Featuring +60 of the most important and well-recognized female-identifying artists, writers and creative thinkers of the last century as they explore the idea of pleasure - and empowerment - in all its forms. Iconic and never-before-published works by Georgia O'Keeffe, Louise Bourgeois, Judy Chicago, Tracey Emin, Jenny Holzer, Marlene Dumas and Alice Neel run alongside contributions from photographers like Cindy Sherman, Carrie Mae Weems, Marilyn Minter and Nan Goldin, as well as by emerging talent such as Mickalene Thomas, Martine Gutierrez, Harley Weir and Nina Chanel Abney, as well as an exclusive coloring book by RIP Bambi. With forewords by New York Times best-selling authors Erica Jong and Roxane Gaye, and original essays and texts by Stoya, Erika Lust, Pussy Riot and the late cult author, Kathy Acker, among others.
Iconic and never-before-published works by Georgia O'Keeffe, Louise Bourgeois, Judy Chicago, Tracey Emin, Jenny Holzer, Marlene Dumas and Alice Neel run alongside original essays by New York Times best selling authors Erica Jong and Roxane Gay, and contributions from photographers like Cindy Sherman, Carrie Mae Weems, Marilyn Minter and Nan Goldin, as well as by emerging talent such as Mickalene Thomas, Martine Gutierrez and Harley Weir in this groundbreaking art book that sees the most critical female voices of the last century explore the idea of pleasure -- and empowerment -- in all its forms.
This pioneering collection explores the ways in which positive, pleasure-focused approaches to sexuality can empower women. Gender and development has tended to engage with sexuality only in relation to violence and ill-health. Although this has been hugely important in challenging violence against women, over-emphasizing these negative aspects has dovetailed with conservative ideologies that associate women’s sexualities with danger and fear. On the other hand, the media, the pharmaceutical industry, and pornography more broadly celebrate the pleasures of sex in ways that can be just as oppressive, often implying that only certain types of people - young, heterosexual, able-bodied, HIV-negative - are eligible for sexual pleasure. Women, Sexuality and the Political Power of Pleasure brings together challenges to these strictures and exclusions from both the South and North of the globe, with examples of activism, advocacy and programming which use pleasure as an entry point. It shows how positive approaches to pleasure and sexuality can enhance equality and empowerment for all.
American culture is more sexually liberal than ever. But compared to men, women's sexual pleasure has not grown: Up to 40 percent of American women experience the sexual malaise clinically known as low sexual desire. Between this low desire, muted pleasure, and experiencing sex in terms of labor rather than of lust, women by the millions are dissatisfied with their erotic lives. For too long, this deficit has been explained in terms of women's biology, stress, and age. In The Pleasure Gap, Katherine Rowland rejects the idea that women should settle for diminished pleasure; instead, she argues women should take inequality in the bedroom as seriously as we take it in the workplace and understand its causes and effects. Drawing on extensive research and interviews with more than one hundred women and dozens of sexual health professionals, Rowland shows that the pleasure gap is neither medical malady nor psychological condition but rather a result of our culture's troubled relationship with women's sexual expression. This provocative exploration of modern sexuality makes a case for closing the gap for good.
In her new book, Women, Sex, Power & Pleasure, Evelyn Resh, a sexuality counselor and certified nurse-midwife, takes an innovative approach to helping women create the lives – and sex lives – they want. With a funny and compassionate, yet tell-it-like-it-is style, she looks at the relationship between feeling powerful in life and accessing life’s pleasures, and their combined effect on sexual desire. Resh introduces six essential qualities that women must have to live healthfully, stating that when these are out of balance women seem to exist in lives devoid of pleasure, self-empowerment, and sex. These markers of emotional well-being are: • Self-confidence and self-esteem • Healthy Habits • Spiritual Satisfaction • Creativity • Self-assurance/re-assurance • Compassion and Empathy Once the six traits are laid out, Resh devotes the rest of the book to exploring how, when one or more of a woman’s markers of emotional well-being are off kilter, their reasons for avoiding sex mount exponentially. She looks at some of the most common excuses she’s heard over her many years as a sexuality counselor – I Feel Nothing, It’s All He Thinks About, I’m Too Busy!, I’m Too Fat to Have Sex – and outlines the specific imbalances that create this void of sexual desire and activity. With practical guidance, self-assessment questions, and stories from her practice and personal life, Resh explains to modern women how to regain their emotional wellness and live a powerful life that includes a steady relationship with pleasure and sexual satisfaction. This book is a must read for all women. From housewives to sophisticated urban corporate types, from new moms to post-menopausal women – this book will help any woman who feels estranged from her sexual energy and a sense of empowerment, and deprived of pleasure, or who views sex as just another thing to tick off her overwhelming to-do list.
