Dia daoibh a chairde!
Have you ever found yourself wanting to read a good book about queer feminism but you weren’t sure where to look?
I have spent more hours than I would care to admit studying, writing about, and educating on the topic of gender and sexuality, and I’ve realized that I could lend a bit of my educational development work to you kind folks by prepping this here reading list.
I hope you can find something to interest you–and I would love to talk about any of the works listed. The categories are not hard and fast, with many books belonging in several of them, but I figured there had to be some way to organize this, so bear with me. I also tried to narrow inclusion to books relating to queer/feminist studies.
1. Introduction to Feminism
The Second Sex - Simone De Beauvior
This Sex Which Is Not One - Luce Irigaray
In the Beginning, She Was - Luce Irigaray
An Ethics of Sexual Difference - Luce Irigaray
Speculum of Other Women - Luce Irigaray
The Political Economy of Women’s Liberation - Margaret Benston
Women and Economics - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community - Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Selma James
The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution - Shulamith Firestone
I am Woman: Native Perspective of Sociology and Feminism - Lee Maracle
I Myself am a Woman: Selected Writings of Ding Ling - Ding Ling
Living a Feminist Life - Sara Ahmed
Philosophical Trends in the Feminist Movement - Anuradha Ghandy
Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women - Silvia Federici
Compañeras: Zapatista Women’s Stories - Hilary Klein
Chinese Femininities/Chinese Masculinities: A Reader - Susan Brownell and Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom
Women in the Sky: Gender and Labor in the Making of Modern Korea - Hwasook Nam
Outsiders Inside: Whiteness, Place, and Irish Women - Bronwen Walter
2. Intersectionality and Black Feminism
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches - Geraldine Audre Lorde
This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color - Cherríe Moraga and Gloria E. Anzaldúa
How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective - Keeanga-Yahmatta Taylor
Women, Race, and Class - Angela Y. Davis
Women, Culture, and Politics - Angela Y. Davis
Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology - Margaret L. Anderson and Patricia Hill Collins
Intersectionality - Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge
Emerging Intersections: Race, Class, and Gender in Theory, Policy, and Practice - Bonnie Thornton Dill, Ruth Enid Zambrana and Patricia Hill Collins
Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment - Patricia Hill Collins
Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound - Daphne A. Brooks
3. Trans* and Gender Diversity
The Transfeminist Manifesto - Emi Koyama
Transfeminism: A Collection - Emi Koyama
Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us - Kate Bornstein
Gender Outlaws: the Next Generation - Kate Bornstein and S. Bear Bergman
Read My Lips: Sexual Subversion and the End of Gender - Riki Wilchins
Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue - Leslie Feinberg
Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman - Leslie Feinberg
Beyond Gender Binaries: The History of Trans, Intersex, and Third-Gender Individuals - Rita Santos
Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity - Julia Serano
Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive - Julia Serano
Sexed Up: How Society Sexualizes Us, and How We Can Fight Back - Julia Serano
Outspoken: A Decade of Transgender Activism and Trans Feminism - Julia Serano
Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People - Viviane K. Namaste
Sex Change, Social Change: Reflections on Identity, Institutions, and Imperialism - Viviane K. Namaste
My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage - Susan Stryker
The Transgender Studies Reader - Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle
The Transgender Studies Reader 2 - Susan Stryker and Aren Aizura
Transgender History: The Roots of Today’s Revolution - Susan Stryker
We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics - Andrea Abi-Karam and Kay Gabriel
Imagining Transgender: An Ethnography of a Category - David Valentine
Second Skins: The Body Narratives of Transsexuality - Jay Prosser
You’ve Changed: Sex Reassignment and Personal Identity - Laurie J. Shrage
In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives - Judith Halberstam
How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States - Joanne Meyerowitz
Assuming a Body: Transgender and Rhetorics of Materiality - Gayle Salamon
The Lives of Transgender People - Genny Beemyn and Susan Rankin
Side Affects: On Being Trans and Feeling Bad - Hil Malatino
Trans/Love: Radical Sex, Love & Relationships Beyond the Gender Binary - Morty Diamond
