a non-exhaustive informal annotated bibliography of books regarding sex and culture.
radical love letter #83 | on books about sex
I keep mentioning the Sex Wars because I think locating debates in history is necessary for liberation work — we lose a lot of time when we keep reinventing the wheel, we lose a lot of possibilities for connection when we ignore the hard-earned wisdom of our radical elders and ancestors. Today I offer a bit of an informal annotated bibliography in the spirit of popular education. (This is also a working list of things I’m reading for the book I’m working on, which I hope will fill a gap in the literature and help connect dots more explicitly.) It starts with a brief overview of writing from the late 70s, 80s, 90s, and early 00s, then it moves into a handful of very recent books that try to grapple with sex (sexual violence, sexual pleasure, sexual work, etc.) in a post-MeToo world. Prior to this history was the gay liberation movement of the 60s and 70s, and prior to that were all the gender and sexual deviants that eluded the state, or existed before state and colonial formations. But this particular genealogy will begin in 1977…..
Late 1970s/Early 1980s
Multiple organizations dedicated to fighting violence against women were founded in the late 1970s, many of which anchored their strategy in attacking the porn industry. In 1977, Women Against Violence Against Women organized in response to the film Snuff, and 1979 Women Against Pornography (yes, “WAP”) began. Two of the most vocal leaders in the anti-porn movement were Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon, who both focused on legal measures that allied them with the State and the Christian Right. It won’t be a surprise to my regular readers that I strongly disagree with Dworkin’s and MacKinnon’s perspectives and their decidedly reformist approach to change, but I also recognize that their analysis of patriarchy prioritizes women victims of violence and that this was profoundly important to a lot of survivors. This isn’t an essay on their views, though, so peruse through some links and see what you think.
On the other side of the Sex Wars were the Sex Radicals, which included both scholars and activists (and scholar-activists), most of whom were queer. I talk about Gayle Rubin a lot because she is a central figure in pro-sex feminism, giving her “Thinking Sex” talk at the Barnard Conference on Sexuality in 1982 that is oft-cited as a key event in the Sex Wars. Rubin theorized the notion of the “the charmed circle” of sexuality, which interrogates what is considered normal and acceptable when it comes to sex, and what is punished. Around the same time, in 1981, Ellen Willis published “Lust Horizons: Is the Women’s Movement Pro-Sex?”, which many consider the origin of the term “sex-positivity.” The thinkers I find most instrumental during this time were the explicitly queer and kinky thinkers and activists, writing about porn, D/s, and sex work through their own experiences of it. Names of note here include (with links to helpful piece of their writing): Pat Califia, Amber Hollibaugh, Cherríe Moraga, Gloria Anzaldua, Leslie Feinberg, Jewell Gomez, Joan Nestle, and various writers for different kink and leather culture magazines. See also, everyone involved with ACT UP, the movement that had to talk about sex in order to save their lives, a movement to whom we owe so very much.
Around this same time Black feminists are also engaging with sex and the erotic; there are differences among Black feminist thought, the predominantly white women leading the anti-sex faction of the sex wars, and the predominantly white queers leading the pro-sex side. Writers like bell hooks brought an indispensable nuance to these debates, writing about love and sexuality as a Black woman. She had a ruthless interrogation of the ways in which patriarchy shaped our desires and relationships, but also offered agency to men to work beyond rigid gender roles, describing different kinds of masculinity she saw in the Black men in her life — from her sometimes harmfully macho father to her gentle and caring grandfather. Similarly, Audre Lorde’s “Uses of the Erotic” has an ostensibly anti-pornography lens, but also offers a more agentic, pleasure-centric lens on sexuality and eroticism than most of the anti-porn thinkers.
1990s/Early 00s
Many of these writers are still moving and shaking in 90s and early 2000s, but there is also a newer generation of Gen Xers who have taken up the mantle of sex positivity on a spectrum that ranges from bourgeois liberalism to awe-inspiring radicalism. The feminist blogosphere begins to boom with writers like Jessica Valenti writing important (but usually solidly liberal and not radical) critiques of rape culture; to her credit, Valenti’s edited collection with Jaclyn Friedman, Yes Means Yes , was pivotal to my consciousness raising process. Other more mainstream feminist writers were offering interesting but sometimes insufficient analysis on sex and patriarchy that either did or did not pay enough attention to capitalism and white supremacy; this was also the peak of the Dan Savage, Ethical Slut, More Than Two era.
