From 1983 to 2002, Trouble and Strife: The Radical Feminist Magazine was a distinctive voice in British feminism. It was the longest-surviving completely independent feminist periodical published in this period and it combined the intellectual depth of an academic journal with the accessibility, topicality and visual appeal of commercial feminst magazines such as Everywoman and Spare Rib. Featuring articles by internationally prominent feminists including Julie Bindel, Deborah Cameron, Beatrix Campbell, Patricia Duncker, Liz Kelly and Diana Leonard, it represented a particular current in feminism, radical rather than liberal, materialist but not marxist, anti-essentialist but not postmodernist. It regularly challenged orthodoxies on controversial issues such as ritual abuse or the sexual politics of religious fundamentalism. This is a collection of the best and most enduring articles published in the magazine during its 20-year life. It offers a unique historical record of an important strand of radical feminist debate, enabling old readers to revisit it and new readers to discover it.

A collection of the best and most enduring articles published in Trouble and Strife: The Radical Feminist Magazine between 1983 and 2002.

Sex discrimination is supposedly a distant memory. Yet popular books, magazines and even scientific articles defend inequalities by citing immutable biological differences between the male and female brain. Why are there so few women in science and engineering, so few men in the laundry room? Well, they say, it's our brains.

DIVDIVSusan Brownmiller’s groundbreaking bestseller uncovers the culture of violence against women with a devastating exploration of the history of rape—now with a new preface by the author exposing the undercurrents of rape still present today/divDIV Rape, as author Susan Brownmiller proves in her startling and important book, is not about sex but about power, fear, and subjugation. For thousands of years, it has been viewed as an acceptable “spoil of war,” used as a weapon by invading armies to crush the will of the conquered. The act of rape against women has long been cloaked in lies and false justifications./divDIV It is ignored, tolerated, even encouraged by governments and military leaders, misunderstood by police and security organizations, freely employed by domineering husbands and lovers, downplayed by medical and legal professionals more inclined to “blame the victim,” and, perhaps most shockingly, accepted in supposedly civilized societies worldwide, including the United States./divDIV Against Our Will is a classic work that has been widely credited with changing prevailing attitudes about violence against women by awakening the public to the true and continuing tragedy of rape around the globe and throughout the ages./divDIV Selected by the New York Times Book Review as an Outstanding Book of the Year and included among the New York Public Library’s Books of the Century, Against Our Will remains an essential work of sociological and historical importance./divDIV/div/div

Winner of the 2015 FWSA Book Prize The body is a site of impassioned, fraught and complex debate in the West today. In one political moment, left-wingers, academics and feminists have defended powerful men accused of sex crimes, positioned topless pictures in the tabloids as empowering, and opposed them for sexualizing breasts and undermining their natural function. At the same time they have been criticized by extreme-right groups for ignoring honour killings and other culture-based forms of violence against women. How can we make sense of this varied terrain? In this important and challenging new book, Alison Phipps constructs a political sociology of womens bodies around key debates: sexual violence, gender and Islam, sex work and motherhood. Her analysis uncovers dubious rhetorics and paradoxical allegiances, and contextualizes these within the powerful coalition of neoliberal and neoconservative frameworks. She explores how feminism can be caricatured and vilified at both ends of the political spectrum, arguing that Western feminisms are now faced with complex problems of positioning in a world where gender often comes second to other political priorities. This book provides a welcome investigation into Western politics around womens bodies, and will be particularly useful to scholars and upper-level students of sociology, political science, gender studies and cultural studies, as well as to anyone interested in how bodies become politicized.

Feminism is not dead. This groundbreaking book advances a radical and pioneering feminist manifesto for today's modern audience that exposes the real reasons as to why women are still oppressed and what feminist activism must do to counter it through a vibrant and original account of the global Reclaim the Night March.

Women's awareness of the threat and reality of sexual violence is now perhaps more than ever publicly acknowledged. Yet this fact continues to be almost wholly ignored. This new study, based on in-depth interviews with 60 women, is the first to cover the experience of a range of forms of sexual violence over women's lifetimes. Drawing on feminist theory, developing a critique of male research and quoting extensively from the women interviewed, it developes feminist thought in several key areas: the similarities and differences between forms of sexual violence; the ways women define their experiences; and the strategies women use in resisting, coping with and surviving sexual violence. The author stresses the importance for all women of recognizing the incidents of sexual violence in their lives and seeing themselves and other women as survivors rather than victims. In highlighting the ways in which the media, the criminal justice system and even the "helping" profess ions contribute to the trivialization of sexual violence, she demonstrates the necessity of women organizing collectively to end this suffering.