Queer and Trans Madness: Struggles for Social Justice - Merrick Daniel Pilling
Please Select Your Gender: From the Invention of Hysteria to the Democratizing of Transgenderism - Patricia Gherovici
Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach - Suzanne J. Kessler and Wendy McKenna
Travesti: Sex, Gender, and Culture Among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes - Don Kulick
Beyond Emasculation: Pleasure and Power in the Making of hijra in Bangladesh - Adnan Hossain
Badhai: Hijra-Khwaja Sira-Trans Performance Across Borders in South Asia - Adnan Hossain, Claire Pamment and Jeff Roy
Beauty and Power: Transgendering and Cultural Transformation in the Southern Philippines - Mark Johnson
Changing Ones: Third and Fourth Genders in Native North America - Will Roscoe
4. Understanding Intersex
Myths of Gender: Biological Theories About Women and Men - Anne Fausto-Sterling
Sex/Gender/Biology in a Social World - Anne Fausto-Sterling
Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality - Anne Fausto-Sterling
Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex - Alice Dromurat Dreger
Intersex - Catherine Harper
Bodies in Doubt: An American History of Intersex - Elizabeth Reis
Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud - Thomas Walter Laqueur
Contesting Intersex: The Dubious Diagnosis - Georgiann Davis
The Spectrum of Sex: The Science of Male, Female, and Intersex - Hida Vilori and Maria Nieto
Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity - Julia Epstein and Kristina Straub
Queer Embodiment: Monstrosity, Medical Violence, and Intersex Experience - Hil Malatino
Critical Intersex - Morgan Holmes
Fixing Sex: Intersex, Medical Authority, and Lived Experience - Katrina Karkazis
Intersex Matters: Biomedical Embodiment, Gender Regulation, and Transnational Activism - David A. Rubin
Intersex Rights: Living Between Sexes - Nikoletta Pikramenou
Transgender and Intersex: Theoretical, Practical, and Artistic Perspectives - Stefan Horlacher
Expanding the Rainbow: Exploring the Relationships of Bi+, Polyamorous, Kinky, Ace, Intersex, and Trans People - Brandy L. Simula, J. E. Sumerau and Andrea Miller
Challenging Lesbian Norms: Intersex, Transgender, Intersectional, and Queer Perspectives - Angela Pattatuchi Aragón
5. Queer Theory and Philosophy
Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity - Judith Butler
Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex - Judith Butler
Undoing Gender - Judith Butler
Performativity and Performance - Andrew Parker and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others - Sara Ahmed
Deleuze and Queer Theory - Chrysanthi Nigianni and Merl Storr
Epistemology of the Closet - Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Tendencies - Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, and Performativity - Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Queer Performance and Contemporary Ireland: Dissent and Disorientation - Fintan Walsh
New Feminist Perspectives on Embodiment - Clara Fischer and Luna Dolezal
Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism - Elizabeth Grosz
Sexual Subversions - Elizabeth Grosz
Time Travels: Feminism, Nature, Power - Elizabeth Grosz
Sexy Bodies: The Strange Carnalities of Feminism - Elizabeth Grosz and Elspeth Probyn
Beyond the Periphery of the Skin: Rethinking, Remaking, and Reclaiming the Body in Contemporary Capitalism - Silvia Federici
Thinking Through the Skin - Sara Ahmed and Jackie Stacey
Differences that Matter: Feminist Theory and Postmodernism - Sara Ahmed
Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-coloniality - Sara Ahmed
Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction - Elizabeth Grosz
A Rave at the End of the World: The Politics of Queer Hauntology and Psychedelic Chronomancy - Sean Michael Feiner
Queer/Early/Modern - Carla Freccero
6. Exploring Sexuality
The Straight Mind and Other Essays - Monique Wittig
Cherry Grove, Fire Island: Sixty Years in America’s First Gay and Lesbian Town - Esther Newton
Margaret Mead Made Me Gay: Personal Essays, Public Ideas - Esther Newton
Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America - Esther Newton
Sapphists and Sexologists: Histories of Sexualities - Mary McAuliffe
Witchcraft and Gay Counterculture - Arthur Evans
Deviations: A Gayle Rubin Reader - Gayle S. Rubin
Conditional Spaces: Hong Kong Lesbian Desires and Everyday Life - Denise Tse-Shang Tang
Queer Comrades: Gay Identity and Tongzhi Activism in Postsocialist China - Hongwei Bao
Maid to Queer: Asian Labor Migration and Female Same-Sex Desires - Francisca Yuenki Lai
Oral Histories of Older Gay Men in Hong Kong: Unspoken but Unforgotten - Travis S. K. Kong
Tongzhi: Politics of Same-Sex Eroticism in Chinese Societies - Chou Wah-Shan
The Emerging Lesbian: Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern China - Tze-Lan D. Sang
