Book Selections

"Despite greater social awareness and intense media coverage of high-profile sexual assault cases, the vast majority of such crimes still go either unreported or unprosecuted. Why? The answer lies in the patchwork of laws governing such crimes and the often sexist and racist roots that underlie them. This book discusses the history of sexual violence laws, the social and media forces that drive the laws, and the progress American society has made in recognizing and punishing such behavior. The chapters cover a range of subjects including federal regulations such as Title IX and Title VII, sentencing, children and sexual violence, pornography, and evidence, as well as the evolution of legal concepts such as force and consent"--

"In the United States, one in four women will be victims of domestic violence each year. Despite the passage of federal legislation on violence against women beginning in 1994, differences persist across states in how domestic violence is addressed. Inequality Across State Lines illuminates the epidemic of domestic violence in the U.S. through the lens of politics, policy adoption, and policy implementation. Combining narrative case studies, surveys, and data analysis, the book discusses the specific factors that explain why U.S. domestic violence politics and policies have failed to keep women safe at all income levels, and across racial and ethnic lines. The book argues that the issue of domestic violence, and how government responds to it, raises fundamental questions of justice; gender and racial equality; and the limited efficacy of a state-by-state and even town-by-town response. This book goes beyond revealing the vast differences in how states respond to domestic violence, by offering pathways to reform";"Every year, one in four women will be victims of domestic violence in the United States. This book shows how and why U.S. domestic violence politics and policies have failed to keep them safe at all income levels, and across racial and ethnic lines"--

"No comparable volume collects in one place the various rules, doctrines, policies, and ideological positions that prevent our criminal justice system from pursuing and achieving justice"--

Increasingly fraught debates about sex, consent, feminism, justice, law, and gender relations have taken centre stage in academic, journalistic and social media circles in recent years. This has resulted in myriad new theories, debates and mediated movements including #MeToo and #TimesUp. In this book, Tina Sikka explores many of the contradictions and tensions that make up these debates and movements. She looks at those that draw together contemporary understandings of justice, violence, consent, pleasure and desire.

"Analyzing sex offense laws and false claims, this book shows that laws based on vengeance rather than justice or evidence create new forms of harm while failing to address the real and pervasive problem of sexual violence"--;"In this timely and extensively researched book, sociologist Emily Horowitz shows how current sex offense policies in the United States create new forms of harm and prevent those who have caused harm from the process of constructive repentance or contributing to society after punishment. Horowitz also illustrates the failure of criminal justice responses to social problems. Sharing detailed narratives from the experiences of those on registries and their loved ones, Horowitz reveals the social impact and cycle of violence that results from dehumanizing and banishing those who have already been held accountable.From Rage to Reason offers a new perspective on how and why false claims about sex offenses became so pervasive and how these myths fostered ineffective policies that have little to do with the reality of most sexual abuse. It argues that to truly prevent sexual abuse, we must unearth the sources of these misunderstandings, debunk these claims in a systematic way, and have frank and genuine discussions about the limits of legal responses to complex social problems"--

"Slavery has not been eradicated. The second edition of Human Trafficking updates the legal, moral and political attempts to contain sex and labor trafficking. The authors bring unique perspectives to these topics. Professor Page, an African American woman all too familiar with the vestiges of slavery, has written and lectured internationally on trafficking. Professor Piatt, a Hispanic law professor and former law school dean, brings his international experience as an educator, author and advocate regarding immigration and human rights matters to bear. The book considers efforts at containment, including controversial topics such as whether prostitution should be legalized. It concludes with specific approaches to eliminate trafficking"--

"Fair adjudication of campus sexual assault is one of the most divisive issues facing the United States. Victims contend that schools aren't doing enough to protect them, and accused students complain that they are presumed guilty. Sexual Assault on Campus: Defending Due Process begins by critically assessing the extent of the problem, before explaining why the criminal justice system has been unable to respond adequately. The book discusses the Department of Education's attempts to force schools to take campus assault seriously and uses original data in assessing the fairness of adjudication in the wake of the 2o1 "Dear Colleague Letter." It also includes excerpts from interviews with complainants, accused students, and administrators, which offer readers a first-hand account of these proceedings. Finally, the book provides a critical, in-depth look at the Title IX regulations put in place by the Trump Administration, with detailed recommendations for how they can be improved."

