Why am I passionate about this?

I am a feminist writer and sexologist. My recent book narrates my search for sexual empowerment and presents my vision for a world where no woman is objectified. I teach courses on topics including orgasms, neurodiversity, and childbirth. I also coach people on their sex and love lives, empowering them to take control over their relationships. I am now working on a new book that imparts my long and winding triumph over chronic illness and reveals that having a female body is not a curse but a blessing. 


I wrote...

Subjectified: Becoming a Sexual Subject

By Suzannah Weiss,

Book cover of Subjectified: Becoming a Sexual Subject

What is my book about?

This is a book about subjects, objects, and verbs. It is also a book about clothing-optional resorts, masturbation circles, and…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Lady's Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness: A Memoir

Suzannah Weiss Why did I love this book?

This book provides an answer to the looming modern-day question of why so many women are chronically ill. Author Sarah Ramey tells the moving story of her own chronic illness while putting the pieces together as to what so many women are suffering from and how we can help.

As someone who has dealt with chronic illness myself, this book illuminated not only what was happening in my body but also what was happening within my culture that needed to be overhauled along with my own life.

By Sarah Ramey,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Lady's Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'A visceral, scathing, erudite read that digs deep into how modern medicine continues to fail women and what can be done about it' Booklist

The darkly funny memoir of Sarah Ramey's years-long battle with a mysterious illness that doctors thought was all in her head - but wasn't. A revelation and an inspiration for millions of women whose legitimate health complaints are ignored.

In her harrowing, defiant and unforgettable memoir, Sarah Ramey recounts the decade-long saga of how a seemingly minor illness in her senior year of college turned into a prolonged and elusive condition that destroyed her health but…


Book cover of Orgasmic Birth: Your Guide to a Safe, Satisfying, and Pleasurable Birth Experience

Suzannah Weiss Why did I love this book?

We typically think of childbirth as a pain women must simply get through. Elizabeth Davis and Debra Pascali-Bonaro offer a wildly different perspective in this read. They show how birth can be a blissful, ecstatic experience—and why women have been robbed of this experience.

Reading this book not only made me excited about the prospect of giving birth but also helped me challenge the outdated conventional wisdom of "no pain, no gain."

By Elizabeth Davis, Debra Pascali-Bonaro,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Orgasmic Birth as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Based on the hit documentary that inspired a vibrant online community, this innovative approach to birthing shows women how to maximize childbirth's emotional and physical rewards

With more than 4 million babies born in the United States each year, too many women experience birth as nothing more than a routine or painful event. In her much-praised film Orgasmic Birth, acclaimed filmmaker Debra Pascali-Bonaro showed that in fact childbirth is a natural process to be enjoyed and cherished. Now she joins forces with renowned author and activist Elizabeth Davis to offer an enlightening program to help women attain the most empowering…


Book cover of This Sex Which Is Not One

Suzannah Weiss Why did I love this book?

Women's genitals are too often painted as passive, empty holes. When we think of them, we think of the vagina rather than the vulva or clitoris. In this book, Irigaray offers a simple reframe: Our bodies are not zero. They are two.

Analyzing the symbolism of the female body, Irigaray challenges patriarchal logic. This book helped me become sexual in a way that honored my own body rather than submitting to the erasure so endemic to our culture.

By Luce Irigaray, Catherine Porter (translator), Carolyn Burke (translator)

Why should I read it?

1 author picked This Sex Which Is Not One as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"The publication of these two translations is an event to be celebrated by feminists of all persuasions."
Women's Review of Books

In This Sex Which Is Not One, Luce Irigaray elaborates on some of the major themes of Speculum of the Other Woman, her landmark work on the status of woman in Western philosophical discourse and in psychoanalytic theory, In eleven acute and widely ranging essays, Irigaray reconsiders the question of female sexuality in a variety of contexts that are relevant to current discussion of feminist theory and practice.

Among the topics she treats are the implications of the thought…


Book cover of Naturally Selective: Evolution, Orgasm, and Female Choice

Suzannah Weiss Why did I love this book?

Female orgasms are not the mysteries society makes them out to be. This book illuminates how they work while debunking the prevalent, insidious myth that women's bodies are poorly designed.

