The Spinifex Shorts Complete Collection 2025

Donna F. Johnson

For a mother, the death of a child under any circumstances is unbearable. When the child is severed from the mother’s life by his or her own hand, the cleaving is particularly brutal. It is a bereavement with no equivalence in human experience.

If you are a mother today, you are mothering in patriarchy. What that means, and how it might impact a mother grieving the loss of her child to suicide, is a subject Donna Johnson explores in this profound book. Johnson, in her counselling role in a police service, worked closely with mothers who lost a child to suicide, supporting them through those first traumatic days, weeks and months as the impact of suicide reverberated throughout their lives.

What struck her was the absence of specific supports for mothers and the prevalence of a type of paralysis in the mothers. The burden of overwhelming guilt, shame and a huge sense of failure – emotions not shared by the fathers of the children – impeded the possibility of mothers recovering from their child’s suicide. In Shattered Motherhood, Donna Johnson argues for specific supports for mothers in these circumstances; supports that meet their unique needs, recognise the depth of their suffering and provide them with proper care. Through a feminist lens, she considers the institutions of marriage, motherhood and the family as well as the suffering of mothers who have lost a child to suicide.

Johnson articulates her belief in the power of women coming together to name their own experiences, feel their own pain and search for their own solutions.

FEBRUARY 2025 | ISBN 9781922964144 | Paperback | 180 pages | 135 x 180 mm

THIS BOOK IS PART OF THE SPINIFEX SHORTS COMPLETE COLLECTION

Silvia Guerini

If the human being is allowed to be genetically manipulated and made by artificial means in the laboratory in an unstoppable crescendo of experimentation, what will be left to defend?

This book is a radical critique of gender ideology and transhuman design. Silvia Guerini shows how the TQ+ rights agenda is being pushed by eugenicist capitalist technocrats at the top of Big Business, Big Philanthropy, Big Tech and Big Pharma companies. She argues that dissociation from our sexed bodies leads to dissociation from reality, with the human body transformed into a permanent construction site besieged by synthetic and artificial interventions. Erasure of the material dimension of bodies and sexual difference is an erasure of women. She explains how fundamental struggles such as the fight against genetic engineering and the fight against artificial reproduction can only advance in conjunction with an opposition to gender ideology. By linking ‘gender identity’ to the genetic modification of bodies, she warns that humanity itself is at risk of becoming a synthetic life form with synthetic emotions within a virtual, fluid, deconstructed metaverse. Today, being revolutionary means preserving everything that makes us human. It means defending the living world and nature as entities to be respected, not as parts that can be broken down and redesigned in a laboratory world.

The idea of the ‘neutral’ body and body modification pave the way for the construction of the post-human cyborg and the genetic engineering of bodies. Is the last bioethical barrier about to be breached to give way to transhumanist demands? And at what cost?

OCTOBER 2023 | 9781925950885 | Paperback | 168 pages

THIS BOOK IS PART OF THE GENDER CRITICAL COLLECTION & THE SPINIFEX SHORTS COMPLETE COLLECTION

Max Robinson

I experienced my transition as a form of resistance, but in reality it only affirmed the same stereotypes that had done me harm to begin with. Trying to prevent myself from committing suicide by becoming less recognizably female was an attempt at resistance that, politically, functioned in many ways as a form of capitulation.

Many feminists are concerned about the way transgender ideology naturalizes patriarchal views of sex stereotypes, and encourages transition as a way of attempting to escape misogyny.

In this brave and thoughtful book, Max Robinson goes beyond the ‘before’ and ‘after’ of the transition she underwent and takes us through the processes that led her, first, to transition in an attempt to get relief from her distress, and then to detransition as she discovered feminist thought and community.

The author makes a case for a world in which all medical interventions for the purpose of assimilation are open to criticism. This book is a far-reaching discussion of women’s struggles to survive under patriarchy, which draws upon a legacy of radical and lesbian feminist ideas to arrive at conclusions. Robinson’s bold discussion of both transition and detransition is meant to provoke a much-needed conversation about who benefits from transgender medicine and who has to bear the hidden cost of these interventions.

Transition is not an unconstrained choice when we are fast-tracked to medical intervention as if being female was a tumor that required immediate removal to save our lives.

SEPTEMBER 2021 | ISBN 9781925950403 | Paperback | 135 x 180 mm | 200 pages

THIS BOOK IS PART OF THE GENDER CRITICAL COLLECTION & THE SPINIFEX SHORTS COMPLETE COLLECTION

Heather Brunskell-Evans

Transgenderism in the twenty-first century is patriarchy emblazoned in imperial form.

