Research & Reading
Necessary Dreams – Anna Fels
Everybody Should Read This Book.
I love books, love to read, and love to study. Every month, when Barnes & Noble still existed on Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, I would go and browse all the tables and bookshelves of various topics and buy what interested me at that moment. That is how I found this book. I’m a feminist by the traditional definition, but I was never interested in or knew anything about feminist theory, feminist books, organizations, or activities. I just am who I am. However, I could not put this book down. Anna Fels, MD, talks about women’s reality in a way that describes my experience in all the very important, yet subtly detailed ways, that it completely hit my heart. I can’t understand, with all the studies and books out there about women, why she isn’t a household name. As far as I can tell, none of the major players acknowledge her or her observations, which are crucial to women moving forward.
Click here to buy the book!
Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society
Cordelia Fine begins with Darwin then presents a study from the 1940’s where popular culture got the idea that science proved that the difference in behavior and social position of men and women came from biology and genetics. She goes through the history and many subsequent scientific criticisms and follow up experiments which disproves that original theory that popular culture has still not dismissed.
Recommended Links
If she can see it, she can be it.
Mrs. America. A series on HULU about Phyllis Schlafly and her fight against the Equal Rights Amendment. I include it here because it is very interesting to see a woman violating the concepts of femininity while she fought for the enforcement of those very concepts. It shows an ambitious, highly capable woman who was shut out of the all-male Washington circle of politicians and policy makers, of that time, who decided questions of defense and national security, a subject she was very knowledgeable in and passionate about. Her response was to direct her ambition to a subject acceptable for women, of that circle, which was to oppose feminists and the passage of the ERA. She was successful and the ERA was never passed. In addition, she gained considerable recognition and prestige for her activities. She did win the battle against the ERA, however she still lost the war. Almost all of the social changes she resisted have now become a reality in American society.