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112 reviews for:
Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape
Jessica Valenti, Jaclyn Friedman
4.16 AVERAGE
112 reviews for:
Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape
Jessica Valenti, Jaclyn Friedman
4.16 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Una colección muy irregular, en tono y en calidad, acerca de la violencia sexual desde un enfoque centrado en el sexo como placer y como libre expresión. Consentimiento entusiasta, educación sexual, sobrevivir al trauma... No todos los ensayos son buenos y casi todos son muy accesibles a principiantes en leer teoría feminista.
challenging
hopeful
informative
medium-paced
ABSOLUTE MUST-READ FOR ANY ASPIRING FEMINIST or even ant-feminists, as it's an incredible overview of a host of issues and ideas within the field in an enthralling, captivating, and witty variety of voices!!! Loved it a lot; learned a lot; couldn't put it down.
It's rare that a feminist book not only confirms what I believe, not only gives me new insight into what I do believe, but gives me entirely new ideas to think about. For me the essay on body sovereignty in particular was very profound, and it'll have implications not only in my feminist thought but in the way I act.
Perhaps one of the most important non-fiction books I've ever read. Inspiring, angering and quite fantastic in every sense of the word. I love how it's organized into a series of short stories so that the reader can create its own journey through the book. I read each one, and always ended up with new insight.
I probably would have liked this more if I was just starting out learning about feminism. Some essays were excellent, but most were pretty basic to me.
It's a book of essays by different people, and as such doesn't build quite as much as a single book would, bouncing between different themes. The common theme as such is the idea of active female choice and agency over the idea of acquiescence/consent or refusal.
The breakout essay for me was (annoyingly) written by a man, in which he talks about how men are socialized to push against women's boundaries (asking for phone numbers, making plans, touching women during a date) on the underlying theory that women are incapable of active agency. His point is that rapists are the natural outgrowth of this social brainwashing -- rapists don't think of themselves as rapists so much as "successful" men under their own logic. They broke down the woman's natural defenses and gave her what she secretly wanted.
I'd heard this referred to as "rape culture" but the problem is that it doesn't sound so much like rape culture, but like dating culture as a whole, where rape is the extreme end of it. It's like referring to the culture of violence against men as "murder culture" -- yes, men kill other men and it's wrong, but the real evil is in the assumption that it's okay to hit a man to begin with.
When it came to whether Hooters was degrading or how fat women are treated when it comes to sexual assault, I got the feeling that I was intruding even by reading about it. And a discussion about how sex can be viewed as a musical performance rather than being viewed as a commodity -- well, I thought it was interesting, but people just aren't genetically programmed at puberty to want to play music.
Interesting read though.
[After writing this and sleeping on it, there's also a disconnect between the title and the concept. The idea of female agency isn't about saying "yes" or "no", it's about creating a question that other people have to answer. And the idea of female agency is so foreign that books like "Belle De Jour" and "Girl with a One Track Mind" are shocking media sensations that have to be written anonymously because they deal exactly with that question. And the word for a woman who exercises that agency sexually is "slut", or if she exercises it personally or professionally, it's "bitch."]
[I remember reading about "Slutwalk" and thinking that it was important in some way I hadn't quite wrapped my head around. It's not just about rape: women should just as much of a right to exercise agency as men do.]
The breakout essay for me was (annoyingly) written by a man, in which he talks about how men are socialized to push against women's boundaries (asking for phone numbers, making plans, touching women during a date) on the underlying theory that women are incapable of active agency. His point is that rapists are the natural outgrowth of this social brainwashing -- rapists don't think of themselves as rapists so much as "successful" men under their own logic. They broke down the woman's natural defenses and gave her what she secretly wanted.
I'd heard this referred to as "rape culture" but the problem is that it doesn't sound so much like rape culture, but like dating culture as a whole, where rape is the extreme end of it. It's like referring to the culture of violence against men as "murder culture" -- yes, men kill other men and it's wrong, but the real evil is in the assumption that it's okay to hit a man to begin with.
When it came to whether Hooters was degrading or how fat women are treated when it comes to sexual assault, I got the feeling that I was intruding even by reading about it. And a discussion about how sex can be viewed as a musical performance rather than being viewed as a commodity -- well, I thought it was interesting, but people just aren't genetically programmed at puberty to want to play music.
Interesting read though.
[After writing this and sleeping on it, there's also a disconnect between the title and the concept. The idea of female agency isn't about saying "yes" or "no", it's about creating a question that other people have to answer. And the idea of female agency is so foreign that books like "Belle De Jour" and "Girl with a One Track Mind" are shocking media sensations that have to be written anonymously because they deal exactly with that question. And the word for a woman who exercises that agency sexually is "slut", or if she exercises it personally or professionally, it's "bitch."]
[I remember reading about "Slutwalk" and thinking that it was important in some way I hadn't quite wrapped my head around. It's not just about rape: women should just as much of a right to exercise agency as men do.]
There are some seriously good essays in here. While not all of them make you put the book down and shout "Yes! This is how the world should be! This is how I can change it!", a surprising number do. I didn't agree with every thing the authors had to say, but almost every single essay challenged me.
Highly recommended to pretty much anyone.
Highly recommended to pretty much anyone.