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Review: Talk Dirty to Me

Editorial Review - Kirkus Reviews

Tisdale (Stepping Westward, 1991, etc.) leads an enthusiastic amateur's tour through sex in America (with a few brief forays abroad). In an inviting expansion of her controversial 1992 Harper's magazine essay of the same title, Tisdale offers a trek through sexual inhibitions, expressions, assumptions, and questions (for instance, if everyone thinks about sex so much, why do so few feel comfortable discussing it?), arriving at an increasingly fashionable pro-sex feminism. Americans are so conflicted about sex, she says, because they're caught endlessly between obsession and avoidance. Tisdale, fighting avoidance, confronts the subject head on. She checks out sex clubs, sex toy stores, pornography shops, and erotic novels, citing everyone from Roland Barthes to Susie Bright. Ancient Greece, the story of Adam and Eve, Freud, Jesse Helms, and Basic Instinct convince her that we're a nation of guilty prudes, arrested adolescents who can't sate our lust for adult material. We're ""sex drenched and sex phobic."" Tisdale indicates that the fear starts with men, but that women can help fix it. ""Women guiding the sexual drive of men changes them, gentles the institutions men have made to cope with their feelings toward women."" One area she sees women reinventing is pornography. The chapter on this subject is by far the most controversial and at times tedious. Coming down hard on anti-porn feminists like Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin (even more than on the Religious Right), she argues for tolerance and maintains that the heterosexual nuclear family, reproductive legislation, and patriarchal society in general are likely to do more damage to women than any X-rated films. Finally, she reaches the unoriginal but hopeful point that sexual freedom contains the seeds of significant social change. ""The center will not hold...if radical sexuality works."" Just about everything you always wanted to know about sex but were afraid to ask. Fluidly written, sexy, probing, personally revealing, and wise.

User reviews

Review: Talk Dirty to Me

User Review - Rooks - Goodreads

A fun read, if a little obvious. Read full review

Review: Talk Dirty to Me

User Review - Goodreads

Not the type of book I usually pick up, but it looked intriguing, since I like books about human behavior. This was a great read, an eye-opener on some levels, and helped me mature in my views on ...

Review: Talk Dirty to Me

User Review - Pascale Plänk Steig - Goodreads

This book caught my attention because it was pleasant to the touch, the cover had a smooth plasticized feel; the wordless cover featured a black and white photo of a hand holding a nectarine or a ... Read full review

Review: Talk Dirty to Me

User Review - Alexander - Goodreads

Very sexy, in an analytic sense. Read full review

Review: Talk Dirty to Me

User Review - Goodreads

There was lots of interesting information in this book and was reminiscent of my sex, gender, culture class in college. Towards the end i felt that it was disorganized and jumped around from paragraph to paragraph.

Review: Talk Dirty to Me

User Review - Nico Our Lady of the Sacred Bonechuck - Goodreads

SEX IS REAL GREAT KEEP ON. Read full review

Review: Talk Dirty to Me

User Review - Xiaomin Zu - Goodreads

I couldn't finish reading this book. It's kind of boring. I agree with her on some points but somehow feel that she missed something very essential to sex and love. I don't know yet what it is that ... Read full review

Review: Talk Dirty to Me

User Review - Avolyn Fisher - Goodreads

At times I thought Tisdale was running verbal laps. Going round' and round' without saying anything at all. Just yapping away using phrases to sound intelligent but were unnecessary. I hate to be ... Read full review

Review: Talk Dirty to Me

User Review - Molly - Goodreads

I liked this- very well-written and personal, and is just what it says- a philosophy. Very thought-provoking. I wish it was a bit more current (she wonders if there will be a day when there are gay ... Read full review

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