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 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
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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