Unshaved: Resistance and Revolution in Women's Body Hair Politics
Published June 28, 2022
Link to University of Washington Page
Body hair, especially on women, provokes, disrupts, and, at times, offends. It is tangled up with culture itself—in art, families, workplaces, relationships, sex, the beauty industry, governments, and capitalism. From Chinese activists challenging the Communist Party, to students in Arizona rejecting their family and workplace ideas about grooming, to high-art feminist photographers boldly featuring hairy women, Fahs deftly explores the volatile and ever-changing landscape of women's body hair politics. She showcases an underground movement of artists, zine-makers, rebels, and activists who have used women's visible body hair as a declaration of freedom from patriarchal norms. Fahs presents body hair not just as a personal grooming choice but as a connection to broader cultural stories about women's reproductive rights, feminist battlegrounds about autonomy, neoliberal intrusions into beauty regimens, and even global tensions around women's place in society. Ultimately, Unshaved shows the collision between the mundane and the extraordinary, the everyday and the revolutionary.
Podcast with Laurie Betito "Passion" where we talk about sex and body hair.
NPR interview with Lauren Gilger
Reviews:
Fahs's lively writing, coupled with an abundance of evidence, convincingly illustrates how body hair is a path to difficult discussions regarding gender, bodies, power, and social control.- Samantha Kwan, coauthor of Under the Knife: Cosmetic Surgery, Boundary Work, and the Pursuit of the Natural Fake
"Fahs astutely reveals how tricky, sticky patriarchal power is enacted right down to the surface of our skin. What’s more, she makes clear that the everyday can—and must—be truly revolutionary."- Chris Bobel, author of The Managed Body: Developing Girls & Menstrual Health in the Global South
"Breanne Fahs is a moving, bold, and brilliant thinker and writer. Unshaved blasts the century-old Western misogynist, racist, and shame-inducing imposition of the norm of women's bodily hairlessness. Fahs urges a body politics of lived resistance and attends closely to differences among women as she covers a rich repository of feminist art, zines, and global activism. This book is utterly compelling reading; and it is an ideal text for many classes in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies."- Jane Caputi, author of Call Your “Mutha”:
"Unshaved provides an accessible way to think about power and how power gets inside our heads to shape women’s experiences of their bodies, but it is also optimistic, envisaging through in-depth scholarship a better world for women."--Sarah Riley, Women's Reproductive Health (full review here)
"This is a thorough and revelatory treatment of an underexamined aspect of feminism and body politics."- Publisher's Weekly
"Unshaved is an unabashed and unparalleled reading for anyone wanting to think more deeply about body politics."--Janice Yoder, Psychology of Women Quarterly
"“UNSHAVED has wended its way into my favorite new conversation starter…We cannot be whole until we have autonomy over our own bodies. Read Breanne Fahs' book. Start the conversations. Take Action.”—Bonnilee Kaufman, Journal of Lesbian Studies
Burn It Down!: Feminist Manifestos for the Revolution
Published March 24, 2020 with Verso
Link to Verso page
The most comprehensive collection of feminist manifestos, chronicling our rage and dreams from the nineteenth century to today. In this landmark collection spanning three centuries and four waves of feminist activism and writing, Burn It Down! is a testament to what is possible when women are driven to the edge. The manifesto—raging and wanting, quarreling and provoking—has always played a central role in feminism, and it’s the angry, brash feminism we need now. Collecting over seventy-five manifestos from around the world, Burn It Down! is a rallying cry and a call to action. Among this confrontational sisterhood, you’ll find
• “Dyke Manifesto” by the Lesbian Avengers
• “The Ax Tampax Poem Feministo” by the Bloodsisters Project
• “The Manifesto of Apocalyptic Witchcraft” by Peter Grey
• “Simone de Beauvoir’s pro-abortion Manifesto of the 343
• “Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female” by Frances M. Beal
• “The Futurist Manifesto of Lust” by Valentine de Saint-Point
• “Zapatista Women’s Revolutionary Laws”
• “Riot Grrrl Manifesto” by Bikini Kill
• “Anarchy and the Sex Question” by Emma Goldman
Breanne Fahs argues that we need manifestos in all their urgent rawness—their insistence that we have to act now, that we must face this, that the bleeding edge of rage and defiance ignites new and revolutionary possibilities is where new ideas are born.
Burn It Down! is named one of the TOP 20 BOOKS OF THE YEAR. Check it out here.
Read the review in the New York Times here!
Conversation with Sarah Leonard at Bluestockings Bookstore (5/4/20) about Burn It Down!
Review by Hettie Judah in iNews here
Read an excerpt of the book here at Public Books or here at Hunger
Interview with Soraya Chemaly about Women's Anger at Literary Hub (click here)
Podcast of This is Hell! "The Power of the Feminist Manifesto". To read full transcript, click here.
Interview conversation with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz on Burn it Down! for Literary Hub's Rekindled series
Interview with Eric Cervini on Quarantini, "From Contagion to Revolution"
Interview with Jessa Crispin on Public Intellectual: "The Feminist Response to Coronavirus"
Blog post about "Life Under COVID-19" for Verso Books Blog
Interview with James Tracy on Books to the Barricades (Howard Zinn Book Festival)
New Books Network interview with Rebekah Buchanan
Whitechapel Gallery Event, Reading/Conversation with Lola Olufemi (click here)
Burn It Down! was selected as the Verso book club selection for December. Read about it here.
Reviews:
"An invaluable reminder of feminism's radical and revolutionary visions. It's also, to those least inclined to read it but most in need of doing so, a powerful threat."--Soraya Chemaly, author of Rage Becomes Her
“This exhilarating work of love and scholarship is a radiant gift to all who value liberation and justice. Reading it filled me with hope, inspiration and an electric connection to the angry, dissatisfied comrades who have come before me - as well my outraged contemporaries. A must-read, an antidote to powerlessness, a literary companion for the ages.”--Michelle Tea, author of How to Grow Up
“In an age of platitudes and etsy-fied feminist empowerment products, Breanne Fahs gives us the uncompromising, the unruly, the ungovernable, the unpalatable. This book is a fiery reminder that the world does not change, we change the world.” -- Jessa Crispin, author of The Dead Ladies Project
"This book is a true feminism buffet, no matter what angle is of interest to you. This is 500 pages of solid gold...Her selections showcase an editorial instinct that aims for the truly exhaustive. No feminist who picks up this book is going to feel unheard or left out based on the comprehensive material included in it."--Megan Volpert, Pop Matters. Full review here.
