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Why We Lost the Sex Wars: Sexual Freedom in the #MeToo Era
Reexamining feminist sexual politics since the 1970s—the rivalries and the remarkable alliances
Since the historic #MeToo movement materialized in 2017, innumerable survivors of sexual assault and misconduct have broken their silence and called out their abusers publicly—from well-known celebrities to politicians and high-profile business leaders. Not surprisingly, conservatives quickly opposed this new movement, but the fact that “sex positive” progressives joined in the opposition was unexpected and seldom discussed. Why We Lost the Sex Wars explores how a narrow set of political prospects for resisting the use of sex as a tool of domination came to be embraced across this broad swath of the political spectrum in the contemporary United States. To better understand today’s multilayered sexual politics, Lorna N. Bracewell offers a revisionist history of the “sex wars” of the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. Rather than focusing on what divided antipornography and sex-radical feminists, Bracewell highlights significant points of contact and overlap between these rivals, particularly the trenchant challenges they offered to the narrow and ambivalent sexual politics of postwar liberalism. Bracewell leverages this recovered history to illuminate in fresh and provocative ways a range of current phenomena, including recent controversies over trigger warnings, the unimaginative politics of “sex-positive” feminism, and the rise of carceral feminism. By foregrounding the role played by liberal concepts such as expressive freedom and the public/private divide as well as the long-neglected contributions of Black and “Third World” feminists, Bracewell upends much of what we think we know about the sex wars and makes a strong case for the continued relevance of these debates today. Why We Lost the Sex Wars provides a history of feminist thinking on topics such as pornography, commercial sex work, LGBTQ+ identities, and BDSM, as well as discussions of such notable figures as Patrick Califia, Alan Dershowitz, Andrea Dworkin, Elena Kagan, Audre Lorde, Catharine MacKinnon, Cherríe Moraga, Robin Morgan, Gayle Rubin, Nadine Strossen, Cass Sunstein, and Alice Walker.
Since the historic #MeToo movement materialized in 2017, innumerable survivors of sexual assault and misconduct have broken their silence and called out their abusers publicly—from well-known celebrities to politicians and high-profile business leaders. Not surprisingly, conservatives quickly opposed this new movement, but the fact that “sex positive” progressives joined in the opposition was unexpected and seldom discussed. Why We Lost the Sex Wars explores how a narrow set of political prospects for resisting the use of sex as a tool of domination came to be embraced across this broad swath of the political spectrum in the contemporary United States. To better understand today’s multilayered sexual politics, Lorna N. Bracewell offers a revisionist history of the “sex wars” of the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. Rather than focusing on what divided antipornography and sex-radical feminists, Bracewell highlights significant points of contact and overlap between these rivals, particularly the trenchant challenges they offered to the narrow and ambivalent sexual politics of postwar liberalism. Bracewell leverages this recovered history to illuminate in fresh and provocative ways a range of current phenomena, including recent controversies over trigger warnings, the unimaginative politics of “sex-positive” feminism, and the rise of carceral feminism. By foregrounding the role played by liberal concepts such as expressive freedom and the public/private divide as well as the long-neglected contributions of Black and “Third World” feminists, Bracewell upends much of what we think we know about the sex wars and makes a strong case for the continued relevance of these debates today. Why We Lost the Sex Wars provides a history of feminist thinking on topics such as pornography, commercial sex work, LGBTQ+ identities, and BDSM, as well as discussions of such notable figures as Patrick Califia, Alan Dershowitz, Andrea Dworkin, Elena Kagan, Audre Lorde, Catharine MacKinnon, Cherríe Moraga, Robin Morgan, Gayle Rubin, Nadine Strossen, Cass Sunstein, and Alice Walker.
