Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality

by Carole S. Vance (Editor)

Essays discuss sexual politics, feminism, sex manuals, marriage, sexual behavior, eroticism, repression, and child abuse

Genres: Feminism, Sexuality, Gender, Nonfiction, Theory, Poetry, Essays

462 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

Reviews

[Dot Matrix · Rating 4 out of 5]

None of the essays in here stand out in my memory (I read it many years ago), but the reason I'm giving it so many stars is because what does linger in my memory is the extremely clarifying title conceit: the idea that sex is both pleasurable and dangerous, and that women's responses to that dual nature tend to fall on one side or the other, and how that leads to many (all?) of the controversies commonly understood to be "women's": abortion, sexwork, pornography, ...

Maybe this is all obvious now, maybe it was the time of my life when I came across this book, but that framing really made some things clear.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was asked to contribute 500 words to a special journal issue marking the 25th Anniversary of the Barnard Conference on Women, so I thought I should review the anthology that collected the work presented there. I really do think that this is where white feminism broke open in a way that cleared a path, a decade later, for transgender feminist theory. Great to see so many old friends in these pages . . .

[Maxine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't agree politically with some of these essays, but you can't deny this is a compelling document from the 80s feminist sex wars. More to the point, it avoids the usual psychobabble and gets down to the brass tacks of what sexuality is--more than an act or an identity, sex is both and neither at the same time. Come for the talk about adolescent sexual freedom and new erotic vocabularies, stay for the cheeky poetry connecting capitalism to unimpressive male sexual performance.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this collection was a mixed bag. I liked Carole Vance's pieces, particularly her introduction; but the quality is inconsistent. I found interesting the brief history of how some "anti-pornography" feminists worked to misrepresent and slander the feminists who put together a conference on female sexuality on which this collection is based. This is found at the very end in the epilogue.

There are some great insights in here, but there's an equal helping of filler.

[Bethnoir · Rating 4 out of 5]

re-read after many years, still haas some very relevant and interesting things to say about female sexuality.