Books
This section lists books that are directly relevant to Gender Identity politics and the feminist Gender Critical viewpoint. Other sections below feature books on the wider Feminist movement.
Most books can be ordered online at News from Nowhere Radical and Community Bookshop, which is run by a women’s cooperative. When available we have linked to NFN and otherwise to bookshop.org. Other booksellers are available.
For out-of-print books, try sourcing via justbooks.co.uk
Gender Critical Feminism
Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality by Helen Joyce
Biological sex is no longer accepted as a basic fact of life. It is forbidden to admit that female people sometimes need protection and privacy from male ones. In an analysis that is at once expert, sympathetic and urgent, Helen Joyce offers an antidote to the chaos and cancelling
Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism by Kathleen Stock
A timely and trenchant critique of the influential theory that we all have an inner feeling known as a gender identity, and that this feeling is more socially significant than our biological sex. Looks at biological sex in a range of important contexts, including women-only spaces and resources, healthcare, epidemiology, political organization and data collection
Feminism for Women: The Real Route to Liberation by Julie Bindel
Why is feminism the only social justice movement in the world that is expected to prioritise every other issue before pursuing its own objective of women’s liberation? Why does the movement appear to be moving backwards, accommodating the rights and feelings of men and leaving women in the cold
Transgender Body Politics by Heather Brunskell-Evans
At a time when supposedly enlightened attitudes are championed by the mainstream, philosopher and activist Heather Brunskell-Evans shows how, in plain view under the guise of liberalism, a regressive men’s rights movement is posing a massive threat to the human rights of women and children everywhere
Unfair Play: The Battle for Women’s Sports by Sharron Davies & Craig Lord
Biological males are being allowed to compete directly against women under the guise of trans ‘self-ID’, a development that could destroy the integrity of female sport. This callous indifference towards women in sport, argue the authors, is merely the latest stage in a decades-long history of sexism on the part of sport’s higher-ups
Gender-Critical Feminism by Holly Lawford-Smith
Introduces and defends gender-critical feminism, a theory and movement that reclaims the sex/gender distinction, insists upon the reality and importance of sex, and continues to understand gender as a way that men and women are made to be, rather than a way they really are
Transpositions: Personal Journeys into Gender Criticism ed by Sarah Phillimore & Al Peters
A collection of narratives from women and men about how they first became aware of the brewing conflict around ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ and how they decided to make their voices heard.
A Feminist View of Gender Identity Politics by Rosemary Goude
Gender is what feminism has critiqued for decades, so the recent concept of gender identity as something to be chosen and celebrated is a strange one for feminists. Available by emailing: nfn@newsfromnowhere.org.uk or on Ebay
Defending Women’s Spaces by Karen Ingala Smith
This trenchant critique argues that we cannot ignore the wealth of evidence which shows that people of the female sex have a unique set of needs which are often not met by mixed-sex spaces. Drawing on her 30 years of experience the author outlines how certain spaces, including refuges, benefit from remaining single sex – and what they stand to lose.
Detransition: Beyond Before and After by Max Robinson
“Trying to prevent myself from committing suicide by becoming less recognizably female was an attempt at resistance that, politically, functioned in many ways as a form of capitulation.” A far-reaching discussion of women’s struggles to survive under patriarchy, which draws upon a legacy of radical and lesbian feminist ideas.
Hags: the Demonisation of Middle-Aged Women by Victoria Smith
As identity politics have taken hold, middle-aged women have found themselves talked and written about as morally inferior beings: the face of bigotry, entitlement and selfishness, to be ignored, pitied or abused. Care work, beauty, violence, political organization and sex are explored in relation to middle-aged women’s beliefs, bodies, histories and choices.
Transsexual Transgender Transhuman: Dispatches from The 11th Hour by Jennifer Bilek
Traces the evolution of transsexualism from a personal fetish into an industry that commodifies human reproductive sex, particularly womanhood, divorcing it from its biological roots and its connection to the environment. Bilek exposes the technological and financial motivations behind a political agenda masquerading as a human rights movement.