The above coexisted alongside more radical iterations of sex positivity: the Riot Grrrl Movement (a decidedly anti-rape pro-sex movement), Queer Nation, Bash Back!, Against Equality, and other radical queer, pro-sex groups. Oh, here’s a great archive of some kinky cheers chanted by The Radical Cheerleaders (of which I was a part in the early 00s!).
The 90s and early 00s also saw an expansion of Queer Studies departments and Queer Theory as a scholarly field. Obviously, Judith Butler is a godparent of this movement and Gayle Rubin too; see also, especially a bit later, Tim Dean, Jack Halberstam, Lee Edelman, Rod Ferguson, José Muñoz, Julia Serano, Kate Bornstein, Susan Stryker, and many other scholars and scholar-activists. Slightly later, but very important, I’d add radical queer activist writers like Dean Spade, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Kenyon Farrow, Matilda Bernstein Sycamore, Yasmin Nair, and many others.
This era also sees more books written by sex workers, though the ones who get published are often white women and not particularly representative of the now-growing sex workers rights movement.
Today: Post-MeToo
A lot of other important stuff is being published, marched about, rioted about, and so on, but remember, this is a super quick, non-exhaustive overview, so I’m fastforwarding ahead to today, to things that are being written in what many call the “post-MeToo era.” Here are a collection of books I’ve read or have in my library cart to read, all of which are being discussed as contributing to the discourse around this current moment in debates around sex.
Pleasure Activism, adrienne maree brown (ed.)
I love this collection, edited by adrienne maree brown, that looks critically at how we indulge pleasure, and how we can use a pleasure framework to arouse our collective desires for liberation.
On Freedom, Maggie Nelson
I am an unapologetic fan of Nelson, even if I think she sometimes misses the mark. In On Freedom, each chapter covers a different subject; I feel mixed on some of them, but I absolutely loved the Sex chapter, and think she’s making some necessary arguments, especially about different generational perspectives.
The Right to Sex, Amia Srinivasan
Srinivasan is a philosophy professor based in the UK; this book has some thoughtful and nuanced theoretical perspectives, coupled with more anecdotal research. I don’t land on all the same conclusions, but to Srinivasan’s credit, she is mostly trying to ask questions.
Rethinking Sex, Christine Emba
Mostly disagree with the conclusions of this book, but it’s offering some really important insight into the dissatisfaction that Gen Z is experiencing in romantic and sexual relationships, and I think it’s worth reading.
ACE: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex, Angela Chen
Adding this to the pile because my ace comrades have helped me understand how asexuality is a queer orientation, and I can’t talk about sex culture without addressing it!
Tomorrow Sex will be Good Again, Katherine Angel
A critique of consent that I really appreciate!
Sexual Revolution: Modern Fascism and the Feminist Fightback, Laurie Penny
I did not think this was contributing much new, but there is a polemic quality that fans of Penny’s blogging will likely vibe with, and it may be helpful for folks newer to feminist concepts. Still, this book deserves a nod for trying to grapple with the current state of things.
We Too: Essays on Sex Work and Survival, Tina Horn and Natalie West (eds.)
This is a really important book full of powerful essays written by sex workers. Sex workers have so much to teach about combatting sexual violence culture.
More that I haven’t read yet but have on my list and/or that I think fall into this general genre: Hatred of Sex, Tim Dean & Oliver; Bad Sex: Truth, Pleasure, and an Unfinished Revolution, Nona Willis Aronowitz; Sexed Up: How Society Sexualizes Us and How We Can Fight Back, Julia Serano; Me, Not You; The Trouble with Mainstream Feminism, Alison Phipps. I’d also include scholar Heather Berg who is doing wonderful work on the labor of pornography, and Conner Habib, a former sex worker, whose ideas on sex and culture are wonderfully stimulating. I’d be remiss not to add Make the Golf Course a Public Sex Forest to this list, in part for the work it’s doing to revive some of the sentiments our pro-sex elders were espousing in the 1980s.
The goal of my forthcoming book is to do a more thorough weaving together of this history and also to put it in conversation with more explicitly anarchist and transformative justice texts, theories, and movements. Let me know what you think I’m missing, or any other thoughts you have that are arising. Comments are open! <3
