Fuck Yeah, Gender Studies!

NOTE: I have not read all of these books. Some of them, particularly the earlier feminist stuff, may be problematic as regards cissexism and so forth, but i’ve included them because they nonetheless are important texts within the field (and i always think it’s best to know thine enemy). Some of the texts that i have read and whose theses i want to highlight i don’t endorse are in parentheses. However, just because a book isn’t in parentheses doesn’t mean i do endorse its views—it more likely means its one of the ones i haven’t read yet.

Note 2: You will notice that this list currently prioritises some aspects of gender studies/related issues over others. Namely, there’s a lot on disability, illness, embodiment, trans/gender and passing, corporeal subjectivity and sexology, and comparatively less on ethnic minorities’ feminisms and theoretical texts how race (especially in the US) intersects with feminism.

This is because the former align with my academic interests and my own experience (i am disabled) and the latter don’t, really (i am not in an ethnic minority). Whilst i have studied a great deal about the topics that are well-represented here, regretfully i haven’t studied much (or anything, in some cases) of the topics that are least present here.

Consequently, any recommendations for texts in these areas would be gratefully received. And for any other texts you think should be added.

This list is going to keep expanding. I hope you like it.

Comics (about cool women, by women, about other topics covered on this blog—sexuality, HIV, sex work, etc.)
- Fun Home (UK) // Fun Home (US) - Alison Bechdel

- Embroideries (UK) // Embroideries (US) - Marjane Satrapi

- Blue Pills: A Positive Love Story (UK) // Blue Pills (US)- Frederik Peeters

- The Tale of One Bad Rat (UK) // The Tale of One Bad Rat (US)- Bryan Talbot

- Ghost World (UK) // Ghost World (US) - Daniel Clowes

- Lost Girls (UK) // Lost Girls (US) - Alan Moore & Melinda Gebbie

- American Widow (UK) // American Widow (US) - Alissa Torres

- Paying for it (UK) // Paying for It (US) - Chester Brown

- Y: The Last Man Vol. 1 - Unmanned (UK) // Y: The Last Man, Vol. 1 (US) - Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra  (This text is apparently extremely cissexist; perhaps the person who recommended it for the list would get in touch with me to defend their recommendation? I’d love to know why you asked me to add it.)

- The Mirror of Love (UK) // The Mirror of Love (US) - Jose Villarrubia & Alan Moore (not strictly a comic, but.)

Trans/gender & passing
- Gender Trouble (UK) // Gender Trouble (US) - Judith Butler - 

- Middlesex (UK) // Middlesex (US)- Jeffrey Eugenides

- Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (UK) // Whipping Girl (US) - Julia Serano

- Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality (UK) // Sexing the Body (US) - Anne Fausto Sterling

- Queer Theory, Gender Theory: An Instant Primer (UK) // Queer Theory, Gender Theory (US) - Riki Wilchins

- Female Masculinity (UK) // Female Masculinity (US) - Judith Halberstam

- The Drag King Book (UK) // The Drag King Book (US) - Judith Halberstam

- Assuming a Body: Transgender and Rhetorics of Materiality (UK) - Gayle Salamon
- Just Add Hormones: An Insider’s Guide to the Transsexual Experience (UK) - Matt Kailey
- Self-made Man: My Year Disguised as a Man (UK)- Norah Vincent
- Transgender History (UK) - Susan Stryker
- Becoming a Visible Man (UK) - Jamison Green
- Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex (UK) - Judith Butler
- Genderqueer: Voices from Beyond the Sexual Binary (UK) - Clare Howell, Joan Nestle, and Riki Wilchins
-From the Inside Out: Radical Gender Transformation, FTM and Beyond (UK) - Morty Diamond
- My Princess Boy (UK) - Suzanne DeSimone Cheryl Kildavos
- Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us (UK) - Kate Bornstein
- Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation (UK) - Kate Bornstein and S. Bear Bergman
- The Passion of New Eve (UK) - Angela Carter
- Cock and Bull (UK)- Will Self
- Orlando (UK)- Virginia Woolf 
- Normal: Transsexual CEOs, Crossdressing Cops and Hermaphrodites with Attitude (UK) - Amy Bloom 