Women's Rights, Gender Wrongs: The Global Impact of Gender-Identity Ideology ed Kath Aiken and Sally Wainwright
An international perspective on the global spread of gender-identity ideology's effect on all aspects of women's private, political and professional lives, discussing women's human rights, lesbians, sports, surrogacy, prostitution, prisons, shelters, spirituality, single sex spaces and education.
Doublethink: a Feminist Challenge to Transgenderism by Janice Raymond
Illuminates the 'doublethink' of a transgender movement that is able to define men as women, women as men, he as she, dissent as heresy, science as sham, and critics as fascists. The medicalisation of gender dissatisfaction has today expanded into the transgender industrial complex built on big medicine, big pharma and big banks.
Tough Crowd: How I Made and Lost a Career in Comedy by Graham Linehan
An emotionally charged memoir, in turns hilarious and harrowing. Half about the craft of comedy writing, half about why he chose the hill of women and girls' rights to die on - and why, despite the hardship of cancellation, he's not coming down from it any time soon.
Gender Hurts: a Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism by Sheila Jeffreys
Explores the effects of transgenderism on the lesbian and gay community, the partners of people who transgender, children who are identified as transgender and the people who transgender themselves, and argues that these are negative. In doing so the book contends that the phenomenon is based upon sex stereotyping, referred to as 'gender' - a conservative ideology that forms the foundation for women's subordination.
Hounded: Women, Harms and the Gender Wars by Jenny Lindsay
Award-winning poet and essayist, whose own 'hounding' offers a unique perspective, charts the often hidden and unspoken harms women face for prioritising and defending sex-based language and rights. Outlines the array of tactics used by opponents against such women, as well as the resilience required to refuse to be silenced
The Women Who Wouldn't Wheesht: Voices from the Front-Line of Scotland's Battle for Women's Rights ed by Susan Dalgety and Lucy Hunter-Blackburn
How a grassroots women's movement, harking back to the suffragettes and second wave feminists of the 1970s and 1980s, took on the political establishment - and changed the course of history. Thirty essays by J K Rowling, Joanna Cherry, Ash Regan et al.
Born in the Right Body: Gender Identity Ideology from a Medical and Feminist Perspective by Isidora Sanger
The oppression of women was in the past justified with metaphysical theories about women's brains and the innate nature of gender stereotypes. Now we have the idea that feminine males and masculine females were "born in the wrong body" and that their psychological distress can be cured by medical and surgical procedures designed to make them resemble the opposite sex.
The Politicization of Mumsnet by Sarah Pedersen
Subjects encompass politics, feminism and current affairs, and, in its support for free speech, it has become a space where gender-critical feminists have been able to share information and make plans for action.
Feminism
End of Equality by Beatrix Campbell
Among liberal thinkers, there is an optimistic belief that men and women are on a cultural journey toward equality. But observation and evidence tell us that in many ways this progress has stopped – and in some cases even reversed. Beatrix Campbell, argues that even as the patriarchy has lost some of its legitimacy, new inequalities are emerging in our culture.
Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez
From government policy and medical research, to technology, workplaces, and the media. Invisible Women reveals how in a world built for and by men we are systematically ignoring half of the population, often with disastrous consequences
Do It Like a Woman … and Change the World by Caroline Criado-Perez
Doing anything ‘like a woman’ used to be an insult. Now, as the women in this book show, it means being brave, speaking out, and taking risks, changing the world one step at a time
We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Drawing extensively on her own experiences and her deep understanding of the often masked realities of sexual politics, here is one remarkable author’s exploration of what it means to be a woman now – an of-the-moment rallying cry for why we should all be feminists
The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer
Drawing liberally from history, literature and popular culture, past and present, Germaine Greer’s searing examination of women’s oppression is at once an important social commentary and a passionately argued masterpiece of polemic.
