The Right to Sex

Book excerpt: A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERBLACKWELL'S BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021Essential lessons on the world we live in, from one of our greatest young thinkers - a guide to what everybody is talking about today'Unparalleled and extraordinary . . . A bracing revivification of a crucial lineage in feminist writing' JIA TOLENTINO'I believe Amia Srinivasan's work will change the world' KATHERINE RUNDELL'Rigorously researched, but written with such spark and verve. The best non-fiction book I have read this year' PANDORA SYKES-------------------------How should we talk 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. 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 need to rethink sex as a political phenomenon. Searching, trenchant and extraordinarily original, The Right to Sex is a landmark examination of the politics and ethics of sex in this world, animated by the hope of a different one.SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2022LONGLISTED FOR THE POLARI FIRST BOOK PRIZE 2022LONGLISTED FOR THE BRITISH ACADEMY BOOK PRIZE 2022