"This text is important historically and as a handbook for understanding and organizing today. Fahs has put together a collection that runs from the immediate and practical to the futuristic and abstract. In doing so, she reminds us that radical feminism is both utopian vision and practical argument."--Ron Jacobs, Counterpunch. Full review here.
"Learned and impassioned ... irreverent, scabrous and enraged, these manifestos also happen to be full of contradictions, written in the heat of the moment and without a cool eye to posterity. But it’s this rough-hewn immediacy that makes some of them so bracing to read, especially now. At a time when public life has dissolved into self-quarantine, when the ability to concentrate seems like a vestige from another era, there’s something to be said for tracts that don’t just lay claim to your attention but also seize it.”--Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times. Full review here.
“But kill feminism a thousand times, and it will rise a thousand more…This sentiment—that your feminism is only as good as the way it treats the most vulnerable—comes up again and again across the collection. Sex workers compare their struggle to that of care workers. Trans activists compare the control they want over their bodies to the control demanded by abortion activists. Single women fight for the right of women in couples to have their loneliness acknowledged…Sometimes no one listens if you ask nicely. If feminism is condemned to come in waves, with each generation having to relearn what was achieved in the last, then forgetting also brings unexpected alliances.”—Joanna Biggs, London Review of Books. Full review here.
"This powerful and inspiring collection belongs on the bedside tables of women in America who feel diminished or discouraged by the profound insult of Trump’s election. In the wee hours of November 9, 2016, the American electorate delivered an unforgettable kick in the teeth to women by electing a man who had campaigned on open misogyny and recorded himself on an open mike bragging about having sexually assaulted women. The primary wound from his election was to women, a fact we tend to forget in the awful what-came-after—Islamophobic travel bans, children in cages, rising Nazis, etc. This anthology is a well-aimed kick in return."--Nina Burleigh, Air Mail. Full review here.
"These are not carefully worded philosophical treatises or – god forbid – placatory corporate mission statements. They are calls to protest, and for urgent change. They pulsate with righteous fury, end-of-the-tether angst and high emotion. If your blood is boiling, dip in. It is magnificently cathartic...It also offers something like balance: the extremes of one position countered by the extremes of another. It is perhaps worth re-stating this: these manifestos are not in accord, so no reader will be in agreement with all they read in this volume. Yet all these contrary positions can co-exist within feminism – strong, heartfelt and eloquently expressed – without erasing one another, or the book exploding, or the crust of the earth being rent asunder and us all being sucked down to the fiery depths. In the era of cancel culture and the accompanying pressure to consensus, this feels revelatory. Almost a manifesto in itself."--Hettie Judah, iNews. Full review here.
"Burn It Down! arrives at this precarious moment of American history, one when feminist and related American social justice movements have achieved unprecedented success, but also as white and male supremacist hatreds rise in backlash. It is an essential text for any time, but especially this one."--Jane Caputi Journal of American Culture
Women, Sex, and Madness: Notes from the Edge
Published August 26, 2019 with Routledge
ISBN: 978-1138614086 ($46.95)
Order at Routledge, Amazon, or request at your local bookstore
Covering a wide variety of subjects and points of inquiry on women's sexuality, from genital anxieties about pubic hair to constructions of the body in the therapy room, this book offers a ground-breaking examination of women, sex, and madness, drawing from psychology, gender and sexuality studies, and cultural studies.
Breanne Fahs argues that women’s sexuality embodies a permanent state of tension between cultural impulses of destruction and selfishness contrasted with the fundamental possibilities of subversiveness and joy. Emphasizing cultural, social, and personal narratives about sexuality, Fahs asks readers to imagine sex, bodies, and madness as intertwined, and to see these narratives as fluid, contested, and changing. With topics as diverse as anarchist visions of sexual freedom, sexualized emotion work, lesbian haunted houses, and the insidious workings of capitalism, Fahs conceptualizes sexuality as a force of regressive moral panics and profound inequalities—deployed in both blatant and more subtle ways onto the body—while also finding hope and resistance in the possibilities of sexuality.
By integrating clinical case studies, cultural studies, qualitative interviews, and original essays, Fahs offers a provocative new vision for sexuality that fuses together social anxieties and cultural madness through a critical feminist psychological approach. Fahs provides an original and accessible volume for students and academics in psychology, gender and sexuality studies, and cultural studies.
Published August 26, 2019 with Routledge
ISBN: 978-1138614086 ($46.95)
Order at Routledge, Amazon, or request at your local bookstore
Covering a wide variety of subjects and points of inquiry on women's sexuality, from genital anxieties about pubic hair to constructions of the body in the therapy room, this book offers a ground-breaking examination of women, sex, and madness, drawing from psychology, gender and sexuality studies, and cultural studies.
Breanne Fahs argues that women’s sexuality embodies a permanent state of tension between cultural impulses of destruction and selfishness contrasted with the fundamental possibilities of subversiveness and joy. Emphasizing cultural, social, and personal narratives about sexuality, Fahs asks readers to imagine sex, bodies, and madness as intertwined, and to see these narratives as fluid, contested, and changing. With topics as diverse as anarchist visions of sexual freedom, sexualized emotion work, lesbian haunted houses, and the insidious workings of capitalism, Fahs conceptualizes sexuality as a force of regressive moral panics and profound inequalities—deployed in both blatant and more subtle ways onto the body—while also finding hope and resistance in the possibilities of sexuality.
