Pleasure, Play, and Politics: A History of Humor in U.S. Feminism

Kirsten Leng explores the ways culture and politics feed one another and shows how humor contributed to movement-building by changing hearts and minds, creating and maintaining a sense of community beyond a single issue, and sustaining activists over the long haul. The fascinating individuals, groups, and objects examined here--including the sex workers' rights group COYOTE, the Guerrilla Girls, Florynce Kennedy, and the Lesbian Avengers--don't just provide entertaining anecdotes, or unsettle lazy assumptions that feminists are perennially dour and censorious: they offer a lesson or two for contemporary feminists and social justice activists. Taken together, they remind us that laughter can move us, that humor and anger can coexist, and that play and pleasure have a place in struggle.