Status
Available
Publication
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2021), 304 pages
Description
Philosophy. Sociology. Nonfiction. HTML: "Laser-cut writing and a stunning intellect. If only every writer made this much beautiful sense." �??Lisa Taddeo, author of Three Women "Amia Srinivasan is an unparalleled and extraordinary writer�??no one X-rays an argument, a desire, a contradiction, a defense mechanism quite like her. In stripping the new politics of sex and power down to its fundamental and sometimes clashing principles, The Right to Sex is a bracing revivification of a crucial lineage in feminist writing: Srinivasan is daring, compassionate, and in relentless search of a new frame." �??Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self Delusion Thrilling, sharp, and deeply humane, philosopher Amia Srinivasan's The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century upends the way we discuss�??or avoid discussing�??the problems and politics of sex. How should we think about sex? It is a thing we have and also a thing we do; a supposedly private act laden with public meaning; a personal preference shaped by outside forces; a place where pleasure and ethics can pull wildly apart. How should we talk about sex? Since #MeToo many have fixed on consent as the key framework for achieving sexual justice. Yet consent is a blunt tool. To grasp sex in all its complexity�??its deep ambivalences, its relationship to gender, class, race and power�??we need to move beyond yes and no, wanted and unwanted. We do not know the future of sex�??but perhaps we could imagine it. Amia Srinivasan's stunning debut helps us do just that. She traces the meaning of sex in our world, animated by the hope of a different world. She reaches back into an older feminist tradition that was unafraid to think of sex as a political phenomenon. She discusses a range of fraught relationships�??between discrimination and preference, pornography and freedom, rape and racial injustice, punishment and accountability, students and teachers, pleasure and power, capitalism and liberation. The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century is a provocation and a promise, transforming many of our most urgent political debates and asking what it… (more)
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LibraryThing member rivkat
Fascinating, challenging work of feminist philosophy. On intersectionality: a movement “that focuses only on what all members of the relevant group (women, people of colour, the working class) have in common is a movement that will best serve those members of the group who are least oppressed.”
She discusses her students’ openness to earlier feminist critiques of pornography, since they grew up with the awful misogynistic stuff readily available. “Almost every man in that class would have had his first sexual experience the moment he first wanted it, or didn’t want it, in front of a screen. And almost every woman in the class would have had her first sexual experience, if not in front of a screen, then with a boy whose first sexual experience had been.” But law is not a good tool for dealing with the consequences; the UK prohibits porn from featuring spanking, watersports, ageplay, physical restraint, humiliation, female ejaculation, facesitting, and fisting as well as several other things, including “penetration by any object ‘associated with violence.’” As she asks: “Does a man’s penis count? Presumably not.” The UK prohibits depicting female ejaculation, “an act that is emblematic of women’s pleasure,” as well as things like facesitting associated with femdom porn, but leaves unregulated basic male-focused porn. “But the whole point of the feminist critiques of porn was to disrupt the logic of the mainstream: to suggest that what turns most people on is not thereby OK.” Her students don’t want further legal regulation of porn, but not because they were free speech absolutists; rather they recognized that laws would be used against the marginalized (what she calls a “sex positivity of fear,” motivated by fear of authoritarian alternatives). Relatedly, she asks, “is the fact that there is relatively little porn fetishising Native American, Aboriginal or Dalit women evidence that they are not oppressed? … Anti-porn feminists are too confident in their assumption that images of sexual and racial domination on screen can do nothing but exacerbate sexual and racial domination off the screen.”
She also discusses the extent to which it is possible to critique individual sexual desires without suppressing sexual minorities—“no fats no fems no Asians” is individual, but also political and cultural. There are no easy answers in her discussion; when she talks about Asian women who prefer to date non-Asian men, she notes, “[s]ometimes when we say that Asian men remind us of our cousins, we are saying: we know too much about how these boys and men are raised.”
There’s also an interesting essay about prohibitions on student-teacher sex as implementing not primarily feminist principles but pedagogical ones: If the very real erotics of education are diverted to physical sex, then students—primarily women—lose important educational opportunities. The proper object of students’ erotic energies is not the professor, but what he represents: “knowledge, truth, understanding.” Students want to have the professor’s capacity to understand, “not just the pleasure of watching him exercise that capacity,” or maybe they aren’t sure whether they want to be like him or have him; in that case, it’s very easy for the teacher to steer inchoate desire in the anti-pedagogical direction, especially given “the way that women are socialised to interpret their feelings about men they admire.” Not having sex with students isn’t the same thing as treating them like children.
There’s also a great essay about anti-prostitution campaigns. She’s against abolitionism because she’s most interested in improving conditions for women. Criminalization leads to unchecked violence against sex workers by johns and the police; legalization/regulation benefits men but still excludes women from being primary beneficiaries and leaves a subset of sex workers who can’t meet the legal requirements criminalized. And making buying but not selling sex illegal leads johns to demand greater privacy and thus impose greater risks. Thus, none of these regimes make sex workers, as a class, better off. She argues that abolitionists want to punish men who buy sex “as individuals, but also as stand-ins for all violent men,” and that this isn’t worth making life worse for sex workers. Abolitionists conceive of this as a necessary step, but she doesn’t believe that criminalization of any kind genuinely gets us closer to a world without sex work, any more than banning abortion decreases abortions.