By integrating clinical case studies, cultural studies, qualitative interviews, and original essays, Fahs offers a provocative new vision for sexuality that fuses together social anxieties and cultural madness through a critical feminist psychological approach. Fahs provides an original and accessible volume for students and academics in psychology, gender and sexuality studies, and cultural studies.
Firebrand Feminism: The Radical Lives of Ti-Grace Atkinson, Kathie Sarachild, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, and Dana Densmore
Published April 24, 2018 with University of Washington Press
ISBN: 978-0295743165 ($29.95)
Order at University of Washington Press, Amazon, or your local bookstore!
Unapologetic, troublemaking, agitating, revolutionary, and hot-headed: radical feminism bravely transformed the history of politics, love, sexuality, and science. In Firebrand Feminism, Breanne Fahs brings together ten years of dialogue with four founders of the radical feminist movement: Ti-Grace Atkinson, Kathie Sarachild, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, and Dana Densmore. Taking aim at the selfishness of the right and the incremental politics of the liberal left, they defiantly and fiercely created a new kind of feminism in the late 1960s.
Firebrand Feminism provides a timely and historically rich account of these audacious women and the lasting impact of their words and work. This unique and provocative book unites second- and third-wave feminism and creates a much-needed intergenerational dialogue about the utility of feminist rage, the importance of refusal, the changing politics of sex and love, trans rights, and tactics to start (and continue) a revolution.
Reviews of Firebrand Feminism:
"Just the book I've been looking for to supplement the manifestos, tracts, and other writings produced during the heyday of the Women's Liberation Movement."―Eileen Boris, professor of feminist studies, University of California, Santa Barbara
"At a time when feminism would prefer to forget about its radical past, Breanne Fahs does the hard work of dragging it back out from the shadows. Her writing remembers forgotten and neglected women, and their ideas for a wild transformation of society, and it is increasingly vital. Firebrand Feminism is no nostalgia tour, it is a white-hot reminder that we can and should and will change the world. "―Jessa Crispin, author of The Dead Ladies Project
"Makes the argument that contemporary feminism needs a reinfusion of the 'firebrand feminism' epitomized by these women and early radical feminism."―Jane Caputi, author of Goddesses and Monsters: Women, Myth, Power, and Popular Culture
"Fahs makes a case for why radical feminism is needed, given liberal feminists’ failure to tackle the roots of patriarchy within social structures to effect much needed change...Her case is persuasive."--Louise Warwick-Booth, Feminism & Psychology
"Readers will find themselves richly rewarded with details, anecdotes..., and musings that truly flesh out these activists, allowing us to see them as complex thinkers and activists. Their radicalness stems from their desire to get at the roots of patriarchy, making them impatient with incremental change and polite tactics."--Amy Erdman Farrell, The Sixties
Published April 24, 2018 with University of Washington Press
ISBN: 978-0295743165 ($29.95)
Order at University of Washington Press, Amazon, or your local bookstore!
Unapologetic, troublemaking, agitating, revolutionary, and hot-headed: radical feminism bravely transformed the history of politics, love, sexuality, and science. In Firebrand Feminism, Breanne Fahs brings together ten years of dialogue with four founders of the radical feminist movement: Ti-Grace Atkinson, Kathie Sarachild, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, and Dana Densmore. Taking aim at the selfishness of the right and the incremental politics of the liberal left, they defiantly and fiercely created a new kind of feminism in the late 1960s.
Firebrand Feminism provides a timely and historically rich account of these audacious women and the lasting impact of their words and work. This unique and provocative book unites second- and third-wave feminism and creates a much-needed intergenerational dialogue about the utility of feminist rage, the importance of refusal, the changing politics of sex and love, trans rights, and tactics to start (and continue) a revolution.
Reviews of Firebrand Feminism:
"Just the book I've been looking for to supplement the manifestos, tracts, and other writings produced during the heyday of the Women's Liberation Movement."―Eileen Boris, professor of feminist studies, University of California, Santa Barbara
"At a time when feminism would prefer to forget about its radical past, Breanne Fahs does the hard work of dragging it back out from the shadows. Her writing remembers forgotten and neglected women, and their ideas for a wild transformation of society, and it is increasingly vital. Firebrand Feminism is no nostalgia tour, it is a white-hot reminder that we can and should and will change the world. "―Jessa Crispin, author of The Dead Ladies Project
"Makes the argument that contemporary feminism needs a reinfusion of the 'firebrand feminism' epitomized by these women and early radical feminism."―Jane Caputi, author of Goddesses and Monsters: Women, Myth, Power, and Popular Culture
"Fahs makes a case for why radical feminism is needed, given liberal feminists’ failure to tackle the roots of patriarchy within social structures to effect much needed change...Her case is persuasive."--Louise Warwick-Booth, Feminism & Psychology
"Readers will find themselves richly rewarded with details, anecdotes..., and musings that truly flesh out these activists, allowing us to see them as complex thinkers and activists. Their radicalness stems from their desire to get at the roots of patriarchy, making them impatient with incremental change and polite tactics."--Amy Erdman Farrell, The Sixties
Transforming Contagion: Risky Contacts Among Bodies, Disciplines, and Nations
Published July 5, 2018 with Rutgers University Press.
ISBN: 978-0-8135-8958-9 ($34.95)
Order at Amazon here or your local/university bookstore
Moving from viruses, vaccines, and copycat murder to gay panics, xenophobia, and psychopaths, Transforming Contagion energetically fuses critical humanities and social science perspectives into a boundary-smashing interdisciplinary collection on contagion. The contributors provocatively suggest contagion to be as full of possibilities for revolution and resistance as it is for the descent into madness, malice, and extensive state control. The infectious practices rooted in politics, film, psychological exchanges, social movements, the classroom, and the circulation of a literary text or meme on social media compellingly reveal patterns that emerge in those attempts to re-route, quarantine, define, or even exacerbate various contagions.
