, Christopher Kendall, Susan Hawthorne, Sheila Jeffreys, Caroline Taylor, Meagan Tyler, Robi Sonderegger, Caroline Norma, Renate Klein, Helen Pringle, Betty McLellan, Melinda Tankard Reist, Abigail Bray, Melinda Liszewski.

(International) Gail Dines, Catharine A MacKinnon, Melissa Farley, Diana Russell, Robert Jensen, Jeffrey Masson, Chyng Sun, Julia Long, Diane L Rosenfeld, Linda Thompson, Hiroshi Nakasatomi, Anne Mayne, Ruchira Gupta, Asja Armanda, Natalie Nenadic, Anna van Heeswijk, Matt McCormack Evans.

2011 | ISBN 9781876756895 | Paperback | 225 x 150 mm | 310 pp

THIS BOOK IS PART OF THE RADFEM STARTER LIBRARY

Diane Bell

Renate Klein

Since the 1960s radical feminists have worked to articulate a vision of the world in which all women are safe and are acknowledged as human beings in their own right. Their projects include Take Back the Night campaigns, establishing women’s refuges, rape crisis centres, health centres, organising against pornography and developing courses in Women’s Studies. The richness of the practice and the theory of radical feminism is often misrepresented or unknown. Radically Speaking tells this important story.

1996 | ISBN 9781875559381 | Paperback | 242 x 176 mm | 654 pp

THIS BOOK IS PART OF THE RADFEM STARTER LIBRARY