The Menstuff® library lists pertinent books on Sexism. See also Books on Sex Roles. It's interesting that dictionaries like The Oxford Dictionary, American Edition, 1997 discriminate against men in their definition of sexism. "Sexism: n. prejudice or discrimination, esp. against women, on the grounds of sex."
Askew, Sue & Carol Ross, Boys Don't
Cry: Boys and sexism in education. This book looks at the
factors in schools that affect the socialization of boys; at
pressure on them to conform to damaging male sterotypes; at
relationships between boys and at bullying and aggressive behavior
in general. The book provides an analysis of the ways in which
schools may unintentionally reinforce and perpetuate certain
aspects of 'masculinity' which operate against the boys 'best
interests'. It also considers some constraints put on boys and
looks at how these may affect both their social development and
their approach to various learning activities. Women teachers
might also be adversely affected by these pressures. The book
explores ways in which this is particularly apparent in the
'masculine' atmosphere of boys' school. Open University Press,
1989 ISBN 0-335-10296-4
Beneke, Timothy,
Proving Manhood: reflections on men and sexism, Timothy
Beneke. Is male chauvinism a natural byproduct of American
masculinity or does it reflect a deeper pain and fear at the heart
of gender relations? With sensitivity and honesty, the author
frames the issue of sexism as a problem of masculinity, one deeply
rooted in cultural ideals of manhood and forever opposed to the
feminine. Men are required to "prove" their masculinity daily from
childhood on. In rituals such as sports, sex and work, men
constantly invent and renew their masculine identities as they
learn to repress and reject all "feminized" behavior. Pornography,
homophobia and the morning sports section become crucial "proving
grounds" where masculinity is tested and asserted. With personal
anecdotes of hero-worship and guilt over his own struggle with
latent sexism, the author incorporates a thought-provoking self
critique into this unique study of modern masculinity. University
of California Press 1997 ISBN 0-520-21266-5 Buy
This Book!
Chancer, Lynn S., Reconcilable
Differences: Confronting beauty, pornography and the
future of feminism. This book breathes sanity, balance and
wisdom into debates about the current state of feminism. Why, the
author asks, do we so often find ourselves lining up on one side
or the other of a great divide? What are the
costs? How do we learn to think in terms of "both/ands"
rather than "either/ors"? These are key questions for
our times, and the author does them brilliant justice, challenging
rigid positions on pornography, sex work, beauty and
sadomasochism, showing that even with these charged issues, we can
be attentive to our differences without denying our commonalties,
acknowledge women's agency while criticizing coercive
institutions, and celebrate sex without giving up the battle
against sexism. The author is a passionate and persuasive enemy of
the oversimplified polarities that have dogged feminist debates.
Her radical and richly nuanced essay on the "beauty issue" sets a
standard that any future argument on the subject will have to
meet. A must read for feminists of all persuasions. University of
California Press, 1998 ISBN 0-520-20923-0 Buy
This Book!
Crawford, Susan Hoy, Beyond Dolls
& Guns: 101 ways to help children avoid gender
bias. This book offers parents concrete, easy-to-follow
suggestions for raising boys and girls who can treat each other
(and themselves) with dignity and respect, and can grow into
adults who are equally caring, competent, and courageous. It is a
fun, balanced, easy-to-read and ready-to-use book. It is loaded
with tips for parents, teachers and anyone who cares about girls'
and boys' healthy development. It does concenrate on sexism
against girls. Page one says "Gender stereotypes and bias hurt
boys: Boys who like to read. Boys who don't like hunting,
fishing or mechanics. Boys who don't like sports (or who do, but
are pushed too hard)." Each one of these is a gender stereotype.
And assumes that gender stereotypes don't hurt boys who like
sports, or hunting or mechanics. However, a suggestion from the
book itself is that anywhere the female reference is used, replace
it with the male reference and see if it is equal. "Gender
stereotypes and bias hurt girls: Girls who like to read.
Girls who don't like hunting, fishing, or mechanics. Girls who
don't like sports (or who do, but are pushed too hard)." Other
than that bias, it is really a valuable addition to the parenting
role. Heinemann, 1999 ISBN 0-435-08129-2 Buy
This Book!
