Tomorrow Sex will be Good Again – Women and Desire in the Age of Consent by Katherine Angel

February 17, 2022 – Thornbury

I picked this up because the concept is intriguing: that sexual response is fundamentally different for women. This book tries to unpick a few tricky knots which I may or may not be able to communicate properly here.

In its most controversial argument, it argues that affirmative consent is problematic because it requires a kind of self knowledge that may not be possible. "Do I want this?" isa question Angel believes we sometimes can't answer as well as the law believes we can, and moreover, sometimes its ambiguity and fuzziness is inherently erotic.

She touches on research that draws differences between male and female sexual response, previously thought to be almost the same but potentially unfolds in a different order, causing women's desire to function in response to arousal, rather than vice versa.

It should be clarified that I don't think Angel is saying affirmative consent is wrong, but perhaps that it has some drawbacks, and potentially oversimplifies an inherently complex, soft, squishy, ambiguous world of two people having sex.

There is definitely something in this that is slippery and hard to grasp, something that I think even evades the author. I'm keen to read more in this area, and follow the thread not just of how to prevent sexual violence but how to increase pleasure — not just the reduction of harmful sex but creating more joyful sex. I think, surprisingly, Angel didn't quite get there with this book, despite the title.