emma ’s Reviews > Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again: Women and Desire in the Age of Consent > Status Update

Notes:
- “In the morning after, Roiphe wrote with impatience about women who cannot put a man ‘in his place without crying into our pillow or screaming for help or counseling.’ Her distaste for vulnerability is palpable here, for this ‘teary province of trauma and crisis.’”
- “These accounts privilege an idealized, gutsy woman who knows what she wants and can shout it from the rooftops; a woman who can simply set aside the imbalances of power and pleasure in the world, accessing and voice her desire with confidence.”
- What was really powerful to me was that later, in examining her very own writing and life experiences, in reflection of her earlier views, Roiphe writes “the things I was writing in my twenties were not lies… they were wishes” and that done fucked me up damn.
- ALSO “that both Weinstein lawyer and consent advocates urge self-knowledge on us should give us a pause”
- “The rubric of consent is yet again not sufficient for thinking about sex, because it glosses over something crucial to acknowledge: that we don’t always know what we want… we don’t always know what we want and we are not always able to express our desires clearly. This is in part due to the violence, misogyny and shame that make desires discovery difficult, and its expression fraught. But it is also in the nature of desire to be social, emergent and responsive - to context, to our histories and to the desires and behaviours of others. We are social creatures; and our desires have always emerged, from day one, in relation to those who care, or do not care, for us. Desire never exists in isolation”
- “We need to start from this very premise - this risky, complex premise: that we shouldn’t have to know ourselves in order to be safe from violence”

I felt like I was underlining every single paragraph in this reading session bc Angel was dropping straight bars. Utilizing consent as a rubric is such an easy cop out- and it’s no wonder with the rise of post-feminism and affirmative consent culture, it makes total sense why institutions latch onto it. Let alone~ the economic success and productivity of women serves daddy capitalism very well.

Also I love the point on how desire is always relational and “and our desires have always emerged, from day one, in relation to those who care, or do not care, for us”. I feel like this speaks deliciously to attachment styles, kinks, and how we desire things that are not “good for us”

That being said, this reminds me of this point of contention I feel towards the discourse on choice feminism v. Radical feminism. On one hand, I definitely don’t believe every choice a woman makes is automatically feminist. Just because something feels empowering to one person doesn’t mean it’s liberatory on a structural level. But at the same time, radical feminism can feel so prescriptive- like trying to force pure social equality in every single context without accounting for the social world we actually live in.

Take traditional gender roles and the resurgence of chivalry and anti-50/50 discourse. If many women genuinely desire that dynamic because of social conditioning, is it inherently wrong? You can force yourself into a perfectly “equal” relationship on paper, but if it means participating in a structure you don’t actually desire, is that feminist either? How is it liberation if you’re overriding your own wants?

In line with the discourse on sex work- On a structural level, it clearly operates within and often reinforces systems that objectify women- and there’s the undeniable reality of exploitation, coercion, and child sex trafficking that exists alongside it. But at the same time, sex work has historically given many women financial independence and freedom from marriage as an economic necessity. For some, it has been a real avenue of agency and survival. To just say “abolish it” in the name of radical feminism can feel overly simplistic, even naive.

I don’t even know where I fully land on any of this- I’m kind of just spitballing rn. Anyway. My potatoes are burning, so I have to go.