Amia Srinivasan

The Sunday Times Bestseller

The Right to Sex

Karolina

jiaqi kang

"on not sleeping with your students" is for sure the strongest essay, and "sex, carceralism, capitalism" is the second strongest. i agree with some others that srinivasan's tone still feels too measured and respectful, even when it comes to people/ideas that she explicitly wants to condemn. the fact that catherine mackinnon is undoubtedly the most-cited thinker in this book but that srinivasan doesn't really go into/confront mackinnon's anti-sex worker stances feels like an intellectual failure when the entirety of this book is about considering/exploring, and then countering, ideas in feminism that srinivasan disagrees with. i also think that, as a UK-based cis feminist, she should have been more clear about who in her citations is trans-exclusionary (eg what is the point of simply name-dropping julie bindel -- whom srinivasan lists as an "anti-prostitution feminist" and leaves it at that?). overall, i felt that srinivasan spent a little too much time describing/summarising and a bit less time engaging in thorough critique - I would have loved to hear more of her very interesting ideas and point of view. for instance, in the porn essay, srinivasan perfunctorily mentions chinese yaoi (which is called danmei, actually) being "porn by women for women" yet completely fails to mention that the porn DEPICTS MEN, which you'd think would actually be very interesting to her arguments on the depiction of women in porn - if she didn't want to get into it, then why mention it in the first place? anyway, perhaps the smaller flaws/issues are an editorial fault rather than srinivasan's. i really enjoy and respect her work and i look forward to reading more from her

The Right to Sex The Sunday Times Bestseller

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