May 16, 2022 – Thornbury
Finished this last week with an old man reading over my shoulder on the plane. Hope he enjoyed it.
As I understand it the eponymous essay that this book started with was a response to the Brock Turner case, which has occupied many pages in recent feminist literature. That essay is good, although the following, more freeform reflection on the backlash to that essay is probably more interesting.
The world of incel politics and gendered mass shootings gets a close analysis, TL;DR the right to sex is a misogynistic brain worm and inherently racist, classist etc.
My favourite essays were elsewhere, including a chapter "On Not Sleeping With Your Students" where Srinivasan unpicks the strange logic of professors who attempted to make a case for the praxis of student/teacher sexual relationships. People continue to surprise and disappoint.
I also found the discussion around pornography and how it plays differently for different generations based on technology and the temperature of feminist talking points pretty interesting, and Srinivasan handles this topic really well.
The closing chapter "Sex, Carceralism, Capitalism" grapples with implicit contradictions between abolishing the police and jailing rapists, but her conclusion is for me, a little underwhelming and not useful — it's complicated, paradoxical and difficult. Also Universal Basic Income and reshaping society completely would help.
I liked this book and am glad to have been introduced to Srinivasan's work, but look forward to a book-length argument rather than a series of essays in the future. Also, I need a break from reading about rape.