Sexual Politics by Kate Millett
Identifying patriarchy as a socially conditioned belief system masquerading as nature, Millett demonstrates in detail how its attitudes and systems penetrate literature, philosophy, psychology, and politics. A new introduction to this edition draws attention to some of the forms patriarchy has taken recently in consolidating its oppressive and dangerous control.
Everyday Sexism by Laura Bates
‘From being harassed and wolf-whistled at on the street, to discrimination in the workplace and serious sexual assault, it is clear that sexism had become normalised. But Bates inspires women to lead a real change and writes this ‘extremely powerful book that could, and should, win hearts and minds right across the spectrum’ (Financial Times)
Fix the System, Not the Women by Laura Bates
Too often, we blame women. For walking home alone at night. For not demanding a seat at the table. For not overcoming the odds that are stacked against them. This distracts us from the real problem: the failings and biases of a society that was not built for women
Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism by Mary Daly
Mary Daly’s Intergalactic Introduction explores her process as a Crafty Pirate on the Journey of Writing Gyn/Ecology and reveals the autobiographical context of this “Thunderbolt of Rage” that she first hurled against the patriarchs in 1979 and hurled again in the Re-Surging Movement of Radical Feminism in the Be-Dazzling Nineties.
Not Dead Yet: Feminism, Passion and Women’s Liberation ed by Renate Klein & Susan Hawthorne
Fifty-six women who participated in the Women’s Liberation Movement from the 1960s onwards describe how they have contributed in multitudinous ways across politics, the arts, health, education, environmentalism, economics and science and created wonderfully rebellious activism.
Sex and Gender: a Contemporary Reader ed by Alice Sullivan and Selina Todd
How and why sex matters, addressing questions such as: Is sex binary? What is a woman? Why do we need data on sex? Topics include sports, feminism, sex and inequality, sex-based rights, puberty suppression, criminal justice and gender dysphoria.
Sexed: a History of British Feminism by Susanna Rustin
Starting in the revolutionary 1790s and ending in the present day, she introduces radicals, suffragists, the first female MPs, as well as activists such as the Greenham women and the Black and Asian women’s groups of the 1970s and 1980s.
Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
Uncompromising, angry and yet full of hope, this collection of her essential prose - essays, speeches, letters, interviews - explores race, sexuality, poetry, friendship, the erotic and the need for female solidarity, and includes her landmark piece 'The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House'.
The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
A landmark in the history of feminism, first published 1949. Liberation, de Beauvoir argues, entails challenging traditional perceptions of the social relationship between the sexes and, crucially, in achieving economic independence.
Backlash: the Undeclared War Against Women by Susan Faludi
Analyses the 1980s backlash against the women's liberation movement, which arguably created a void in feminist understanding of women's oppression and gender roles, and later allowed gender identity ideology to fill the gap. In a bizarre twist, Faludi's violent father went on to have ‘sex reassignment’ surgery.
Give Birth Like a Feminist: Your Body, Your Baby, Your Choices by Milli Hill
Birth is a feminist issue. Finally blasting the feminist spotlight into the labour ward, Hill insists that birth is no longer left off the list in discussions about female power, control and agency. She has been ostracized from birthing support services due to her insistence that obstetric violence is violence against women, and that the word ‘woman’ must not be erased.
Ain't I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism by bell hooks
Examines how black women, from the seventeenth century to the present day, were and are oppressed by both white men and black men and by white women, and that racism and sexism are inextricably linked.
Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution by Adrienne Rich
Revolutionised how women thought about motherhood and their own liberation when first published in 1976. Poet and feminist Adrienne Rich examines the patriarchal systems and institutions that define motherhood and are imposed on all women.
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft
A classic feminist text, first published 1792, arguing for the education of women and for an increased female contribution to society.
Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics by bell hooks
'Simply put, feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.' Topics include reproductive rights, sexual violence, race, class and work. hooks encourages us to demand alternatives to patriarchal, racist and homophobic culture and thereby to seek out a different future.
