Joanne L. Bagshaw PhD - The Feminist Handbook: Practical Tools to Resist Sexism and Dismantle the Patriarchy

This book comes at the perfect time. This is a guide for women and men, young and old, with tools for everyoneeducators, policy makers, therapists, and anyone who wants to navigate oppressive patriarchyto find specific ways to handle the workplace, health care, education, or deal with their own personal relationships. Everyone should read this book to heal and move forward, to create a new society, empowered and stronger for it.

Tammy Nelson, PhD , director of the Integrative Sex Therapy Institute, TEDx speaker, and author of The New Monogamy

The Feminist Handbook is not only chock-full of information, but also has activities that the reader can personalize for many of the major points. This guided, experiential focus will help the reader really incorporate various issues from a feminist perspective.

Judith Belmont, MS , author of Embrace Your Greatness

This unique book challenges you to change yourself in order make changes in the world around you. By integrating feminist scholarship with personal reflection and behavioral strategies, the reader will find ways to express their values and prioritize self-care. This is a must-read for those who want to express their voice and work for social justice, while nurturing themselves and their relationships in the process.

Sheela Raja, PhD , associate professor and clinical psychologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago, author of Overcoming Trauma and PTSD , and coauthor of The PTSD Survival Guide for Teens and The Sexual Trauma Workbook for Teen Girls

The Feminist Handbook is a must-read for anyone who wants to gain self-awareness and take action to improve the lives of women (and men). Joanne Bagshaw has given an important gift to the worlda powerful, accessible, and actionable guide to intersectional feminism.

Julie de Azevedo Hanks, PhD, LCSW , author of The Assertiveness Guide for Women , owner of Wasatch Family Therapy, and assistant professor of social work at Utah Valley University

In the times of #blacklivesmatter, #metoo, and #timesup, Joanne Bagshaw gives us a gift where we can deeply explore the connections of intersectional feminism to our lived experiences. Patriarchy has long outlived itself, and Bagshaw provides step-by-step learning for how to resist, engage in body liberation, and work for sexual and reproductive justice.

Anneliese Singh, PhD, LPC , professor and associate dean of diversity, equity, and inclusion at the University of Georgia; and author of The Racial Healing Handbook and The Queer and Transgender Resilience Workbook

Publishers Note

This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering psychological, financial, legal, or other professional services. If expert assistance or counseling is needed, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

Distributed in Canada by Raincoast Books

Copyright 2019 by Joanne L. Bagshaw

New Harbinger Publications, Inc.

5674 Shattuck Avenue

Oakland, CA 94609

www.newharbinger.com

Cover design by Sara Christian

Acquired by Elizabeth Hollis Hansen

Edited by Brady Kahn

All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file

For Ava, so that you may have a better, safer world to live in.

Contents

Foreword

One of the constant issues women face in leading healthier, happier lives is that we are not educated in ways that enable us to make sense of our experiences as women. Instead, we can find ourselves fighting against an enduring cultural hostility to any acknowledgment of our experiences and what they mean to us personally, professionally, and politically. In some cases this hostility is blunt. We see it in fractious political debates about wage gaps, pregnancy discrimination, or reproductive justice. More often, however, its less visible, manifested in the subtle granularity of habits, traditions, and storytelling. It is baked into how we learn history and how we think about our religious, political, and media institutions, all of which are grounded in the idea that the men who rule and have the power to shape the world do so because they are born to instead of because others are systemically and violently oppressed. One of the most powerful constraints on womens equality remains how much of the nitty-gritty of our lives is still considered taboo or unwelcome in private and pubic conversation, not family friendly in media, and not centrally important to politics. Women and people who are feminine continue to be harmed by the centering of men and masculinity, which are the pillars of patriarchal social organization. In other words, we are harmed because we live in a patriarchal world optimized to silence us.

For many years Ive studied, written, and talked about this world and the role that feminism plays in understanding and challenging it. During that time, three issues have remained constant and primary for the women and men with whom Ive come in contact. First, why does it often take us, as individuals, so long to learn about and understand what feminism is, its urgency and importance? Second, what can we do, as individuals and as a society, to unlearn damaging lessons and to further the aims of feminism? And third, how do we cultivate genuinely egalitarian beliefs, mores, and values earlier, so that this unlearning is no longer necessary? These questions result from the conditions of patriarchy itself: a systemic and intersectional oppression of women that dictates how we live and what roles we play in our interpersonal relationships, our schools, our places of worship, and our governance.

These questions are grounded in our early childhood socialization and education. It is as children that most of us learn to narrowly define gender as binary and oppositional and then, almost always, to disdain femininity in anyone. It is as children that girls learn to adapt in silence to subtle and often socially tolerated and institutionally perpetuated discrimination. As we grow up, we are taught to ignore, work around, and minimize the blunt threat and reality of the violence that surrounds us, whether in our homes or on public streets. It is rare for a woman to reach adulthood with any real and useful knowledge about the confusion, stress, pain, and trauma that can be associated with having (or not having) a body that conforms to roles and ideals, a body that menstruates, gestates, and gives birth (or doesnt). While we all experience discrimination and oppression differently and in different measure, and, indeed, can often oppress others, we share the understanding that shrouding ourselves in shame is preferable to demanding respect, trust, and power. As a result, women often strugglefrom cradle to gravewith saying what we feel and need; we struggle to demand care, fairness, respect, and our rights.

It is often the case that we come to feminism reluctantly and with little or no understanding of the diversities of feminism or with the history of liberation movements, or with the ways in which both shape our lives every day. Instead we learn, as children, to fold the tremendous costs of patriarchy into ourselves. We grow into adults who live, ultimately, maladaptively.