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108 reviews for:
Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape
Jessica Valenti, Jaclyn Friedman
4.16 AVERAGE
108 reviews for:
Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape
Jessica Valenti, Jaclyn Friedman
4.16 AVERAGE
Read this for a seminar held at my university: http://www.feministing.com/archives/018222.html
As if humanity needed more evidence for a second sexual revolution. Just skim a few pages and you'll want to volunteer down at your local rape crisis center or Planned Parenthood. While I value this book for its bravery, I see two big flaws here: 1) too much focus on westernized American feminists, and 2) some essays reads like one long blog entry (I prefer empirical research over blog comments for evidence/arguments). But I understand that academia is too slow to wade into the swiftly moving debates that are happening right now in the feminist blogosphere. Julia Serano has the best essay here, and I'm assigning it to my summer class. Can't wait to see how the students react to her transgendered take on heterosexuality!
While I don't agree with every essay here, I think that the open conversation about these issues is important. Further, Jaclyn Friedman's closing essay is brilliant.
Sex. This book is about sex and how society sees sex. Honestly, if you are a women read this book. If you are worried about sex ed in school, read this book. There are various topics covered in this collection, mostly about sexually and rape. (The weakest one I thought, strangely, was the essay about sex and immigration. While I grant rape is a particular thing the female immigration must worry about, outside of that, don't male immigrants face the same problem?).
Yet the ideas and theories presented in this work are interesting and well worthing considering. It is not only about the slut/stud double standard but about the idea of pleasure and of free consent. Most of the essays are well thought out.
Yet the ideas and theories presented in this work are interesting and well worthing considering. It is not only about the slut/stud double standard but about the idea of pleasure and of free consent. Most of the essays are well thought out.
informative
medium-paced
I didn't read the whole thing, only essays that I was most interested in and all of them were fabulous. Definitely worth a read.
In some ways a time capsule for what the progressive rhetoric was like at this time for integrating feminist discourse on sex and sexuality into the mainstream, but that doesn't mean the fundamentals aren't correct. As a 30 something who's been well-steeped in these lines of thought for a while, much of it struck me as basic, even if essential ideas wit an overly ostentatious delivery. Still, it generally makes for a decent starting point on these ideas. My favorite piece was "Invasion of Space by a Female" by Coco Fusco on the sexual abuse by female interrogators on prisoners in Abu Ghraib during the Iraq War. It's a topic I didn't know about before and the analysis Fusco provides is severe and thought-provoking.
I'm sure everyone who has read this book will say this: I learnt so much from this book. It's an incredibly rich collection of essays encompassing so many different aspects of rape culture - I couldn't not give this 5 stars.
The most shocking thing about this book is the fact that I didn't learn an ounce of this at school.
I've been exploring feminism since the age of 16 or so, and I like to think that my opinions and thoughts have become more developed since then. Even so, there were still so many things included in this book that I had not thought about before. The main ones that come to mind: when reading An Immodest Proposal, the scenario of a straight couple's consensual first time seemed both normal and reasonable to me. It seems the common situation that I, and many others, went through, where the guy is the main proponent but the girl does agree. It was only at the end when the author points out the missing ingredient in this story, and in many other people's story: the woman's desire. Another thing I had never thought about: for a rape victim, their level of sobriety or drunkenness is always called into question - but the same is rarely done for the rapist.
This book made me realise how moulded our brains are to put male pleasure above women's, to be embarrassed or scared to ask for women's pleasure to be respected, to put heterosexual relationships above others, to stereotype different races' sexual characters, to overly value virginity, and so many other things.
I can already think of a handful of people I would like to pass this book on to, but really, I shouldn't hesitate to implore anyone to read this book.
An interesting last thought was people's reactions to me reading this book. I would be sat in my shared university kitchen, and someone would come in and casually ask what I was reading. I would say the title and give a brief summary from the blurb and say how much I was enjoying it. The usual reaction from my male flatmates would be "oh wow, that seems a heavy book" or "that seems very academic". This was interesting, but did also make my blood boil, because it's this denial of applicability and ignorance to the fact that fighting rape culture needs to be a joint effort that is perpetuating it.
So yes, I will be passing this book on to a friend, and encouraging that friend to continue passing it on.
The most shocking thing about this book is the fact that I didn't learn an ounce of this at school.
I've been exploring feminism since the age of 16 or so, and I like to think that my opinions and thoughts have become more developed since then. Even so, there were still so many things included in this book that I had not thought about before. The main ones that come to mind: when reading An Immodest Proposal, the scenario of a straight couple's consensual first time seemed both normal and reasonable to me. It seems the common situation that I, and many others, went through, where the guy is the main proponent but the girl does agree. It was only at the end when the author points out the missing ingredient in this story, and in many other people's story: the woman's desire. Another thing I had never thought about: for a rape victim, their level of sobriety or drunkenness is always called into question - but the same is rarely done for the rapist.
This book made me realise how moulded our brains are to put male pleasure above women's, to be embarrassed or scared to ask for women's pleasure to be respected, to put heterosexual relationships above others, to stereotype different races' sexual characters, to overly value virginity, and so many other things.
I can already think of a handful of people I would like to pass this book on to, but really, I shouldn't hesitate to implore anyone to read this book.
An interesting last thought was people's reactions to me reading this book. I would be sat in my shared university kitchen, and someone would come in and casually ask what I was reading. I would say the title and give a brief summary from the blurb and say how much I was enjoying it. The usual reaction from my male flatmates would be "oh wow, that seems a heavy book" or "that seems very academic". This was interesting, but did also make my blood boil, because it's this denial of applicability and ignorance to the fact that fighting rape culture needs to be a joint effort that is perpetuating it.
So yes, I will be passing this book on to a friend, and encouraging that friend to continue passing it on.
this essay anthology was pretty good, although it wasn’t anything super revolutionary or new in my opinion (it was written a while ago, though, so maybe that’s why). There were a handful of essays that were super interesting, and learning about “enthusiastic consent” is definitely something that I will take with me and apply to my own life.
збірка намагається охопити максимально широкий спектр проблем, пов'язаних із активною згодою – і часом здається, що it tries too hard, що, втім, не рятує її від повторів. але повторюються зазвичай важливі речі, тому це навіть корисно.
із таких важливих повторів:
Feminists insist that men are not animals. Instead, men are rational human beings fully capable of listening to their partners and understanding that sex isn’t about pushing someone to do something they don’t want to do.
і
Men generally are constructed as the pursuers of sex, and taught that their proper pursuit will be rewarded. What straight men really need to learn is that women are humans, too, who get to make their own decisions about whether and with whom to have sex; and that nobody owes anyone sex.
(очевидні ж речі, правда?)
із таких важливих повторів:
Feminists insist that men are not animals. Instead, men are rational human beings fully capable of listening to their partners and understanding that sex isn’t about pushing someone to do something they don’t want to do.
і
Men generally are constructed as the pursuers of sex, and taught that their proper pursuit will be rewarded. What straight men really need to learn is that women are humans, too, who get to make their own decisions about whether and with whom to have sex; and that nobody owes anyone sex.
(очевидні ж речі, правда?)