At a time when supposedly enlightened attitudes are championed by the mainstream, philosopher and activist Heather Brunskell-Evans shows how, in plain view under the guise of liberalism, a regressive men’s rights movement is posing a massive threat to the human rights of women and children everywhere.

This movement is transgender politics which, while spouting platitudes about equality, is in reality colonising and erasing the bodies, agency and autonomy of women and children, while asserting men’s rights to bodily intrusion into every social and personal space. The transgender agenda redefines diversity and inclusion utilising the language of victimhood.

In a complete reversal of feminist gender critical analyses, sex and gender are redefined: identity is now called ‘innate’ (a ‘feeling’ located somewhere in the body) and biological sex is said to be socially constructed (and hence changeable). This ensures a lifetime of drug dependency for transitioners, thereby delivering vast profits for Big Pharma in a capitalist dream.

Everyone, including every trans person, has the right to live freely without discrimination. But the transgender movement has been hijacked by misogynists who are appropriating and inverting the struggles of feminism to deliver an agenda devoid of feminist principles.

In a chilling twist, when feminists critique the patriarchal status quo it is now they who are alleged to be extremists for not allowing men’s interests to control the political narrative. Institutions whose purpose is to defend human rights now interpret truth speech as hate speech, and endorse the no-platforming of women as ethical.

This brave, truthful and eye-opening book does not shirk from the challenge of meeting the politics of liberalism and transgender rights head on. Everyone who cares about the future of women’s and children’s rights must read it.

The micro-politics and the macro-politics of identity interact to form one of the most misogynistic expressions of patriarchy in recent times under the guise of equality, diversity and inclusion.

OCTOBER 2020 | ISBN 9781925950229 | Paperback | 135 x 180 mm | 190 pages

THIS BOOK IS PART OF THE GENDER CRITICAL COLLECTION & THE SPINIFEX SHORTS COMPLETE COLLECTION

eBook Available

For more paperback copies, please visit IPG Book in the US or Gazelle Book Services in the UK

www.ipgbook.com

www.gazellebookservices.co.uk

Janet Fraser

How did we move so far from love that a mother’s grief became the vehicle with which to punish her?

Losing a baby during childbirth is one of the most heartbreaking things imaginable. But to then be accused of causing that death is nothing short of soul-destroying.

Janet Fraser’s story shows what happens when private grief is turned into a public accusation against a woman who dared to exercise choice about how and where she gave birth.

This sobering book demonstrates the penalties dished out to women who question medical orthodoxy and to make decisions for themselves about their own bodies.

When things go wrong in a hospital, it is seen as unavoidable, and no one is to blame, as the medical institutions are seen as the arbiters of decision-making. The layers of bureaucracy protect insiders.

Yet if a baby dies in a home birth, the full weight of the law comes down upon the woman who dared to give birth outside a hospital.

Janet Fraser is that woman and this is her story of injustice, loss and grief. This painful yet enlightening book shows that the patriarchy still wrestles for the control of women and their bodies —and punishes them with every tool in the legal handbook when they contest the view that their bodies are public property.

AUGUST 2020 | ISBN 9781925950120 | Paperback | 135 x 180 mm | 112 pages

THIS BOOK IS PART OF THE SPINIFEX SHORTS COMPLETE COLLECTION

Susan Hawthorne

In Defence of Separatism is a timely book. When it was first written in 1976, although it was an important subject of conversation among many feminists it was not welcomed by academics or publishers.

When a political group wants to strategise so that its members can arrive at agreed-on political tactics and ideas, they call for, and create, separate spaces. These might be in coffee shops, in community centres, in one another's homes or in semi-public spaces such as workers clubs, even cinemas. When the proletariat was rebelling, they did not ask the capitalists and aristocracy to join them (even if a few did); when the civil rights movement started it was not thanks to the ideas and politics of white people (even though some whites joined to support the cause); when the women's liberation movement sprang into life, it was women joining together to fight against their oppression.

The difference is that women are supposed to love men.

Through careful argument, Susan Hawthorne takes us through the ideas which are central to her argument. She analyses the nature of power, oppression, domination and institutions and applies these to heterosexuality, rape and romantic love. She concludes with a call for women, all women no matter their sexuality, to have separate spaces so they can work together to change the world and end patriarchy.

This 2019 edition includes a Preface, Afterword and additional commentary in italicised footnotes that bring the reader up to date on changes, developments and controversies in feminist theory.