(Un)kind: How ‘Be Kind’ Entrenches Sexism by Victoria Smith
Argues that the pressure of kindness culture on women and girls has been incorporated into the 'work' of feminism. Kindness culture supports the backlash against feminism while claiming to represent feminism's - and women's - true nature. It is, at heart, unkind.
This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color ed by Cherrie Moraga & Gloria Anzaldua
Originally published 1981, a pioneering, foundational text of black feminism, as it emerged towards the end of the 20thC. Personal essays, criticism, interviews, testimonials, poetry, and visual art.
Sister in Law: Fighting for Justice in a System Designed by Men by Harriet Wistrich
Explores landmark cases demonstrating that, terrifyingly often, the law is not-fit-for-purpose for half the population and shines a feminist light on the landscape of arcane laws and systems skewed towards men.
A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
Originally published 1981, a pioneering, foundational text of black feminism, as it emerged towards the end of the 20thC. Personal essays, criticism, interviews, testimonials, poetry, and visual art.
Identity Politics
The New Puritans: How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World by Andrew Doyle
Leading a cultural revolution driven by identity politics and so-called ‘social justice’, the new puritanism movement is best understood as a religion – one that makes grand claims to moral purity and tolerates no dissent. Its disciples even have their own language, rituals and a determination to root out sinners through what has become known as ‘cancel culture’
The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity by Douglas Murray
One of the few writers who dares to counter the prevailing view and question the dramatic changes in our society – from gender reassignment for children to the impact of transgender rights on women – Murray’s penetrating book clears a path of sanity through the fog of our modern predicament
The End of the World is Flat by Simon Edge
Can Mel and her fellow heretics – vilified as ‘True-Earth Rejecting Globularists’ (Tergs) – thwart Orange Peel before insanity takes over? Might the solution to the problem lie in the 15th century? Using his trademark mix of history and satire to poke fun at modern foibles, Simon Edge is at his razor-sharp best in a caper that may be more relevant than you think
Mania by Lionel Shriver
A scathing satire. When best friends Pearson and Emory find themselves on opposing sides of a new culture war over intelligence, their relationship begins to fracture. Soon, Pearson's determination to cling onto the 'old, bigoted way of thinking' begins to endanger her job, her safety and even her family.
Cynical Theories by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay
How activist scholarship made everything about race, gender and identity - and why this harms everybody.
Gay Shame: The Rise of Gender Ideology and the New Homophobia by Gareth Roberts
Homophobia is making a major comeback under the guise of the ideology of 'gender identity'. The enforcers of this new creed insist that attraction to people of the same sex is 'hateful'. They argue that effeminate men and butch women can't just be gay, but must 'really' be trans. How and why was the older gay-rights activism, which gifted such progress to homosexual people, hijacked?
Eco-Feminism & Environmentalism
Climate Justice: A Man-Made Problem With a Feminist Solution by Mary Robinson
Powerful and deeply humane, Climate Justice is a stirring manifesto on one of the most pressing humanitarian issues of our time, and a lucid, affirmative, and well-argued case for hope
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
This book exposed the hazards of the pesticide DDT, eloquently questioned humanity’s faith in technological progress and helped set the stage for the environmental movement. Carson, a renowned nature author and a former marine biologist was uniquely equipped to create so startling and inflammatory a book
Unbowed: My Autobiography by Wangari Maathai
in 1977, Maathai established the Green Belt Movement, which spread from Kenya across Africa, and which helps restore indigenous forests while assisting rural women by paying them to plant trees in their villages. Eventually her achievement was internationally recognized in the Nobel Peace Prize, awarded in recognition of her ‘contribution to sustainable development, human rights, and peace’.
Fighting the Banana Wars and Other Fairtrade Battles by Harriet Lamb
GPEW's new CEO explains how the fairtrade movement took on the corporate giants to change the world.
How Women Can Save the Planet by Anne Karpf
IShines a light on the radical ideas, compelling research and tireless campaigns, led by and for women around the world, that have inspired her to hope. Her conversations with female activists show how we can fight back, with strength in diversity.
