Free and Female

by Barbara Seaman

The new sexual role of women

Genres: Feminism

320 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

One of the most tireless health advocates, Barbara Seaman (1935-2008) was co-founder of the National Women's Health Network, and a pioneer in a new style of health reporting that focused on patient rights. Her groundbreaking investigative book, The Doctors' Case Against the Pill (1969), prompted Senate hearings in 1970 that led to a warning label on oral contraceptives and the drastic lowering of estrogen doses due to dangerous health effects. Well received by a mass audience, Seaman was a columnist and contributing editor at Bride's Magazine, Ladies' Home Journal, Family Circle, and Ms. Magazine. She also contributed to the New York Times, Washington Post, Newsday, and others.

Books

* The Doctor's Case Against the Pill (1969)
* Free and Female (1972)
* Women and the Crisis in Sex Hormones (1977)(with Gideon Seaman, M.D.)
* Lovely Me: The Life of Jacqueline Susann (1987)
* The Greatest Experiment ever Performed on Women: Exploding the Estrogen Myth (2003)
* For Women Only: Your Guide to Health Empowerment with Gary Null (2000).

Contributor to many books, including:

* Career and Motherhood (1979)
* Rooms with No View (1974)
* Women and Men (1975)
* Seizing our Bodies (1978)

Contributor to several plays and documentaries, including:

* I am a Woman (1972)
* Taking Our Bodies Back (1974)
* The American Experience Presents the Pill (2003)

Reviews

[Rachel Jackson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Free and Female was a book I originally picked up (for free at a bookstore) with amused skepticism: I thought it was going to be some kind of cringeworthy analysis of women's sexuality. And it kind of was an analysis, I'll grant author Barbara Seaman that, despite her unfortunate last name in this area. But it was actually quite a bit more insightful and interesting than I expected. Seaman discussed women's rights, birth control, anatomy and physiology, and much more about female sexuality than I was expecting. It was a much more engaging read that I anticipated, and I appreciated Seaman's views and opinions in most place. Some were a bit heavy-handed, and in the end she became overtly judgmental of certain things, at which point my enthusiasm about the book decreased substantially. I can grant a little bit of leeway to Seaman knowing that 45 years have passed since she wrote this book, and her ideas were probably much more radical and courageous back then than they are now, so in that sense the book didn't really stand the test of time as I read it in 2018. But other things still rubbed me the wrong way toward the end of the book.

[J. Dolan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first copy I owned of Free was a battered old paperback, which gave me license as I saw it to underline the most cogent, illuminating passages for quick reference in the future. I finally had to give this up, however, as I very quickly found myself underlining whole paragraphs per page, every page.
Ms. Seaman takes us on a guided tour of the entire spectrum of female sexuality rarely equaled before or since for its honest, science-based appraisal of one of the more misunderstood of feminine attributes. That it was written forty years ago, with the Sexual Revolution still-- well, revolutionary-- makes it all the more remarkable.
And at the same time, disheartening. For despite the progress Western culture has made those forty years in admitting that women, too, possess pronounced sexual urges, it has yet to concede that these are as pronounced and powerful as those of men. One sees this demonstrated in not only every aspect of the mainstream media but in everyday people's attitudes and opinions. Those women who do advertise a sexual drive and depth that dwarfs those of men are looked upon, when not with disapproval as deviant, then with a nudge and a wink as oversexed objects of derision.
So much for progress. Indeed, it is a refutation of precisely the premise on which Seaman based her book four decades ago, that the human female is by nature and in most every respect vastly more libidinous than the male. Nor is hers an ad hominem argument or born of conjecture, rather one backed by irrefutable physiological and evolutionary fact. Time and again she cites the sciences of anatomy, endocrinology, and anthropology to point out how nature has equipped woman with a taste and capacity for sex that makes her allegedly more lustful partner look anemic in comparison. Which, of course, is but one of several reasons that partner began millennia ago to convince her (and himself) just the opposite was true.
And with unparalleled success. So that today, notwithstanding the efforts of Ms. Seaman and countless other heroic voices in the sexual wilderness, the lie still resonates, continuing to misinform and mislead, and will for who knows how many more benighted decades, if not centuries.
Funny, the human animal. How it has no trouble embracing with an almost religious zeal the newest cybertechnology and its toys, yet is so resistant to change in the social and behavioral spheres. Or maybe funny isn't exactly the word I'm looking for.

[Catina · Rating 1 out of 5]

Full review to come.
Veredict: stay far, far away. The book has no value except as unintentional comedy, and it isn't very good at that either. There are a lot of books of the "sex and relationship advice given by socially ill-adjusted virgins who've never masturbated" variety, but this is one of the worst ones I've ever read. It's up there with Emily Nagoski's equally terrible "Come as you are". See? Who says only recent books can be terrible?

If the author really is a medical doctor, it makes you wonder just how terrible medical school "education" was back then (and probably still is). She knows very little about the reproductive system and sex organs. She knows nothing about STDs and their transmission. She knows nothing about the nervous system.

[M.v · Rating 3 out of 5]

Her opinion is blatant in the book and of course I continue to be skeptical of taking all she argues in this book as truth. However, I find this book informational about different cultures in different parts of the world. And oddly this book is still relevant because of the discrimination that continues to happen towards women. There should be more of a discussion in regards to the discrimination and the attitude towards women of color.