Christine Emba

This book is subtitled “A Provocation,” but it struck me as tame, timid even. I appreciate Emba’s reporting and the citations ranging from Ellen Willis to Dan Savage to M. Gessen to Thomas Aquinas. All the questions she raises and the tentative answers she suggests make sense to me. The only outrageous thing about this book is that it is considered so extreme it had to come from a conservative publisher, it never came out in paperback and my local bookstore can’t order it, it show more wasn’t available from any library in my state and I had to wait weeks for a copy. The ideas raised in this book should not be that controversial. show less

Christine Emba argues against modern sexual ethics. Our culture of casual, selfish sex leaves people (especially women) unfulfilled, but refusing to embrace this ethos makes you countercultural and can lose you friends and esteem -- it's a double bind.

I wanted this book to be so much more than it was, and at the same time, I can't quite articulate what I wanted from it. I suppose I am positively disposed to the premise that a society that demands everyone embrace casual sex is just as show more stifling as a society that demands everyone embrace immediate marriage and monogamy, but this book offers very few prescriptions on how to get to a society that truly enables self-determination. (And, given the particular positioning of this young black ex-evangelical-turned-Catholic in the identity wars, I'm not even sure she'd agree with my urge to embrace both poles of sexual engagement.)

I expect this book would be most useful to the folks who are least likely to give it a fair shake. Perhaps it will find its highest purpose within a course reader for undergraduate sexuality and gender studies classes. show less

Very thought provoking