320 pages, Paperback
First published March 23, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
January 14, 2021
A thought-provoking analysis of feminist sexual politics, but one that the general reader will find very difficult to follow. The author takes as her point of departure the 1980s clash between anti-pornography feminists (e.g. Susan Brownmiller, Andrea Dworkin) whose arguments centered on sexual danger and sex radicals (e.g. Gayle Rubin and Carol Vance) whose arguments focused on sexual pleasure as a source of liberation. The author suggests that the so-called "cat fight narrative" that came to dominate how this dispute was understood is overly simplistic and consequently limits how we approach sexual politics today. In lieu of this dualistic approach, she revisits this debate, focusing instead on the intersection between feminist sexual politics and liberalism. In bringing in this new dimension, the author wants to point to the commonalities between the two feminist approaches in order to suggest a new way forward that moves beyond the carceral solutions advanced by the #Me Too movement.
The author makes some excellent points about the limits of focusing on criminal justice solutions to issues of sexual inequality, especially given many inequalities in the sphere of sexuality occur that do not transgress into the realm of criminal behavior. Unfortunately, the book will not attract a readership beyond academia because the writing style simply is not accessible to anyone not already well-versed in feminist sexual politics and theory. Given how important this topic is, it would have been nice if the author had tried to reach an audience beyond the ivory tower.
I would like to thank the publisher, NetGalley, and the author for an advance copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.
The author makes some excellent points about the limits of focusing on criminal justice solutions to issues of sexual inequality, especially given many inequalities in the sphere of sexuality occur that do not transgress into the realm of criminal behavior. Unfortunately, the book will not attract a readership beyond academia because the writing style simply is not accessible to anyone not already well-versed in feminist sexual politics and theory. Given how important this topic is, it would have been nice if the author had tried to reach an audience beyond the ivory tower.
I would like to thank the publisher, NetGalley, and the author for an advance copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.
March 26, 2021
Sex good. Pornography bad. With such utterances we begin to draw the lines that marked the “sex wars” of the 1980s, in which feminism schismed over how to approach sexual expression and the pornography industry. For some feminists, porn amplified the potential for violence against women—porn was essentially as bad as rape. For other feminists, the fight against porn was a fight against freedom of sexual expression, freedom to openly and intensely celebrate women’s sexuality. Lorna N. Bracewell seeks to subvert the conventional narrative that this conflict was a simple, two-sided fight between anti-pornography feminists on one side and sex-radical feminists on the other. Why We Lost the Sex Wars is a very deep, very slow dive into the sex wars and their echoes into the 21st century. Thanks to NetGalley and University of Minnesota Press for the review copy!
Bracewell’s thesis has 3 components. Firstly, she examines how both anti-pornography feminists and sex-radical feminists flirted contentiously with liberalism, and how this undermines the simplistic view that the sex wars were a “catfight” between two feminist movements. Secondly, Bracewell contends that these two groups largely ignored, erased, or appropriated from the work of Black and self-identified “third world” feminists; in other words, the conventional narrative of the sex wars has been whitewashed. Finally, Bracewell attempts to connect this complicated narrative to more recent developments—in particular, as the subtitle suggests, the #MeToo movement originating from Tarana Burke’s hashtag and catching fire after numerous women began openly accusing powerful men of sexual harassment and assault.
Before I go further: this is an academic manuscript. On the plus side, that means it is saturated with citations. Bracewell is quite literally walking us through the minutes and minutiae of various feminist writers and activists from the 1970s onwards, and she does not come to play. On the downside, this means that if you are not of a particularly academic inclination—or if you are merely looking for a more conversational read, then this book is not going to be your jam. I can take what Bracewell dishes out here, but I’m going to confess I didn’t enjoy it that much merely because, the further I drift away from my university days, the less interested I become in reading highly academic publications. This was giving me flashbacks to revising my best friend’s PhD. dissertation a year ago! Nevertheless, I persevered, and Bracewell definitely has some interesting things to say.
I grew up in the ’90s and early 2000s, so the sex wars that Bracewell describes aren’t something I’m very familiar with. My feminist awakening during high school was very much an, “oh, yeah, ok,” realization that women are still oppressed in our society, followed by many years of autodidactic education and one or two university courses to help me come to appreciate how that oppression manifests. My knowledge of the history of feminism as a movement has always been spotty, so that was what attracted me to Why We Lost the Sex Wars: I was hoping Bracewell would fill in some of those gaps. For the most part, she does!