It taught me about the evolutionary forces shaping our sexuality, the types of orgasms we can enjoy, and the frequently underestimated expansiveness of women's sexuality. 

By Robert King,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Naturally Selective as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Researchers of human behaviour have identified an "orgasm gap": Men usually orgasm during intercourse, whereas women often do not. This book addresses this mystery. The two leading explanations are either that women are "psychologically broken" - Freud's theory - or badly designed - the "by-product theory." However, there is a much more compelling third explanation. Evolutionary biology, anatomy, physiology, and direct sex research suggest women have evolved under their own selection pressures and orgasm is a fitness-increasing consequence of such selective factors. This is revealed in their patterns of orgasmic response, which are neither random nor inexplicable.

Key Features

Synthesizes…


Book cover of Ejaculate Responsibly: A Whole New Way to Think About Abortion

Suzannah Weiss Why did I love this book?

For years, women have been imprisoned by the myth that we must rely on medications with undesired side effects to prevent unwanted pregnancies. Yet the reality is simple: Men can take the responsibility not to ejaculate inside someone who has not requested they do so.

This book helped me take control of my reproductive health by asserting boundaries for how partners treat me. It's my body, after all. 

By Gabrielle Stanley Blair,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Ejaculate Responsibly as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In Ejaculate Responsibly, Gabrielle Blair offers a provocative reframing of the abortion issue in post-Roe America. In a series of 28 brief arguments, she deftly makes the case for moving the abortion debate away from controlling and legislating women's bodies and instead directs the focus on men's lack of accountability in preventing unwanted pregnancies.

Highly readable, accessible, funny, and unflinching, Blair builds her argument by walking readers through the basics of fertility (men are 50 times more fertile than woman), the unfair burden placed on women when it comes to preventing pregnancy (90% of the birth control market is for…


Explore my book 😀

Subjectified: Becoming a Sexual Subject

By Suzannah Weiss,

Book cover of Subjectified: Becoming a Sexual Subject

What is my book about?

This is a book about subjects, objects, and verbs. It is also a book about clothing-optional resorts, masturbation circles, and sex parties.

Suzannah Weiss takes the reader through her adventures as a sex and relationship writer to explore how we can create a world with less objectification and more subjectification–placing women and other marginalized groups in the subject role of sentences and actions. Offering a deeply personal critique of sexual empowerment movements, Weiss presents a way forward that focuses on what women desire, not what men desire from them. Subjectified calls for women everywhere to inhabit their bodies and hearts–to look through their own eyes and speak as “I.”

Book cover of The Lady's Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness: A Memoir
Book cover of Orgasmic Birth: Your Guide to a Safe, Satisfying, and Pleasurable Birth Experience
Book cover of This Sex Which Is Not One

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Follow Me to Africa

By Penny Haw,

Book cover of Follow Me to Africa

Penny Haw Author Of The Invincible Miss Cust

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

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Penny's 3 favorite reads in 2024

What is my book about?

Historical fiction inspired by the story of Mary Leakey, who carved her own path to become one of the world's most distinguished paleoanthropologists.

It's 1983 and seventeen-year-old Grace Clark has just lost her mother when she begrudgingly accompanies her estranged father to an archeological dig at Olduvai Gorge on the Serengeti plains of Tanzania. Here, seventy-year-old Mary Leakey enlists Grace to sort and pack her fifty years of work and memories. 

Their interaction reminds Mary how she pursued her ambitions of becoming an archeologist in the 1930s by sneaking into lectures and working on excavations. When well-known paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey…

Follow Me to Africa

By Penny Haw,

What is this book about?

Historical fiction inspired by the story of Mary Leakey, who carved her own path to become one of the world's most distinguished paleoanthropologists.

It's 1983 and seventeen-year-old Grace Clark has just lost her mother when she begrudgingly accompanies her estranged father to an archeological dig at Olduvai Gorge on the Serengeti plains of Tanzania. Here, seventy-year-old Mary Leakey enlists Grace to sort and pack her fifty years of work and memories.

Their interaction reminds Mary how she pursued her ambitions of becoming an archeologist in the 1930s by sneaking into lectures and working on excavations. When well-known paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey…


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