Customer Reviews

Yes Means Yes: Getting Explicit About Heterosex

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A proudly post-post-modern academic 'Sexpert', Kath Albury totally relishes the irony of her pop-media job-description and loves her subject to bits. This original, impressively researched book is really smart and really funny -- totally fascinating fun from cover to cover. It's kinda "discourse with laughs" (wait'll you learn about "the Whipple Spot"), but way smarter than just that. Albury leaves no stone unturned in this smooth-reading and sparkling argument for a truly liberated female sexuality in the post-feminist age, and backs it up with some eye-opening research from some of the more exotic corners of pop culture, a solid knowledge of feminist history, and a sprinkling of anecdotal evidence as well. If you don't hail from academia yourself (I don't), fret not! Albury is an earthy, life-loving young populist and makes her material deliciously accessible. Not afraid to take a healthy tilt at some of the icons of feminism's past generations, she busts the female (AND the human) spirit free of a whole lot of obsolete "thou shalt nots" -- her logic is delicious by the way -- in a gutsily optimistic journey round the sexual subway. I found "Yes Means Yes" to be just what its title suggests -- a truly liberating book by a truly liberated woman. It's our choice: why shouldn't life feel good? This book sure made this reader feel that way. And I loved the Mills & Boon cover artwork too.

This is a witty, smooth-reading and brilliantly researched post-feminist argument in favour of guilt-free moral, spiritual and above all sexual freedom in its most optimistic sense. Never has the noble pursuit of corporeal contentment in all its intriguing permutations been expounded in a more erudite, down-to-earth and lighthearted form. That's not to say the subject lacks solemnity: what should take greater priority than freedom? Full of fabulous facts, anecdotal evidence and incisive argument, this book makes a canny academic discourse not only accessible but entertaining for everybody of either (any) gender. It's really funny and really fascinating. The author, a committed and apparently lifeloving feminist, doesn't let the cause itself stand in the way of her occasional arguments against various restrictive theories of previous generations. She takes educated tilts at many of the movement's most famous exponents with calm and occasionally hilariously incisive logic. It's highly educational and engaging, and to me points an articulate way forward for anyone interested in casting off the shackles of sexual dogma. No stone, incidentally, seems to have been left unturned. Intellectual hedonism at its best -- I LOVED THIS BOOK!