Reviews of Transforming Contagion:
“This is an extraordinary book that radically rethinks and expands our understanding of contagion. Crossing historical, geographical and disciplinary boundaries, Transforming Contagion brings a feminist, queer and new materialist perspective that insists on the possibilities as well as the risks and anxieties of contagion.”--Rosalind Gill, author of New Femininities
"Traversing the humanities and social sciences, the essays in Transforming Contagion offer a fertile prism for exploring how contagion--the spread of beliefs, emotions, texts, practices, people, and pathogens across communities and culture--has been represented, experienced, addressed, and theorized across disciplines and historical periods. This volume establishes contagion as a central keyword for studying not only biomedical but also cultural, psychological, and political forms of connection, communication, and collective action.”--David Zimmerman, author of Panic!
"This collected volume brings together a diverse and interesting potpourri of essays on notions associated with contagion within the broader social context. While some of the chapters are specific to a certain time, place, and discipline, others manage to promote the contagion of ideas by debating hot political issues, such as treatment of dissent, attitudes towards immigrants, how social media affects sexuality, and exposing the challenges that modern society has in dealing with the ‘other’. This volume has something for everyone, and can beconsidered a recommended reader in social contagion, highlighting both the clinical aspects of some current challenges in cultural phenomena and historical roots of many of today’s debates on feminism, gender roles and social intersections."--Julie Cwikel, Feminism & Psychology
Published July 5, 2018 with Rutgers University Press.
ISBN: 978-0-8135-8958-9 ($34.95)
Order at Amazon here or your local/university bookstore
Moving from viruses, vaccines, and copycat murder to gay panics, xenophobia, and psychopaths, Transforming Contagion energetically fuses critical humanities and social science perspectives into a boundary-smashing interdisciplinary collection on contagion. The contributors provocatively suggest contagion to be as full of possibilities for revolution and resistance as it is for the descent into madness, malice, and extensive state control. The infectious practices rooted in politics, film, psychological exchanges, social movements, the classroom, and the circulation of a literary text or meme on social media compellingly reveal patterns that emerge in those attempts to re-route, quarantine, define, or even exacerbate various contagions.
Reviews of Transforming Contagion:
“This is an extraordinary book that radically rethinks and expands our understanding of contagion. Crossing historical, geographical and disciplinary boundaries, Transforming Contagion brings a feminist, queer and new materialist perspective that insists on the possibilities as well as the risks and anxieties of contagion.”--Rosalind Gill, author of New Femininities
"Traversing the humanities and social sciences, the essays in Transforming Contagion offer a fertile prism for exploring how contagion--the spread of beliefs, emotions, texts, practices, people, and pathogens across communities and culture--has been represented, experienced, addressed, and theorized across disciplines and historical periods. This volume establishes contagion as a central keyword for studying not only biomedical but also cultural, psychological, and political forms of connection, communication, and collective action.”--David Zimmerman, author of Panic!
"This collected volume brings together a diverse and interesting potpourri of essays on notions associated with contagion within the broader social context. While some of the chapters are specific to a certain time, place, and discipline, others manage to promote the contagion of ideas by debating hot political issues, such as treatment of dissent, attitudes towards immigrants, how social media affects sexuality, and exposing the challenges that modern society has in dealing with the ‘other’. This volume has something for everyone, and can beconsidered a recommended reader in social contagion, highlighting both the clinical aspects of some current challenges in cultural phenomena and historical roots of many of today’s debates on feminism, gender roles and social intersections."--Julie Cwikel, Feminism & Psychology
Out for Blood: Essays on Menstruation and Resistance
Published November 1, 2016 with SUNY Press
ISBN: 978-1438462127 ($24.95)
Order at SUNY Press, Amazon, or at your local bookstore!
Winner: Association for Women in Psychology Distinguished Publication Award (2017)
Transporting the reader to worlds in which Komodo dragons prey on menstruating women, artists prowl the streets of Spain in blood-stained pants, and the myths of women bleeding in synchrony with each other are drawn and redrawn, these eleven essays on menstruation and resistance evoke thought-provoking tensions between silence and confrontation, shame and rebellion, and compliance and disobedience. Fusing together gender and feminist theory, critical body studies, political activism, and menstrual anarchy, Breanne Fahs illuminates in sharp and accessible language the troubling omissions of menstrual coming-of-age narratives in the museum, the outdated terminology of “feminine hygiene,” the provocative terrain of menstruating male bodies, and the moral panics about blood that erupt from within and outside of our bathrooms, classrooms, and cell phones. Borrowing from a multitude of voices—single moms, trans teenagers, zine makers, menstrual artists, college students, tour guides, French philosophers, and culture jammers—Fahs forcefully argues for a new culture of menstruation, one where the joys, rhythms, and controversies of menstrual cycles collides with the defiant, shameless, and bold new possibilities of menstrual resistance.
"Fahs tells a collection of honest, powerful stories that raise important and timely questions about how power takes hold of the body--
and how unruly bodies might splatter blood all over the structures of power."--Jessica Chavez, Sex Roles
Valerie Solanas: The Defiant Life of the Women Who Wrote SCUM (and Shot Andy Warhol)
Published April 8, 2014 with Feminist Press
ISBN: 978-1558618480
BUY NOW at Feminist Press, Amazon, or at your local bookstore
Named by Flavorwire, Geek Unleashed, and the Cleveland Examiner as one of the most anticipated books of 2014!
Verso named it one of the top 10 books of 2014.
Winner of Independent Publisher Book Award, Silver Medal (Women's Issues)
Staff pick at The Paris Review
(Read an excerpt from Chapter 5 reprinted in Spolia magazine)
Too drastic, too crazy, too "out there," too early, too late, too damaged, too much—Valerie Solanas has been dismissed but never forgotten. She has become, unwittingly, a figurehead for women's unexpressed rage, and stands at the center of many worlds. She inhabited Andy Warhol's Factory scene, circulated among feminists and the countercultural underground, charged men money for conversation, despised "daddy's girls," and outlined a vision for radical gender dystopia. Known for shooting Andy Warhol in 1968 and for writing the polemical diatribe SCUM Manifesto, Solanas is one of the most famous women of her era. SCUM Manifesto—which predicted ATMs, test-tube babies, the Internet, and artificial insemination long before they existed—has sold more copies, and has been translated into more languages, than nearly all other feminist texts of its time. Shockingly little work has interrogated Solanas's life. This book is the first biography about Solanas, including original interviews with family, friends (and enemies), and numerous living Warhol associates. It reveals surprising details about her life: the children nearly no one knew she had, her drive for control over her own writing and copyright, and her elusive personal and professional relationships. Valerie Solanas addresses how this era changed the world and depicts an iconic figure whose life is at once tragic and remarkable.