"The relationship between class and intimate violence against women is much misunderstood. While many studies of intimate violence focus on poor and working-class women, few examine the issue comparatively in terms of class privilege and class disadvantage. James Ptacek draws on in-depth interviews with sixty women from wealthy, professional, working-class, and poor communities to investigate how social class shapes both women's experiences of violence and the responses of their communities to this violence. Ptacek's framing of women's victimization as "social entrapment" links private violence to public responses and connects social inequalities to the dilemmas that women face"--

Despite significant accomplishments over the past 35 years, antiviolence activists know that justice for most abused women remains elusive. Most victims do not call the police or seek help from the courts, making it crucial to identify new ways for survivors to find justice. This path-breaking book examines new justice practices for victims that are being used in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. These informal, dialogue-based practices, referred to as "restorative justice," seek to decrease the role of the state in responding to crime, and increase the involvement of communities in meeting the needs of victims and offenders. Restorative justice is most commonly used to address youth crimes and is generally not recommended or disallowed for cases of rape, domestic violence, and child sexual abuse. Nevertheless, restorative practices are beginning to be used to address violent crime. Restorative Justice and Violence Against Women considers both the dangers and potential benefits of using restorative justice in response to these crimes. The contributors include antiviolence activists and scholars from the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Some are strongly in favor of using restorative practices in these cases, some are strongly opposed, and many lie somewhere in between. Their chapters introduce a range of perspectives on alternative justice practices, offering rich descriptions of new programs that combine restorative justice with feminist antiviolence approaches. Controversial and forward-thinking, this volume presents a much-needed analysis of restorative justice practices in cases of violence against women. Advocates, community activists, and scholars will find the theoretical perspectives and vivid case descriptions presented here to be invaluable tools for creating new ways for abused women to find justice.

"This book investigates the widespread and persistent relationship between disasters and gender-based violence, drawing on new research with victim-survivors to show how the two forms of harm constitute 'layered disasters' in particular places, intensifying and reproducing one another. The evidence is now overwhelming that disasters and gender-based violence are closely connected, not just in moments of crisis but in the years that follow as the social, economic and environmental impacts of disasters play out. This book addresses two key gaps in research. First, it examines what causes the relationship between disasters and gender-based violence to be so widespread and so enduring. Second, it highlights victim-survivors' own accounts of gender-based violence and disasters. It does so by presenting findings from original research on cyclones and flooding in Bangladesh and the UK and a review of global evidence on the Covid-19 pandemic. Drawing on feminist theories, it conceptualises the coincidence of gender-based violence, disasters and other aggravating factors in particular places as 'layered disasters.' Taking an intersectional approach that emphasises the connections between culture, place, patriarchy, racism, poverty, settler-colonialism, environmental degradation and climate change, the authors show the significance of gender-based violence in creating vulnerability to future disasters. Forefronting victim-survivors' experiences and understandings, the book explores the important role of trauma, and how those affected go about the process of survival and recovery. Understanding layered disasters casts light on why tackling gender-based violence must be a key priority in disaster planning, management and recovery. The book concludes by exploring critiques of existing formal responses, which often ignore or underplay gender-based violence. The book will be of interest to all those interested in understanding the causes and impacts of disasters, as well as scholars and researchers of gender and gender-based violence"--

