A provocative counterargument to recent feminist dogma.
As this slim yet philosophically dense volume suggests, consent doesn't guarantee enjoyable sex—and may in fact inhibit it.
British academic Angel considers the relatively new concept that sexual interaction should rely on a man asking for, and a woman granting, permission for each sequential act involved. (For the purposes of this book, she focuses on cis men and women: “The particular quandaries affecting trans people’s experience of sex, as well as those in same-sex relationships will, I hope, find some resonance and recognition in the dynamics I explore here, but the fine-grained texture of those quandaries are not mine to explore, and others are better placed to be doing (and to have done) that vital work.”) In chapters about consent and vulnerability, the author makes the point that “we do not always know what we want” and that clearly stating your desires does nothing to prevent “miserable, unpleasant, humiliating” sex. The book's ironic title—borrowed from a 1976 essay by French philosopher Michel Foucault that criticized contemporary “sexual liberationists”—suggests that positive sexual interactions cannot be willed into existence. Rather, they depend on “conversation, mutual exploration, curiosity, uncertainty—all things, as it happens, that are stigmatized within traditional masculinity.” Angel argues that sexual relationships don't have much to do with the conscious and the verbal but, especially for women, with what goes on beneath the surface of consciousness. The one certainty she returns to repeatedly is that “we shouldn't have to know ourselves in order to be safe from violence.” Because she builds her case on her own observations and experiences more than scholarly research, some readers may be skeptical about her authority while others will find the logical arguments that she makes convincing. Some might also wish for even more personal stories to be woven into what is generally a cerebral and abstract book. Still, Angel raises intriguing questions about commonly accepted assumptions, and she offers reassurance to female readers.
A provocative counterargument to recent feminist dogma.Pub Date: March 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-78873-916-0
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Verso
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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