Read my interview about Valerie Solanas with John Williams in the New York Times here.
Read my full interview about Valerie Solanas in BOMB Magazine with Liz Kinnamon here.
Read my full interview about Valerie Solanas with Interview Magazine's Hannah Ghoreshi here.
Read the interview with Bookslut's Coco Papy here.
Read the interview about Valerie Solanas in Spain's El Pais with Cati Bestard here.
"Fahs teaches us new ways to think and write about mental health through her careful engagement with Solanas...
Throughout the book, Fahs explores these types of complexities about Solanas: the angelic and the mutilated, the incendiary and the abject, the fierce and the feral. Through thick descriptions of the environments in which Solanas found herself, Fahs allows Solanas’s ideas and actions to unfold; she illuminates a mind that is, if not always reasonable, generally understandable given the circumstances she endured. Perhaps the most impressive achievement of the biography is how Fahs writes about Solanas: she makes her humane and human."--Julie R. Enszer, LAMBDA Literary
"Fahs comes up with what will likely be as close to a comprehensive biography of Solanas as will ever exist...Fahs constructs this story (a good deal of which is previously untold) with a cool mixture of sympathy, appreciation, and something that approaches objectivity...Straightforward, then, but also consistently hilarious, challenging, and poignant. After all, it’s a Valerie Solanas biography."--T. Clutch Fleischmann, The Brooklyn Rail
"As the first comprehensive biography of Solanas, Fahs's Valerie Solanas delivers a thorough, empathic portrait of the notoriously volatile but little-understood writer. A formidable biographer, Fahs reconstructs, mostly from primary sources, the familial and social conditions that surrounded the creation of Solanas's masterworks, the SCUM Manifesto and the lesser-known but equally searing play Up Your Ass."--Jennifer Pan, Dissent
“Finally, a biography of Valerie Solanas that does justice to her brilliant SCUM Manifesto and tragic life. In this narrative, Andy Warhol no longer defines who Valerie was. Breanne Fahs has written a compelling masterpiece sure to become a classic.” --Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of Outlaw Woman
"Breanne Fahs delivers the crucial backstory behind the deadly yet relevant aims of premier cultural deviant, Valerie Solanas, whose often indefensible edges, war cries, logic of injury, continue to haunt our era of desperate justice." --Avital Ronell, author of Dictations, The Telephone Book, Stupidity, and Crack Wars
"Fahs is a delicate biographer. She fills in nuance without betraying the subject. She’s compassionate and holistic...You see this complicated figure moving about truly alive and conscious, wading through the same shit as all of us."--E. Conner, Maximum RocknRoll
"Valerie Solanas was an enigma, an outsider even among misfits, and one of the most shocking radicals in a decade teeming with them. Breanne Fahs’ book is a long overdue excavation of the obsessions, paranoia, and rage that fueled both Solanas’s visionary manifesto and her appalling attempt to murder Warhol." --Cynthia Carr, author of Fire in the Belly
“This compelling biography shows the complexity of Valerie Solanas, placing her in the context of so many later twentieth century cultural realities—the commodity explosion of the art world, nuclear family damage and dysfunction, emergent baby boomer generation narcissism, and the complicated internal struggles of the feminist movement.” --Catherine Morris, Sackler Family Curator at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art
“Valerie Solanas finally provides an in-depth, decade-spanning, history of Valerie’s life, mid-teen pregnancies, anti-essentialist college newspaper rebuttals, SCUM lectures, Up Your Ass casting calls, comedic improv timing, transience, letters of grammatical corrections to Majority Report, a continual emphasis in interviews on Valerie’s intelligence, radicalism, articulacy, humor, and intensity, and thorough discussions of her work dismantling and repudiating sexuality, gender, morality, marriage, the money system, and the patriarchal status quo.” --Nath Ann Carrera
"There’s no question that Solanas’s belief in the necessaity of theorizing 'from the gutter' would have her denouncing today’s inclusive, increasingly professional landscape of feminism. But perhaps she can rest easier (if not in peace) knowing that Fahs has painted a sympathetic portrait of her uncompromising life that — for better and worse — wears its powerful ugliness on its sleeve."--Andi Zeisler, Los Angeles Review of Books
"Fahs explores the relationship between Solanas's notorious crime, her contentious relationship with the women’s movement, and the reality of her life living on the edges of society, offering an exacting report of the inner darkness that many feared, and the outward charm that even her detractors would concede...This book is a compelling, balanced account of an unraveling of brilliance and the matter of a desperate resistance."--G. Andrew Collins, Out Magazine
"Fahs, who clearly admires Solanas’s contribution to a type of wild feminism, remains the objective biographer of Solanas’s life. The Solanas she fashions in her narrative is not sympathetic but understandable. Perhaps Fahs does this out of deference to Solanas, who seems to have been the last person to ever want someone’s pity. Solanas, whose own presence in feminist discourse has been hotly contested, has been given new life by Fahs. This biography is a testament to not just the historical person of Solanas, but to the kind of feminist symbol she has become—one that, arguably, like Solanas herself, has been sidelined to the margins of feminism."--Marcie Bianco, After Ellen
"A sympathetic biography of a troubled and troubling woman."--Kirkus Review
"Rather than focusing on the Warhol shooting, Fahs gives a refreshing degree of weight to not only SCUM Manifesto—and its contribution to the birth of radical feminism—but also to Solanas’s earlier writings and creative pursuits, such as her playwriting and attempts at publishing in periodicals...Fahs ably fills a notable gap in feminist history with this accessible volume." --Publisher's Weekly
"Fahs’s biography sees Solanas as an inspirational figure to the radical feminist movement."--Barbara Spindel, Dame Magazine
"Valerie is married to Warhol now, never mind until death did them part. Breanne Fahs's incredible book does not try to minimize that connection; it only asks us to think of the event as a moment in Valerie's life, connected to everything before and everything since, rather than the moment."--Haley Mlotek, The AWL
"Fahs has effectively eschewed an easier narrative in favor of presenting Solanas in her many contradictions, humanizing her without erasing her undeniable impact."--Jordan Larson, N+1
"What this biography does is give the reader a sense of an extraordinary woman who was a product of men’s abuse. Read it. You won’t hate her anywhere near as much as you imagine."--Julie Bindel, The Spectator
Published April 8, 2014 with Feminist Press
ISBN: 978-1558618480
BUY NOW at Feminist Press, Amazon, or at your local bookstore
Named by Flavorwire, Geek Unleashed, and the Cleveland Examiner as one of the most anticipated books of 2014!