Ecofeminism: Feminist Intersections with Other Animals and the Earth by Carol J Adams
Engages with intersections of gender, sexuality, gender expression, race, disability, and species to address the various ways that sexism, heteronormativity, racism, colonialism, and ableism are informed by and support animal oppression.
Ecofeminism by Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva
Is there a relationship between patriarchal oppression and the destruction of nature in the name of profit and progress? How can women counter the violence inherent in these processes?
Why Women Will Save the Planet by Friends
of the Earth
Showcases key voices in the environmental and feminist movements, which collectively demonstrate
both the need for women's empowerment for climate action and the powerful change it can bring.
Small Wonder by Barbara Kingsolver
Whether contemplating her vegetable garden, motherhood, adolescence, genetic engineering
or the history of civil rights, she is grounded in the belief that our largest problems have grown from
the earth's remotest corners as well as our own backyards, and that answers lie in those places, too.
Out of the Darkness: Greenham Voices 1981-2000 by Kate Kerrow & Rebecca Mordan
In 1981, a group of women marched from Cardiff to the Greenham Common RAF base in Newbury to protest the siting of US nuclear missiles. The Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp stayed there for twenty years, the largest, most effective woman-led protest since the Suffrage campaign. Here the women of Greenham share their recollections, explore how they organised, and uncover the non-violent ways they challenged the military in the name of peace.
Coming Back to Life: the Work That Reconnects by Joanna Macy & Molly Brown
Updated edition of the classic text which offers inspiration, practices, and meditations to empower us in the face of planetary suffering and points the way forward out of apathy.
Pornography, Prostitution, Sexual Exploitation, VAWG
The Undercover Police Scandal : The story of state-sponsored deception, by the women who uncovered the shocking truth by Alison, Belinda, Helen Steel, Lisa, Naomi
Groomed. Gaslighted. Ghosted. They thought they’d found their soulmate. They had no idea he was spying on them. This is the story of five women whose lives were stolen by state-sponsored spies, and who, one by one, uncovered the shocking truth.
Pornography: Men Possessing Women by Andrea Dworkin
This strongly argued feminist case against pornography stirred tremendous controversy when published in 1979, and has lost none of its bite. Dworkin lobbies for municipal statutes declaring pornography a violation of women’s civil rights, insists that pornography links sex and violence by incorporating violent domination of women as a key element of sexual fantasy
Sex Dolls, Robots and Woman Hating: The Case for Resistance by Caitlin Roper
Exposes the inherent misogyny in the trade. From doll owners enacting violence and torture on their dolls, men choosing their dolls over their wives, dolls made in the likeness of specific women and the production of child sex abuse dolls, sex dolls and robots pose a serious threat to the status of women and girls.
Cut: FGM in Britain Today by Hibo Wardere
FGM in the UK has gone undocumented for too long and now that’s going to change. Devastating, empowering and informative, this book brings to life a clash of cultures at the heart of contemporary society and shows how female genital mutilation is a very British problem
Pimp State: Sex, Money and the Future of Equality by Kat Banyard
Prostitution is just work, porn is fantasy, demand is inevitable; so fully legalise the sex trade and it can be made safe. Kat Banyard contends that these are profoundly dangerous myths. Sexual consent is not a commodity, objectification and abuse are inherent to prostitution, and the sex trade poses a grave threat to the struggle for women’s equality..
Men Who Hate Women: From incels to pickup artists, the truth about extreme misogyny and how it affects us all by Laura Bates
Imagine a world in which a vast network of incels and other misogynists are able to operate, virtually undetected. These extremists commit deliberate terrorist acts against women. Vulnerable teenage boys are groomed and radicalised. You don’t have to imagine that world. You already live in it
“He Chose Porn over Me”: Women Harmed by Men Who Use Porn by Melinda Tankard Reist
Shattering the popular myth that porn is harmless, the personal accounts of 25 brave women in He Chose Porn over Me reveal the real-life trauma experienced by women at the hands of their porn-consuming partners; men who were supposed to care for them.