Writers like Andrea Dworkin, Caroline MacKinnon, Judith Butler, etc.—some of whom I’ve read things by, some of whom I haven’t—become central characters in this much larger story, and Bracewell helps you understand how the sex wars actually played out. As someone who wasn’t alive then, who didn’t live through those tumultuous middle and later decades of the 20th century, this is valuable. I do not want to be guilty of oversimplifying feminism’s past, of saying, “well, you had the good feminists and the bad feminists” or even, as Bracewell chides us, the anti-pornography feminists and the sex-radical feminists. It was, as these things usually are, so, so much more complex than that.
Bracewell devotes most of the book to examining how these various positions interacted with legal frameworks and proposed solutions to the problem of pornography and related ideas of sexual deviancy or otherness. In particular, Bracewell is keen to critique tenets of liberalism as a political philosophy grounded in the preservation of individual liberties provided they don’t threaten the coherence of the state. While I admit I found some of this interesting and enlightening, the staid, survey-like nature of Bracewell’s narrative means I was not exactly enthralled.
Probably the best part of this book is the chapter that looks at how Black women and other women of colour were shut out of the sex wars pretty much entirely. The problem, Bracewell points out, is a “monistic” view of womanhood—something that others might more commonly refer to as the “monolith” idea of feminism. The sex wars were not intersectional, in other words; both anti-pornography and sex-radical feminists viewed the issues as they pertained to white women, often in ways that were racist and ignorant of the history of white supremacy in the United States. This resonated with me a lot—I’m really interested in making sure that I approach equity work with an intersectional lens; we cannot burn down the patriarchy without also tackling the white supremacist society that enables it. So I think it is very important to acknowledge and critique, as Bracewell does here, how white feminism often erased or appropriated the work of Black feminists, pushing aside or dismissing race as a factor and choosing to focus exclusively on sex/gender as an axis of oppression.
Towards the end of the book, Bracewell goes off on a tangent about why she thinks trigger warnings are a not-useful outgrowth of tepid liberal responses to harm and oppression. I guess … agree to disagree? This is the part of the book that seeks to fulfill the promise of the subtitle and connect Bracewell’s historical overview with more recent events. She examines the SlutWalk phenomenon of the past decade before briefly turning to #MeToo. Bracewell is highly critical of the way that SlutWalk and similar movements embraced a carceral notion of feminism, i.e., that the best way to deal with things like violence against women is to make it easier and safer for victims to report violence to the police, who can then take care of it as part of a reformed criminal justice system.
Now, ideologically speaking, I agree with Bracewell here. She finishes the book with a call to action to return feminism to some of its more radical roots—i.e., the feminists from all sides of the sex wars who were sceptical of state involvement or invoking state power in what is ultimately a social issue. I am on Team Abolish the Police and agree that the solution is not “please, police, treat victims better!” and that feminism is best served aligning itself with more radical, abolitionist aims.
Nevertheless, this part of the book is the least satisfying because Bracewell ultimately doesn’t succeed at drawing a clear connection between #MeToo-ish movements of the now and the sex wars of the then. The moment the book seems to be getting good and about to make this connection … it ends. All we get are some tentative discussions in the introduction and then conclusion about how “sex-positive feminists” are complaining about #MeToo because it’s prudish. Yet I’m failing to see how the critical retelling of the sex wars informs this phenomenon, because Bracewell spends too little time on the modern phenomenon.
So Why We Lost the Sex Wars is incredibly detailed, well-researched, and well-organized. As an academic publication, it ticks a lot of the boxes. It is definitely informative and got me thinking about things like intersectionality and how liberalist philosophies interact with feminist thinking. Nevertheless, the book left me hanging with the third part of its thesis, the promise that this would feel relevant to more recent events.
Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter.
Bracewell’s thesis has 3 components. Firstly, she examines how both anti-pornography feminists and sex-radical feminists flirted contentiously with liberalism, and how this undermines the simplistic view that the sex wars were a “catfight” between two feminist movements. Secondly, Bracewell contends that these two groups largely ignored, erased, or appropriated from the work of Black and self-identified “third world” feminists; in other words, the conventional narrative of the sex wars has been whitewashed. Finally, Bracewell attempts to connect this complicated narrative to more recent developments—in particular, as the subtitle suggests, the #MeToo movement originating from Tarana Burke’s hashtag and catching fire after numerous women began openly accusing powerful men of sexual harassment and assault.
