Sunday, October 2, 2016

Sunday Story - women's sexuality

There's a great post here about a book called, Doing It, which is a compilation of stories by women about sex, edited by Karen Pickering.

There's a paragraph that's really stuck with me, mostly because it's a reflection on some of the thoughts I've been having (see Friday's post). But here it is -

"Pickering hopes that a teenager or young woman experiencing her own sexual awakening will read Doing It and ‘take away that her body is her own.’ The act of silencing women, or only permitting them to speak when what they have to say both aligns with and indulges the male gaze, is rife in a society where women have historically been categorised as, in Anne Summers’ words, either damned whores or God’s police. Many of the individual women telling their stories in Doing It are marginalised for their failure to conform under patriarchal structures, and are rendered not only silent but invisible. The most important principle underlying the collection, Pickering says, is that ‘however your sexual self is constructed, it should at least be constructed by you.’ As a reclamation of that ownership, Doing It is radical for the multifaceted nature of the desires it reveals."

There is so much in this post, that it makes me want to go out and grab this book!


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