The backlash against feminism has been documented powerfully by Naomi Wolf and Susan Faludi: within the lesbian community too, there has been a parallel backlash. A lesbian sex industry is now making a profit from womens oppression, teaching lesbians to turn the pain of abuse and subordination into pleasure and calling it liberation. Feminist theorist Sheila Jeffreys challenges the patriarchal and racist assumptions of the sex industry. In The Lesbian Heresy she advocates the continued creation of lesbian culture, community, friendship and ethics based on principles of equality and resistance. And for this call to freedom, lesbian feminists are deemed heretics.
Sheila Jeffreys is a radical feminist writer and activist who has worked mainly against male violence and for lesbian feminism. She joined her first Womens Liberation Movement group in the UK in 1973. In 1991, she moved to Australia to teach at the University of Melbourne where she is now a Professorial Fellow in the School of Social and Political Sciences. She moved back to the UK in 2015. She is the author of twelve books on issues such as the history of sexuality, lesbian feminism, prostitution, gay mens politics, beauty practices, the threat of patriarchal religion to womens rights, and the politics of transgenderism. Her most recent book is Trigger Warning: My Lesbian Feminist Life (2020).
