The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom [Paperback]

Michael Bronski (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0312252870 | ISBN-13: 978-0312252878 | Publication Date: February 23, 2000 | Edition: 1st

Drawing on a half-century of gay history, Michael Bronski brilliantly maps out the fascinating and often ironic interplay between culture and politics. In doing so, he illustrates how and why most heterosexuals need and love certain aspects of gay culture, even though this culture also causes them enormous anxiety and fear. The Pleasure Principle offers a profound and disturbing analysis of the roots—and the damaging results—of Western culture's inability to deal with both pleasure and sexuality, especially as they are embodied for many by contemporary gay culture.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"We are your worst fear," went one 1970s rallying cry among gay activists. "We are your best fantasy." Michael Bronski runs with that paradoxical notion, arguing that "straights" are correct to believe that homosexuals represent a threat to the values of Western civilization--and that's a good thing. What they fear (and resent) most in homosexuality, Bronski argues, is the ability of homosexuals to simply enjoy themselves, to take the pleasures of sexuality without the cultural baggage of reproductive responsibility and social conformity. Consequently, the "unique position" of homosexuals "as sexual outsiders endows them with an unparalleled vision for cultural and social change."

Bronski deftly deals with a dizzying array of post-WWII American history and culture, from the battles between homophile assimilationists and gay liberationists to the media controversy surrounding Pee-Wee Herman's arrest and the rise of lesbian chic. He makes a strong case both for the vitality of gay culture (including sexuality) and the necessity of explicitly recognizing the contributions that it has made and continues to make to mainstream culture. "Only when those in the dominant culture realize that they are better off acting like gay people," Bronski writes, "will the world change and be a better, safer, and more pleasurable place for everyone." --Ron Hogan --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

"For decades," writes Boston gay cultural critic Bronski (Culture Clash), "conservative psychoanalysts, religious leaders, and politicians have charged that homosexuality is about nothing more than having sex; that homosexuals are 'obsessed' with sex; that homosexuality is a 'flight' from the responsibilities of 'mature' sexuality. And they are right." Though occupying an uneasy middle ground between the academic and the mainstream (reflected in its clear but occasionally fussy prose), Bronski's book is important as a long-overdue addition to the discussion of gayness and sexuality in general in the U.S. In devoting the greatest part of his argument to the relationship of gay sex to pure pleasure, and to the lessons in pleasure learned by the rest of society from the gay example, Bronski is able to deal with issues that nearly all sides of the debate have tended to shy away from. Bronski draws compelling and broadly considered parallels between homophobia and anti-Semitism and provides a useful history of the development of ghettos as a way that various societies have handled unassimilable minorities. Though he forthrightly takes on the issue of children and homosexuality, he is at his weakest there for relying heavily on correspondences and opinions that seem inconclusive. Yet his book reminds us that before matters of sexuality?homo-, hetero- or otherwise?can be resolved, sexuality itself and the concept of pleasure must be confronted head on.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Stonewall Inn Editions; 1st edition (February 23, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312252870
• ISBN-13: 978-0312252878
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #218,147 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Michael Bronski is senior lecturer in the Women's and Gender Studies Program and in the Jewish Studies Program at Dartmouth College. He has written extensively on LGBT issues for four decades, in both mainstream and queer publications. His book Pulp Friction: Uncovering the Golden Age of Gay Male Pulps won a Lambda Literary Award in 2003.

Photo: Marilyn Humphries

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Gay "Theory Of Everything", December 30, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom (Hardcover)

The current search by physicicists for a "Theory Of Everything", a short formula that will explain the universe.... comes to mind when reading Michael Bronski's newest and best book.Bronski shows that several aspects of lesbians & gay mens' lives, usually treated as separate subjects (sexuality, psychology, social norms & biasas, discrimination & civil rights) actually make a lot more sense--- when considered together, as a unified whole.He shows that you can't understand why lesbians & gay men are where we are, today, in terms of human rights..... unless you look at more than a little history.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Its "The Principle of Pleasure", October 15, 2003

By 

Michael S. Waren "schoeder" (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom (Paperback)

Author Michael Bronski has written a great and understandable book on the homophobia that heterosexual society feels toward homosexuals. In short, all because gays experience sexual freedom and often live their sexuality freely without fear of repercussions which straight society feels would be the downfall of civilization as know it, especially if everyone adopted this paradigm of thought. This is a myth that gets explicated fully here by Bronski drawing on several examples from history and research. Bronski makes his most insightful points on the "gaze" of the male body, the continued struggles for gays due to the AIDS crisis and the difference between public and private space relating to the "gay ghetto" in straight society. Also Bronski makes a startling revelation that gay society is not assimilating to the straight ideal but that straight society is actually accepting, adopting and drawing from gay culture more. The thought that "the world is turning upside down" due to the experience of sexual pleasure is ridiculous and unfounded. As a scholar interested in media and gay studies I can't stress how important and meaningful I found this text to be. It justifiably has a place in every personal and academic library because within it this book speaks volumes of information.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A gay "Theory Of Everything"; Bronski proves that you can't, December 23, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom (Hardcover)

Many books divide the subject of lesbian & gay male or 'queer' liberation, into isolated parts. The legal part. The sexuality part. The cultural change part.Michael Bronski's new book shows that-- that's arbitrary, and doesn't respect the historical facts.You CAN'T understand why we are so late in gaining civil rights against housing & employment discrimination in most States, and federally.... if you isolate that question from the sexual and the cultural history areas.Bronski shows, step by step, that those "soft" (he doesn't use that term) areas of gay studies-- are the things you need to understand, to explain the "hard" areas (he doesn't use that term, either) of L/B/G human rights and legal struggles .... And, to some extent, vice versa.The newly popular wave of "conservative" or quasi-closety authors, who isolate the human rights issues and avoid the realities of who we are, by saying things like "We're exactly the same as heterosexuals" ... can never explain why our situation is what it is, or how homophobia and discrimination can be dealt with ... without the wholistic approach, that Michael Bronski has now carried further, than any other gay liberationist author.