Fiona Vera-Gray – författare

Research on violence against women tends to focus on topics such as sexual assault and intimate partner violence, arguably to the detriment of investigating men’s violence and intrusion in women’s everyday lives. The reality and possibility of the routine intrusions women experience from men in public space – from unwanted comments, to flashing, following and frottage – are frequently unaddressed in research, as well as in theoretical and policy-based responses to violence against women. Often at their height during women’s adolescence, such practices are commonly dismissed as trivial, relatively harmless expressions of free speech too subjective to be legislated against.

Based on original empirical research, this book is the first of its kind to conduct a feminist phenomenological analysis of the experience for women of men’s stranger intrusions in public spaces. It suggests that intrusion from unknown men is a fundamental factor in how women understand and enact their embodied selfhood.

This book is essential reading for academics and students involved in the study of violence against women, feminist philosophy, applied sociology, feminist criminology and gender studies.

Research on violence against women tends to focus on topics such as sexual assault and intimate partner violence, arguably to the detriment of investigating men’s violence and intrusion in women’s everyday lives. The reality and possibility of the routine intrusions women experience from men in public space – from unwanted comments, to flashing, following and frottage – are frequently unaddressed in research, as well as in theoretical and policy-based responses to violence against women. Often at their height during women’s adolescence, such practices are commonly dismissed as trivial, relatively harmless expressions of free speech too subjective to be legislated against.

Based on original empirical research, this book is the first of its kind to conduct a feminist phenomenological analysis of the experience for women of men’s stranger intrusions in public spaces. It suggests that intrusion from unknown men is a fundamental factor in how women understand and enact their embodied selfhood.

This book is essential reading for academics and students involved in the study of violence against women, feminist philosophy, applied sociology, feminist criminology and gender studies.

Brought to you by Penguin. At a time when women are more vocal than ever about our lives, there''s one last taboo. We need to talk about porn.When we think about porn today, we still mostly think about men. Men as the producers and the consumers. Women as the product. Most women aren''t talking to each other about what they do and don''t do with porn - not really. And when we do talk about it, we are divided into unhelpful binaries: for or against? Liberation or coercion? Too sexual or not sexual enough? But in a world where porn sites get more traffic than Netflix, Amazon plus Twitter combined, and one of the leading sites claims a third of its users are women, isn''t it time to change that?In this book, interviews with 100 women result in an extraordinary and powerful conversation on pornography. How they first encountered it. How they consume it. How it has affected their sex lives. What they like and what they don''t. And what it means for their relationships.Eye-opening, provocative and deeply moving, this book navigates the polarised public debates, to open an intimate window into porn and the sexual lives of women today.© Dr Fiona Vera-Gray 2024 (P) Penguin Audio 2024