Feminist policymaking has many of these wicked problems: mandatory arrest policies for domestic violence “reduced the amount of violence perpetrated by employed white men while increasing the amount of violence perpetrated by unemployed black men,” but poor abused women are not given the option of having the state provide employment to their male partners, only of having them locked up. She’s generally anti-punishment because “once you have started up the carceral machine, you cannot pick and choose whom it will mow down.” I’m personally skeptical that it’s truly impossible to make distinctions, but I take the point that feminists should be realists about who’s going to jail. More generally, she argues, there “is no settling in advance on a political programme that is immune to co-option …. You can only see what happens, then plot your next move.”
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In her discussion of sex under patriarchy, she posits that law might just be the wrong tool to deal with many kinds of bad sex produced under patriarchy (e.g., sex that men get women to affirmatively consent to but that they don’t actually want).She discusses her students’ openness to earlier feminist critiques of pornography, since they grew up with the awful misogynistic stuff readily available. “Almost every man in that class would have had his first sexual experience the moment he first wanted it, or didn’t want it, in front of a screen. And almost every woman in the class would have had her first sexual experience, if not in front of a screen, then with a boy whose first sexual experience had been.” But law is not a good tool for dealing with the consequences; the UK prohibits porn from featuring spanking, watersports, ageplay, physical restraint, humiliation, female ejaculation, facesitting, and fisting as well as several other things, including “penetration by any object ‘associated with violence.’” As she asks: “Does a man’s penis count? Presumably not.” The UK prohibits depicting female ejaculation, “an act that is emblematic of women’s pleasure,” as well as things like facesitting associated with femdom porn, but leaves unregulated basic male-focused porn. “But the whole point of the feminist critiques of porn was to disrupt the logic of the mainstream: to suggest that what turns most people on is not thereby OK.” Her students don’t want further legal regulation of porn, but not because they were free speech absolutists; rather they recognized that laws would be used against the marginalized (what she calls a “sex positivity of fear,” motivated by fear of authoritarian alternatives). Relatedly, she asks, “is the fact that there is relatively little porn fetishising Native American, Aboriginal or Dalit women evidence that they are not oppressed? … Anti-porn feminists are too confident in their assumption that images of sexual and racial domination on screen can do nothing but exacerbate sexual and racial domination off the screen.”
She also discusses the extent to which it is possible to critique individual sexual desires without suppressing sexual minorities—“no fats no fems no Asians” is individual, but also political and cultural. There are no easy answers in her discussion; when she talks about Asian women who prefer to date non-Asian men, she notes, “[s]ometimes when we say that Asian men remind us of our cousins, we are saying: we know too much about how these boys and men are raised.”
There’s also an interesting essay about prohibitions on student-teacher sex as implementing not primarily feminist principles but pedagogical ones: If the very real erotics of education are diverted to physical sex, then students—primarily women—lose important educational opportunities. The proper object of students’ erotic energies is not the professor, but what he represents: “knowledge, truth, understanding.” Students want to have the professor’s capacity to understand, “not just the pleasure of watching him exercise that capacity,” or maybe they aren’t sure whether they want to be like him or have him; in that case, it’s very easy for the teacher to steer inchoate desire in the anti-pedagogical direction, especially given “the way that women are socialised to interpret their feelings about men they admire.” Not having sex with students isn’t the same thing as treating them like children.
There’s also a great essay about anti-prostitution campaigns. She’s against abolitionism because she’s most interested in improving conditions for women. Criminalization leads to unchecked violence against sex workers by johns and the police; legalization/regulation benefits men but still excludes women from being primary beneficiaries and leaves a subset of sex workers who can’t meet the legal requirements criminalized. And making buying but not selling sex illegal leads johns to demand greater privacy and thus impose greater risks. Thus, none of these regimes make sex workers, as a class, better off. She argues that abolitionists want to punish men who buy sex “as individuals, but also as stand-ins for all violent men,” and that this isn’t worth making life worse for sex workers. Abolitionists conceive of this as a necessary step, but she doesn’t believe that criminalization of any kind genuinely gets us closer to a world without sex work, any more than banning abortion decreases abortions.
Feminist policymaking has many of these wicked problems: mandatory arrest policies for domestic violence “reduced the amount of violence perpetrated by employed white men while increasing the amount of violence perpetrated by unemployed black men,” but poor abused women are not given the option of having the state provide employment to their male partners, only of having them locked up. She’s generally anti-punishment because “once you have started up the carceral machine, you cannot pick and choose whom it will mow down.” I’m personally skeptical that it’s truly impossible to make distinctions, but I take the point that feminists should be realists about who’s going to jail. More generally, she argues, there “is no settling in advance on a political programme that is immune to co-option …. You can only see what happens, then plot your next move.”
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LibraryThing member deusvitae
A great exploration into the situation of feminism in the twenty-first century in relation to sexuality.
