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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
Incredibly mixed bag. There are some strong essays, but others suffered from tissue-thin or outright stupid analysis. Even some of the short pieces could be a slog, and I was frustrated with the amount of unchecked misogyny.
I like how the editors chose some essays that directly address how enthusiastic consent is not effective at counteracting rape for many sections of the population, and also acknowledged that "yes means yes" is just a beginning. It was also a good mix of diverse perspectives on what sexual power looks like for different kinds of people, and also many essays on what healing after surviving sexual violence can look and feel like.
I also absolutely love Thomas Macaulay Millar's "Toward a Performance Model of Sex..."--this totally changed how I think about sexuality and sex and consent and music and everything.
I also absolutely love Thomas Macaulay Millar's "Toward a Performance Model of Sex..."--this totally changed how I think about sexuality and sex and consent and music and everything.
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
I read this book in my intro to Women's Studies class in college. I found that it held up pretty well. Like with most anthologies, I loved some essays and didn't care for others.
I loved Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha's essay "What It Feels Like When It Finally Comes: Surviving Incest in Real Life." I love basically everything Leah writes. They wrote about their healing process beautifully, and they also talked about how the non-profit industrial complex has taken over rape crisis work and depoliticized it.
I also loved "Queering Black Female Heterosexuality" by Kimberly Springer. It was a really interesting discussion on what it means to queer a concept and what that could look like for Black heterosexual women.
I really enjoyed "The Fantasy of Acceptable 'Non-Consent': Why the Female Sexual Submissive Scares Us (And Why She Shouldn't)" by Stacey May Fowles. I thought this was a great discussion of kink, consent, and feminism.
"When Pregnancy Is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Be Pregnant" by Tiloma Jayasinghe was a fantastic discussion of criminalizing the actions of pregnant people. It's unfortunately even more relevant now that Roe is gone. She talks about how laws against pregnant people using drugs are used to control and punish marginalized people for having sex and reproducing. She talks about how pregnant people who use drugs are coerced into long term birth control and sterilization by the criminal justice system and how that's a form of eugenics. It's a really great piece that breaks down why it's harmful to criminalize pregnancy.
Julia Serano's essay "Why Nice Guys Finish Last" is one that I'm conflicted on. I think she's spot on about what she calls the "predator/prey mindset" where men are always seen as sexual aggressors and women are always seen as sexual objects. But then she goes on to write that asshole men are more successful with women because women gravitate towards men who are filling the predator role. To illustrate this, she talks about people she observed in high school, college, and young adulthood before she transitioned. I didn't find these anecdotes compelling because she was looking at a really limited group of people (her social group) who were very young (college and immediately after college). I don't think the dating dynamics in college dorms can be mapped onto society at large. You're talking about a privileged group of people who are pretty young. When she transitioned, she came out as a lesbian, so she doesn't really have any direct experience with heterosexual dating beyond the young adult years. I suspect that she would find that women don't prefer assholes if she looked at a larger, more diverse sample size.
I loved Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha's essay "What It Feels Like When It Finally Comes: Surviving Incest in Real Life." I love basically everything Leah writes. They wrote about their healing process beautifully, and they also talked about how the non-profit industrial complex has taken over rape crisis work and depoliticized it.
I also loved "Queering Black Female Heterosexuality" by Kimberly Springer. It was a really interesting discussion on what it means to queer a concept and what that could look like for Black heterosexual women.
I really enjoyed "The Fantasy of Acceptable 'Non-Consent': Why the Female Sexual Submissive Scares Us (And Why She Shouldn't)" by Stacey May Fowles. I thought this was a great discussion of kink, consent, and feminism.
"When Pregnancy Is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Be Pregnant" by Tiloma Jayasinghe was a fantastic discussion of criminalizing the actions of pregnant people. It's unfortunately even more relevant now that Roe is gone. She talks about how laws against pregnant people using drugs are used to control and punish marginalized people for having sex and reproducing. She talks about how pregnant people who use drugs are coerced into long term birth control and sterilization by the criminal justice system and how that's a form of eugenics. It's a really great piece that breaks down why it's harmful to criminalize pregnancy.
Julia Serano's essay "Why Nice Guys Finish Last" is one that I'm conflicted on. I think she's spot on about what she calls the "predator/prey mindset" where men are always seen as sexual aggressors and women are always seen as sexual objects. But then she goes on to write that asshole men are more successful with women because women gravitate towards men who are filling the predator role. To illustrate this, she talks about people she observed in high school, college, and young adulthood before she transitioned. I didn't find these anecdotes compelling because she was looking at a really limited group of people (her social group) who were very young (college and immediately after college). I don't think the dating dynamics in college dorms can be mapped onto society at large. You're talking about a privileged group of people who are pretty young. When she transitioned, she came out as a lesbian, so she doesn't really have any direct experience with heterosexual dating beyond the young adult years. I suspect that she would find that women don't prefer assholes if she looked at a larger, more diverse sample size.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Incest, Rape, Sexual content
I would be able to give this five stars if the essays by Stacey May Fowler and Julia Serano had been left out. The former was frustratingly short-sighted but the latter was just outright vile. Saying “I’m not defending feminism’s definition of nice guys” then describing EXACTLY how you WERE a stereotypical “Nice Guy” and thought you were better/less physically imposing than cis men bc you were “more androgynous” tells me that the only people being defended in your essay are the exact kind of men who feel entitled to sex. Telling a girlfriend that she is at fault for picking out the man who hurt her IS victim blaming. Ignoring the pervasiveness of casual misogyny from men IS unfeminist. “Nice Guys” finish last because there is no such thing as a nice guy. You don’t get an award for not raping people. There are feminist men, and there are sexist men. There is no middle ground where “good but misguided” men get to exist.
