Books & Spoken Word
Cancelled: Helen Lewis
Helen Lewis discusses her new book, Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights.
Well-behaved women don’t make history: difficult women do. Helen Lewis argues that feminism’s success is down to complicated, contradictory, imperfect women, who fought each other as well as fighting for equal rights. Too many of these pioneers have been forgotten in our modern search for feel-good, inspirational heroines. It’s time to reclaim the history of feminism as a history of difficult women.
Helen Lewis talks about the working-class suffragettes who advocated bombings and arson; the princess who discovered why so many women were having bad sex; and the pioneer of the refuge movement who became a men’s rights activist. Find out about the ‘striker in a sari’ who terrified Margaret Thatcher; the wronged Victorian wife who definitely wasn’t sleeping with the prime minister; and the lesbian politician who outraged the country. Taking the story up to the present with the twenty-first century campaign for abortion services, Helen reveals the unvarnished – and unfinished – history of women’s rights. She talks about why the feminist movement has succeeded and what it should do next with Sarah Ditum.
is needed now More than ever
Photo credit: Urszula Soltys
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