We are witnessing the patriarchy’s last gasp, and it’s not going down without a fight. Using legislation, language, and women’s own silence, it seeks to return us to a time when choice and self-determination were not options.
In this collection, twenty-one fearless writers examine reproductive rights, access to health care, violence against women, and the rise of rape apologists in the twenty-first-century United States. Illuminating intersections of gender, class, and race, these stories speak to the challenges women routinely face, the attempts to undermine their rights, and the deliberate, systemic erosion of their agency and existence as equals.
It’s time to revisit what’s at stake, what could still be lost, and why we must continually fight for equality and freedom for all.
Roxane Gay • The Alienable Rights of Women
Betty MacDonald • Before Roe v. Wade
Katha Pollitt Remember • Savita Halappanavar
Dolores P. • Ask an Abortion Provider
Sari Botton • Confessions of a Good Girl
Addy Robinson McCulloch • Three Heresies
Tara Murtha • Ripple Effect
Sarah Mirk • Lucky Breaks and Little Miracles
Kari O’Driscoll • A Mile in Their Shoes
Martha Bayne • Knocked Over: On Biology, Magical Thinking, and Choice
Janet Frishberg • Endo
Mira Ptacin • Un-Bearing
J. Victoria Sanders • Grown-Woman Swagger
s.e. smith • Justice for All
Camille Hayes • The Great Leap Backward
Rebecca K. O’Connor • Birdsong and Gunshot
Lidia Yuknavitch • Explicit Violence
Elissa Bassist • Caffeine-Free Rape
Kevin Sampsell • I Know Who You Raped Last Summer
Kate Sheppard • Don’t Know Much About Biology
Rebecca Cohen • Binders Full of Women: Episode 1, The Story of Mary & Bill
