Sheila Jeffreys
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Sheila Jeffreys (born 13 May 1948) is a former professor of political science at the University of Melbourne. An English expatriate and lesbian feminist scholar, she is best known for her analysis of the history and politics of human sexuality.
Jeffreys' argument that the "sexual revolution" on men's terms contributed less to women's freedom than to their continued oppression has commanded respect and attracted intense criticism. She argues that women suffering pain in pursuit of beauty is a form of submission to patriarchal sadism, that transsexuals reproduce oppressive gender roles and mutilate their bodies through sex reassignment surgery, and that lesbian culture has been negatively affected by emulating the sexist influence of the gay male subculture of dominant/submissive sexuality.
She is the author of several books about feminism and feminist history, including The Spinster and Her Enemies (1985), The Sexuality Debates (1987), Beauty and Misogyny (2005), and Gender Hurts (2014).
In her 1990 work Anticlimax: A Feminist Perspective on the Sexual Revolution, Jeffreys offered a critique of the sexual revolution of the 1960s