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Since Willis, the case for pro-sex feminism has been buttressed by feminism’s turn toward intersectionality. Thinking about the ways patriarchal oppression is inflected by race and class has made feminists reluctant to make universal prescriptions, including universal sexual policies. The demand fo…

It is easy to see why many women—and not just the ones dealing with a history of sexual trauma—might find something salutary in a phantasmic role reversal.

The invocation of young people in political discourse often serves reactionary ends. Calls to protect their innocence are based on a fantasy of childhood that does not and never did exist—a childhood untouched by the world of adults and adult desires. The appeal to childhood innocence also tends to…

To be sure, pornographers, unlike umpires, were never formally invested with the authority to tell the truth about sex. No one elected or appointed the pornographers. If porn is indeed the voice of the “ruling power,” it is not officially so. Whatever authority porn has is granted by those who watc…

I am not saying that feminism has no business asking better of men—indeed, asking them to be better men. But a feminism worth having must find ways of doing so that avoid rote reenactment of the old form of crime and punishment, with its fleeting satisfactions and predictable costs. I am saying tha…