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A review by savaging
Yes Means Yes!: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape by Jaclyn Friedman
4.0
"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.