Verso named it one of the top 10 books of 2014.
Winner of Independent Publisher Book Award, Silver Medal (Women's Issues)
Staff pick at The Paris Review
(Read an excerpt from Chapter 5 reprinted in Spolia magazine)
Too drastic, too crazy, too "out there," too early, too late, too damaged, too much—Valerie Solanas has been dismissed but never forgotten. She has become, unwittingly, a figurehead for women's unexpressed rage, and stands at the center of many worlds. She inhabited Andy Warhol's Factory scene, circulated among feminists and the countercultural underground, charged men money for conversation, despised "daddy's girls," and outlined a vision for radical gender dystopia. Known for shooting Andy Warhol in 1968 and for writing the polemical diatribe SCUM Manifesto, Solanas is one of the most famous women of her era. SCUM Manifesto—which predicted ATMs, test-tube babies, the Internet, and artificial insemination long before they existed—has sold more copies, and has been translated into more languages, than nearly all other feminist texts of its time. Shockingly little work has interrogated Solanas's life. This book is the first biography about Solanas, including original interviews with family, friends (and enemies), and numerous living Warhol associates. It reveals surprising details about her life: the children nearly no one knew she had, her drive for control over her own writing and copyright, and her elusive personal and professional relationships. Valerie Solanas addresses how this era changed the world and depicts an iconic figure whose life is at once tragic and remarkable.
Read my interview about Valerie Solanas with John Williams in the New York Times here.
Read my full interview about Valerie Solanas in BOMB Magazine with Liz Kinnamon here.
Read my full interview about Valerie Solanas with Interview Magazine's Hannah Ghoreshi here.
Read the interview with Bookslut's Coco Papy here.
Read the interview about Valerie Solanas in Spain's El Pais with Cati Bestard here.
"Fahs teaches us new ways to think and write about mental health through her careful engagement with Solanas...
Throughout the book, Fahs explores these types of complexities about Solanas: the angelic and the mutilated, the incendiary and the abject, the fierce and the feral. Through thick descriptions of the environments in which Solanas found herself, Fahs allows Solanas’s ideas and actions to unfold; she illuminates a mind that is, if not always reasonable, generally understandable given the circumstances she endured. Perhaps the most impressive achievement of the biography is how Fahs writes about Solanas: she makes her humane and human."--Julie R. Enszer, LAMBDA Literary
"Fahs comes up with what will likely be as close to a comprehensive biography of Solanas as will ever exist...Fahs constructs this story (a good deal of which is previously untold) with a cool mixture of sympathy, appreciation, and something that approaches objectivity...Straightforward, then, but also consistently hilarious, challenging, and poignant. After all, it’s a Valerie Solanas biography."--T. Clutch Fleischmann, The Brooklyn Rail
"As the first comprehensive biography of Solanas, Fahs's Valerie Solanas delivers a thorough, empathic portrait of the notoriously volatile but little-understood writer. A formidable biographer, Fahs reconstructs, mostly from primary sources, the familial and social conditions that surrounded the creation of Solanas's masterworks, the SCUM Manifesto and the lesser-known but equally searing play Up Your Ass."--Jennifer Pan, Dissent
“Finally, a biography of Valerie Solanas that does justice to her brilliant SCUM Manifesto and tragic life. In this narrative, Andy Warhol no longer defines who Valerie was. Breanne Fahs has written a compelling masterpiece sure to become a classic.” --Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of Outlaw Woman
"Breanne Fahs delivers the crucial backstory behind the deadly yet relevant aims of premier cultural deviant, Valerie Solanas, whose often indefensible edges, war cries, logic of injury, continue to haunt our era of desperate justice." --Avital Ronell, author of Dictations, The Telephone Book, Stupidity, and Crack Wars
"Fahs is a delicate biographer. She fills in nuance without betraying the subject. She’s compassionate and holistic...You see this complicated figure moving about truly alive and conscious, wading through the same shit as all of us."--E. Conner, Maximum RocknRoll
"Valerie Solanas was an enigma, an outsider even among misfits, and one of the most shocking radicals in a decade teeming with them. Breanne Fahs’ book is a long overdue excavation of the obsessions, paranoia, and rage that fueled both Solanas’s visionary manifesto and her appalling attempt to murder Warhol." --Cynthia Carr, author of Fire in the Belly
“This compelling biography shows the complexity of Valerie Solanas, placing her in the context of so many later twentieth century cultural realities—the commodity explosion of the art world, nuclear family damage and dysfunction, emergent baby boomer generation narcissism, and the complicated internal struggles of the feminist movement.” --Catherine Morris, Sackler Family Curator at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art
“Valerie Solanas finally provides an in-depth, decade-spanning, history of Valerie’s life, mid-teen pregnancies, anti-essentialist college newspaper rebuttals, SCUM lectures, Up Your Ass casting calls, comedic improv timing, transience, letters of grammatical corrections to Majority Report, a continual emphasis in interviews on Valerie’s intelligence, radicalism, articulacy, humor, and intensity, and thorough discussions of her work dismantling and repudiating sexuality, gender, morality, marriage, the money system, and the patriarchal status quo.” --Nath Ann Carrera
"There’s no question that Solanas’s belief in the necessaity of theorizing 'from the gutter' would have her denouncing today’s inclusive, increasingly professional landscape of feminism. But perhaps she can rest easier (if not in peace) knowing that Fahs has painted a sympathetic portrait of her uncompromising life that — for better and worse — wears its powerful ugliness on its sleeve."--Andi Zeisler, Los Angeles Review of Books
"Fahs explores the relationship between Solanas's notorious crime, her contentious relationship with the women’s movement, and the reality of her life living on the edges of society, offering an exacting report of the inner darkness that many feared, and the outward charm that even her detractors would concede...This book is a compelling, balanced account of an unraveling of brilliance and the matter of a desperate resistance."--G. Andrew Collins, Out Magazine
