Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again: Women and Desire in the Age of Consent

Category: Book
By (author): Angel, Katherine
Subject:  SOCIAL SCIENCE / Feminism & Feminist Theory
  SOCIAL SCIENCE / General
  SOCIAL SCIENCE / Women's Studies
Publisher: Verso Books
Published: March 2021
Format: Book-hardcover
Pages: 160
Size: 8.09in x 5.33in x 0.61in
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$ 25.95
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Additional Notes

From The Publisher*A provocative, elegantly written analysis of female desire, consent, and sexuality in the age of MeToo

Women are in a bind. In the name of consent and empowerment, they must proclaim their desires clearly and confidently. Yet sex researchers suggest that women's desire is often slow to emerge. And men are keen to insist that they know what women-and their bodies-want. Meanwhile, sexual violence abounds. How can women, in this environment, possibly know what they want? And why do we expect them to?

In this elegant, searching book-spanning science and popular culture; pornography and literature; debates on Me-Too, consent and feminism-Katherine Angel challenges our assumptions about women's desire. Why, she asks, should they be expected to know their desires? And how do we take sexual violence seriously, when not knowing what we want is key to both eroticism and personhood?

In today's crucial moment of renewed attention to violence and power, Angel urges that we remake our thinking about sex, pleasure, and autonomy without any illusions about perfect self-knowledge. Only then will we fulfil Michel Foucault's teasing promise, in 1976, that "tomorrow sex will be good again."
Review Quote*"Thought-provoking … [Angel's] jargon-free prose and nuanced readings of popular culture and postmodern theory enlighten. Readers will value this lively and incisive inquiry into the sexual dynamics of the #MeToo era."
-Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

"An ardent, rigorous, nuanced investigation into the question of consent, at once illuminating and empowering. A truly vital guide to navigating the difficult waters of 21st century desire."
-Olivia Laing, author of Funny Weather

"One of our most daring, exciting and nuanced writers on the complexities of female desire, pleasure, autonomy and imagination."
-Deborah Levy, author of The Cost of Living

"A provocative counterargument to recent feminist dogma … Angel raises intriguing questions about commonly accepted assumptions, and she offers reassurance to female readers."
-Kirkus Reviews

"[Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again] takes a taboo topic and removes the stigma by providing facts. Its titular refrain advocates for a better tomorrow."
-Ashley Holstrom, Foreword Reviews

"[Angel] writes about complex questions with such clarity and elegance, and amid all the polarised spats that currently pass for considered debate, her work is a breath of fresh air. [Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again] is a provocative but clear-sighted analysis of female sexuality in the wake of #MeToo … I'd urge anyone who cares about sexual ethics to read it."
-Caroline Sanderson, Bookseller ("Editor's Choice")
Biographical NoteKatherine Angel is a writer and a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Birkbeck, University of London, and the author of Unmastered: A Book On Desire, Most Difficult To Tell (2012) and Daddy Issues (2019). Her writing and research focus on sexuality, psychiatry, feminism, and gender in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. Katherine has a PhD in the history of psychiatry and sexuality from the University of Cambridge's History and Philosophy of Science Department.