Sexually Empowered Reading List
Don't just fuck the patriarchy, learn how to fuck outside of it!
An empowered reading list that teaches you how to have sex outside of patriarchal paradigms.
A list of books I have read and am going to read that help me understand my sovereign and spiritual sexuality as a someone who experience’s life (force) through the female body.
This list will expand, be commented on an updated.
A lot of these books deal with heavy and triggering themes, please look after yourself and check in with yourself about when it feels right to delve into these topics and when it does not. Change happens incrementally over time, you do not have to read all of these at once unless you feel fantastically and incredibly resourced!
Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good - Adrienne Maree Brown
The Right To Sex - Amia Srinivasan - A very well researched and good intersectional account of sex, power and consent.
Uses of The Erotic: The Erotic As Power - Audre Lorde
Queen Audre! What else can I say? She knew before all of us that the pornagraphic has a lot to answer to. Our bodies are a unique universe of sensual sensation and emotional depth, this is a pre-verbal language of intution we speak with our bodies. The erotic is not sex, it is a pleasurable and sensational charge that passes through all of us that drives us yes to have sex but also to love, to cry and to change the world!
Sluts: The Truth About Slut Shaming and What We Can Do To Fight It - Beth Ashley
Did you know that slut shaming can cause sexual dysfunction in women? That being an inability to get aroused or feel sexual sensation in our genitals. Beth has written a research backed book that explores these themes.
Sensual: Connect Deeply, Express Freely, Love Intimately - Henika Patel
The Case Against The Sexual Revolution - Louise Perry
Ok, this one is definetly to be read with a grain of salt. There are some good points made in this book but she sluts shames young women at the end and is quite terfy and swerfy (I didn’t know before I read the book but I advocate for reading people who don’t always align with our world view).
However in terms of validating (a lot of) women’s experiences about emotionally crippling themselves in order to access sexual relationships with men I think there is a lot of truth here. Her point that “having sex like a man” doesn’t lead to sexual empowerment for women feels true for me, but a lot of her other arguments do not stand up for me and are extremely conservative (pontentially soft fash?) rather than liberatory.
The Joy of Consent - Manon Garcia
Men and women cannot consent to sex in the same way. It is just not possible and Garcia sophisticately explains why. Consent is not enough of an indicator of good, mutually beneficial, liberated sex for all genders.
Bodywork: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative - Melissa Febos
I mean the WHOLE book but particularly the chapter called ‘Mind Fuck: Writing Better Sex’
In Body Work Febos, describes a historic and cultural pressure on women to prioritize “the feelings and the desires of others - sometimes total strangers-” over our own particularly when it comes to sex.
Favourite quote from this is “Here;s the thing: they were already calling me a slut. Before they ever said the word. Before I let any boy touch me.”
Because being a slut isn’t about whether a woman has sex or not or whether she lets herself be touched by men. It is a social category and class system men use for women, which allows their sexual privilege to dominate over the emotional and physical care and protection of women and girls bodies and minds.
Sensuous Knowledge: A Black Feminist Approach For Everyone - Minna Salami
Conversations on Love - Natasha Lunn
Women’s Anatomy of Arousal: Secret Maps to Buried Pleasure - Sheri Winston
Did you know it is possible to orgasm as a woman or as a person with a vagina from stimulating the throat through oral sex? This book busts many myths about our sexual culture like: men are the horniest gender and teaches us tips and tricks on how to explore our bodies more sensually for more pleasure on our own and with partners.
Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation - Silvia Federici
Anyone that knows me will have heard me speak about this book at one point. If you want to understand about where the control of women’s bodies and the exploitation of our labour comes from and how it relates to capitalism this is your book. It is an academic text so it is dense, but very informative. If dense written text is not for you there is a great podcast that delves into the history and themes of this book called The Book on Fire Podcast linked here.
Great reading list, thanks! 🙏🏽
Thanks for liking Sophie x