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Bad Sex: Truth, Pleasure, and an Unfinished Revolution

Bad Sex: Truth, Pleasure, and an Unfinished Revolution

by Nona Willis Aronowitz

Plume ·2022 ·336 pages
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14/99
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23/99

Critics' Rating Index

Bottom of the Pile

4/99

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Scholars' Citation Index

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About This Book

From Teen Vogue sex and love columnist Nona Willis Aronowitz, a blend of memoir, social history, and cultural criticism that explores the new problem that has no name when it comes to female desire, seeking answers from the author's life and family history as well as from revolutionaries of the past. The daughter of Ellen Willis (of Second Wave Feminist fame), Nona grew up not only believing the feminist revolution was thriving, but that she was a result: She was sexually liberated, wrote her college thesis on 1970s porn, and had genuinely good sex from the time she was a teen. But then at twenty-four, she entered into an ironic and unplanned marriage that become a surprisingly seductive trap into conventional life. But eight years later that partnership was starting to show signs of wear and eventually culminated in divorce. It was in that moment of personal sea change and political tumult that Nona turned to her late mother's writing (and other revolutionaries of the past) for guidance, all while navigating the modern dating world. In a time when sex has never been more accepted and feminism has never been more mainstream, what does it mean to be sexually liberated? For readers of Rebecca Traister and Rebecca Solnit, Bad Sex is a brave, bold, and vulnerable exploration of the enduring barriers of sexual freedom, which lays bare the triumphs and flaws of contemporary feminism and also helps shine a light on universal questions of desire.


Reviews

"A courageously frank, sometimes uneven hybrid of memoir and social history."

Kirkus Read review ↗ Maybe Someday

"It's hard not to want more exploration of how an extroverted sex life, as the Washington Post opinion writer Christine Emba argues in her new book, Rethinking Sex, has become 'a sign and symbol of health and—especially for women—a political statement signifying personal power and our liberation as a class, gender, or generation.' But, somehow, we let the thoughtful and charged sex positivity espoused by Ellen Willis and her peers curdle into the practice of sex as conspicuous, often unsatisfying, consumption."

Sophie Gilbert· The Atlantic Read review ↗ Maybe Someday

"By twining the threads of her sexual past (erotic awakening, open relationships and so on) with her mother's thoughts on the same experiences, Aronowitz creates a vivid, tapestry-like intergenerational feminist social history."

Nell Beram· Shelf Awareness Read review ↗ Near the Top

"She is un-self-conscious in her descriptions, recounting length of orgasms, positions tried and the precise tools used to achieve them ..."

Jessica Bennett· The New York Times Read review ↗ Near the Top

"[Aronowitz] entwines her own experiences with a meticulous analysis of society and culture to explore the larger systems (white supremacy, capitalism, the patriarchy) and smaller trends (revenge porn, hookup apps, secretly misogynist activism) that encourage intimacy to fail."

Courtney Eathorne· Booklist Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"Aronowitz's chatty tone and corpuscular language explodes myths in ways that will help readers clearly recognize the lies they've been fed."

Emily Bowles· Library Journal Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

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