Overview

What happens when an old radical lesbian feminist has an idea of publishing a collection of her papers? She looks at her writings and despairs. She has written too much. The idea gets shelved. Fifteen years later, she revisits the project. But it is worse now because she has written more … But being stared down by her publisher she gets a grip and (painfully) pares down her oeuvre to a manageable size. This then is a skeleton journey through Renate’s life and her survival in patriarchy. The book starts with her passion for autonomous Women’s Studies as an intellectual necessity and radical feminist research methodology to give women a voice. And why men don’t belong in Women’s Studies classes. Next, she documents her immersion in a critique of reproductive technologies as a member of FINRRAGE. We hear about the exploitation of a desire in IVF followed with problems of egg ‘donations’, cloning, and of course the human rights violation of women and children in surrogacy. A critique of the illusion of ‘choice’ – endorsed by liberal feminists – has to be in the book and with it papers on long-acting contraceptives. Necessary warnings about the unethics of hormone replacement therapy and the French abortion pill RU 486 are included too. As a feminist women’s health activist, Renate Klein has always been concerned about the fact that women are our bodies and that reproductive technologies in tandem with postmodern and queer theories result in the fragmentation and dismemberment of women: from the one an egg, from the other a uterus … this erasure of women is helped by dissociation and a belief in delusions – such as the assault on women’s existence by transgender ideologues. But not to be beaten by such attacks, Renate Klein continues her quest for the liberation of all women, whatever age, sexuality, abilities and wherever we live. Aged 80, she is ‘not dead yet’ and hopes this collection will stir young women into action to continue the crucial rebellion against the system of patriarchy before it fully crushes women, animals and nature.

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9781925950960

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Reviews

Read at your own peril. Agree, disagree, or mull it over but never doubt Renate Klein’s unflinching recall of 40 years at the coalface of women’s issues in Radical Reckonings. Hers is a voice to heed. —Diane Bell

Author Information

Dr Renate Klein holds an MSc from Zürich University, a BA (Honours) in Women’s Studies from the University of California at Berkeley, and a PhD in Sociology of Education from the University of London. She was a Research Associate in the Department of Neurobiology at the University of Zürich. Klein was Associate Professor, Women’s Studies at Deakin University until retirement in 2006 and taught courses on International Feminism, Reproductive Medicine and Feminist Ethics. Since the early 1980s she has conducted critical feminist research on the new and old reproductive technologies including international population control, IVF (fertility drugs), hormonal and immunological contraceptives, RU 486 and Gardasil. With Dr Susan Hawthorne she co-founded the independent feminist publishing company Spinifex Press in Melbourne in 1991. She is the (co)author/(co)editor of 19 previous books including Test-Tube Women: What Future for Motherhood?; Infertility: Women’s Experiences with Reproductive Medicine; RU 486: Misconceptions, Myths and Morals; Radically Speaking: Feminism Reclaimed; Cyberfeminism and Not Dead Yet. Dr Klein has authored 23 book chapters and 40 journal articles. Her latest article on international surrogacy was published in Arena (March 2025)

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