"Legal Spectatorship examines the visual culture surrounding domestic violence, or DV, focusing on the ways that photographs are marshaled as a form of spectacular evidence rooted in slavery and antiblackness. Historically, slaves were not able to testify in person in court although they were often silent witnesses to white domestic conflicts. Today, these histories of racism are embedded into domestic violence prosecution as photographs documenting evidence of DV stand in for women's testimony, and an extensive web of surveillance and administrative tactics criminalize female victims. Kelli Moore reads the legislative, juridical, and media structures that have developed around domestic violence as an extension of the logics of slavery that points to a broader form of US "domestic violence" in the form of slavery and racism. The chapters take up slave witnessing and black subjectivity; the psychological theories that developed around DV in the context of the Civil Rights movement; "artivism" around domestic violence imagery and anti-DV campaigns; and Moore's own ethnographic work in the courtroom observing domestic violence cases"--

Leigh Gilmore provides a new account of #MeToo that reveals how storytelling by survivors propelled the call for sexual justice beyond courts and high-profile cases. She reframes #MeToo as a breakthrough moment within a longer history of feminist thought and activism.

Violence and economic oppression affect women the world over, and women with disabilities face even greater risks than their counterparts. Women with disabilities experience violence and poverty in different ways and at higher rates than non-disabled women and all men. This book explores gender-based violence and disability from the vantage point of resistance movements. Emphasis is placed on giving voice to the experiences of thirteen community organizers and self-advocates working to end gender-based violence. These stories, told from Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, Ghana, India, Kenya, United States, Nepal, and Yemen identify common challenges and transformative aspects of community organizing. The challenges that emerged from these stories were negative perceptions of disability, a lack of representation in disability and feminist movements, inadequately addressing intersectional oppression, structural violence, and rights, justice and policy issues. These community organizers and advocates also identified important transformative elements which they describe as seeing their experiences reflected in the work, wanting a better situation for others, a raised awareness about gender-based violence against people with disabilities, having support from the community, and improved advocacy. The book concludes with a discussion on the ways that movements to end violence can transform individual and collective consciousness about disability and gender oppression. Ultimately, in order for social movements to be ongoing and progressive, they require supporters and actors who individually and collectively recognize a common struggle, share a desire to ensure better for themselves and others, and exhibit a propensity to act.

"The newest book from V (formerly Eve Ensler), Reckoning invites you to travel the journey of a writer's and activist's life and process over forty years, representing both the core of ideas that have become global movements and the methods through which V survived abuse and self-hatred. Seamlessly moving from the internal to the external, the personal to the political, Reckoning is a moving and inspiring work of prose, poetry, dreams, letters, and essays drawn from V's lifelong journals that takes readers from Berlin to Oklahoma to the Congo, from climate disaster, homelessness, and activism to family. Unflinching, intimate, introspective, courageous, Reckoning explores ways to create an unstoppable force for change, to love and survive love, to hold people and states accountable, to reckon with demons and honor the dead, to reclaim the body, and to see oneself as connected to a greater purpose. It reimagines what seems fixed and intractable, providing a path to understand one's unique experience as deeply rooted in the world, to break through one's own boundaries, and to write oneself into freedom."--Amazon.;A Publishers Weekly Top 10 Memoir of the Season The work of a lifetime from the Tony Award-winning, bestselling author of The Vagina Monologues--political, personal, profound, and more than forty years in the making.

"A chillingly personal and exquisitely wrought memoir of a daughter reckoning with the brutal murder of her mother at the hands of her former stepfather, and the moving, intimate story of a poet coming into her own in the wake of a tragedy."--Dust jacket.;At nineteen Trethewey's world turned upside down when her former stepfather shot and killed her mother. Grieving and still new to adulthood, she confronted the twin pulls of life and death in the aftermath of unimaginable trauma. Here she explores the way this experience lastingly shaped the artist she became. Moving through her mother's history in the deeply segregated South and through her own girlhood as a 'child of miscegenation' in Mississippi, Trethewey plumbs her sense of dislocation and displacement in the lead-up to the harrowing crime that took place on Memorial Drive in Atlanta in 1985. -- adapted from jacket

This is a no-holds-barred response to the liberal and conservative retreat from an assertive, activist, and socially transformative civil rights agenda of recent years - using a Black feminist lens and the issue of the impact of recent legislation, social policy, and welfare "reform" on Black women's - especially poor Black women's - control over their bodies' autonomy and their freedom to bear and raise children with respect and dignity in a society whose White mainstream is determined to demonize, even criminalize their lives. It gives its listeners a cogent legal and historical argument for a radically new, and socially transformative, definition of "liberty" and "equality" for the American polity from a Black feminist perspective.