Faludi, Susan: Backlash: The
undeclared war against American woman. In this disturbing
examination of women's crumbling status in American life and
culture during the past decade, the author uncovers a growing
backlash against a sex that is still, in many respects, second. It
is a backlash that, as she amply demonstrates, has worked on two
levels: convincing women that their feelings of
dissatisfaction and distress are the result of too much feminism
and independence, while simulatneoulsy undermining the minimal
progress that women have made at work, in politics, and in their
own minds. The author shows how the media has spread the backlash
message through moralizing "news" stories and manipulated
statistics, and how virtually every outlet of popular culture has
contributed its own embellishments and anxiety-producing visions.
This book exhaustively documents and dissects this largely
soft-peddled and insidious war againast women's rights, probing
the dimensions of a cultural phenomenon that has changed shape and
resurfaced in Hollywood films and TV, in the fashion and beauty
industries, in New Right rhetoric and presidential speeches, and
in office harassment and clinic bombings. Whether by the promotion
of dubious stidues about "the man shortage" and "the infertility
epidemic," or by the rollback of employment and reproductive
rights, or by the elevation of commerical female icons like the
"New Traditional Woman" and the liposuction-perfect model., the
backlash has cost American women dearly in their endless struggle
for equality. This book challenges the central, and suspect,
thesis of the backlash: that feminism is women's worst enemy, that
the very changes that leave strengthened women have actually led
to their decline. In doing so, this book offers a timely and
troubling picture of the female condition today, a picture that
women and men cannot and must not ignore. Crown Publishers, 1991
ISBN 0-517-57698-8 Buy
This Book!
Farrell, Warren, Why Men Are the Way They
Are. In this riveting book, you'll find potentially
life-changing answers to these other often-asked
questions: Why are men afraid of commitment? Why
are they threatened by successful women? Why are the most
attractice women often difficult for men to get along
with? Why can't men listen? If women are liberated, why
do so many still like to have men pay for dinner and then call
them in the morning? Why are men and women so
preoccupied with physical beauty? Why do so many men have so
few really close friendships with other men? The ways
the sexual revolution and the women's movement have affected women
have been well documented in the last two decades. But what have
these movements done to men? For nearly twenty years, over
100,000 women and men have experienced the other sex's point of
view in his workshops. As a result, he has come up with
provocative new theories about the reasons love, intimacy, and
commitment mean different things to women and men; how to change a
man for the better (without just preparing him for someone else);
what makes people successful at the office but can make them
unsuccessful at home; when a discussion between a women and a man
is helpful and when it is harmful; and how men are much less
"powerful" than we ever thought possible. McGraw Hill, 1986
ISBN 0-07-019974-4 Buy
This Book!
Farrell, Warren, Why Men Earn More.
Because statistics show that men earn more than women, we assume
that men are paid more than women for the same work. But think
about this: if women really are paid less, why would anyone
hire a man? The truth, argues the author, is that the
pay gap can no longer be attributed to large-scale discrimination
against women. Men who earn more most often do so not because of
their gender, but because "the invisible curriculum of male
socialization" influences the choices they make. For example, to
get higher pay, men are more likely to enter higher-paying fields,
perform riskier tasks, take positions with less stability and less
fulfillment, and work longer hours - a choice that doesn't just
translate as "more hours, more money," but also opens the door to
much more lucrative job and career opportunities. Although it's
men who are more likely to make such choices, the fact is, both
men and women who do so usually earn more than those who choose
otherwise. Are they the right choices for you? For men,
women, and their families, some choices will lead to higher
income, some to a more balanced life. And quite a few will help
achieve both. This book presents 25 choices you face in your life
and career and examines the impact each decision has on your
earning power. This book also reveals some startling truths about
how women earn - revelations that are sure to re-energize debate
about gender roles, workplace dynamics, affirmative action and
much more. The many surprises in this book are based on
comprehensive reasearch, and provides solid facts and figures as
evidence. More important, the author presents them with an eye
toward giving women (and men) the unvarnished truth - and the
information they need in order to make the empowering choices that
will lead to a more balanced and fulfilling life. American
Management Association, www.amacombooks.org,
2005, ISBN 0.8144.7210.9 
Gmelch, Sharon Bohn, Gender on
Campus: Issues for college women. As women enter
college they face many new challenges, including how they are
perceived by their professors and peers. The issues of feminism,
gender and sexuality crop up in dormitories and classrooms, on
dates and in conversation. This is the first book to combine
analyses of the broad range of gender issues for women in college
with realistic approaches to heighten awareness and initiate
positive change. The author addresses both the subtle and blatant
areas where gender is an active ingredient of college life - from
the sports field to social life. She probes sexism, racism and
homophobia on campus. She addresses the special issues facing
diverse women students and the universal issues of body image,
diet, and sexuality confronting all women in college. Students
will come away from this book prepared for the role gender will
play after college - in the media, workplace, and politics. This
is a book that should be read by every student - male and female.