Other than that absolute monstrosity of an article: I really enjoyed the message of this collection. I don’t personally agree with liberal/choice/third-wave feminism, I find it counterproductive and lacking foresight, but many of even the more “choicey” essays were poignant and snappy in a way I could appreciate. Some I would’ve been unsurprised to read in some of my favorite feminist literature from the 60s-80s. Miriam Zoila Pérez’s essay + the excerpt from Coco Fusco’s “A Field Guide for Female Interrogators” were both scary and powerful, + opened my eyes to ideas from white feminism I hadn’t realized I’d been mindlessly parroting. They were starkly necessary in this collection especially, where most of the focus is on reclaiming personal autonomy as opposed to conversations about how rape and sexual violence realistically manifests. Cristina Meztli Tzintzún and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha broke me to pieces then built me back up in a slightly different configuration. Hanne Blank redefined my assumptions about virginity and Lee Jacobs Riggs reintroduced me to the power of the vibrator.
This is, without a doubt, a book I want my daughters to read and one I’m glad I found in my early twenties. Minus Julia- sorry not sorry at all, girl. That essay was disgusting and I regret the time I wasted reading that slop.
Other than that absolute monstrosity of an article: I really enjoyed the message of this collection. I don’t personally agree with liberal/choice/third-wave feminism, I find it counterproductive and lacking foresight, but many of even the more “choicey” essays were poignant and snappy in a way I could appreciate. Some I would’ve been unsurprised to read in some of my favorite feminist literature from the 60s-80s. Miriam Zoila Pérez’s essay + the excerpt from Coco Fusco’s “A Field Guide for Female Interrogators” were both scary and powerful, + opened my eyes to ideas from white feminism I hadn’t realized I’d been mindlessly parroting. They were starkly necessary in this collection especially, where most of the focus is on reclaiming personal autonomy as opposed to conversations about how rape and sexual violence realistically manifests. Cristina Meztli Tzintzún and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha broke me to pieces then built me back up in a slightly different configuration. Hanne Blank redefined my assumptions about virginity and Lee Jacobs Riggs reintroduced me to the power of the vibrator.
This is, without a doubt, a book I want my daughters to read and one I’m glad I found in my early twenties. Minus Julia- sorry not sorry at all, girl. That essay was disgusting and I regret the time I wasted reading that slop.
emotional
informative
reflective
fast-paced
tremendous. dizzyingly bold. fierce.
inspiring. radical. feminist. fun.
rockin'. brilliant. sexy-positive.
boundary-pushing. top notch. concrete.
inspiring. radical. feminist. fun.
rockin'. brilliant. sexy-positive.
boundary-pushing. top notch. concrete.
"I heal not like a cliche but like I can see new cells being made, the purple and magenta color of the outside of the skin cells, the bone being reknit. - Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, “What It Feels Like When It Finally Comes: Surviving Incest in Real Life"
I came to this as a down-to-earth feminism book. After reading Gender Trouble, I found ideas of phallogocentrism and normativity all very interesting, but felt frustrated with the esoteric academic jargon, and how far it all felt from the daily living-out of a life. There are ideas that interest me as ideas, but maybe feminism isn't one of those -- the stakes are too high for me.
Yes Means Yes! is a good grounding book for modern feminists. The essays gathered here are far more diverse than I expected. There are voices here of immigrant women, working-class women, all different genders, orientations, abilities. This book shows that the feminist fight isn't something for white yuppies -- the highest stakes and the most brilliant ideas are in the border-crossings and skid rows and shop floors.
The essays also work through some of the harder knots in our thinking through sex-positivity: can sex-work be "empowering"? what's feminist about BDSM? what would sex-positive education for children look like?
Not all of the essays are well-written. Not all of them are self-aware of their own privilege. But by and large, I see this book as a thoughtful reworking of feminism, incorporating the best critiques levelled at the old models by women of color, differently-abled women, transgender people, sex workers, working-class women, and others.
I came to this as a down-to-earth feminism book. After reading Gender Trouble, I found ideas of phallogocentrism and normativity all very interesting, but felt frustrated with the esoteric academic jargon, and how far it all felt from the daily living-out of a life. There are ideas that interest me as ideas, but maybe feminism isn't one of those -- the stakes are too high for me.
Yes Means Yes! is a good grounding book for modern feminists. The essays gathered here are far more diverse than I expected. There are voices here of immigrant women, working-class women, all different genders, orientations, abilities. This book shows that the feminist fight isn't something for white yuppies -- the highest stakes and the most brilliant ideas are in the border-crossings and skid rows and shop floors.
The essays also work through some of the harder knots in our thinking through sex-positivity: can sex-work be "empowering"? what's feminist about BDSM? what would sex-positive education for children look like?
Not all of the essays are well-written. Not all of them are self-aware of their own privilege. But by and large, I see this book as a thoughtful reworking of feminism, incorporating the best critiques levelled at the old models by women of color, differently-abled women, transgender people, sex workers, working-class women, and others.
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
A generous 3 star which honestly is probably more of a 2.5 rounded up
hopeful
informative
medium-paced