Lynne Segal

A personal and political memoir from a leading feminist thinker about interdependence and the importance of caring for each other Longtime feminist activist and writer Lynne Segal searches for hope in her own life and in the world around her, and finds it in our intimate commitments to each other and our shared collective engagements, the two being intertwined. Issues of care, intimacy, education, alongside meaningful work, and social engagement, lie at the core of our ability to understand the world and its possibilities for human flourishing. Not only does our dependence on others not disappear into self-sufficient autonomy once we leave childhood behind–only to re-emerge in very old age–but ignoring human interdependence and our lifelong need for care has been part of a massive and destructive public denial that must be resisted. Segal looks at our shared lifelong dependence on care and the well-being of others. In recounting from her own life the moments of motherhood, and of being on the front line of second wave feminism, Segal draws upon lessons from more than half a century of engagement in Left feminist politics, with its underlying commitment to building a more egalitarian and nurturing world. The personal and the political combine in this rallying cry to radically transform how we approach education, motherhood, and our everyday vulnerabilities of disability, ageing and enhanced needs. Finally, Segal insists that only by confronting head on these different forms of interdependence and care can we change the ways that we think about the environment and how we must struggle, together, against impending climate catastrophe.

The Politics of Radical Care

Lean on Me

Elaine Showalter

A brave book with a polemical argument on the paradoxes, struggles and advantages of aging. How old am I? Don’t ask, don’t tell. As the baby boomers approach their sixth or seventh decade, they are faced with new challenges and questions of politics and identity. In the footsteps of Simone de Beauvoir, Out of Time looks at many of the issues facing the aged—the war of the generations and baby-boomer bashing, the politics of desire, the diminished situation of the older woman, the space on the left for the presence and resistance of the old, the problems of dealing with loss and mortality, and how to find victory in survival.

The Pleasures and the Perils of Ageing

Out of Time

In an age of increasing individualism, we have never been more alone and miserable. But what if the true nature of happiness can only be found in others? In Radical Happiness, leading feminist thinker Lynne Segal believes that we have lost the art of radical happiness, the art of transformative, collective joy. She shows that only in the revolutionary potential of coming together it is that we can come to understand the powers of flourishing.

Moments of Collective Joy

Radical Happiness

Making Trouble

An examination of feminist thinking on sexuality over the past twenty-five years and an exploration of sex in our culture tackles major questions head on and considers whether women must choose between sexuality and selfhood

Rethinking the Politics of Pleasure

Straight Sex

Segal, a British psychologist and feminist, explores the different types of male identities--macho, Black, gay, and anti-sexist--and examines how these identities are produced, reproduced, and transformed. She contends that it is of central importance to understand the differences between men and how the changes in male identities have occurred. Only with this understanding can a non- repressive sexual agenda be constructed for the future. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Changing Masculinities, Changing Men

Slow Motion

Why Feminism?

A profound and sympathetic investigation of ageing, in life and literature. In Out of Time, leading thinker Lynne Segal examines her life and surveys the work and lives of other writers and artists to explore the pleasures and perils of growing old. Following in the footsteps of Simone de Beauvoir—who in her mid-fifties mourned 'never again!' and yet was energetically writing in her sixties and seventies—Segal mixes memoir, literature and polemic to examine the inevitable consequences of staying alive. Who is that stranger who stares back from the mirror? What happens to ambition and sexuality? As millions of baby boomers approach their sixth or seventh decade, these questions are becoming increasingly urgent. Must the old always be in conflict with the young? How can we deal with the inevitability of loss and find victory in survival? Brilliant, moving and challenging, Out of Time is an urgent and necessary corrective to the assumptions and taboos that constrain the lives of the aged.

rethinking the politics of pleasure

Straight sex

Mary McIntosh

Essays by well-known feminists explore the issues of feminism and censorship, anti-pornography feminism, and the tendency of recent feminist debates about sexuality to focus on questions relating to pornography

Sexuality and the Pornography Debate

Sex Exposed

A manifesto of sexual liberation, from the leading feminist thinker. Is heterosexual sex inherently damaging to women? This is the central question of Straight Sex, Lynne Segal’s account of twentyfive years of feminist thinking on sexuality. Covering the thought of sixties-era sexual liberationists, alongside the ensuing passionate debates over sex and love within feminist and lesbian communities, Segal covers certain shifts toward greater sexual conservatism in the eighties. Straight Sex examines an array of issues, including sex as a subversive activity, the “liberated orgasm,” sex advice literature, gender uncertainties, queer politics, anti-pornography campaigns and the rise of the moral right.

Feminism and the Family

Correspondence and reports produced when working for Harper & Row in 1985-1987 and when working as a freelance editor, 1992-1995. A report on an early manuscript of Helen Demidenko's "The hand that signed the paper", expressing serious objections to it, is included, as is some correspondence with Allen & Unwin regarding this publication.

Papers of Lynne Segal

What is to be Done about the Family?

Over the past twenty years debates about pornography have raged within feminism and beyond. Throughout the 1970s feminists increasingly addressed the problem of men's sexual violence against women, and many women reduced the politics of men's power to questions about sexuality. By the 1980s these questions had become more and more focused on the issue of pornography--now a metaphor for the menace of male power. Collapsing feminist politics into sexuality and sexuality into pornography has not only caused some of the deepest splits between feminists, but made it harder to think clearly about either sexuality or pornography--indeed, about feminist politics more generally. This provocative collection, by well-known feminists, surveys these arguments, and in particular asks why recent feminist debates about sexuality keep reducing to questions of pornography.

Written by the author of Is the Future Female? , this work looks at the ongoing feminist pessimism about men and male power. It has been revised throughout, and has a new introduction updating the debate surrounding masculinity. Throughout the 1980s, questions concerning the changing nature of men's lives and experiences have been debated with new passion and concern. From the exploration of sex roles to the study of gender and power, the psychology of men has emerged fraught with strain and crisis. Ironically, the thoughts of those seeking sexual politics to undermine men's power over women remain consistently gloomy, while the category of masculinity seems monolithic and secure. This book approaches the problem of men in a new way by not looking at masculinity, but at specific masculinities . From tough guys and martial men to camp, gay and super-macho, their differing roles are analyzed. The author argues that men can and do change, and that if we are to move on, it is vital we recognise and build on these changes, and construct a vision of a non-repressive sexual agenda for both men and women.

What happens when angry young rebels become wary older women, ageing in a leaner, meaner time: a time which exalts only the ‘new’, in a ruling orthodoxy daily disparaging all it portrays as the ‘old’? Delving into her own life and those of others who left their mark on it, Lynne Segal tracks through time to consider her generation of female dreamers, what formed them, how they left their mark on the world, where they are now in times when pessimism seems never far from what remains of public life. Searching for answers, she studies her family history, sexual awakening, ethnic belonging, as well as the peculiarities of the time and place that shaped her own political journeys, with all their urgency, significance, pleasures and absurdities.

Life and Politics

Author "challenges many of the current feminist orthodoxies of war and peace, female sexuality, pornography, psychoanalysis and sociobiology."--Jacket.

Troubled Thoughts on Contemporary Feminism

Is the Future Female?

Sheila Rowbotham

Hilary Wainwright

"The last decade has seen the women's movement gain strength among all classes of society. At the same time, the left has too often floundered, as fragmented groups of party liberals and leftists struggle against a growing right-wing trend. There's an important reason for all of this, say the authors. It lies in the very different structure of the women's movement as compared to that of most socialist organizations. This book shows what the left must learn if it is to become an effective force for grassroots change."--

Lynne Segal

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