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Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again

Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again

by Katherine Angel

Verso ·2021 ·144 pages
Academic Press
Maybe Someday
Maybe Someday
I Index
28/99
Bottom of the Pile

22/99

Critics' Rating Index

Maybe Someday

33/99

Readers' Rating Index

n/a

Scholars' Citation Index

89/99

Volume of Reviews

62/99

Volume of Reader Ratings

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About This Book

A provocative, elegantly written analysis of female desire, consent, and sexuality in the age of MeToo Women are in a bind. They are told that in the name of sexual consent and feminist empowerment, they must proclaim their desires clearly and confidently. Sex researchers tell us that women don't know what they want. And men are on hand to persuade women that what they want is, in fact, exactly what men want. In this environment, how can women possibly know what they want—and how can they be expected to? In this elegantly written, searching book Katherine Angel surveys medical and psychoanalytic understandings of female desire, from Freud to Kinsey to present-day science; MeToo-era debates over consent, assault, and feminism; and popular culture, TV, and film to challenge our assumptions about female desire. Why, she asks, do we expect desire to be easily understood? Why is there not space for the unsure, the tentative, the maybe, the let's just see? In contrast to the endless exhortation to know what we want, Angel proposes that sex can be a conversation, requiring insight, interaction, and mutual vulnerability—a shared collaboration into the unknown. In this crucial moment of renewed attention to violence and power, Angel urges that we remake our thinking about sex, pleasure, and autonomy without any illusions of perfect self-knowledge. Only then will we bring about Michel Foucault's sardonic promise, in 1976, that "tomorrow sex will be good again."


Reviews

"she makes a clear and well-researched case."

Stephanie Merritt· The Guardian Read review ↗ Near the Top

"Resisting definitive and simplistic conclusions, Angel has been wide-reaching in her research (though potentially too restricted to cis heterosexuality), presenting us with an in-depth history of the study of sex."

Emily S Cooper· The Irish Times Read review ↗ Near the Top

"As this slim yet philosophically dense volume suggests, consent doesn't guarantee enjoyable sex—and may in fact inhibit it ..."

Kirkus Read review ↗ Near the Top

"intriguing, philosophical ..."

LAURA MILLER· Slate Read review ↗ Maybe Someday

"It's good to see Angel pay attention to heterosexual men, to 'welcome them to vulnerability.' They may be the group of people most in need of hearing what she has to say."

Alexandra Schwartz· The New Yorker Read review ↗ Near the Top

"That this is an unlikely prospect doesn't make it any less attractive."

Hettie O Brien· The Guardian Read review ↗ Near the Top

"We will never simply want the things we should."

Helen Lewis· The Atlantic Read review ↗ Near the Top

"Armed now with the tools of consent and sex research, 'we are, yet again, in a moment in which it seems to be tomorrow … that sex will be good again,' writes Angel."

Mia Levitin· Times Literary Supplement Read review ↗ Near the Top

"Readers will value this lively and incisive inquiry into the sexual dynamics of the #MeToo era."

Publishers Weekly Read review ↗ Near the Top

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