Tongzhi Living: Men Attracted to Men in Postsocialist China - Tiantian Zheng
Queer Women in Urban China: An Ethnography - Elisabeth L. Engebretsen
Backward Glances: Contemporary Chinese Cultures and the Female Homoerotic Imaginary - Fran Martin
Queer Politics and Sexual Modernity in Taiwan - Xianyong Bai and Hans Tao-Ming Huang
Queer Sinophone Cultures - Howard Chiang and Ari Larissa Heinrich
Boy-wives and Female Husbands: Studies in African Homosexualities - Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe
Islamic Homosexualities: Culture, History, and Literature - Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe
Gender and Sexuality in Muslim Cultures - Gul Ozyegin
Gender and Sexuality in Modern Ireland - Anthony Bradley and Maryann Gialanella Valiulis
7. Cultural Critique
Cultural Sites of Critical Insight: Philosophy, Aesthetics, and African American and Native American Women’s Writings - Angela L. Cotten and Christa Davis Acampora
The Dress of Women: A Critical Introduction to the Symbolism and Sociology of Clothing - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Vested Interests: Cross-dressing and Cultural Anxiety - Marjorie Garber
Leatherfolk: Radical Sex, People, Politics, and Practice - Mark Thompson
Queer Pulp: Perverted Passions from the Golden Age of the Paperback - Susan Stryker
Women in the Chinese Enlightenment: Oral and Textual Histories - Zheng Wang
Desiring China: Experiments in Neoliberalism, Sexuality, and Public Culture - Lisa Rofel
Transgender China - Howard Chiang
A Society Without Fathers of Husbands: the Na of China - Cai Hua
Queer/Tongzhi China: New Perspectives on Research, Activism, and Media Cultures - Elisabeth L. Engebretsen, William F. Schroeder and Hongwei Bao
Queer TV China: Televisual and Fannish Imaginaries of Gender, Sexuality and Chineseness - Jamie J. Zhao
Queer China: Lesbian and Gay Literature and Visual Culture Under Postsocialism - Hongwei Bao
Queer Media in China - Hongwei Bao
Boys’ Love, Cosplay, and Androgynous Idols: Queer Fan Culture in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan - Maud Lavin, Ling Yang and Jing Jamie Zhao
Trad Nation: Gender, Sexuality, and Race in Irish Traditional Music - Tes Slominski
Celtic Women: Women in Celtic Society and Literature - Peter Berresford Ellis
The Irish Novel at the End of the Twentieth Century: Gender, Bodies, and Power - Jennifer M. Jeffers
Contemporary Irish and Welsh Women’s Fiction: Gender, Desire and Power - Linden Peach
LGBTQ Visibility, Media and Sexuality in Ireland - Páraic Kerrigan
The Poor Bugger’s Tool: Irish Modernism, Queer Labor, and Postcolonial History - Patrick R. Mullen
Women and the Irish Nation: Gender, Culture, and Irish Identity, 1890-1914 - D. A. J. MacPherson
Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire - Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
Smut: Erotic Reality/Obscene Ideology - Murray S. Davis
Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society - Lila Abu-Lughod
Writing Women’s Worlds: Bedouin Stories - Lila Abu-Lughod
Gramsci, Migration, and the Representation of Women’s Work in Italy and the U.S. - Laura E. Ruberto
Queer Bangkok: 21st Century Markets, Media, and Rights - Peter Jackson
8. Queer Marxism
Transgender Marxism - Jules Joanne Gleeson and Elle O’Rourke
Transition and Abolition: Notes on Marxism and Trans Politics - Jules Joanne Gleeson
Lavender and Red - Leslie Feinberg
Caliban and the Witch: Women, The Body, and Primitive Accumulation - Silvia Federici
Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons - Silvia Federici
Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle - Silvia Federici
The Problematics of Heterosexuality: Marxism, Psychoanalysis, and Mother Nature - Hilary Manette Klein
The Politics of Everybody: Feminism, Queer Theory, and Marxism at the Intersection - Holly Lewis
Raya Dunayevskaya’s Intersectional Marxism: Race, Class, Gender, and the Dialectics of Liberation - Kevin B. Anderson, Kieran Durkin and Heather A. Brown
Queer Marxism in Two Chinas - Petrus Liu
Finding Women in the State: A Socialist Feminist Revolution in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1964 - Zheng Wang
Some of Us: Chinese Women Growing Up in the Mao Era - Xueping Zhong, Wang Zheng and Bai Di
The Women’s Revolution: Russia 1905 - 1917 - Judy Cox
Social-Democracy and Woman Suffrage - Clara Zetkin
Lenin on the Woman Question - Clara Zetkin
The New Soviet Man and Woman: Sex-Role Socialization in the USSR - Lynne Attwood
Revolution, She Wrote - Clara Fraser
9. Abolition
Abolition. Feminism. Now. - Angela Y. Davis, Gina Dent, Erica Meiners and Beth Richie
Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color - Andrea J. Ritchie
Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America’s Prison Nation - Beth E. Richie
We Do This 'Til We Free Us - Mariame Kaba
Abolitionist Intimacies - El Jones
Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States - Joey L. Mogul, Andrea J. Ritchie and Kay Whitlock
Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex - Eric A. Stanley
Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law - Dean Spade
Transgender Sex Work and Society - Larry Nutbrock
Revolting Prostitutes - Molly Smith and Juno Mac
Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class, and the State - Judith R. Walkowitz
The Social Construction of AIDS Issues - Suiming Pan
Thinking Differently About HIV/AIDS: Contributions from Critical Social Science - Eric Mykhalovskiy and Viviane K. Namaste
Insurgent Love: Abolition and Domestic Homicide - Ardath Whynacht
Written on the Body: Letters from Trans and Non-Binary Survivors of Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence - Lexie Bean
Curative Violence: Rehabilitating Disability, Gender, and Sexuality in Modern Korea - Eunjung Kim
10. Anti-Imperialism and Internationalism
Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times - Jasbir Puar
Class, Gender, and Neoliberalism - Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale
Gender and Colonialism: A Psychological Analysis of Oppression and Liberation - Geraldine Moane
Gender and Imperialism - Clare Midgley
The Beginning and End of R-pe: Confronting Sexual Violence in Native America - Sarah Deer
Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide - Andrea Smith
Western Women and Imperialism: Complicity and Resistance - Nupur Chaudhuri and Margaret Strobel
Do Muslim Women Need Saving? - Lila Abu-Lughod
Anti-Veiling Campaigns in the Muslim World: Gender, Modernism and the Politics of Dress - Stephanie Cronin
Embodying Geopolitics: Generations of Women’s Activism in Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon - Nicola Pratt
Greater Than the Sum of Our Parts: Feminism, Inter/Nationalism, and Palestine - Nada Elia
Palestinian Women’s Activism: Nationalism, Secularism, Islamism - Islah Jad
Israel/Palestine and the Queer International - Sarah Schulman
Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique - Saed Atshan
Even a Freak Like You Would Be Safe in Tel Aviv: Transgender Subjects, Wounded Attachments, and the Zionist Economy of Gratitude - Saffo Papantonopoulou
Militarization and Violence Against Women in Conflict Zones in the Middle East: A Palestinian Case-Study - Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian
Decolonial Feminism in Abya Yala: Caribbean, Meso, and South American Contributions and Challenges - María Lugones, Yuderkys Espinosa-Miñoso and Nelson Maldonado-Torres
Positioning Gender and Race in (Post)colonial Plantation Space: Connecting Ireland and the Caribbean - Eve Walsh Stoddard
Ireland and the Magdalene Laundries: A Campaign for Justice - Claire McGettrick, Katherine O’Donnell, Maeve O’Rourke, James M. Smith and Mari Steed
Family and Gender in the Pacific: Domestic Contradictions and the Colonial Impact - Margaret Jolly and Martha Macintyre
Oceanic Encounters: Exchange, Desire, Violence - Margaret Jolly, Serge Tcherkézoff and Darrell Tryon
Maternities and Modernities: Colonial and Postcolonial Experiences in Asia and the Pacific - Kalpana Ram and Margaret Jolly
Paradoxes of Hawaiian Sovereignty: Land, Sex, and the Colonial Politics of State Nationalism - J. Kēhaulani Kauanui
FREE IRELAND DEATH TO THE UK
Haha yeah there’s a solid amount of books here that might be a little Irish-specific, but I think they’re well worth reading!
go raibh míle for this post Saoirse! i think i had a comment of yours saved from a while ago with a shorter list but this is just a wonderful selection. always appreciate your posts, you’re seriously a font of knowledge and insight.
Glad to be of service! I think these should all be available on libgen, but if you ever catch sight of one you’re interested in and can’t find, shoot me a message and I’ll track it down for you <3
I looked through and this is a really good reading list!! Some things I’ll have to check out!
I didn’t see it, but I’d recommend “A short history of transmisogyny” by Jules Gill-Peterson.
Thank you so much for the recommendation! I see that it just came out last year, I’ll have to dive into that one this weekend. The list is stuff I’ve read, so I’ll update it once I’ve had a chance to check it out! Very much appreciated <3 <3
Thank you for this. Only one of the books here has been a course book in my uni gender studies and that sure makes one think.
So many I want to read.
Hope you find something you enjoy, and please feel free to let me know what you think of any of them, I’m always up for a good discussion <3
It is very interesting that only one of them has been in your coursework, there are a couple here that are usually pretty ubiquitous
Damn this is so cool, definitely saving for a time when I get back to reading. You should crosspost this to the effortpost comm too, needs more recognition imo!
ohh thank you <3, sure I can do that. I think I know how haha
