Sexing the Millennium [Paperback]

Linda Grant (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 19, 1995

“Grant is passionate yet blessedly free of rhetoric and gush. And how welcome is her evocation of the [sexual revolution’s] optimism –– even its loopy naivete –– at a time when AIDS stamps eros with death, when the religious Right uses illness to stake sexual terror.” — The Village Voice

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In her frequently provocative odyssey through the 1960s sexual revolution and its aftermath, London-based freelance journalist Grant explores a window of sexual freedom that opened briefly between the advent of the Pill and the AIDS epidemic. She begins by tracing the roots of modern sexual liberation back to the 17th-century English Ranters, anti-Puritan pacifists who viewed erotic freedom as a liberating agent. Wending through hippie communes, open marriages and sexual freedom advocacy groups from London to San Francisco, Grant pays particular attention to the Catholic Church's declining hold on sexual mores, to the women's health movement and to the 1970s conservative backlash. Calling for a renewal of female sexuality that will overturn the assumption of "women's monogamy and men's promiscuity," she vaguely sketches a sexual future allowing for long-term nonmonogamous relationships that combine love and commitment with casual encounters.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

In certain circles, discussion of the sexual revolution elicits cynical, arched-eyebrowed expressions of "what sexual revolution?" The perceived backlash against women in recent years has caused many to question the success of the sexual revolution that swept the United States and Britian during the past 30 years. Grant attempts to analyze this brief period in our history from a millenarian, socially optimistic perspective. Beginning in the 18th century with the Ranters, an anarchist organization who believed in sex as a liberating agent, Grant leaps enthusiastically ahead two centuries to the hippie idealism of the Sixties counterculture, then moves to the current postmodern obsession with voyeurism. Aside from Grant's failed attempt at a "happy ending," this work paints a staggering landscape of sexual liberation and, ultimately, repression. Recommended for academic libraries with social history collections.
- David R. Johnson, Arnold LeDoux Lib., Louisiana State Univ., Eunice
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 282 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press (June 19, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802133495
• ISBN-13: 978-0802133496
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,807,314 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Linda Grant was born in Liverpool on 15 February 1951, the child of Russian and Polish Jewish immigrants. She was educated at the Belvedere School (GDST), read English at the University of York, completed an M.A. in English at MacMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario and did further post-graduate studies at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada, where she lived from 1977 to 1984.

Her first book, Sexing the Millennium: A Political History of the Sexual Revolution was published in 1993. Her first novel, The Cast Iron Shore, published in 1996, won the David Higham First Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Prize. Remind Me Who I am Again, an account of her mother's decline into dementia and the role that memory plays in creating family history, was published in 1998 and won the MIND/Allen Lane Book of the Year award and the Age Concern Book of the Year award. Her second novel, When I Lived in Modern Times, set in Tel Aviv in the last years of the British Mandate, published in March 2000, won the Orange Prize for Fiction and was shortlisted for the Jewish Quarterly Prize and the Encore Prize. Her novel, Still Here, published in 2002, was longlisted for the Booker Prize. Her non-fiction work, The People On The Street: A Writer's View of Israel, published in 2006, won the Lettre Ulysses Prize for Literary Reportage. Her Booker Prize shortlisted novel, The Clothes On Their Backs, was published in February 2008. Linda's most recent book, The Thoughful Dresser was published in March 2009.

She has written a radio play, Paul and Yolande, which was broadcast on Radio 4 in October 2006, and a short story, Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, part of a week of stories by Liverpool writers commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Beatles, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, broadcast in July 2007.

She has also contributed to various collections of essays. Her work is translated into French, German, French, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Czech, Russian, Polish, Turkish and Chinese.




Awards

The Clothes On Their Backs Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2008
Winner South Bank Show Award

The People on the Street:
A Writer's View of Israel Lettre Ulysses Prize for Literary Reportage

When I Lived in Modern Times Winner, Orange Prize for Fiction 2000
Shorlisted: Jewish Quarterly Prize
Encore Prize


Remind Me Who I Am, Again Mind Book of the Year 1999
Age Concern Book of the Year 1999


The Cast Iron Shore David Higham First Novel Prize
Shortlisted Guardian Fiction Prize

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sexual freedom, no power, October 30, 2007

By 

Luc REYNAERT (Beernem, Belgium) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sexing the Millennium (Paperback)

Linda Grant's nostalgic book reflects on the beginning of the age of sexual freedom starting with the marketing of the Pill.

The Pill had evidently a major impact on female sexuality. There was no fear of pregnancy any more. Motherhood became a choice. Women became more confident, more independent, and freer. The old socio-sexual order of women servicing men's physical needs was over at least in the Western world.

The Pill also attacked the power of the Church, who commanded that women convert themselves into mere brood sows (H.L. Mencken).

For the freedom movement, the State had no business legislating matters of personal conscience. It forced the Establishment (which controls the State) to liberalize the laws on contraception, divorce, abortion and homosexuality.

But why has the sexual revolution globally failed? Why was it only `a Molotov cocktail thrown at the Establishment'? Why is the exploitation of women (rape, prostitution, slave labor, sexual dependency) still rampant and abortion still under threat?

The human genes don't change in a few generations. As the author states, `women are attracted to power, men to youth and beauty'.

Power is life. The average lifespan of `The People of the Abyss' (Jack London) (20th century) was 29 years. Youth and beauty (= health) are life, because they only can transmit one's genes.

In a capitalist system power equals wealth, equals economic domination. The system is still marching on and is now embracing the whole world.

Linda Grant's book reflects mainly on the `individual', not on broader socio-economic aspects of sexual freedom. Her female hero is Madonna, a most sympathetic, but only, an entertainer.

A worth-while read.