"Fahs, who clearly admires Solanas’s contribution to a type of wild feminism, remains the objective biographer of Solanas’s life. The Solanas she fashions in her narrative is not sympathetic but understandable. Perhaps Fahs does this out of deference to Solanas, who seems to have been the last person to ever want someone’s pity. Solanas, whose own presence in feminist discourse has been hotly contested, has been given new life by Fahs. This biography is a testament to not just the historical person of Solanas, but to the kind of feminist symbol she has become—one that, arguably, like Solanas herself, has been sidelined to the margins of feminism."--Marcie Bianco, After Ellen
"A sympathetic biography of a troubled and troubling woman."--Kirkus Review
"Rather than focusing on the Warhol shooting, Fahs gives a refreshing degree of weight to not only SCUM Manifesto—and its contribution to the birth of radical feminism—but also to Solanas’s earlier writings and creative pursuits, such as her playwriting and attempts at publishing in periodicals...Fahs ably fills a notable gap in feminist history with this accessible volume." --Publisher's Weekly
"Fahs’s biography sees Solanas as an inspirational figure to the radical feminist movement."--Barbara Spindel, Dame Magazine
"Valerie is married to Warhol now, never mind until death did them part. Breanne Fahs's incredible book does not try to minimize that connection; it only asks us to think of the event as a moment in Valerie's life, connected to everything before and everything since, rather than the moment."--Haley Mlotek, The AWL
"Fahs has effectively eschewed an easier narrative in favor of presenting Solanas in her many contradictions, humanizing her without erasing her undeniable impact."--Jordan Larson, N+1
"What this biography does is give the reader a sense of an extraordinary woman who was a product of men’s abuse. Read it. You won’t hate her anywhere near as much as you imagine."--Julie Bindel, The Spectator
The Moral Panics of Sexuality (edited by Breanne Fahs, Mary L. Dudy, and Sarah Stage)
Published October 2, 2013 with Palgrave
ISBN: 978-1137353160
Orders and reviews available on Amazon here
Masturbation, vampires, cannibalism, bareback pornography, menstruation, sex education, and more. These issues provoke the moral panics of sexuality, the often unspoken and politically charged targets for accusations of deviance and threats to the existing social order. A provocative and path-breaking book, this interdisciplinary edited collection showcases the range of historical and contemporary crises we too often suppress. From closeted gay Republicans and vagina dentata imagery, to cyber pinkwashing and sex surrogates for the disabled, these cutting-edge essays draw from established and emerging scholars and span over three centuries of sexual panics. Provocative, surprising, engaging, and even shocking, this collection pulls together strange bedfellows and unlikely allies in the fight against the hypocritical, reductive, and dismissive voices promoting unnecessary panic. If you're panicking, you're not thinking.
"With the blended ink of scholarly brilliance, activist wisdom, and biting humor, the writers in this volume accomplish a remarkable doubled analytic: they carry their critical lens under the covers of the moral panics of sexuality, targeting the erectile dysfunction of the Right wing and the conservative agenda more broadly, daring to theorize strategic diversionary motives and trace the multiple ideological tremors the morning after. At the same time, however, they refuse to neglect and attend intimately to the embodied crises of and sustained violence against women, queer, of color, marginalized, and figured/disfigured bodies, tossed to the political side of the road like a used condom." - Michelle Fine, Distinguished Professor of Psychology, Women's Studies and Urban Education, The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, USA
"Ours is a time of unsettling conservatism rooted in the 'toxic sludge' (21) of resurrected and new modes of panicking. We urgently need more irreverent, timely, and strategically sharp work by scholar-activists unafraid being labeled 'indecent', 'unscholarly', or 'perverse.' Breanne Fahs, Mary D. Dudy, Sarah Stage, and their co-conspirators have boldly oriented us to novel entry points and directions. Bravo!"--Becki L. Ross, Compte Rendu
"Interesting, timely, and thought provoking...The introduction sets up the rest of the book in a clear way by discussing moral panics as well as the direction of the book while the afterword works to bring the book together."--Hennie Weiss, Metapsychology
"The work is timely and essential reading for those interested in the origins, manifestations, transmission mechanisms and effects of moral panics...The outcome is a major accomplishment, making this book indispensable as both a learning and a teaching resource."--Matthew Hall, Feminism & Psychology
"The collection of essays moves queer, disabled, transgender, of-color, and other identities from the margins to the center...The book succeeds at its aim of presenting narratives of resistance to the marginalization, suppression, and violence brought about by moral panics of sexuality that obfuscate knowledge and silence critical discourse."--Dina Pinsky, Gender & Society
Published October 2, 2013 with Palgrave
ISBN: 978-1137353160
Orders and reviews available on Amazon here
Masturbation, vampires, cannibalism, bareback pornography, menstruation, sex education, and more. These issues provoke the moral panics of sexuality, the often unspoken and politically charged targets for accusations of deviance and threats to the existing social order. A provocative and path-breaking book, this interdisciplinary edited collection showcases the range of historical and contemporary crises we too often suppress. From closeted gay Republicans and vagina dentata imagery, to cyber pinkwashing and sex surrogates for the disabled, these cutting-edge essays draw from established and emerging scholars and span over three centuries of sexual panics. Provocative, surprising, engaging, and even shocking, this collection pulls together strange bedfellows and unlikely allies in the fight against the hypocritical, reductive, and dismissive voices promoting unnecessary panic. If you're panicking, you're not thinking.
