TheRight to Sex

Amia Srinivasan is a young and brilliant thinker who holds the Chichele Professorship at All Souls College, Oxford, one of Britain's most prestigious academic positions. It was previously held by Isaiah Berlin. She is set to become one of Britain's finest public intellectuals, able to write as compellingly about popular culture as she can about philosophy, and The Right to Sex is her first trade bookBoth a razor-sharp analysis that will direct the public conversation about sex and gender, and a new guidebook for feminism in the twenty-first century, The Right to Sex upends what we think we know about issues such as pornography, consent, sexual pleasure and powerAmia Srinivasan's 2018 piece for the London Review of Books, 'Does anyone have the right to sex?', sparked a heated debate in publications across the world, becoming a focal point for conversations about incels and male sexual entitlementAmia Srinivasan was born in 1984 in Bahrain and raised in London, New York, Singapore and Taiwan. She is currently the Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at All Souls College, Oxford, and has held permanent or visiting academic posts at University College London, Yale, NYU and UCLA. She has written on subjects as diverse as sex, death, octopuses, suicide, anger, education and many others for publications including the London Review of Books, where she is a contributing editor, the New Yorker, the Times Literary Supplement and the New York Times. She lives in Oxford.A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER BLACKWELL'S BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021 Essential lessons on the world we live in, from one of our greatest young thinkers - a guide to what everybody is talking about today 'Unparalleled and extraordinary . . . A bracing revivification of a crucial lineage in feminist writing' JIA TOLENTINO 'I believe Amia Srinivasan's work will change the world' KATHERINE RUNDELL 'Rigorously researched, but written with such spark and verve. The best non-fiction book I have read this year' PANDORA SYKES ------------------------- How should we talk about sex? It is a thing we have and also a thing we do; a supposedly private act laden with public meaning; a personal preference shaped by outside forces; a place where pleasure and ethics can pull wildly apart. To grasp sex in all its complexity - its deep ambivalences, its relationship to gender, class, race and power - we need to move beyond 'yes and no', wanted and unwanted. We need to rethink sex as a political phenomenon. Searching, trenchant and extraordinarily original, The Right to Sex is a landmark examination of the politics and ethics of sex in this world, animated by the hope of a different one. SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2022 LONGLISTED FOR THE POLARI FIRST BOOK PRIZE 2022 LONGLISTED FOR THE BRITISH ACADEMY BOOK PRIZE 2022A landmark book on sexual politics from Amia Srinivasan, the leading young intellectual behind the viral London Review of Books essay 'Does anyone have the right to sex?'The best book I've read recently . IncredibleQuietly dazzling . A brilliant, rigorous book. [Srinivasan] coaxes our imaginations out of the well-worn grooves of the existing orderI've thoroughly audited why anyone should skip The Right to Sex, and I couldn't think of any reasons. Srinavasan's work is too interesting to be perfect. It's superbA daring feminist collection . . . Srinivasan accomplishes what she sets out to do: deliver a treatise both ambivalent and discomfiting, one which reveals the inadequacies in what we had imagined to be solutionsSex has always been a minefield, but surely never more than now. In The Right to Sex, Srinivasan shows us mines I barely knew existedTo say that Srinivasan's challenging, complex, and - for some - controversial essays are a must-read is a colossal understatementWith her debut book, The Right to Sex, a 36-year-old Oxford don is dazzling everyoneSrinivasan demonstrates how the feminist philosopher can emancipate our basic ethical concepts from the stranglehold of patriarchy, capitalism, and state racism - and this is a remarkable and promising effort[This] ambitious, magisterial work stands out in the ongoing tide of dull, girl boss feminism arguing for personal empowerment over collective liberation . . . In a world of easy, one-dimensional answers, [Srinivasan] is unquestionably the real dealAmia Srinivasan is the most brilliant feminist theorist writing today. 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 timeThe Right to Sex is absolutely extraordinary. Read it!Laser-cut writing and a stunning intellect. If only every writer made this much beautiful senseAmia Srinivasan's magnificent first book announces itself as a classicAmia 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 themFascinating . . . Amia must be one of the leading thinkers around on the subject of sex and her work is both stimulating and challenging