Before I go further: this is an academic manuscript. On the plus side, that means it is saturated with citations. Bracewell is quite literally walking us through the minutes and minutiae of various feminist writers and activists from the 1970s onwards, and she does not come to play. On the downside, this means that if you are not of a particularly academic inclination—or if you are merely looking for a more conversational read, then this book is not going to be your jam. I can take what Bracewell dishes out here, but I’m going to confess I didn’t enjoy it that much merely because, the further I drift away from my university days, the less interested I become in reading highly academic publications. This was giving me flashbacks to revising my best friend’s PhD. dissertation a year ago! Nevertheless, I persevered, and Bracewell definitely has some interesting things to say.
I grew up in the ’90s and early 2000s, so the sex wars that Bracewell describes aren’t something I’m very familiar with. My feminist awakening during high school was very much an, “oh, yeah, ok,” realization that women are still oppressed in our society, followed by many years of autodidactic education and one or two university courses to help me come to appreciate how that oppression manifests. My knowledge of the history of feminism as a movement has always been spotty, so that was what attracted me to Why We Lost the Sex Wars: I was hoping Bracewell would fill in some of those gaps. For the most part, she does!
Writers like Andrea Dworkin, Caroline MacKinnon, Judith Butler, etc.—some of whom I’ve read things by, some of whom I haven’t—become central characters in this much larger story, and Bracewell helps you understand how the sex wars actually played out. As someone who wasn’t alive then, who didn’t live through those tumultuous middle and later decades of the 20th century, this is valuable. I do not want to be guilty of oversimplifying feminism’s past, of saying, “well, you had the good feminists and the bad feminists” or even, as Bracewell chides us, the anti-pornography feminists and the sex-radical feminists. It was, as these things usually are, so, so much more complex than that.
Bracewell devotes most of the book to examining how these various positions interacted with legal frameworks and proposed solutions to the problem of pornography and related ideas of sexual deviancy or otherness. In particular, Bracewell is keen to critique tenets of liberalism as a political philosophy grounded in the preservation of individual liberties provided they don’t threaten the coherence of the state. While I admit I found some of this interesting and enlightening, the staid, survey-like nature of Bracewell’s narrative means I was not exactly enthralled.
Probably the best part of this book is the chapter that looks at how Black women and other women of colour were shut out of the sex wars pretty much entirely. The problem, Bracewell points out, is a “monistic” view of womanhood—something that others might more commonly refer to as the “monolith” idea of feminism. The sex wars were not intersectional, in other words; both anti-pornography and sex-radical feminists viewed the issues as they pertained to white women, often in ways that were racist and ignorant of the history of white supremacy in the United States. This resonated with me a lot—I’m really interested in making sure that I approach equity work with an intersectional lens; we cannot burn down the patriarchy without also tackling the white supremacist society that enables it. So I think it is very important to acknowledge and critique, as Bracewell does here, how white feminism often erased or appropriated the work of Black feminists, pushing aside or dismissing race as a factor and choosing to focus exclusively on sex/gender as an axis of oppression.
Towards the end of the book, Bracewell goes off on a tangent about why she thinks trigger warnings are a not-useful outgrowth of tepid liberal responses to harm and oppression. I guess … agree to disagree? This is the part of the book that seeks to fulfill the promise of the subtitle and connect Bracewell’s historical overview with more recent events. She examines the SlutWalk phenomenon of the past decade before briefly turning to #MeToo. Bracewell is highly critical of the way that SlutWalk and similar movements embraced a carceral notion of feminism, i.e., that the best way to deal with things like violence against women is to make it easier and safer for victims to report violence to the police, who can then take care of it as part of a reformed criminal justice system.