Follow the sizzling hot, yet romantic and sensually sexual adventures of twenty-five very different men as they encounter their first sexual, most erotic, and most sensual experiences in satisfying the desires of women in A Woman's Pleasure. The erotic adventures of A Woman's Pleasure will carry readers to a new, heightened state of sexual awareness. Each of the many sexual experiences is surrounded by an aura of romance, respect, and mutuality, where both women and men experience total pleasure and complete satisfaction. Making love is not something you do to someone-it's something you share. Women should be equal players in the sexual encounter. They express their sexuality as intensely as men and should also participate as much as men do in driving the lovemaking experience. The real-life sensual, sexual, and lovemaking interactions in these stories will empower women to seek sexual fulfillment and show men how to make love so that women will achieve sexual satisfaction. Men will discover how to give sensual, sexual pleasure to their women and understand that by giving pleasure, they will receive pleasure-which is something that can't be learned from watching porn. At times, these stories make you blush; other times, they'll leave your heart-and other body parts-throbbing. They are sure to stimulate your senses, stir your thoughts, and inspire your fantasies. More importantly, men and women alike will realize what it means to make love and feel unparalleled pleasure. This book will help men and women redefine their lovemaking and sexual expression with each other. No matter what age or stage their relationship is at, they can transform their interaction from "what was" and "what is" to "what can be." There are no fetishes, kinkiness, or control issues involved-but plenty of romance, love, and caring to enjoy foreplay, satisfaction, and afterglow. Give it to your lover, husband, or wife. Read it together or alone. Keep it by your bedside. You will continually return to certain sexual encounters you especially enjoy many times over.
Mama Gena’s School of Womanly Arts shows women how celebrating their sensuality can help them achieve their dreams—“think of it as The Power of Positive Thinking as interpreted by Anais Nin” (The New York Times). Relationship expert Regena Thomashauer teaches the lost “womanly arts” of identifying your desires, having fun no matter where you are, knowing sensual pleasure, befriending your inner bitch, flirting (in a way that makes your day, not just his), and more—because making pleasure your priority can actually help you reach your goals. So if you need a refresher course in fun—and you know you do—come to Mama.
In Shopping for Pleasure, Erika Rappaport reconstructs London's Victorian and Edwardian West End as an entertainment and retail center. In this neighborhood of stately homes, royal palaces, and spacious parks and squares, a dramatic transformation unfolded that ultimately changed the meaning of femininity and the lives of women, shaping their experience of modernity. Rappaport illuminates the various forces of the period that encouraged and discouraged women's enjoyment of public life and particularly shows how shopping came to be seen as the quintessential leisure activity for middle- and upper-class women. Through extensive histories of department stores, women's magazines, clubs, teashops, restaurants, and the theater as interwoven sites of consumption, Shopping for Pleasure uncovers how a new female urban culture emerged before and after the turn of the twentieth century. Moving beyond the question of whether shopping promoted or limited women's freedom, the author draws on diverse sources to explore how business practices, legal decisions, and cultural changes affected women in the market. In particular, she focuses on how and why stores presented themselves as pleasurable, secure places for the urban woman, in some cases defining themselves as instrumental to civic improvement and women's emancipation. Rappaport also considers such influences as merchandizing strategies, credit policies, changes in public transportation, feminism, and the financial balance of power within the home. Shopping for Pleasure is thus both a social and cultural history of the West End, but on a broader scale it reveals the essential interplay between the rise of consumer society, the birth of modern femininity, and the making of contemporary London.
Starting with Bad Behavior in the 1980s, Mary Gaitskill has been writing about gender relations with searing, even prophetic honesty. In This Is Pleasure, she considers our present moment through the lens of a particular #MeToo incident. The effervescent, well-dressed Quin, a successful book editor and fixture on the New York arts scene, has been accused of repeated unforgivable transgressions toward women in his orbit. But are they unforgivable? And who has the right to forgive him? To Quin’s friend Margot, the wrongdoing is less clear. Alternating Quin’s and Margot’s voices and perspectives, Gaitskill creates a nuanced tragicomedy, one that reveals her characters as whole persons—hurtful and hurting, infuriating and touching, and always deeply recognizable. Gaitskill has said that fiction is the only way that she could approach this subject because it is too emotionally faceted to treat in the more rational essay form. Her compliment to her characters—and to her readers—is that they are unvarnished and real. Her belief in our ability to understand them, even when we don’t always admire them, is a gesture of humanity from one of our greatest contemporary writers.
A FRANK, FUNNY AND EMPOWERING CELEBRATION OF FEMALE PLEASURE An orgasm will help you sleep and keep you looking younger, it doesn’t cost money and isn’t a scarce resource. So why is it that, like the pay gap, there is an ‘orgasm gap’ between women and men? The Hotbed Collective began life as a podcast with a mission ‘to make life better one orgasm at a time’. Their debut book, More Orgasms Please is an open, honest and at moments hilarious dive into all aspects of sex for women. It covers feminist porn, body image, menopause and much more. Like the podcast that inspired it, More Orgasms Please is like the best sort of chat between friends: punchy and playful, normalising and educating. It is an eye-opening read that puts women’s bodies and our right to pleasure firmly on the map. Think of it as ‘Couch to 5k’ ... for orgasms.
