false 71247 123732 0375719326 9780375719325 81 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171862273m/123732.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171862273s/123732.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/123732.Against_Love_A_Polemic 3.56 288
Love is, as everyone knows, a mysterious and all-controlling force, with vast power over our thoughts and life decisions.

But is there something a bit worrisome about all this uniformity of opinion? Is this the one subject about which no disagreement will be entertained, about which one truth alone is permissible? Consider that the most powerful organized religions produce the occasional heretic; every ideology has its apostates; even sacred cows find their butchers. Except for love.

Hence the necessity for a polemic against it. A polemic is designed to be the prose equivalent of a small explosive device placed under your E-Z-Boy lounger. It won't injure you (well not severely); it's just supposed to shake things up and rattle a few convictions.]]> 71247 3.56 562 134 2003 283773 0375424172 9780375424175 35 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173404823m/283773.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1173404823s/283773.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/283773.The_Female_Thing_Dirt_Sex_Envy_Vulnerability 3.55 145 Against Love. With “the gleeful viperish wit of Dorothy Parker” (Slate), Kipnis now offers a fresh and provocative assessment of the female condition in the post-post-feminist world of the twenty-first century. For every advance toward sexual equality on the part of women in recent years, she argues, some new impediment just “seems” to appear. Ironically, feminism ran up against an unanticipated opponent: the inner woman.

An ambitious and original reassessment of feminism and women’s ambivalence about it, The Female Thing brims with bracing and funny social observations informed by psychological acuity. For all the upbeat “You go, girl” slogans, women remain caught between feminism and femininity, between self-affirmation and an endless quest for self-improvement, between playing the injured party and claiming independence. Feminism is bedeviled by the same impasses and contradictions it seeks to rectify. But rather than blaming the usual suspects–men, the media–Kipnis takes a hard look at culprits closer to home, namely women themselves and their complicity in upholding male privilege, even as they resent men deeply for it. Which makes relations between the sexes rather thorny at the moment, and Kipnis serves up the gory details of the mutual displeasure between men and women in painfully hilarious detail.

In the tradition of The Feminine Mystique and The Female Eunuch, this is a pathbreaking work. As audacious as it is historically and socially grounded, The Female Thing explores age-old quandaries: the war between the sexes, what women “really” want, and to what extent anatomy is destiny after all.]]> 71247 3.56 562 134 2006 353392 0822323435 9780822323433 6 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174014313m/353392.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174014313s/353392.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/353392.Bound_and_Gagged_Pornography_and_the_Politics_of_Fantasy_in_America 3.61 59 71247 3.56 562 134 1996 353391 0816619972 9780816619979 0 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/353391.Ecstasy_Unlimited_On_Sex_Capital_Gender_and_Aesthetics 3.70 10 71247 3.56 562 134 1993