Synopsis
Examining gender and desire, romance and pornography, prostitution and morality, and fantasies and orgasm, the author takes a candid look at sex and sexuality, our fear of sex, and how sex pervades every aspect of our culture.
Reviews
Tisdale, who stirred controversy with her 1992 essay on pornography in Harper's, combines simplistic thinking and provocative insight in this freewheeling but tiresome meditation on female desire, sexual jealousy, orgasm, horniness, adult sex shows and much else. She argues that "alternative sexuality"-everything that is taboo, from homosexuality to masturbation-is punished because it is nonreproductive. Recounting her own enjoyment of pornographic films, Tisdale contends that pornography, though often crude and adolescent, is nevertheless a positive force because it emphasizes a broad view of what is erotic, and separates sex from reproduction, marriage and the heterosexual relationship, "which most feminists would agree have been oppressive to women." Seeking to dispel stereotypes surrounding prostitutes, she cites a study that concludes that whores and their customers are happy and healthy; she also advocates decriminalization of prostitution. Her embrace of sexuality is sprinkled with allusions to Plato, James Joyce, Nietzsche, Freud and Wilhelm Reich. First serial to Esquire and Elle; author tour.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Tisdale (Stepping Westward, 1991, etc.) leads an enthusiastic amateur's tour through sex in America (with a few brief forays abroad). In an inviting expansion of her controversial 1992 Harper's magazine essay of the same title, Tisdale offers a trek through sexual inhibitions, expressions, assumptions, and questions (for instance, if everyone thinks about sex so much, why do so few feel comfortable discussing it?), arriving at an increasingly fashionable pro-sex feminism. Americans are so conflicted about sex, she says, because they're caught endlessly between obsession and avoidance. Tisdale, fighting avoidance, confronts the subject head on. She checks out sex clubs, sex toy stores, pornography shops, and erotic novels, citing everyone from Roland Barthes to Susie Bright. Ancient Greece, the story of Adam and Eve, Freud, Jesse Helms, and Basic Instinct convince her that we're a nation of guilty prudes, arrested adolescents who can't sate our lust for adult material. We're ``sex drenched and sex phobic.'' Tisdale indicates that the fear starts with men, but that women can help fix it. ``Women guiding the sexual drive of men changes them, gentles the institutions men have made to cope with their feelings toward women.'' One area she sees women reinventing is pornography. The chapter on this subject is by far the most controversial and at times tedious. Coming down hard on anti-porn feminists like Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin (even more than on the Religious Right), she argues for tolerance and maintains that the heterosexual nuclear family, reproductive legislation, and patriarchal society in general are likely to do more damage to women than any X-rated films. Finally, she reaches the unoriginal but hopeful point that sexual freedom contains the seeds of significant social change. ``The center will not hold...if radical sexuality works.'' Just about everything you always wanted to know about sex but were afraid to ask. Fluidly written, sexy, probing, personally revealing, and wise. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Tisdale likes to expose the fallacies of our most thoughtlessly cherished stereotypes. She applied this sort of critical perception to life in the Pacific Northwest in Stepping Westward (1991) but soon moved on to far more mysterious and treacherous territory: the land of desire and arousal. The first incarnation of Talk Dirty to Me was a jolting essay that appeared in Harper's in 1992. Now Tisdale has explored the controversial subject of sexuality in greater depth and with even more chutzpah in this far-reaching, candid, tolerant, and provocative treatise. Tisdale believes that in spite of the so-called sexual revolution, American sexuality remains juvenile and conflicted. She expands on this by challenging commonly held assumptions about nearly everything related to sexuality, from the age-old and fear-based image of the vagina as a devouring mouth to oral sex to slang for various parts of the body and what we do with them. She also blends personal anecdotes with commonsensical analyses of various attitudes about sexual fulfillment, especially for women. Tisdale's frame of reference is wide: she compares American and Japanese pornography, quotes from James Joyce's infamous love letters, interviews enterprising prostitutes proud of their skills and earning power, critiques the rhetoric that equates pornography with violence, and analyzes the findings of sex researchers. Uncompromisingly honest if a bit dismissive of the dark side of lust, Tisdale forces us to recognize our sexual self and be more accepting of the needs, and rights, of others. Donna Seaman
Tisdale (The Long Search for Home in the Pacific Northwest, LJ 3/1/93) has written a beautiful book that presents a very personal philosophy and experience with sex. She divides the book into four phases-desire, arousal, climax, and resolution. The author's journey toward sexual awakening and freedom begins by posing the question, "Why are we so unhappy about our own sexual acts and the acts of others?" Poetically exploring issues such as sexual orientation, pornography, feminist politics, and prostitution, Tisdale moves eloquently from Plato's Symposium and Japanese Ukiyo-e art to Annie Sprinkle and Masters and Johnson. She concludes by conceding that most ethical systems are imperfect and that "the translating of belief into behavior is the most radical sexual behavior of all." This is a book for any reader who has pondered "What is all the fuss about?" and could well serve as a complement to Diane Ackerman's A Natural History of Love (LJ 5/15/94). Recommended for academic and public libraries.
Dana L. Brumbelow, Auburn P.L., Alabama
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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