2019 | ISBN 9781925950045 | Paperback | 112 pages

THIS BOOK IS PART OF THE SPINIFEX SHORTS COMPLETE COLLECTION

Renate Klein

Pared down to cold hard facts, surrogacy is the commissioning/buying/ renting of a woman into whose womb an embryo is inserted and who thus becomes a ‘breeder’ for a third party.

Surrogacy is heavily promoted by the stagnating IVF industry which seeks new markets for women over 40, and gay men who believe they have a ‘right’ to their own children and ‘family foundation’. Pro-surrogacy groups in rich countries such as Australia and Western Europe lobby for the shift to commercial surrogacy. Their capitalist neo-liberal argument is that a well-regulated fertility industry would avoid the exploitative practices of poor countries.

Central to the project of cross-border surrogacy is the ideology that legalised commercial surrogacy is a legitimate means to provide infertile couples and gay men with children who share all or part of their genes. Women, without whose bodies this project is not possible, are reduced to incubators, to ovens, to suitcases. And the ‘product child’ is a tradable commodity who has never consented to being a ‘take away baby’: removed from their birth mother and given to strangers aka ‘intended parents’. Still, those in favour of this practice of reproductive slavery speak of ‘Fair Trade Surrogacy’ and ‘responsible surrogacy’.

In Surrogacy: A Human Rights Violation Renate Klein details her objections to surrogacy by examining the short- and long-term harms done to the so-called surrogate mothers, egg providers and the female partner in a heterosexual commissioning couple. Klein also looks at the rights of children and compares surrogacy to (forced) adoption practices. She concludes that surrogacy, whether so-called altruistic or commercial can never be ethical and outlines forms of resistance to Stop Surrogacy Now. www.stopsurrogacynow.com

It is the global advertising campaigns that groom infertile couples and gay men that have led to the establishment of multibillion cross-border industries: money made literally from women’s flesh.

2017 | ISBN 9781925581034 | Paperback | 180 x 135 mm | 224 pp

THIS BOOK IS PART OF THE SPINIFEX SHORTS COMPLETE COLLECTION & THE STOP SURROGACY NOW COLLECTION

Helen Lobato

InGardasil: Fast-Tracked and FlawedHelen Lobato argues that we do not know whether HPV vaccines will decrease the incidence of cervical cancer. What is emerging, however, is evidence of their harmful effects. In 2006, the experimental HPV vaccination program began and there have been at least 315 associated deaths and more than 50,000 adverse events following HPV vaccination. 

Gardasil was fast-tracked through the FDA, a process usually reserved for life threatening diseases to fill an unmet and urgent medical need. Improved living conditions had already reduced the incidence of cervical cancer significantly in Western countries. So why is the HPV vaccine so heavily promoted in Australia, a country with one of the lowest rates of cervical cancer in the world?

Gardasil: Fast-Tracked and Flaweddocuments the early history of cervical cancer and tracks its progression from a disease of obscurity to one of mainstream prominence. It includes the stories of vaccinated girls and boys who remain ill after receiving a vaccine purported to prevent a disease they were most unlikely to get. It records the voices of dissenters and resisters who call for an inquiry into HPV vaccines approved for use after a relentless propaganda campaign promoting a vaccine against a virus that many had never heard of.

This in-depth investigation exposes cracks in the pharmaceutical industry and highlights the problems that arise when government regulators and corporate interests are prioritised ahead of patient safety, independent science and common sense.

2017 | ISBN 9781742199931 | Paperback | 140 pages

THIS BOOK IS PART OF THE SPINIFEX SHORTS COMPLETE COLLECTION

Susan Hawthorne

In a globalised world, megacorp publishing is all about numbers, about sameness, about following a formula based on the latest megasuccess. Each book is expected to pay for itself and all the externalities of publishing such as offices and CEO salaries. It means that books which take off slowly but have long lives, the books that change social norms, are less likely to be published.

Independent publishers are seeking another way. A way of engagement with society and methods that reflect something important about the locale or the niche they inhabit. Independent and small publishers are like rare plants that pop up among the larger growth but add something different, perhaps they feed the soil, bring colour or scent into the world.

Bibliodiversity is a term invented by Chilean publishers in the 1990s as a way of envisioning a different kind of publishing. In this manifesto, Susan Hawthorne provides a scathing critique of the global publishing industry set against a visionary proposal for organic publishing. She looks at free speech and fair speech, at the environmental costs of mainstream publishing and at the promises and challenges of the move to digital.

2014 | 9781742199306 | Paperback | 104 pages

THIS BOOK IS PART OF THE SPINIFEX SHORTS COMPLETE COLLECTION