"Sylvia Jane Burrow explores self-confidence as integral to autonomy development within everyday contexts threatening gender violence, arguing that self-defense training is significant to resistance and resilience"--;"In often mundane but sometimes quite obvious ways, persons belonging to groups routinely threatened with harm on the basis of gender and sexuality suffer restrictions to choice and action, impairing autonomy. Gender Violence: Resistance, Resilience, and Autonomy shows that resistance to, and cultivating resiliency within, a culture of gender violence is key to fostering autonomy. Building on decades of research philosophically interrogating autonomy and its limits, and with a martial arts background spanning over twenty-five years, Professor Burrow develops a novel approach to autonomy development under everyday threats of violence. Appealing to empirical research to ground its philosophical analysis, the theory presented in this book establishes that cultivating self-confidence through self-defense training is a significant strategy contributing to resistance and resilience under threats of violence and hence, autonomy development." -- Publisher's description

Crisis and Care reveals what is possible when activists mobilise for the radical changes our society needs. In a time of great uncertainty, fear, and isolation, Queer activists organised for health equity, prison abolition, racial justice, and more. Crisis and Care anthologises not what happened during COVID-19, or why it happened, but rather how Queer activists responded in real time. It considers the necessity to memorialise resiliency as well as loss, hope as well as pain, to remember the strides forward as well as the steps back.

"Physical, psychological, and sexual abuse among intimate partners, commonly known as domestic violence, but more recently as intimate partner violence or IPV, is a significant social and public health problem in the United States and worldwide. IPV had long been considered private by law enforcement, rarely investigated by social science researchers, and poorly understood by mental health professionals. In the 1980s, a series of well-publicized court cases, such as Thurman v. City of Torrington (1985), brought to light the grossly inadequate law enforcement response at the time, which allowed repeat offenders to avoid prosecution while their partners continued to be victimized, often fatally. In response, a grassroots victim advocacy movement established shelter and other services for victims while lobbying state legislatures across the United States, and subsequently to Canada, the U.K., and other nations, to enact new laws that would hold offenders accountable (Buzawa & Buzawa, 2002; Russell, 2010)"--

"This book tells the real story of abortion in America, one that captures a disturbing reality of sometimes insurmountable barriers put in front of women trying to exercise their legal rights to medical services. Without the efforts of an unheralded army of doctors, nurses, social workers, activists, and volunteers, what is a legal right would be meaningless for the almost one million people per year who get abortions. There is a better way-treating abortion like any other form of health care-but the United States is a long way from that ideal"--

"While many claim that being a mom is the most important job in the world, in reality, motherhood in the United States is becoming harder. From pre-conception, through pregnancy and while parenting, women are held to ever-higher standards and finding themselves punished - both socially and criminally - for failing to live up to these norms. This book uncovers how women of all ethnic backgrounds and socio-economic statuses have been interrogated, held against their will, and jailed for a rapidly expanding list of offenses such as falling down the stairs while pregnant or letting a child spend time alone in a park, actions that were not considered criminal a generation ago. While poor mothers and moms of color are targeted the most, all moms are in jeopardy, whether they realize it or not. Women and mothers are disproportionately held accountable compared to men and fathers who do not see their reproduction policed and almost never incur charges for "failure to protect." The gendered inequality of prosecutions reveals them to be more about controlling women than protecting children. Using a reproductive justice lens, Caitlin Killian analyzes how and why mothers are on a precipice and what must change to prevent mass penalization and instead support mothers and their children."--

