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A review by sarasey1
The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century by Amia Srinivasan
4.0
As someone who believes they’re a feminist but hasn’t really read or engaged with material beyond Instagram, I found this book to be an EXCELLENT !!!!! first look into contemporary feminist issues.
The essay structures were easy to follow, but each time the author went in a direction I didn’t fully expect. She doesn't always take a strong and clear stance, and I think that was helpful for a reader like me who is still trying to understand what the heck is going on. I really REALLY appreciate how inclusive her feminism is, and not one of her essays fails to explore an important intersection like sexuality, race, and class.
I tried to explain one of the essays to a friend but stumbled thru it, so I’m going to give it another read bc it was just so much rich information LOL
(Thank you to my dear Natalia for this recommendation over a year ago now!)
Quotes upon re-reading it:
"The central insight of intersectionality is that any liberation movement—feminism, anti-racism, the labor movement—that focuses only on what all members of the relevant group (women, people of color, the working class) have in common is a movement that will best serve those members of the group who are least oppressed."
"This is the deep contradiction at the heart of the incel phenomenon: incels oppose themselves to a sexual market in which they see themselves as losers, while being wedded to the status hierarchy that structures that market.”
“Specifically, pornography performs the speech act of licensing the subordination of women, and conferring on women an inferior civic status. Like the stampede that follows my shouting “Fire!,” porn’s effects on women are not just, anti-porn feminists think, the expected result, but moreover the whole point of pornography.” (The essay I tried to explain to my friends lol)
"When the teacher takes the student’s longing for epistemic power and transposes it into a sexual key, allowing himself to be—or worse, making himself—the object of her desire, he has failed her as a teacher." (Natalia's favorite essay)
"But these feminists might counter that they are responding to another, equally real choice, which proponents of sex workers’ rights ignore: the choice between making life better for the women who sell sex now, and bringing into existence a world in which sex is no longer bought and sold."
The essay structures were easy to follow, but each time the author went in a direction I didn’t fully expect. She doesn't always take a strong and clear stance, and I think that was helpful for a reader like me who is still trying to understand what the heck is going on. I really REALLY appreciate how inclusive her feminism is, and not one of her essays fails to explore an important intersection like sexuality, race, and class.
I tried to explain one of the essays to a friend but stumbled thru it, so I’m going to give it another read bc it was just so much rich information LOL
(Thank you to my dear Natalia for this recommendation over a year ago now!)
Quotes upon re-reading it:
"The central insight of intersectionality is that any liberation movement—feminism, anti-racism, the labor movement—that focuses only on what all members of the relevant group (women, people of color, the working class) have in common is a movement that will best serve those members of the group who are least oppressed."
"This is the deep contradiction at the heart of the incel phenomenon: incels oppose themselves to a sexual market in which they see themselves as losers, while being wedded to the status hierarchy that structures that market.”
“Specifically, pornography performs the speech act of licensing the subordination of women, and conferring on women an inferior civic status. Like the stampede that follows my shouting “Fire!,” porn’s effects on women are not just, anti-porn feminists think, the expected result, but moreover the whole point of pornography.” (The essay I tried to explain to my friends lol)
"When the teacher takes the student’s longing for epistemic power and transposes it into a sexual key, allowing himself to be—or worse, making himself—the object of her desire, he has failed her as a teacher." (Natalia's favorite essay)
"But these feminists might counter that they are responding to another, equally real choice, which proponents of sex workers’ rights ignore: the choice between making life better for the women who sell sex now, and bringing into existence a world in which sex is no longer bought and sold."