'Female Fear Factory' offers a bold vision for collective action against all cultures of sexual violence

24 June 2021 - 13:56
By nb-uitgewers/publishers AND NB-Uitgewers/Publishers
'Female Fear Factory' offers an even bolder vision for collective action against all cultures of sexual violence.
Image: Supplied 'Female Fear Factory' offers an even bolder vision for collective action against all cultures of sexual violence.

Female Fear Factory is the much anticipated follow-up to Pumla Dineo Gqola's 2016 Sunday Times Alan Paton Award-winner Rape: A South African Nightmare. Like the previous book on which it builds, Female Fear Factory fuses both razor­ sharp intellectual rigour and extensive research.

The ongoing explosion of sexual violence demands more space for the development of the female fear factory concept as well as its possible antidotes. Where Rape introduced strategies for disrupting rape culture at an individual level, Female Fear Factory offers an even bolder vision for collective action against all cultures of sexual violence.

Gqola, an icon of SA feminism, brilliantly traces the construction and machinations of the female fear factory by exposing its myths, lies and seductions. It is an insightful and sobering account of global patriarchal violence while it simultaneously offers a hopeful vision through the eyes of an unapologetic feminist.

About the author

Gqola is the author of What is Slavery to Me? (Wits University Press), A Renegade Called Simphiwe (MFBooks), Rape: A South African Nightmare (MFBooks), and Reflecting Rogue (MFBooks). Professor Gqola is currently research chair in African Feminist Imagination at NMU.