Now, ideologically speaking, I agree with Bracewell here. She finishes the book with a call to action to return feminism to some of its more radical roots—i.e., the feminists from all sides of the sex wars who were sceptical of state involvement or invoking state power in what is ultimately a social issue. I am on Team Abolish the Police and agree that the solution is not “please, police, treat victims better!” and that feminism is best served aligning itself with more radical, abolitionist aims.
Nevertheless, this part of the book is the least satisfying because Bracewell ultimately doesn’t succeed at drawing a clear connection between #MeToo-ish movements of the now and the sex wars of the then. The moment the book seems to be getting good and about to make this connection … it ends. All we get are some tentative discussions in the introduction and then conclusion about how “sex-positive feminists” are complaining about #MeToo because it’s prudish. Yet I’m failing to see how the critical retelling of the sex wars informs this phenomenon, because Bracewell spends too little time on the modern phenomenon.
So Why We Lost the Sex Wars is incredibly detailed, well-researched, and well-organized. As an academic publication, it ticks a lot of the boxes. It is definitely informative and got me thinking about things like intersectionality and how liberalist philosophies interact with feminist thinking. Nevertheless, the book left me hanging with the third part of its thesis, the promise that this would feel relevant to more recent events.
Originally posted on Kara.Reviews, where you can easily browse all my reviews and subscribe to my newsletter.
July 28, 2022
An excellent account of how the catfight narrative surrounding the sex-wars overshadows the many different impulses and forces that were actually at play. The fact that a large chapter was dedicated to feminists of color and their criticism of white feminism, for me, is the most important part of all the work this book accomplishes.
A disclaimer: this is dense, academic writing. Taking your time to read it will probably pay off.
A disclaimer: this is dense, academic writing. Taking your time to read it will probably pay off.
May 7, 2021
A disclaimer that this is definitely an academic book, which didn't bother me at all, but might not be everyone's cup of tea.
That said - wow, I didn't realize how valuable of a read this would be when I started. Lorna Bracewell offers a much-needed complicating of second-wave feminist discussions about sex and pornography and the way various strains of feminist thought that began as radical were subsumed into liberalism. Her thesis - that ignoring the complicating narratives offered by women of color among both anti-porn and sex radical feminists allowed both to be co-opted in service of the state - seems particularly salient now.
As a younger woman who didn't live through the wars of the 70s and 80s but read a lot of the aftermath in Bitch and other feminist publications, I feel like in many ways I've grown up in the shadow of some of these discussions without realizing it. Bracewell's work served as a much needed overview and framing of that era, with clear parallels for the present day. Particularly recommend if you're a longtime feminist becoming increasingly skeptical of carcareal solutions to violence.
That said - wow, I didn't realize how valuable of a read this would be when I started. Lorna Bracewell offers a much-needed complicating of second-wave feminist discussions about sex and pornography and the way various strains of feminist thought that began as radical were subsumed into liberalism. Her thesis - that ignoring the complicating narratives offered by women of color among both anti-porn and sex radical feminists allowed both to be co-opted in service of the state - seems particularly salient now.
As a younger woman who didn't live through the wars of the 70s and 80s but read a lot of the aftermath in Bitch and other feminist publications, I feel like in many ways I've grown up in the shadow of some of these discussions without realizing it. Bracewell's work served as a much needed overview and framing of that era, with clear parallels for the present day. Particularly recommend if you're a longtime feminist becoming increasingly skeptical of carcareal solutions to violence.
October 12, 2022
Very helpful history if we want to untangle future feminist organizing from liberalism, racism, and the many emerging iterations of carceral feminism.
March 23, 2021
Why We Lost the Sex Wars from Lorna N. Bracewell is a thorough reassessment of the "sex wars" with an eye toward changing the discourse about it from a two-sided "cat fight" to a far more nuanced inclusion of liberalism as well as Black and Third World feminisms. To this end Bracewell is both very convincing and presents her ideas quite clearly.
While this is not really too academic in the sense of information little known outside the academy, it does require some baseline of understanding of both feminisms before and after second wave feminism as well as of the "cat fight" narrative she is targeting. So while this is not an ideal introductory text it does need to be read shortly after beginning to understand the "sex wars" so that the reader will have these perspectives available before forming any strong opinions. It is also equally, or maybe more, important because of the way our current environment is framed in her final chapter. Ultimately this is a call for us to return to some more radical positions rather than defaulting to the liberal/conservative stance of carceral feminism.