In this deeply personal account, Dr. Curtis Boyd and Dr. Glenna Halvorson-Boyd reflect on their lives in abortion care, from the childhood experiences that shaped their paths to the Supreme Court decision that forced the closure of their Dallas clinic. Their stories begin in the 1960s, as Curtis opens a clandestine abortion practice while breaking with the beliefs of his Baptist family and Glenna pursues psychology while coming to understand the world of restrictive gender roles. When the two of them meet shortly after abortion is legalized, they bond over a common commitment to women, forming a professional and personal partnership that will weather the coming decades. We Choose To is the story of that partnership, and the staff and patients that have shaped the history of modern abortion. In these pages, Curtis and Glenna share their holistic, morally rooted approach to their work. Led by a desire to empower patients, they advance abortion and mental health care further than ever even as they find themselves at the center of a controversial new issue in American life. Sweeping, introspective, and deeply honest, We Choose To is a rare portrait of abortion providers and the world in which they work, where abortion is not a talking point in a culture war but a private, even spiritual, act. -- Provided by publisher.

"This work explores how and why individual states choose to regulate abortion in different ways"--

"The inspiring, on-the-ground story of the rising grassroots leaders in the abortion rights movement during the pivotal first year after Dobbs. When the Supreme Court decided Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization -- overturning the constitutional right to abortion care -- the country was thrown into chaos. Abortion providers and their patients faced sudden closures, new restrictions, and rapidly changing rules as nearly half of the states moved quickly to ban or severely curtail abortion access. Against this backdrop, an army of health care providers, lawyers, activists, and everyday people mobilized to protect what a majority of Americans want: legal abortion. In You Must Stand Up, Nieman Fellow Amanda Becker provides a real-time portrait of the creative resistance that unfolded in America's first year without the protections of Roe v. Wade. Amidst daily shifts in health care access, new legal battles coming before partisan courts, and up-for-grabs state constitutions, Becker follows the leaders rising to meet these challenges -- doctors and staffers turning to new financial and medical models to remain open and provide abortions, volunteers campaigning against antiabortion ballot initiatives, and medical students fighting to learn to provide what can be lifesaving care. By depicting the splintered reality of post-Dobbs America, and by capturing how Americans have developed new ways to best protect their constitutional rights, Becker ultimately shows how outrage can beget hope, and give rise to a new movement." --

Through the perspectives of patients, providers, activists and lawmakers, the author, as the landscape of abortion rights continues to shift, forcing people to cross state lines to seek life-saving care, presents this timely examination of human rights, healthcare and economic and racial inequality in America.;"On June 24, 2022, Roe v. Wade was overturned, and the impact was immediate: by 2024, abortion was virtually unavailable or significantly restricted in 21 states. In Undue Burden, reporter Shefali Luthra traces the unforgettable stories of patients faced with one of the most personal decisions of their lives... A revelatory portrait of inequality in America, Undue Burden examines abortion not as a footnote or a political pawn, but as a basic human right, something worthy of our collective attention and with immense power to transform our lives, families, and futures"--

Decades before the overturning of Roe v. Wade, pregnant people faced arrest and prosecution for supposed crimes against the fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses they gestated. The Pregnancy Police investigates the legal arguments undergirding these prosecutions and sheds much-needed light on the networks of health-care providers, social workers, and legal personnel participating in this ongoing surveillance and punishment of pregnant people. Drawing on detailed analyses of legislation, statements from prosecutors and law enforcement, and records from over a thousand arrest cases, Grace E. Howard traces the long history of state attempts to regulate and control people who have the capacity for pregnancy--from the early twentieth century's white supremacist eugenics to the end of Roe and the ever-increasing criminalization of abortion across the United States.