Woman Hating by Andrea Dworkin
Dworkin's blazing, prophetic debut argued that a deep-rooted hatred of women has been ingrained in society for centuries - and still governs us today. From fairy tales to erotic novels to witch-burnings, she uncovers the ways in which male violence and oppression have been normalized throughout history, and points the way to liberation.
Surviving Sexual Violence by Liz Kelly
Covers the experience of sexual violence over women's lifetimes, based on interviews with 60 women. Highlights ways in which the media, criminal justice system and other professions contribute to the trivialization of sexual violence, and demonstrates the necessity of women organizing collectively to end this suffering.
Home Grown: How Domestic Violence Turns Men into Terrorists by Joan Smith
Terrorism is seen as a special category of crime that has blinded us to the obvious - that it is, almost always, male violence. The extraordinary link between so many tragic recent attacks is that the perpetrators have practised in private before their public outbursts.
Living With the Dominator: a Book About the Freedom Programme by Pat Craven
A guide to recognising controlling, violent and abusive behaviour, and placing it in a social context.
Paid For: My Journey Through Prostitution by Rachel Moran
Rachel came from a troubled family background. Taken into State care at fourteen, she became homeless and got involved in prostitution aged fifteen. At the age of 22 she managed, with remarkable strength, to liberate herself from that life and wrote this memoir.
Children & Young People
Irreversible Damage: Teenage Girls and the Transgender Craze by Abigail Shrier
Groups of female friends in schools across the world are coming out as ‘transgender’. Most have never expressed any discomfort in their biological sex until they hear a coming out story from a speaker at a school assembly or discover the internet community of trans influencers. ‘Gender-affirming’ therapists now recommend medical interventions for them.
Time to Think: the Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children by Hannah Barnes
In the last decade more than a thousand children have been referred for medication to block their puberty. At the same time the profile of the patients has changed from largely pre-pubescent boys to mostly adolescent girls. In the words of some former staff, there has been a serious medical scandal, in which ideological concerns took priority over clinical practice.
Secrets and Silence: Uncovering the Legacy of the Cleveland Child Sexual Abuse Case by Beatrix Campbell
Uncovered government documents show how medical evidence of childhood rape identified by pioneering paediatricians was deemed credible but ‘dangerous’. This cover-up has framed policy making and public opinion and has had profound consequences for children, professionals, justice and the state.
Transgender Children and Young People: Born in Your Own Body ed by Michele Moore and Heather Brunskell-Evans
A collection of essays about the theory and practice of transgendering children. Contributors contest the concept of ‘the transgender child’, contending that it is politics, not science, which accounts for the exponential rise in the number of children diagnosed as transgender by gender identity clinics. One of the first books to be published on this subject.
My Body is Me! by Rachel Rooney & Jessica Ahlberg
Beautiful rhyming children’s book celebrating that our bodies are just perfect as they are.
When Kids Say They're Trans: a Guide for Thoughtful Parents by Sasha Ayad, Lisa Marchiano and Stella O'Malley
Parents who have successfully helped their children navigate gender distress without resorting to surgery and hormones have done so by actively taking the reins. This book is a resource for parents who want their trans-identified children to flourish, but do not believe that hasty medicalisation is the best way to ensure long-term health and well-being.
Fantastically Great Women Who Saved the Planet by Kate Pankhurst
Discover the untold stories of women who have helped protect our natural world, all the way through history.
For younger children.
Gender Dysphoria: a Therapeutic Model for Working with Children, Adolescents and Young Adults by Susan Evans and Marcus Evans
Discusses the developmental and relationship issues that can cause a child or young person to become trans-identified and some of the ways a therapist can help them to explore the reasons behind those feelings. From two psychotherapists who blew the whistle on the unethical practices at the Gender Identity Development Service at the Tavistock.