"With the blended ink of scholarly brilliance, activist wisdom, and biting humor, the writers in this volume accomplish a remarkable doubled analytic: they carry their critical lens under the covers of the moral panics of sexuality, targeting the erectile dysfunction of the Right wing and the conservative agenda more broadly, daring to theorize strategic diversionary motives and trace the multiple ideological tremors the morning after. At the same time, however, they refuse to neglect and attend intimately to the embodied crises of and sustained violence against women, queer, of color, marginalized, and figured/disfigured bodies, tossed to the political side of the road like a used condom." - Michelle Fine, Distinguished Professor of Psychology, Women's Studies and Urban Education, The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, USA
"Ours is a time of unsettling conservatism rooted in the 'toxic sludge' (21) of resurrected and new modes of panicking. We urgently need more irreverent, timely, and strategically sharp work by scholar-activists unafraid being labeled 'indecent', 'unscholarly', or 'perverse.' Breanne Fahs, Mary D. Dudy, Sarah Stage, and their co-conspirators have boldly oriented us to novel entry points and directions. Bravo!"--Becki L. Ross, Compte Rendu
"Interesting, timely, and thought provoking...The introduction sets up the rest of the book in a clear way by discussing moral panics as well as the direction of the book while the afterword works to bring the book together."--Hennie Weiss, Metapsychology
"The work is timely and essential reading for those interested in the origins, manifestations, transmission mechanisms and effects of moral panics...The outcome is a major accomplishment, making this book indispensable as both a learning and a teaching resource."--Matthew Hall, Feminism & Psychology
"The collection of essays moves queer, disabled, transgender, of-color, and other identities from the margins to the center...The book succeeds at its aim of presenting narratives of resistance to the marginalization, suppression, and violence brought about by moral panics of sexuality that obfuscate knowledge and silence critical discourse."--Dina Pinsky, Gender & Society
Performing Sex: The Making and Unmaking of Women's Erotic Lives
Published November 1, 2011 with SUNY Press
ISBN: 978-1438437828
Purchase here on Amazon (available in hardcover, paperback, or Kindle)
Although conventional wisdom holds that women in the United States today are more sexually liberated than ever before, a number of startling statistics call into question this perceived victory: over half of all women report having faked orgasms; 45 percent of women find rape fantasies erotic; a growing number of women perform same-sex eroticism for the viewing benefit of men; and recent clinical studies label 40 percent of women as "sexually dysfunctional." Caught between postsexual revolution celebrations of progress and alarmingly regressive new modes of disempowerment, the forty women interviewed in Performing Sex offer a candid and provocative portrait of "liberated" sex in America. Through this nuanced and complex study, Breanne Fahs demonstrates that despite the constant cooptation of the terms of sexual freedom, women's sexual subjectivities--and the ways they continually grapple with shifting definitions of liberation--represent provocative spaces for critical inquiry and personal discovery, ultimately generating novel ways of imagining and reimagining power, pleasure, and resistance.
"Fahs has the opportunity here to shape what should become a burgeoning subfield in gender and sexuality studies--the study of sexual subjectivities. This straddles social psychology, women's studies, and sociology and explores the concept that social influences and forces effect how people come to understand themselves on an individual or psychological level." ---- Rebecca F. Plante, coeditor of Doing Gender Diversity: Readings in Theory and Real-World Experience
“Fahs provides striking evidence that contemporary sexual liberation is sexual performance that disempowers women with the name of empowerment … Connecting the data from … interviews to her clinical experience and current relevant scholarship, the author challenges readers to ask if liberation alone is enough … Fahs examines each case in detail with very accessible language and elaboration … Highly recommended.” — CHOICE
Book Awards
Silver Medal--2012 Independent Publisher Book Awards (Women's Issues)
Honorable Mention--2011 Foreword Book of the Year (Women's Issues)
Published November 1, 2011 with SUNY Press
ISBN: 978-1438437828
Purchase here on Amazon (available in hardcover, paperback, or Kindle)
Although conventional wisdom holds that women in the United States today are more sexually liberated than ever before, a number of startling statistics call into question this perceived victory: over half of all women report having faked orgasms; 45 percent of women find rape fantasies erotic; a growing number of women perform same-sex eroticism for the viewing benefit of men; and recent clinical studies label 40 percent of women as "sexually dysfunctional." Caught between postsexual revolution celebrations of progress and alarmingly regressive new modes of disempowerment, the forty women interviewed in Performing Sex offer a candid and provocative portrait of "liberated" sex in America. Through this nuanced and complex study, Breanne Fahs demonstrates that despite the constant cooptation of the terms of sexual freedom, women's sexual subjectivities--and the ways they continually grapple with shifting definitions of liberation--represent provocative spaces for critical inquiry and personal discovery, ultimately generating novel ways of imagining and reimagining power, pleasure, and resistance.
"Fahs has the opportunity here to shape what should become a burgeoning subfield in gender and sexuality studies--the study of sexual subjectivities. This straddles social psychology, women's studies, and sociology and explores the concept that social influences and forces effect how people come to understand themselves on an individual or psychological level." ---- Rebecca F. Plante, coeditor of Doing Gender Diversity: Readings in Theory and Real-World Experience
“Fahs provides striking evidence that contemporary sexual liberation is sexual performance that disempowers women with the name of empowerment … Connecting the data from … interviews to her clinical experience and current relevant scholarship, the author challenges readers to ask if liberation alone is enough … Fahs examines each case in detail with very accessible language and elaboration … Highly recommended.” — CHOICE
Book Awards
Silver Medal--2012 Independent Publisher Book Awards (Women's Issues)
Honorable Mention--2011 Foreword Book of the Year (Women's Issues)