It also serves as a valuable resource for parents preparing their
daughters for college. After thoroughly discussing a topic, each
chapter provides a list of books, videos and organizations for
additional information and action. Rutgers University
Press,1998
Kammer, Jack, If Men Have All the Power How
Come Women Make the Rules. "The contempt this book would
inspire among the women in house would be immense. I'll let one of
my male competitors be the one who gets pummeled." VP/Exec Editor
with a major New York publishing house in a letter to the author's
agent 3/19/98. Some men's self-published books we've seen we would
agree. However, this book, a follow up to his successful Good
Will Toward Men: Women talk candidly about the balance
of power between the sexes published by St. Martin's Press in
1994, is definitely worth a read! No one will publish it so the
author wants you to take a copy. Free. Self Published. This book
is available from www.RulyMob.com
using Acrobat Reader3.0 or newer which is also available at
www.adobe.com. Comments welcome
at comments@RulyMob.com
2000
Kammer, Jack, Good Will Toward Men: Women talk
candidly about the balance of power between the sexes. "This
book is a truly heartwarming experience for anyone who believes in
equality. It is a series of interviews wth women who are talking
openly about their perceptions of the balance of power between men
and women in society. The insight, sense of fair play, compassion,
and just common decency shown by the interviewees gives me hope
that the tide is turning in the war against pop-feminist
idological nonsense. Many of the women interviewed are in the
"helping professions", some of the others are attorneys or
writers. The common thread in every case is that they came to the
conclusion that, while feminism in its more positive forms has
indeed liberated women to realize more of their potential, much of
it has degenerated into an attack on men and an attempt to use
claims of victimization as a political weapon. Some of these women
acknowledge the tremendous sexual leverage that many women have
over men, and how this causes men to compensate by trying in one
way or another to even things up. This is a great book. It is a
must-read for any women who really wants to love men and know she
isn't alone, and for any man who needs to see that not every women
in the world is Andrea Dworkin." - Wilbur Wormwood. St. Martin's
Press, 1994 ISBN 0-312-10471-5 Buy
This Book!
Lambert, Ellen Zetzel, The Face of
Love: Feminism and the Beauty Question. An alluring
book, moved by the trauma of her own mastectomy, broadened by her
kinship with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women novelists,
put on notice by the odd fascination she feels for photo albums
that record her youth, the author makes palpable to readers what
she plainly experienced as a middle-aged woman: a secular
revelation that beauty is very deep indeed, as deep as we're
capable of making it. The book's affirmation of the corporeal as
an important root of our identity places the author at the
forefront of an important new area of feminist research and theory
that is beginning, at last, to take women's bodies seriously
without trapping them in politically dangerous notions of the
essential female. By reclaiming the vivid ways in which beauty can
be understood as a quality of the spirit - even in a culture
dominated by images of MTV vixens and willowy supermodels -
the author has produced an eloquent plea for the enduring uses of
beauty in feminist discourse. Beacon Press, 1995 ISBN
0-8070-6501-3 Buy
This Book!
Levy, Ariel, Female Chauvinist
Pigs: Women and the rise of raunch culture. Meet the
Female Chauvinist Pig - the new brand of "empowered woman" who
wears the Playboy bunny as a talisman, bares all for
Girls Gone Wild, pursues casual sex as if it were a sport,
and embraces "raunch culture" wherever she finds it. If male
chauvinist pigs of years past thought of women as pieces of meat,
Female Chauvinist Pigs of today are doing them one better, making
sex objects of other women - and of themselves. They think they're
being brave, they think they're being funny, but in this book, a
New York magazine writer asks if the joke is on them. In
her quest to uncover why this is happening, she interviews college
women who flash for the cameras on spring break and teens raised
on Paris Hilton and breast implants. She examines a culture in
which every music video seems to feature a stripper on a pole, the
memoirs of porn stars are climbing the best-seller lists, Olympic
athletes parade their Brazilian bikini waxes in the pages of
Playboy, and thongs are marketed to prepubescent girls. She
meets the high-powered women who create raunch culture - the new
oinking women warriors of the corporate and entertainment worlds
who eagerly defend their efforts to be "one of the guys". And she
traces the history of this trend back to conflicts between the
women's movement and the sexual revolution long left unresolved.
