"A sexually desirous woman may become both the fulfilled wish and the hated object, and a man can simultaneously be avid and judgmental; aroused and punitive."
For 2023, I want to try something new on here. I want to start talking about books and literature and what I'm reading. I've never been a big fan of giving books star ratings since my personal system really doesn't mean much, but because I do read a lot and I am an author I think talking about the books will be a good way to keep my page more interesting.
One of the last books I read was Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again by Katherine Angel. It's a short essay book about consent and desire and what it means for sex research and the law and the personal. I heard about it after watching a YouTube video essay where it was used as a source. And it piqued my interest since I write a lot about women and sex and consent. Dark Romance is a genre that is especially concerned with consent and non consent and what it means, after all.
Instead of directly answering the question of "what is consent?" and "what is desire?" the essay chapters in this book asked more questions and presented scenarios and really parsed through each reason why these questions are so complicated.
It definitely left me with more questions than when I began, but it also made a lot of sense on why the books I read, about gritty romances with dark themes and blurred lines, are so intriguing.
Our understanding of the feminine reception and male desires are kind of terrible with how women, even if they do desire sex, are still required to play hard to get as to not seem too eager or easy or slutty. I was raised in a no means no household, but it wasn't until I read this book that I truly understood why some men and people still wouldn't take no as a definitive answer. Because socially the people who won't listen to no believe women don't know what they want or they won't say what they want or they just don't care.
"Women, it seems, are physically turned on by everything."
But this book also made me feel better about writing a heroine like Mia Thorton who does go after what she wants and sometimes changes her mind and gets herself into the situations where these questions need to be explored, and not just briefly or in abstract theory but in a safe fictional land where no real people get hurt while we read it and figure out for ourselves what we truly desire.
Have you read this book? Have you read similar books or have any book recommendations as to what I should read next?
"What is a man, after all, without desire?masculinity is libido, appetite, excitement."
https://www.instagram.com/p/CnMvy0brPLK/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=