Sheila Jeffreys

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sheila Jeffreys (born 1948) is a radical lesbian feminist scholar and political activist, known for her incisive analysis of the history and politics of sexuality in Britain. She is Associate Professor in Political Science at the University of Melbourne in Australia. Before moving to Australia in the early 1990s, she lived most of her life in the United Kingdom.

In her best known historical work, The Spinster and Her Enemies: Feminism and Sexuality 1880-1930 (1985), Jeffreys challenges the conventional view that the sexual puritanism of Victorian England was displaced by the more scientifically enlightened ideas of the self-styled "sexologists" such as Sigmund Freud and Havelock Ellis. In her examination of late 19th and early 20th century feminist campaigns against child abuse and prostitution, Jeffreys identifies successive male backlash strategies popularized as the conservative "social purity" movement and the "New Woman" vision espoused by spokesmen for sexology. Both of these authoritarian concepts, she argues, interpreted women's sexuality to conform to men's preferences.

Jeffrey traced later adaptations of these core concepts made to fit changing social conditions, modifying the New Woman to accommodate wartime pro-natalist imperatives, and inventing the sexually hedonistic Flapper Girl to move women out of traditional male roles assumed by default during the World War I period that had allowed women greater independence in paid work at home and at the front. In a 1990 work, Anticlimax: A Feminist Perspective on the Sexual Revolution, Jeffreys critiques popular prescriptions for women's sexuality from the 1950's on in key texts including pornography, sex manuals and surveys, and best-selling novels.

Jeffreys's verbal wit and provocative argument that the "sexual revolution" on men's terms contributed less to women's freedom than to their continued oppression has both commanded respect and attracted intense criticism.

Some of her more controversial positions include:

• the transsexual/transgender rights movement is a reactionary movement serving patriarchy and homophobia
• lesbian culture has been negatively impacted by the sexist influence of gay men
• extreme clothing, hairstyles and fashions for women are a form of submission to patriarchal sadism

[edit] References

• Her official Melbourne University home page
• Interview with The Guardian
• Criticial review of her book The Lesbian Heresy
• "Body modification as self-mutilation by proxy" - Article by her
• "Allowing Alex's sex change shows up a gender-biased Family Court" - Article by her
• Critical review of her book Anticlimax

[edit] Books

• Jeffreys, Sheila. Beauty and Misogyny : Harmful Cultural Practices in the West. East Sussex: Psychology Press, 2005. ISBN 0-415-35182-0
• Jeffreys, Sheila. The lesbian heresy : a feminist perspective on the lesbian sexual revolution.. North Melbourne : Spinifex, 1993. ISBN 1-875559-17-5
• Jeffreys, Sheila. Anticlimax : a feminist perspective on the sexual revolution. Washington Square, N.Y. : New York University Press, 1991. ISBN 0-8147-4179-7 (cloth). ISBN 0-8147-4180-0 (pbk.)
• Jeffreys, Sheila Beauty and misogyny : harmful cultural practices in the West London : Routledge, c2005. ISBN 0-415-35183-9 (hbk.). ISBN 0-415-35182-0 (pbk.)
• Jeffreys, Sheila. The spinster and her enemies : feminism and sexuality, 1880-1930. [New ed.] North Melbourne : Spinifex Press, 1997. ISBN 1-875559-63-9
• Jeffreys, Sheila. Unpacking queer politics : a lesbian feminist perspective. Cambridge : Polity ; Oxford : Blackwell, 2003. ISBN 0-7456-2837-0 (hbk.), ISBN 0-7456-2838-9 (pbk.)