The Right to Sex

305 Pages·2021·1.938 MB·English

by  Amia Srinivasan

PRAISE FOR
THE RIGHT TO SEX
‘Each essay in The Right to Sex is a masterpiece on its own; taken together,
they show how learning to think carefully and precisely about the poli-
tics of desire is the preeminent ethical project of our time. [Srinivasan’s]
voice is at once patient and rigorous, demanding and sympathetic. Our
age of hot takes and hard opinions is undeserving of her intellectual gifts’
Merve Emre
‘A spectacular piece of writing – a book that asks you to believe that
the world could be radically different, and a book which engages in the
strenuous work of imagining how that world might come into being …
Amia Srinivasan demands an unswerving allegiance to nuance and to the
interrogation of power. Standing as we all are inside a raging fire, to read
it feels not like a water bucket, but like rain’ Katherine Rundell
‘In stripping the new politics of sex and power down to its fundamental
and sometimes clashing principles, The Right to Sex is a bracing revivifica-
tion of a crucial lineage in feminist writing: Srinivasan is daring, compas-
sionate, and in relentless search of a new frame’ Jia Tolentino
‘Amia Srinivasan’s magnificent first book announces itself as a classic.
Already one of our most superlative philosophers and stylish essayists,
Srinivasan shows that concern for the plight of the most oppressed is
never disconnected from general explorations of and movements for free
lives for everyone, and the renovated social order our common future
requires’ Samuel Moyn
‘Exhilarating ... An incredibly articulate, moving and groundbreak-
ing analysis of the politics of sex and desire in the twenty-first century’
Amrou Al-Kadhi
‘Amia Srinivasan reveals both the material opportunities and dead-ends
of a century-long conscious trajectory towards female empowerment.
The Right to Sex reminds us of the foundational complexities to Women’s
Liberation ideas and why we are still grappling with them’ Sarah Schulman

T H E
R I G H T
TO
S E X
Amia Srinivasan
BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK
29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland
BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING and the Diana logo are trademarks of
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
First published in Great Britain 2021
Copyright © Amia Srinivasan, 2021
Amia Srinivasan has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to
be identified as Author of this work
For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. 181
constitute an extension of this copyright page
The lines from ‘Diving into the Wreck’. Copyright © 2016 by the Adrienne
Rich Literary Trust. Copyright © 1973 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., from
Collected Poems: 1950–2012 by Adrienne Rich.
Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
The lines from Tribute to Freud Copyright © Hilda (H.D.) Doolittle,
used with kind permission of Carcanet Press, Manchester, UK
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system,
without prior permission in writing from the publishers
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: HB 978-1-5266-1253-3; TBP: 978-1-5266-1255-7; eBook: 978-1-5266-1257-1
Typeset by Newgen KnowledgeWorks Pvt. Ltd., Chennai, India
To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com
and sign up for our newsletters
For my mother, Chitra

Contents

Preface xi
The Conspiracy Against Men 1
Talking to My Students About Porn 33
The Right to Sex 73
Coda: The Politics of Desire 93
On Not Sleeping With Y our Students 123
Sex, Carceralism, Capitalism 149
Acknowledgements 181
Notes 185
Bibliography 231
Index 269
vii

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
Adrienne Rich, ‘Diving into the Wreck’