Published in 2014
267 pages
Laurie Penny is a writer and journalist. She is the author of Bitch Doctrine and Unspeakable Things. Her work appears in Vice, the Guardian, Longreads—where her series on consent and rape culture was nominated for a National Magazine Award—and many other publications. She is a columnist and contributing editor at New Statesman and editor at large at the New Inquiry. She was the youngest person to be shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for political writing on her blog, Penny Red. She lives in London.
What is this book about?
Smart, clear-eyed, and irreverent, Unspeakable Things is a fresh look at gender and power in the twenty-first century, which asks difficult questions about dissent and desire, money and masculinity, sexual violence, menial work, mental health, queer politics, and the Internet.
Celebrated journalist and activist Laurie Penny draws on a broad history of feminist thought and her own experience in radical subcultures in America and Britain to take on cultural phenomena from the Occupy movement to online dating, give her unique spin on economic justice and freedom of speech, and provide candid personal insight to rally the defensive against eating disorders, sexual assault, and internet trolls. Unspeakable Things is a book that is eye-opening not only in the critique it provides, but also in the revolutionary alternatives it imagines.