If you remember the sex wars and had strong feelings at the time, this book will be an eye-opener in the sense that we have all tended to gloss over the fine points as time has marched on and unfortunately remember the debates as a two-sided affair rather than a multi-sided one. While there will likely be some new information for most readers in the book (definitely was for me) the strength is in shedding new light on events and people that we may not have known about but did not associate within the "sex wars" discourse.
Highly recommended for readers with an interest and some knowledge of feminist history, especially second wave feminism and the period known as the "sex wars." The reading is dense in spots but nothing that should keep most readers from appreciating the argument.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
While this is not really too academic in the sense of information little known outside the academy, it does require some baseline of understanding of both feminisms before and after second wave feminism as well as of the "cat fight" narrative she is targeting. So while this is not an ideal introductory text it does need to be read shortly after beginning to understand the "sex wars" so that the reader will have these perspectives available before forming any strong opinions. It is also equally, or maybe more, important because of the way our current environment is framed in her final chapter. Ultimately this is a call for us to return to some more radical positions rather than defaulting to the liberal/conservative stance of carceral feminism.
If you remember the sex wars and had strong feelings at the time, this book will be an eye-opener in the sense that we have all tended to gloss over the fine points as time has marched on and unfortunately remember the debates as a two-sided affair rather than a multi-sided one. While there will likely be some new information for most readers in the book (definitely was for me) the strength is in shedding new light on events and people that we may not have known about but did not associate within the "sex wars" discourse.
Highly recommended for readers with an interest and some knowledge of feminist history, especially second wave feminism and the period known as the "sex wars." The reading is dense in spots but nothing that should keep most readers from appreciating the argument.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
August 3, 2022
Arguments are a bit too anxiously orderly and neat here, but nice citations and is on the right wavelength.
March 19, 2025
This is an interesting read for anyone who wants to go deeper on this era in feminist history. Its core argument is that both sides of the "sex wars" capitulated to liberalism; the need to formulate their cases in "legalese" largely guided both sex-radical and anti-porn feminists to frame their thinking around harms provable in court, solutions that can be delivered by legislation, and so on, rather than having a wider program to change society. This wider program, the author thinks, is hinted at by both sides' pre-libbing-out work, and especially the interventions of feminists of colour.
However, "Why We Lost the Sex Wars" has a similar problem to many other works of history or political non-fiction: shit conclusion syndrome. It's a disease where the links to the present or the proposals for solutions are atrophied compared to the well-developed body of the analysis. In this case, the analysis of Slut Walk and of trigger warnings in the conclusion (and damn did I groan when I got to the heading "the trouble with trigger warnings") is a lot weaker than the body of the text. Ngl, the author is ultimately right that police reform is an unworthy end goal and that trigger warnings are a weak, non-systemic solution. But.
I disagree with dismissing Slut Walk as simple choice feminism, since it has grown into dealing with issues like street harassment; the author cherrypicks the word "choice" from an interview in a context that I found just mildly uncharitable. And while I agree that trigger warnings were way too fronted in feminist discourse for a long time relative to how much they actually achieve, I think this should be attributed mostly to bad media incentives and centrist hysteria, not (as Bracewell thinks) to feminists' failure of imagination in developing them in the first place. My impression is that they were students' and teachers' effort to modify something in their environment, and they didn't expect that modification to be a near-decade-long energy sink; it's a bit uncharitable to criticize something that was always meant as a small proximate change for being insufficiently deep or radical. Also notice that the section on trigger warnings mostly cites university documents, which isn't exactly the grassroots. And exactly how important or publicly-remembered are the sex-positive objections to #MeToo that Bracewell both begins and ends the book talking about? A letter signed by actors and an op-ed by, God help us, Margaret Atwood? Under a huge wave of conservative backlash, the messages Bracewell refers to were swamped out of public memory and therefore may not really deserve so much fronting in such a serious narrative. More to the point, there's nothing here to indicate that they were a widespread or serious current in feminist thought. Margaret might just be a boomer.
