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Names: Friedman, Jaclyn, author.
screw us all / Jaclyn Friedman.
Description: Berkeley : Seal Press, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017023481| ISBN 9781580056410 (hardback) | ISBN 9781580056427 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: FeminismUnited States. | WomenSexual behaviorUnited
States. | SexismUnited States. | Sex roleUnited States. | BISAC:
SOCIAL SCIENCE / Womens Studies. | SOCIAL SCIENCE / Feminism & Feminist Theory.
This book should be required reading in schools across the US. Honest, sometimes painful, and brimming with empathy. It couldnt have come at a better time. Jaclyn draws you in to a world of possibility. I am hopeful reading her writing. There is so much work to do to change the systems in which we live, and Jaclyn gives us practical, applicable ways of doing it.
Tatiana Maslany, Emmy-winning star of Orphan Black
Unscrewed is not just a book you should read, its a book youll love to read. Jaclyn Friedmans writing sings, and makes thinking about necessary and important issues a real pleasure. I cant wait to read it again.
Jessica Valenti, author of the New York Timesbestselling Sex Object
In this visionary and necessary book, Jaclyn Friedman cuts through the hypocrisy, mixed messages, and confusion about sex, women, and power. Unscrewed is firmly pro-pleasure, but also bitingly critical of the same old sexism dressed up in the language of empowermentits power, Friedman argues, that matters, and she neatly eviscerates the formal and informal barriers that keep women from accessing it. Required reading for anyone who cares not just about women and sex but about building a better society, Unscrewed will leave you with just one question: Can Jaclyn lead the new sexual revolution and unscrew us all?
Jill Filipovic, author of The H-Spot
There are so many things to love about Unscrewed. What I love most is that I feel smarter, more powerful, and far less crazy after reading this book. From the very first page, I realized that It isnt just me. Other women struggle with how to have the hot empowered sex feminists are always raving about. I wish Id had this book when I was twenty. Im so glad to have it now, to read, to teach to my students, and to share with my homegirls. Jaclyn doesnt just lay out all the problems with contemporary discourses on sex. She also shows us the way forward by profiling some of the pathbreaking feminist badasses that are leading the way. It goes without saying that Jaclyn herself is one of these badasses. Every chapter reminds us in tangible ways that these problems can be solved. We can get this right. There is hope. And the very first step is to get and read Unscrewed.
Brittney Cooper, Crunk Feminist Collective cofounder and author of Eloquent Rage
Gender equality has enough superficial solutions, and Unscrewed is a precise rebuke to the notion that signifying progress is enough. Jaclyn Friedmans book reminds men that it is our job to end misogyny and rape culture, and tells women not to expect anything less.
Jamil Smith, journalist and essayist
As our society has become increasingly obsessed with the paradoxical pursuit of simultaneously controlling and liberating women sexually, there is no better expert than Jaclyn Friedman to help us dissect the complicated and surreal world we are currently living in. Sexuality has always been a tough and complicated topic for women but Jaclyn somehow always manages to make it fun and easy to talk about. You will find yourself nodding in agreement and whispering yas over and over as she captures the essence of every thought and feeling youve always had, but never shared. Jaclyn Friedman is the quintessential modern sex expert, at once understanding and empathetic yet honest and raw.
Elizabeth Plank, senior producer and correspondent, Vox Media
In her hips, theres revolutions.
BIKINI KILL
Y OU MAY HAVE thought that we already had a sexual revolution. You may have heard that women are free to go wild now, that we can do what we want with our bodies. You may have even heard that were in charge now when it comes to sex, and that its men who have to cater to us.
But most women dont quite feel it. Like Leigh Anne Arthur, a South Carolina high school teacher who sent her husband a nude photo of herself for Valentines Day. A few weeks later, a student snuck into Arthurs desk while she was out of the room between classes. The student opened Arthurs cell phone, found the naked selfie, and distributed it to all of his classmates. Arthur lost her job. In doing so, she joined a long line of female teachers fired for what they did with their private sex lives on their own time.
Getting fired for being sexual would have been preferable to what happened to Janese Talton-Jackson. In the wee hours of a Friday morning in 2016, Charles McKinney made a pass at her in a Pittsburgh bar. She declined his attentions. He followed her to her car and shot her dead.
If youre a woman, you know this story in your body. You know what that flinch of fear feels like when a man turns his sexual attention on you. You know that churning feeling in your gut urging you to let him down easy. Or the bile you swallow when you decide it might be safer not to say no at all.
At conferences, colleges, and over friends coffee tables, Im struck by a common agony in what women tell me about their sex lives. They want to knowand because Im a national expert on womens sexuality, they think I can answerwhy dont I feel free? Theyre bombarded with messages telling them that every choice they make makes them more powerful, and yet theyre constantly looking over their shoulders, guarding against a laundry list of possible consequences, measuring their sex lives against what they know or imagine about others, and using that comparison to find themselves wanting. Thats true whether theyre college freshmen or young graduates, stay-at-home moms or power professionals.
Its not always a job at stake, or the fear of a man with a gun. Take, for instance, my friend Louise, a twentysomething media professional and outspoken feminist, who confessed to me that she has compulsively clicked on every celebrity sex tape and nude photo leak published in the last decadeeven the skeezy, immoral, stolen stuff, like Jennifer Lawrences photos. She clicks not because this type of porn gets her off, but because she cant get a handle on her reptilian curiosity about famous womens sex lives. I want to know how girls that gorgeous and fun do relationships, she wrote to me, too sheepish to admit it out loud. (For what its worth, Louise, I barely managed to avoid clicking on Lawrences photos myself, for similar reasons.)