Sex/uality
- The Science/Fiction of Sex: Feminist Deconstruction and the Vocabularies of Heterosex (UK) - Annie Potts
- The Camera My Mother Gave Me (UK) - Susanna Kaysen
- Sex, Lies, and Pharmaceuticals (UK)- Ray Moynihan & Barbara Mintzes
- Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the École Freudienne (UK) - Juliet Mitchell & Jacqueline Rose
- Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence (UK) - Adrienne Rich
- Epistemology of the Closet (UK) - Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
- Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality (UK) - Carole Vance
- The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics and the Ethics of Queer Life (UK) - Michael Warner
- The Invention of Heterosexality (UK) - Jonathan Katz
((- The History of Sexuality: The Will to Knowledge (UK) - Michel Foucault))
((- Intercourse (UK) - Andrea Dworkin))
- Same Sex, Different Cultures: Gays and Lesbians Across Cultures (UK) - Gilbert H. Herdt

Embodiment/subjectivity
- Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (UK) - Susan Bordo
- ‘What Happened to You?’: Writing by Disabled Women (UK) - Lois Keith
- The Body in Pain (UK) - Elaine Scarry
- Regarding the Pain of Others (UK) - Susan Sontag
- Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism (UK) - Elizabeth Grosz
- Writing on the Body: Female Embodiment and Feminist Theory (UK) - Kate Conboy
- Written On The Body (UK) - Jeanette Winterson
- Fat! So?: Because You Don’t Have to Apologise for Your Size (UK) - Marilyn Wann
- Pursuing Privacy in Cold War America (UK) - Deborah Nelson
- The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women (UK) - Naomi Wolf  
- The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly (UK) - Jean-Dominique Bauby 

Sex Work
- Sex for Sale: Prostitution, Pornography, and the Sex Industry (UK) - Robert Weitzer
- The Sadeian Woman (UK)- Angela Carter
- Paying for it (UK) - Chester Brown
- The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels and the Business of AIDS (UK) - Elizabeth Pisani
- The Crimson Petal and the White (UK)- Michel Faber
((- Pornography: Men Possessing Women (UK)- Andrea Dworkin))
((- The Industrial Vagina: The political economy of the global sex trade (UK)- Sheila Jeffreys))
- Bound and Gagged: Pornography and the Politics of Fantasy in America (UK) - Laura Kipnis 

Films, documentaries, miniseries(es)
Paris Is Burning [DVD] [UK Region 2] //
Orlando [DVD] [1992] [UK Region 2] //
Angels In America (HBO) [2003] [DVD] [UK Region 2] //
Boys Don’t Cry [DVD] [2000] [UK Region 2] //
Tipping the Velvet : The Complete BBC Series [2002] [DVD] [UK Region 2] //
Mrs. Doubtfire [DVD] [1994] [UK Region 2] //
Gia [DVD] [UK Region 2] //
Happiness [DVD] [1999] [UK Region 2] //
Frozen River [DVD] [2008] [UK Region 2] //
The Crimson Petal and the White [DVD] [UK Region 2] //
Philadelphia [DVD] [1994] [UK Region 2] //
Death Becomes Her [DVD] [1992] [UK Region 2] //
Diving Bell And The Butterfly [DVD] [UK Region 2] //
Girl, Interrupted [DVD] [UK Region 2] //
An Angel At My Table [1990] [UK Region 2] //
Prozac Nation [DVD] [UK Region 2] //
The Celluloid Closet [DVD] [1995] [UK Region 2] //
Before Stonewall [DVD] [1984] [UK Region 2] //

