F 'em! Goo Goo, Gaga, and Some Thoughts on Balls

by Baumgardner, Jennifer

• ISBN13: 9781580053600
• ISBN10: 1580053602
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-09-27
• Publisher: Seal Press

Summary

From Jennifer Baumgardner, one of the leading voices of Third Wave feminism, comes this provocative, thoughtful, often funny collection of essays and interviews that offers a state of the union on contemporary feminist issues.

F 'em! is a mix of old and new essays by Baumgardner, ranging in tone from laugh-out-loud confessional to sobering analysis. She investigates topics as varied as purity balls, sexuality, motherhood, and shared breastfeeding; rape, reproductive rights, and the future of feminism. The essays in F 'em! are rounded out by candid one-on-one interviews with leading feminists who have influenced Baumgardner's perspectives—including Riot Grrrls' Kathleen Hanna, Native American activist Winona LaDuke, transgender activist Julia Serano, and artists like Ani DiFranco, Björk, and Amy Ray. At turns intimate, fierce, philosophical, and funny, they are an intimate window into the minds and hearts of Third Wave pioneers. Holding it all together is Baumgardner's insightful thinking about what it means to be a feminist today, as she answers frequently-asked questions: What does it mean to be a woman today? Do we even need feminism anymore?

Thought-provoking and cutting-edge, F 'em! provides a clearer and more complete understanding of feminism—its past, its present, and its future.

Author Biography

Writer and activist Jennifer Baumgardner is the author of Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics and Abortion & Life. She is the co-author, with Amy Richards, of the Third Wave classic Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future and Grassroots: A Field Guide to Feminist Activism. As co-owner of the feminist speakers' bureau Soapbox, Inc., Baumgardner runs Feminist Summer Camp and Feminist Winter Term in New York with Richards, and she has lectured at more than three hundred schools. She writes for Glamour, The Nation, Real Simple, and Babble, among other publications. She is the producer of the award-winning documentary I Had an Abortion and of a forthcoming film about rape.

Baumgardner's work has been featured on shows from The Oprah Winfrey Show to NPR's Talk of the Nation, as well as in The New York Times, BBC's News Hour, and various other venues. In 2003, the Commonwealth Club of California hailed her in their centennial year as one of six “Visionaries for the 21st Century,” commenting that “in her role as author and activist, [Baumgardner has] permanently changed the way people think about feminism…and will shape the next 100 years of politics and culture.” A professor of writing at The New School, she lives in New York City with her husband and two sons.