Lynne Segal (born 29 March 1944)[1] is an Australian-born, British-based socialist feminist academic and activist, author of many books and articles, and participant in many campaigns, from local community to international. She has taught in higher education in London, England, since 1970, at Middlesex Polytechnic from 1973. In 1999, she was appointed Anniversary Professor of Psychology and Gender Studies at Birkbeck, University of London, where she now works in the School of Psychosocial Studies.[2]
Early life
Segal was born on 29 March 1944 in Sydney, Australia. Segal was born in a Jewish family to Iza and Reuben Segal, who were both physicians. Her brother Graeme is a mathematician and her sister Barbara is a baroque dancer. She studied psychology at Sydney University, obtaining her PhD in 1969, while becoming immersed in the anti-authoritarian milieu of the Sydney Libertarians (known as 'The Push'), and has always remained within the libertarian wing of Left politics.[citation needed] She became pregnant in 1969 and married her husband, the artist James Clifford, who later came out as gay.[3][4][5]
Activism
She emigrated to London in 1970 and for the next decade her main energies went into grass roots politics in Islington, North London, helping to set up and run a women's centre, an alternative newspaper, the Islington Gutter Press, and supporting anti-racist politics. It was a decade in which the extra-party Left was on the ascendant, but divided structurally and ideologically.[citation needed]
In 1979, the three friends, Segal, Sheila Rowbotham and Hilary Wainwright wrote Beyond the Fragments,[6] arguing for broader alliances among trade unionists, feminists and left political groups. Its argument quickly won a large following leading to a major conference in Leeds, Yorkshire, in 1980 and a second edition in 1981. In 1984, publisher Ursula Owen invited her to join the Virago Advisory Board and write an appraisal of the state of feminism, resulting in her first book, Is the Future Female? Troubled Thoughts on Contemporary Feminism.[7] This book reached a broad audience, with its questioning of gender mythologies, whether of women's intrinsic virtues, or men's inevitable rapaciousness, which had been appearing in the work of many popular feminist writers in the 1980s.[citation needed]
Reflecting her socialist feminist milieu, Segal argued that feminists always needed to confront the ubiquitous negation of the 'feminine', but women's battles could neither be reduced simply to battles with men, nor solved purely by revaluing the 'feminine'.[8] All Segal's consequent books have argued for a more inclusive form of left-feminism, arguing for a more compassionate and egalitarian world.[9][10][11][12] Her next book, Slow Motion: Changing Masculinities, Changing Men,[13] rejected the equating of 'male sexuality' with 'male violence', noting the complexity of forces generating very differing patterns of masculinity across time and place. Discussing the volatile fluidity of sexual experience, the same theoretical perspectives appeared in Straight Sex: The Politics of Pleasure.[14] There she deconstructs the notion of male activity and female passivity that underpin normative understandings of heterosexuality, and serve to shore up the language and practices of male dominance. In 2007, Segal published Making Trouble: Life and Politics, a Political Memoir,[15] covering her generation of post-war activists, pondering what has become of their politics in the grimmer, more divided world of the 21st century.
Segal, Lynne (1983). What is to be done about the family. Harmondsworth: Penguin in association with the Socialist Society. ISBN9780140065961.
Segal, Lynne (1987). Is the future female? : troubled thoughts on contemporary feminism. London: Virago. ISBN9780860686972.
Segal, Lynne (1989). The Past Before Us: Twenty Years of Feminism. Feminist Review. ISBN9780415037525.
Segal, Lynne; McIntosh, Mary (1993). Sex exposed : sexuality and the pornography debate. New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press. ISBN9780813519388.
Segal, Lynne. Does pornography cause violence? The search for evidence in Church Gibson, Pamela; Gibson, Roma (1993). Dirty looks : women, pornography, power. London: British Film Institute (BFI) Publishing. ISBN9780851704043.
Segal, Lynne (1994). Straight sex : rethinking the politics of pleasure. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN9780520200012.
Segal, Lynne, ed. (1997). New sexual agendas. Basingstoke: Macmillan. ISBN0333675681.
^Segal, Lynne (1983). What is to be done about the family. Harmondsworth: Penguin in association with the Socialist Society. ISBN9780140065961.
^Segal, Lynne; McIntosh, Mary (1993). Sex exposed : sexuality and the pornography debate. New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press. ISBN9780813519388.
^Segal, Lynne, ed. (1997). New sexual agendas. Basingstoke: Macmillan. ISBN0333675681.