With expertise across politics and religion, two award-winning New York Times journalists show how the battle over Roe, no matter your view on abortion, symbolizes a miscarriage of the ideals America promised: democracy, morality and freedom, while inadvertently laying out a roadmap for how we might make our way forward in this new America.;From two top New York Times journalists, the breathtaking untold story of the plan to overturn Roe v. Wade and the consequences for women, abortion, and the future of America. In June 2022, Americans watched in shock as the Supreme Court reversed one of the nation's landmark rulings. For nearly a half century, Roe was synonymous with women's rights and freedoms. Then, suddenly, it was gone. In their groundbreaking book The Fall of Roe, Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer reveal the explosive inside story of how it happened. Their investigation charts the shocking political and religious campaign to take down abortion rights and remake American families, womanhood, and the nation itself. Reeling from Barack Obama's 2012 landslide presidential victory -- and motivated by a spiritual mission -- a small but determined network of elite conservative Christian lawyers and powerbrokers worked quietly and methodically to keep their true cause alive: ending abortion rights. Thinking in generational terms, they devised a strategic, top-down takeover at every level of political and legal life, from little-known anti-abortion lobbyists in far flung statehouses to the arbiters of the constitution at the highest court in the land. Broad swaths of liberal America did not register the severity of the threat until it was far too late. At a moment when women had more power than ever before, the feminist movement suffered one of the greatest political defeats in American history.

Hume tells the story of the radical feminist networks who worked outside the law to defend abortion. Starting in the 1970s, small groups of feminist activists met regularly to study anatomy, practice pelvic exams on each other, and learn how to safely perform a procedure known as menstrual extraction, which can empty the contents of the uterus in case of pregnancy using equipment that can be easily bought and assembled at home. This "self-help" movement grew into a robust national and international collaboration of activists and health workers determined to ensure access to reproductive healthcare, including abortion, at all costs--to the point of learning how to do the necessary steps themselves. Even after abortion was legalized in 1973 with Roe v. Wade, activists continued meeting, studying, and teaching these skills, reshaping their strategies alongside decades of changing legal, medical, and cultural landscapes such as the legislative war against abortion rights, the AIDS epidemic, and the rise of anti-abortion domestic terrorism in the 1980s and 90s. The movement's drive to keep abortion accessible led to the first clinic defense mobilizations against anti-abortion extremists trying to force providers to close their doors. From the self-help movement sprang a constellation of licensed feminist healthcare clinics, community programs to promote reproductive health, even the nation's first known-donor sperm bank, all while fighting the oppression of racism, poverty, and gender violence. Hume follows generations of activists and clinicians who orbited the Women's Choice clinic in Oakland from the early 1970s until 2010, as they worked underground and above ground, in small cells and broad coalitions and across political movements with grit, conviction, and allegiances of great trust to do what they believed needed to be done--despite the law, when required. Grounded in interviews of activists sharing details of their work for the first time, Hume retells three decades of this critical, if under-recognized story of the radical edge of the abortion movement. These lessons are more pertinent than ever following the Supreme Court's 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson decision and the devastation to abortion access nationwide. --

"Bringing together a remarkable group of scholars and experts, this volume confronts the beginning and end of the Constitutional right to obtain an abortion in the United States, from the landmark decision in Roe v. Wade to its shocking overturning in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health fifty years later. This is a critical moment in which to reflect on the past, present, and future of abortion regulations and legislation in the U.S"--

"Fighting Mad is a book about what "reproductive justice" means and what it looks like to fight for it. Editors Krystale E. Littlejohn and Rickie Solinger bring together many of the strongest, most resistant voices in the country to describe the impacts of the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision and what it means for abortion access and care. The essayists and change agents in Fighting Mad represent a remarkable breadth of expertise: activists and artists, academics and abortion storytellers, health care professionals and legislators, clinic directors and lawyers, and so many more. They discuss abortion restrictions and strategies to provide care, the impacts of criminalization, efforts to protect the targeted, shortcomings of the past, and visions for the next generation. Fighting Mad captures for the social and historical record the vigorous resistance happening in the early post-Roe moment to show that there are millions on the ground fighting to secure a better future"--