The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century

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About The Right To Sex: Feminism In The Twenty-First

Product Description “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 DelusionThrilling, 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 might mean to be free. Review Advance PraiseA SUNDAY TIMES (UK) BESTSELLER“Srinivasan refuses to resort to straw men; she will lay out even the most specious argument clearly and carefully, demonstrating its emotional power, even if her ultimate intention is to dismantle it . . . For a book by a philosopher that makes a vibrant case for theory, The Right to Sex keeps returning to the reality of lived experience. Srinivasan places the most vulnerable people at the center of her analysis, insisting that any action has to be judged in terms of its effect on them. “―Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times“This new essay collection takes on pornography, power, desire and more, drawing on earlier feminist tradition and connecting questions of freedom to class, race and disability.”―Joumana Khatib, The New York Times Book Review (Most Anticipated)“[Srinivasan] shows us how to let philosophical arguments clarify debates within popular culture, and how to read popular culture as a way of wrestling with moral ­dilemmas related to sex, feminism, equality, and freedom . . . Imbued with the breath of fresher air, The Right to Sex demonstrates . . . how the feminist philosopher can emancipate our basic ethical concepts from the stranglehold of patriarchy, capitalism, and state racism―and this is a remarkable and promising effort.”―Judith Butler, New Statesman"Each individual essay in this collection is complex, requiring an exegesis beyond what the scope of a single book review can handle, but certain moments stand out to me as impossible not to highlight . . . On any given page, Srinivasan will leave you feeling convinced she has found a way out, only to pull the rug out from under you; whenever she says “but,” one wants to duck. Though far from exasperation, I felt relieved―even hopeful―that someone is asking the hard questions in public without asking for