The author dives deeply into many of the great controversies of the modern age, reflecting on (especially second wave) feminist understandings and activism regarding heterosexual sexuality,
The author positions herself in such a way to not make a lot of friends: she perceives the attempt to maintain power or reinforce patriarchy from social/political/cultural conservatism and thus wants to keep at a remove from them; she is willing to question a lot of the orthodoxies regarding modern feminism in light of how they might affect women of color or men of color in a quite different way than white women. She is willing to speak of how white women have often worked for their advantage and look for solidarity even though said solidarity will often come at the expense of people of color.
Yet her analysis is quite excellent and needed. It is good to consider what success would look like and how power gained can be best leveraged for all women (and a lot of men as well). We should not perpetuate some injustices in the name of addressing others.
Very interesting read.
The author dives deeply into many of the great controversies of the modern age, reflecting on (especially second wave) feminist understandings and activism regarding heterosexual sexuality,
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consent as standard, sexual harassment/assault, Title IX, pornography, LGBTQIA+ matters, abuse, and the intersection of these with racism and classism. The author positions herself in such a way to not make a lot of friends: she perceives the attempt to maintain power or reinforce patriarchy from social/political/cultural conservatism and thus wants to keep at a remove from them; she is willing to question a lot of the orthodoxies regarding modern feminism in light of how they might affect women of color or men of color in a quite different way than white women. She is willing to speak of how white women have often worked for their advantage and look for solidarity even though said solidarity will often come at the expense of people of color.
Yet her analysis is quite excellent and needed. It is good to consider what success would look like and how power gained can be best leveraged for all women (and a lot of men as well). We should not perpetuate some injustices in the name of addressing others.
Very interesting read.
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LibraryThing member LynnB
What a great read...challenging at times, but so thought-provoking it is worth the effort. The author examines many feminist issues (consent, porn, prostitution and others), and explores differences in feminist thought about such issues without being judgmental. She explores ideas and perspectives
I liked her exploration of how a patriarchal society defines so many issues and responses. For example, she explores the politics of sex and desire and how mainstream preferences affect people of colour, disabled people, fat people, and others who don't confirm. Are our desires innate or shaped by the patriarchal society we live in? A patriarchal society also leads to systemic harms to consensual sex, in the case of male professors having relationships with female students.
By exploring differing feminist views and the context in which they ae formed, the author has made me think in a deeper, more nuanced way about such issues. Recommended.
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within feminist thought and challenges the reader to do the same. I liked her exploration of how a patriarchal society defines so many issues and responses. For example, she explores the politics of sex and desire and how mainstream preferences affect people of colour, disabled people, fat people, and others who don't confirm. Are our desires innate or shaped by the patriarchal society we live in? A patriarchal society also leads to systemic harms to consensual sex, in the case of male professors having relationships with female students.
By exploring differing feminist views and the context in which they ae formed, the author has made me think in a deeper, more nuanced way about such issues. Recommended.
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LibraryThing member Cecilturtle
I loved this series of five essays which holds feminism accountable for its failures and vagaries. Using specific examples, Srinivasan is able to show the ways in which intersectionality affects individuals. Among the themes that particularly held my attention: the way in which black men were
It's not all finger pointing: the author gives credit where it is due and builds on the theories tested through the decades, while showing opportunities for new leadership.
Original and thought-provoking
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overly negatively impacted by policies; the way economically disadvantaged and women of colour were left behind; the tension between personal preferences and political expression.It's not all finger pointing: the author gives credit where it is due and builds on the theories tested through the decades, while showing opportunities for new leadership.
Original and thought-provoking
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LibraryThing member Citizenjoyce
Ugh, this book is a perfect example of why I don't like philosophy.There's on the one hand, then on the other hand, then on a further hand. How do you help sex workers? Everything you try ends up harming the poor, women of color, or immigrants. Everything you try about everything ends up harming
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poor women, women of color and immigrants. The ulitimate solution is abolition - the abolition of policing and jails. In its place, we substitute guaranteed health care, housing, nutrition, and a liveable wage. Then in this utopia, there will be no need for crime. Then if you inhabit that utopia with robots, you'd be right. There would be no crime. Humans, on the other hand, just aren't that perfectable. Show Less
LibraryThing member MarthaJeanne
This is very well written. Her positions have been well thought through. I think anyone, female or male would learn a lot from it. I'm glad I read it as an ebook, because it made looking vocabulary and references a lot easier.
The ebook table of contents in my copy has major issues. As this didn't
The ebook table of contents in my copy has major issues. As this didn't
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really affect my reading of the book, I have not marked it down for that. Show Less
Awards
National Book Critics Circle Award (Finalist — 2021)
Orwell Prize (Shortlist — 2022)
BookTube Prize (Octofinalist — Nonfiction — 2022)
Blackwell's Book of the Year (Shortlist — Non-Fiction — 2021)
Boston Globe Best Book (Nonfiction — 2021)
Language
Original language
English
Physical description
304 p.; 8.55 inches
ISBN
0374248524 / 9780374248529