In the tradition of Susan Faludi's Backlash
and Naomi Wolf's The Beauty
Myth, she pulls apart the myth of the Female Chauvinist Pig
and argues that what has come to pass for liberating rebellion is
actually a kind of limiting conformity. Irresistibly witty and
wickedly intelligent, this book makes the case that the rise of
raunch does not represent how far women have come, it only proves
how far they have to go. Simon & Schuster, www.simonsays.com,
2005, ISBN 0-7432-4989-5 
Lonardo, Paul, Strike IX: The story
of a big East college forced to eliminate its baseball program and
the team that refused to lose. In October, 1998, as fall
practice was getting underway for the Providence College baseball
team, the players and coaches learned that their sport was going
to be eliminated after the 1999 season. Knowing that this was
going to be the last year that baseball would be played at PC, the
team decided to put their emotions and anger aside and make it a
season to remember by becoming champions. This is the story of
this historic year and the players who decided to make their
statement on the field and show the school administration that
they made a mistake. Infinity Publishing, 2009,
ISBN 0-7414-5690-7
Pharr, Suzanne, Homophobia: A
weapon of sexism/includes afterword and annotated
bibliography. This is the first book of its kind on the subject of
homophobia and sexism. It is essential reading for those whose
lives and organizations are affected by homophobia and for those
who do trainings on the subject. Chardon Press, 1988
ISBN 0-9620222-1-7
Pharr, Suzanne, Homophobia: A
weapon of sexism, Expanded Edition. This classic book is
essential reading for anyone wishing a greater understanding of
how homophobia functions to keep all people - not just lesbian,
gay, bisexual, transgender or questioning - from realizing their
full potential. Chardon Press, 1997, ISBN 1-890759-01-5
Buy
This Book!
Smith, Joan, Misogynies: Reflections on
myths & malice. As a journalist on the crime beat in
Manchester, England, British feminist Joan Smith was on hand to
witness the shocking tragedy of the Yorkshire Ripper in the late
1970s: the incompetent, bumbling police investigation, the rising
toll of dead women, the many months lost because male detectives
could not imagine that the killer might actually be someone living
a quiet life very much like their own. The author's horror at the
spectacle confirmed something she already understood: that
misogyny, pervasive, ingrained, and unquestioned, haunts the lives
of women everywhere, even unto death. In this collection of
stinging essays, she finds her native England fertile ground for
misogyny - Princess Di's unending battle with the press, Margaret
Thatcher, who has turned her back on her sex, and of course, the
chilling story of the Yorkshire Ripper. She also uncovers the
hatred of the female in America. In "Gentlemen Prefer Dead
Blondes," she analyzes the distorted way in which men idolize
Marilyn Monroe. She also takes on such immensely popular books as
Sophie's Choice and Presumed Innocent, and such
films as Fatal Attraction, dissecting them for the
women-hating manifestoes they are. She rounds out the collection
with a sobering examination of Christian symbolism and how it
contributes to the abortion debate and a shocking essay about the
misogynistic songs composed by U.S. Air Force pilots. In her
postscript, she writes, "Men are the victims of lies, just as much
as women. It is only when we dare to confront this reality
together that we will have reason to hope for the
future." With the shrewd, honest, and outraged essays
in this book, the author has made a stunning contribution to a
future in which women can live in their world without fear.
Fawcett Columbine, 1991ISBN 0-449-90591-8 Buy
This Book!
Stone, Lynda, Education Feminism Reader.
This book boldly lays claim to the centrality of feminist
education theory by bringing together for the first time the most
important and influential essays written on the subject. Equally
committed to advancing a pluralist vision of the field, the
anthology showcases the thinking of traditionally liberal
feminists, radical postmodern theorists, feminists of color, and
those with private, political and popular agendas. Mixing classic
contributions with recent essays by younger scholars, the
anthology offers a much-needed overview of the field. Among
feminists education topics treated in the twenty-two essays are
the psychology of self, multiculturalism, black women's
sisterhood, girls' identity and persofmrnace in school, the
"feminization" of teaching, sociology of knowledge, gender-free
education, Latina students, education reform, curriculum, and
"women's ways of knowing." Informed by the
contributors' own lives, educations, and teaching practices, the
essays offer an impressive range of disciplinary perspectives on
the subject-from sociology, psychology and women's studies to
philosophy and education. Designed specifically as a classroom
text for education and women's studies courses, this book will
make a marked difference in the educational lives of women and
girls. Routledge, 1994 ISBN 0-415-90793-4 Buy
This Book!
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