A provocative, elegantly written analysis of female desire, consent, and sexuality in the age of MeToo
Women are in a bind. In the name of consent and empowerment, they must proclaim their desires clearly and confidently. Yet sex researchers suggest that women’s desire is often slow to emerge. And men are keen to insist that they know what women—and their bodies—want. Meanwhile...
A provocative, elegantly written analysis of female desire, consent, and sexuality in the age of MeToo
Women are in a bind. In the name of consent and empowerment, they must proclaim their desires clearly and confidently. Yet sex researchers suggest that women’s desire is often slow to emerge. And men are keen to insist that they know what women—and their bodies—want. Meanwhile, sexual violence abounds. How can women, in this environment, possibly know what they want? And why do we expect them to?
In this elegant, searching book—spanning science and popular culture; pornography and literature; debates on Me-Too, consent and feminism—Katherine Angel challenges our assumptions about women’s desire. Why, she asks, should they be expected to know their desires? And how do we take sexual violence seriously, when not knowing what we want is key to both eroticism and personhood?
In today’s crucial moment of renewed attention to violence and power, Angel urges that we remake our thinking about sex, pleasure, and autonomy without any illusions about perfect self-knowledge. Only then will we fulfil Michel Foucault’s teasing promise, in 1976, that “tomorrow sex will be good again.”
作者简介
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Katherine Angel is the author of Unmastered, Most Difficult to Tell and Daddy Issues. She directs the MA in Creative and Critical Writing at Birkbeck, University of London, and has a PhD from the University of Cambridge.
原文摘录
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Masters and Johnson’s findings on women’s capacity for multiple orgasms suggested that a woman’s release was psychological as well as physical. Women seek more than sex; ‘the real thing we seek is closeness, merging, perhaps a kind of oblivion of self.’ (查看原文)
As soon as a woman articulates a desire, her guilt is implicated. Desire and criminality, longing and responsibility, are awakened in tandem. For women, desire invites interrogation; curiosity invites suspicion; longing invites the law into our heads, the forensic into our pleasures. (查看原文)
Sex is a conversation. A social experience. It entails not just 'yes' or 'no' but also 'maybe,' 'be gentle,' 'go slow,' 'try that angle,' etc. And like all conversations, it may disappoint at times. J...Sex is a conversation. A social experience. It entails not just 'yes' or 'no' but also 'maybe,' 'be gentle,' 'go slow,' 'try that angle,' etc. And like all conversations, it may disappoint at times. January 2025, Dubai(展开)
This book, as a critique, is all about examining assumptions. What is our assumption when we think women should behave in a certain way? What is our assumption when we pose women and research women in certain ways? What do all these mean regarding everythin...
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苏诺
0 有用 夭夭 2025-03-28 17:48:30 上海
所有assumption都应该先检视其背后的权力结构。关于consent的反思很冲击，没有人能真的想清楚自己想要什么，尤其是在亲密关系里，所以如果一味强调性同意，只会让人更加自我怀疑，也并不会带来真正好的性。
0 有用 Suri 2022-02-03 16:35:14
挺好的 挺logical的
0 有用 califlo 2022-03-31 03:05:02
Nothing surprising or revolutionary but it does have a concrete body.
0 有用 禅茶一味 2025-01-14 15:51:34 阿联酋
Sex is a conversation. A social experience. It entails not just 'yes' or 'no' but also 'maybe,' 'be gentle,' 'go slow,' 'try that angle,' etc. And like all conversations, it may disappoint at times. J... Sex is a conversation. A social experience. It entails not just 'yes' or 'no' but also 'maybe,' 'be gentle,' 'go slow,' 'try that angle,' etc. And like all conversations, it may disappoint at times. January 2025, Dubai (展开)
0 有用 牛皮狗 2023-03-31 12:07:26 美国
有一些洞见 对自由主义女权的批判确实值得思考。