Table Of Content

PRAISE FOR THE RIGHT TO SEX ‘Each essay in The Right to Sex is a masterpiece on its own; taken together, they show how learning to think carefully and precisely about the politics of desire is the preeminent ethical project of our time. [Srinivasan’s] voice is at once patient and rigorous, demanding and sympathetic. Our age of hot takes and hard opinions is undeserving of her intellectual gifts’ Merve Emre ‘A spectacular piece of writing – a book that asks you to believe that the world could be radically different, and a book which engages in the strenuous work of imagining how that world might come into being … Amia Srinivasan demands an unswerving allegiance to nuance and to the interrogation of power. Standing as we all are inside a raging fire, to read it feels not like a water bucket, but like rain’ Katherine Rundell ‘In stripping the new politics of sex and power down to its fundamental and sometimes clashing principles, The Right to Sex is a bracing revivifica- tion of a crucial lineage in feminist writing: Srinivasan is daring, compas- sionate, and in relentless search of a new frame’ Jia Tolentino ‘Amia Srinivasan’s magnificent first book announces itself as a classic. Already one of our most superlative philosophers and stylish essayists, Srinivasan shows that concern for the plight of the most oppressed is never disconnected from general explorations of and movements for free lives for everyone, and the renovated social order our common future requires’ Samuel Moyn ‘Exhilarating ... An incredibly articulate, moving and groundbreak- ing analysis of the politics of sex and desire in the twenty-first century’ Amrou Al-Kadhi ‘Amia Srinivasan reveals both the material opportunities and dead-ends of a century-long conscious trajectory towards female empowerment. The Right to Sex reminds us of the foundational complexities to Women’s Liberation ideas and why we are still grappling with them’ Sarah Schulman T H E R I G H T TO S E X Amia Srinivasan BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2021 Copyright © Amia Srinivasan, 2021 Amia Srinivasan has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. 181 constitute an extension of this copyright page The lines from ‘Diving into the Wreck’. Copyright © 2016 by the Adrienne Rich Literary Trust. Copyright © 1973 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., from Collected Poems: 1950–2012 by Adrienne Rich. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. The lines from Tribute to Freud Copyright © Hilda (H.D.) Doolittle, used with kind permission of Carcanet Press, Manchester, UK All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: HB 978-1-5266-1253-3; TBP: 978-1-5266-1255-7; eBook: 978-1-5266-1257-1 Typeset by Newgen KnowledgeWorks Pvt. Ltd., Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters For my mother, Chitra Contents Preface xi The Conspiracy Against Men 1 Talking to My Students About Porn 33 The Right to Sex 73 Coda: The Politics of Desire 93 On Not Sleeping With Y our Students 123 Sex, Carceralism, Capitalism 149 Acknowledgements 181 Notes 185 Bibliography 231 Index 269 vii the thing I came for: the wreck and not the story of the wreck the thing itself and not the myth Adrienne Rich, ‘Diving into the Wreck’