Fiction
- A Kind of Intimacy // - Jenn Ashworth
- The Edible Woman // - Margaret Atwood
- The Handmaid’s Tale // - Margaret Atwood 
- Giovanni’s Room // - James Baldwin
- Union Street // - Pat Barker
- The White Garden: A Novel of Virginia Woolf // - Stephannie Barron 
- Burning Your Boats: Collected Short Stories // - Angela Carter
- The Passion of New Eve // - Angela Carter
- Middlesex // - Jeffrey Eugenides
- A Girl Named Disaster // - Nancy Farmer
- Stone Butch Blues // - Leslie Feinberg
- The Yellow Wallpaper, Herland & Selected Writings // - Charlotte Perkins Gilman 
- The Well of Loneliness // - Radclyffe Hall
- The End of Alice- A.M. Homes
- Beloved - Toni Morrison 
- The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison
- Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
- Woman on the Edge of Time -Marge Piercy
- Braided Lives - Marge Piercy
- Wide Sargasso Sea- Jean Rhys
- Cock and Bull- Will Self
- Venus as a Boy - Luke Sutherland
- Written On The Body - Jeanette Winterson
- Orlando- Virginia Woolf  

Postcolonial & ethnic minority feminisms 
- This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color - Cherrie Moraga & Gloria Anzaldúa
- Black Feminist Thought - Patricia Hill Collins 
- Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics - Cynthia Enloe
- Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity - Chandra Talpade Mohanty 
- Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology - ed. Johnson and Henderson
- Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza - Gloria Anzaldúa
- Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center: From Margin to Centre - bell hooks 
- Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics - ed. Jose Munoz 
- Queer Theory and Communication: From Disciplining Queers to Queering the Discipline - Gust Yep 
- Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches - Audre Lorde 
- Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption - Jane Jeong Trenka
- Woman, Native, Other: Writing, Postcoloniality and Feminism - Trinh T. Minh-Ha
- Colonize This!: Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism - Daisy Hernandez 
- Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty - Dorothy Roberts 
- Evolution’s Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People - Joan Roughgarden 

Critical, feminist & gender theory, essays etc. 
- The Second Sex - Simone de Beauvoir
- Must We Burn De Sade?- Simone de Beauvoir
- Must We Burn Sade? - Deepak Narang Sawhney
- Gender Trouble - Judith Butler
- Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation- Mary Daly
- Fashioning Sapphism: The Origins of a Modern English Lesbian Culture - Laura Doan
- Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women - Susan Faludi
- The Madwoman in the Attic - Sandra Gilbert & Susan Gubar
- Simians Cyborgs & Women +: The Reinvention of Nature - Donna Haraway
- This Sex Which is Not One - Luce Irigaray 
- Speculum of the Other Woman - Luce Irigaray
- An Ethics of Sexual Difference- Luce Irigaray
- Bitchfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of “Bitch” Magazine- Ed. Lisa Jervis and Andi Zeisler
- The Barbie Chronicless - Yona Zeldis McDonough
- Visual and Other Pleasures - Laura Mulvey
- Assuming a Body: Transgender and Rhetorics of Materiality - Gayle Salamon 
- Ties That Bind: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences - Sarah Schulman
- Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection - Julia Kristeva
- The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture, 1830-1980 - Elaine Showalter
- Domestica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence - Pierette Hondagneu Sotello 
- A Room of One’s Own - Virginia Woolf
- Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women - Elizabeth Wurtzel 

Memoir
- The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly - Jean-Dominique Bauby
- Fun Home - Alison Bechdel
- Paying for it - Chester Brown
- In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution - Susan Brownmiller
- Girl, Interrupted- Susanna Kaysen
- The Camera My Mother Gave Me - Susanna Kaysen
- Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books - Azar Nafisi
- Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel - Jeannette Walls
- Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit - Jeanette Winterson 
- Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America - A Memoir - Elizabeth Wurtzel  
- More, Now, Again - Elizabeth Wurtzel