Abstract
The first chapter analyses the manner in which women’s erotic memoirs validate sexual assertion as a form of empowerment and agency. While femininity and feminine sexualities in Western cultures have generally been positioned by a number of contemporary feminists as disempowering and constructed in subordination to dominant masculine sexualities, this chapter explores how postfeminist culture extolls women who subvert this pattern by forcefully expressing their sexual expectations and desires. While recognising that contemporary women do assert their sexual desires, this chapter suggests that postfeminist sensibilities of choice and empowerment are complicit in masking a social reality in which little has changed in terms of real-world sexual practices.
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Notes
Stevi Jackson, “Heterosexuality, Power and Pleasure” in Feminism and Sexuality: A Reader, eds Stevi Jackson and Sue Scott (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996), 175–180.
Sarah Gamble, “Postfeminism” in The Routledge Companion to Feminism and Postfeminism, ed. Sarah Gamble (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 43.
Natasha Walter, Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism (London: Virago, 2010), 68.
Natasha Walter, The New Feminism (London: Virago, 1999), 112.
Suzanne Portnoy, The Butcher, the Baker, the Candlestick Maker (London: Virgin Books, 2006), 85.
Abby Lee, Girl with a One Track Mind: Confessions of the Seductress Next Door (London: Ebury Press, 2006), 105.
Catherine Townsend, Sleeping Around: Secrets of a Sexual Adventuress (London: John Murray, 2007), 3.
Robert Jensen, Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2007), 158.
Janet Holland, Caroline Ramazanoglu, Sue Sharpe and Rachel Thomson, “Pressured Pleasure: Young Women and the Negotiation of Sexual Boundaries” in Feminism and Sexuality: A Reader, eds Stevi Jackson and Sue Scott (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996), 258.
Pat Califia, “Feminism and Sadomasochism” in Feminism and Sexuality: A Reader, eds Stevi Jackson and Sue Scott (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996), 232.
Lynne Segal, Straight Sex: The Politics of Pleasure (London: Virago, 1994), 45.
Georges Bataille, Eroticism, trans. M. Dalwood (London: Penguin, 2001 [1954]). 8.
Andre Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism, trans. R. Seaver and H.R. Lane (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998 [1924]), 234.
Toni Bentley, The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (London: Harper Perennial, 2006), 4.
See Sigmund Freud, “The Sexual Aberrations” in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, trans. James Strachey (New York: Basic Books, 1987), 24.
Kathrina Glitre, “Nancy Meyers and Popular Feminism” in Women on Screen: Feminism and Femininity in Visual Culture, ed. Melanie Waters (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 28.
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© 2013 Joel Gwynne
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Gwynne, J. (2013). Agency. In: Erotic Memoirs and Postfeminism: The Politics of Pleasure. Palgrave Pivot, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137326546_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137326546_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-45980-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-32654-6
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