Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist, and feminist activist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, and even though she was not considered one at the time of her death, she had a significant influence on both feminist existentialism and feminist theory.
Phyllis Stewart Schlafly was an American attorney, conservative activist, author, and anti-feminist spokesperson for the national conservative movement. She held paleoconservative social and political views, opposed feminism, gay rights and abortion, and successfully campaigned against ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Christina Marie Hoff Sommers is an American conservative author and philosopher. Specializing in ethics, she is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Sommers is known for her critique of contemporary feminism. Her work includes the books Who Stole Feminism? (1994) and The War Against Boys (2000). She also hosts a video blog called The Factual Feminist.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a Nigerian writer whose works include novels, short stories and nonfiction. She was described in The Times Literary Supplement as "the most prominent" of a "procession of critically acclaimed young anglophone authors [which] is succeeding in attracting a new generation of readers to African literature", particularly in her second home, the United States.
Phyllis Chesler is an American writer, psychotherapist, and professor emerita of psychology and women's studies at the College of Staten Island (CUNY). She is a renowned second-wave feminist psychologist and the author of 18 books, including the best-sellers Women and Madness (1972), With Child: A Diary of Motherhood (1979), and An American Bride in Kabul: A Memoir (2013). Chesler has written extensively about topics such as gender, mental illness, divorce and child custody, surrogacy, second-wave feminism, pornography, prostitution, incest, and violence against women.
Barbara Smith is an American lesbian feminist and socialist who has played a significant role in Black feminism in the United States. Since the early 1970s, she has been active as a scholar, activist, critic, lecturer, author, and publisher of Black feminist thought. She has also taught at numerous colleges and universities for 25 years. Smith's essays, reviews, articles, short stories and literary criticism have appeared in a range of publications, including The New York Times Book Review, The Black Scholar, Ms., Gay Community News, The Guardian, The Village Voice, Conditions and The Nation. She has a twin sister, Beverly Smith, who is also a lesbian feminist activist and writer.
Marilyn Frye is an American philosopher and radical feminist theorist. She is known for her theories on sexism, racism, oppression, and sexuality. Her writings offer discussions of feminist topics, such as: white supremacy, male privilege, and gay and lesbian marginalization. Although she approaches the issues from the perspective of justice, she is also engaged with the metaphysics, epistemology, and moral psychology of social categories.
Saba Mahmood (1961–2018) was professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. At Berkeley, she was also affiliated with the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Institute for South Asia Studies, and the Program in Critical Theory. Her scholarly work straddled debates in anthropology and political theory, with a focus on Muslim majority societies of the Middle East and South Asia. Mahmood made major theoretical contributions to rethinking the relationship between ethics and politics, religion and secularism, freedom and submission, and reason and embodiment. Influenced by the work of Talal Asad, she wrote on issues of gender, religious politics, secularism, and Muslim and non-Muslim relations in the Middle East.
It has been said that Phyllis Schlafly's social policies are a response to feminism.
Merle Hoffman is an American journalist and activist.
Florence Rush was an American certified social worker, feminist theorist and organizer best known for introducing The Freudian Coverup in her presentation "The Sexual Abuse of Children: A Feminist Point of View", about childhood sexual abuse and incest, at the April 1971 New York Radical Feminists (NYRF) Rape Conference. Rush's paper at the time was the first challenge to Freudian theories of children as the seducers of adults rather than the victims of adults' sexual/power exploitation.
Michelle Taylor, known professionally as Feminista Jones, is an American social worker and writer who writes about Black feminism. She has developed several social media campaigns and has written for The Washington Post, Salon, Time, and Ebony. Jones authored Reclaiming Our Space: How Black Feminism is Changing the World from the Tweets to the Streets.
Women and Madness is a 1972 book by Phyllis Chesler.
Samhita Mukhopadhyay is an American writer and former executive editor of Teen Vogue. She writes about feminism, culture, race, politics, and dating. She is the author of Outdated: Why Dating is Ruining Your Love Life and the co-editor of the anthology, Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump's America.
Brittney Cooper is a tenured professor of Women and Gender Studies, author, professor, activist, and cultural critic. Her areas of research and work include black women organizations, black women intellectuals, and hip-hop feminism. In 2013 and 2014, she was named to the Root.com's Root 100, an annual list of top Black influencers. She has been criticized for promoting violence as a means to remove white culture and people from society.
Katherine Angel is a British academic and writer whose 2012 work of literary non-fiction, Unmastered: A Book on Desire, Most Difficult to Tell, attracted worldwide attention.
Feminists: What Were They Thinking? is a 2018 documentary film directed by Johanna Demetrakas and starring Laurie Anderson, Phyllis Chesler and Judy Chicago among others. Women of different ages and backgrounds are interviewed by Demetrakas and a team of assistants on the subject of feminism, anchored in the book 'Emergence' with portraits by the photographer Cynthia MacAdams published in 1977. The film was partly funded by the International Documentary Association and also by a crowd funding campaign that raised over $75,000. It was released by Netflix on October 12, 2018.
With Child: A Diary of Motherhood is a non-fiction book by Phyllis Chesler, a feminist who gave birth to a son, published on October 26, 1979 by T. Y. Crowell.
Evette Dionne is an American culture writer. Her young adult debut Lifting As We Climb (Viking) was longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award for Young People's Literature. Dionne was editor-in-chief of Bitch from 2018 until 2021.
Carol Hay is a Canadian philosopher and Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. She is known for her works on feminist theory and moral philosophy.
