Bad Sex: Truth, Pleasure, and an Unfinished Revolution

If a woman leaves a man because the sex isn't good, is it the ultimate feminist act or the ultimate act of shallowness? This question is central in Bad Sex: Truth, Pleasure, and an Unfinished Revolution by Nona Willis Aronowitz (Girldrive, with Emma Bee Bernstein), daughter of the feminist writer Ellen Willis. Willis's words and deeds are constant touchstones throughout this light-shedding investigation.

Bad Sex grew out of Aronowitz's decision to end her marriage to a man she was with for eight years; while the relationship's shortcomings weren't limited to unfulfilling sex, that was a big part of it. She had always looked at her parents' 25 years together as a "lifelong model of a functional, loving partnership," but after Willis's 2006 death, Aronowitz learned, while going through her mother's diaries, that her father had had an affair. Writes Aronowitz: "I started thinking about my parents as just two out of so many poor souls who try to square their personal lives with their politics."  

Bad Sex is Aronowitz's equally inward- and outward-looking effort to reconcile these two aspects of her life. To get there, she dives into the history of various rebukes to traditional sexual norms, including free love, homosexuality and celibacy. After exploring them personally, she shares--some readers will say overshares--her takeaways. By twining the threads of her sexual past (erotic awakening, open relationships and so on) with her mother's thoughts on the same experiences, Aronowitz creates a vivid, tapestry-like intergenerational feminist social history. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

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