So maybe the issue is really choice of examples. If you really want to draw a line between earlier surrenders to liberalism and feminism in the 2000s and 2010s, you need to get into "eyeliner sharp enough to kill a man" territory, "everyone is a feminist" territory, corporate-sponsored body positivity territory, the discourses that actually sought to redefine feminism by liberal choice metrics. Still, the examples given do a reasonable job of proving the author's point that liberal capture was a long-lasting legacy. They're just not the examples I would call most impactful, and the discussions of them feel careless and rushed compared to the discussion of the older material.
Ultimately though, the most frustrating thing is that this book suggests that there's a lot of generative potential in the anti-porn and sex-radical currents of feminism, but isn't even a little bit about mining those potentials. The entire chapter on Black and third word feminists is basically the author going "what she said" to Cherrie Moraga's argument that "analysis" is needed around people's desires, why sex is the way it is in the present, and what can come next. Not to backseat write, but maybe the intro and conclusion should have been about beginning that process or pointing up thinkers who are working on it; some positive legacies of the era discussed, proving the point about the possibilities of the material the author is championing, as well as the negative legacies of sluggishness and lack of ambition that prove her critique of liberal capture. There's some hints in the author's repeated positivity towards the "polymorphously perverse" attitudes of the sex radicals and criticism of carceral logic - she has a dream of a world without normal/abnormal binaries or prisons. Ultimately, the book leaves us on a note of despair - if government and legislation can't move us towards the sexual utopia, if opting out and forming alternative communities can't move the needle, if we have failed to even do the analysis in the forty-odd years since Moraga's critique, then what can we even do?
However, "Why We Lost the Sex Wars" has a similar problem to many other works of history or political non-fiction: shit conclusion syndrome. It's a disease where the links to the present or the proposals for solutions are atrophied compared to the well-developed body of the analysis. In this case, the analysis of Slut Walk and of trigger warnings in the conclusion (and damn did I groan when I got to the heading "the trouble with trigger warnings") is a lot weaker than the body of the text. Ngl, the author is ultimately right that police reform is an unworthy end goal and that trigger warnings are a weak, non-systemic solution. But.
I disagree with dismissing Slut Walk as simple choice feminism, since it has grown into dealing with issues like street harassment; the author cherrypicks the word "choice" from an interview in a context that I found just mildly uncharitable. And while I agree that trigger warnings were way too fronted in feminist discourse for a long time relative to how much they actually achieve, I think this should be attributed mostly to bad media incentives and centrist hysteria, not (as Bracewell thinks) to feminists' failure of imagination in developing them in the first place. My impression is that they were students' and teachers' effort to modify something in their environment, and they didn't expect that modification to be a near-decade-long energy sink; it's a bit uncharitable to criticize something that was always meant as a small proximate change for being insufficiently deep or radical. Also notice that the section on trigger warnings mostly cites university documents, which isn't exactly the grassroots. And exactly how important or publicly-remembered are the sex-positive objections to #MeToo that Bracewell both begins and ends the book talking about? A letter signed by actors and an op-ed by, God help us, Margaret Atwood? Under a huge wave of conservative backlash, the messages Bracewell refers to were swamped out of public memory and therefore may not really deserve so much fronting in such a serious narrative. More to the point, there's nothing here to indicate that they were a widespread or serious current in feminist thought. Margaret might just be a boomer.
So maybe the issue is really choice of examples. If you really want to draw a line between earlier surrenders to liberalism and feminism in the 2000s and 2010s, you need to get into "eyeliner sharp enough to kill a man" territory, "everyone is a feminist" territory, corporate-sponsored body positivity territory, the discourses that actually sought to redefine feminism by liberal choice metrics. Still, the examples given do a reasonable job of proving the author's point that liberal capture was a long-lasting legacy. They're just not the examples I would call most impactful, and the discussions of them feel careless and rushed compared to the discussion of the older material.
