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

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 womens desire is often slow to emerge. And men are keen to insist that they know what womenand their bodieswant. 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 bookspanning science and popular culture; pornography and literature; debates on Me-Too, consent and feminismKatherine Angel challenges our assumptions about womens 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 todays 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 Foucaults teasing promise, in 1976, that tomorrow sex will be good again.