Ultimately though, the most frustrating thing is that this book suggests that there's a lot of generative potential in the anti-porn and sex-radical currents of feminism, but isn't even a little bit about mining those potentials. The entire chapter on Black and third word feminists is basically the author going "what she said" to Cherrie Moraga's argument that "analysis" is needed around people's desires, why sex is the way it is in the present, and what can come next. Not to backseat write, but maybe the intro and conclusion should have been about beginning that process or pointing up thinkers who are working on it; some positive legacies of the era discussed, proving the point about the possibilities of the material the author is championing, as well as the negative legacies of sluggishness and lack of ambition that prove her critique of liberal capture. There's some hints in the author's repeated positivity towards the "polymorphously perverse" attitudes of the sex radicals and criticism of carceral logic - she has a dream of a world without normal/abnormal binaries or prisons. Ultimately, the book leaves us on a note of despair - if government and legislation can't move us towards the sexual utopia, if opting out and forming alternative communities can't move the needle, if we have failed to even do the analysis in the forty-odd years since Moraga's critique, then what can we even do?
July 17, 2022
A thoughtful and thorough exploration of the history of both antipornography and pro-sexual expression efforts by feminists in the 1980s. The book provides insightful analysis on the relationship of both of these strands of feminism to classical liberalism and also details the process by which liberals incorporated ideas from these two feminisms into their politics. The author also, importantly, touches on the ways in which race and class affect women's portrayal in porn, and the analysis of the different ways in which porn feeds into unhealthy perceptions of sex and rape culture was by far the most valuable part of the book for me.
The book (surprisingly) concluded with a connection to the rise of what is referred to as carceral feminism, which I also thought was a nice addition.
There were definitely moments in the book where I felt like the book was a bit verbose and the analysis was weak, but overall, I thought it was really well written.
The book (surprisingly) concluded with a connection to the rise of what is referred to as carceral feminism, which I also thought was a nice addition.
There were definitely moments in the book where I felt like the book was a bit verbose and the analysis was weak, but overall, I thought it was really well written.
April 3, 2025
Very solidly good book that really breaks down the different currents within the anti-pornography and sex-radical feminist movements. Also very good at breaking down how these movements connected to liberalism
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 6, 2021
Me encanto!!
Todo esta perfecto. Me llamo mucho la atencion la portada del libro y despues de leerlo me he enamorado.
Felicidades al escritor
Todo esta perfecto. Me llamo mucho la atencion la portada del libro y despues de leerlo me he enamorado.
Felicidades al escritor
July 26, 2025
It’s a good book to give a more nuanced view of what has been referred to as the “sex wars” and to better understand the ways different feminisms conceptualised society’s relationship to pornography. It does not, however, explore the #MeToo era the way the title leads one to expect. It functions better as a historical overview of 1970s-90s feminist thinking regarding pornography, sexuality and gender rather than an exploration of that legacy’s influence on current sexual politics. And although I understand the focus on Anglo-Saxon America and Western Europe when discussing the theme - as the “sex wars” gained heavier political traction after a specific event in an US-American university - it is slightly disheartening that the contributions of feminists from the Global South was added as a quick afterthought (and boy do I hate people who use the term “Third World”).
In sum, it’s a very interesting read through the history of feminism regarding sex and sexuality but fails to deliver its message as promised in the title. This book doesn’t really explore the #MeToo movement at all until the very last couple paragraphs and by then, you’ve already forgotten about it. Would’ve been better structured if it’d aimed at simply breaking the “cat fight narrative” of feminism’s history to sexual theory.
In sum, it’s a very interesting read through the history of feminism regarding sex and sexuality but fails to deliver its message as promised in the title. This book doesn’t really explore the #MeToo movement at all until the very last couple paragraphs and by then, you’ve already forgotten about it. Would’ve been better structured if it’d aimed at simply breaking the “cat fight narrative” of feminism’s history to sexual theory.
June 30, 2022
An excellent account of the anti porn feminist movement tracing from the late 60s to the mid 90s. Bracewell puts all the players on all the sides in a timeline that proves this was not just a two sided argument. Biggest issue was that while she starts with a history of #MeToo before diving in to the anti porn era, the conclusion does not really revisit the tie between the two, but instead brings in other recent movements as remnants of the pro-sex era of liberal feminism.
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