1장
The Sexual Revolution's Unfinished Business
We've been told that women today are sexually liberated - free to express desire, enjoy casual encounters, and claim their pleasure. Yet something doesn't add up. When a high school teacher's private nude selfie is stolen by a student and distributed, she's fired rather than supported. When a woman politely declines a man's advances at a bar, she's murdered. Despite decades of supposed progress, most women still experience that familiar flinch of fear when male sexual attention turns their way. The gap between our cultural narrative of female sexual empowerment and women's lived experiences reveals what author Jaclyn Friedman calls "fauxpowerment" - the illusion of sexual freedom that masks continued oppression. This bestselling feminist analysis has been praised by thought leaders from Jessica Valenti to Soraya Chemaly for its unflinching examination of how our sexual culture continues to limit women's autonomy while pretending to celebrate it. As we navigate a world where Fifty Shades of Grey portrays abuse as empowerment and pop songs package sexism with catchy beats, Friedman's work offers a roadmap for genuine sexual liberation - not just for women, but for everyone.
2장
The False Promise of Fauxpowerment
Fauxpowerment isn't just frustrating - it's dangerous. When women are encouraged to "free themselves" sexually in a world that hasn't fundamentally changed, they face real consequences. Consider Shaunna Lane, who tried a private nude photoshoot to boost her body confidence, only to have an ex post the images on revenge porn sites with her personal information. Even after paying $400 to have them removed, the photos continued circulating, leaving her terrified to leave her apartment.
Some experts respond by telling women to protect themselves - don't take nude photos, don't dress provocatively, don't claim the identity of "slut." But this approach falls into the same individualistic trap as fauxpowerment advocates. Telling women to narrow their sexual lives to avoid misogyny means accepting misogyny as inevitable. It dangerously divides women into "smart" and "foolish" camps, reinforcing virgin/whore dichotomies while wasting energy that could be used fighting the system.
Even "good girls" aren't protected - a fifteen-year-old rape victim saw her Facebook photos of normal teenage happiness used against her in court to "disprove" emotional damage. Meanwhile, society demands women smile while Katy Perry anthems tell us to "own the night."
The sexual revolution promised freedom but delivered a world where women's sexuality remains "a volatile but precious resource that needs to be properly managed." Parents would "rather their daughters have cancer than sex," as evidenced by resistance to HPV vaccination. The revolution's benefits weren't equally distributed - the Pill remained largely available only to middle-class white married women through private doctors' discretion, leaving poor women and women of color vulnerable.
Even women with contraception access found the revolution's promises unfulfilled. British journalist Virginia Ironside recalled that with pregnancy fears removed, "no" always meant "yes" to men who "continued to satisfy their own needs and never for a moment considered whether the women they were having sex with found it pleasurable." Women lacked both cultural power and personal knowledge to demand satisfying sex.
While feminists fought internal battles over issues like lesbian inclusion, Hugh Hefner saw an opportunity to legitimize Playboy through strategic alignment with women's liberation. He funded abortion rights campaigns, filed amicus briefs for Roe v. Wade, and hosted ERA fundraisers at the Playboy Mansion. This allowed him to coopt the movement to liberate women's bodies while selling it back to men at a markup. By wrapping exploitation in feminist rhetoric, Hefner created respectability while perfecting fauxpowerment: selling an illusion of sexual revolution that visually centered women but left men firmly in control.
3장
The Political Battleground of Female Sexuality
The commodification of women's liberation permeated mainstream culture through shows like Charlie's Angels, which perfectly represented how the sexual revolution was stripped of transformative power. The Angels appeared modern - smart women who could fight and fire guns - but remained sex bombs who could simultaneously bring down bad guys while arousing them. This formula - capable women who remained sexually available for male consumption - created "modern" women who weren't threatening to men.
As the sexual revolution's benefits seemed to accrue mainly to men, feminists split over how to respond. The extreme position was held by separatists who believed cutting off all contact with men was the only path to freedom. More mainstream were the "radical feminists" who argued pornography was inherently harmful and should be prohibited. Their position was appealingly simple at a time when the anti-rape movement was gaining ground, but it stigmatized women who enjoyed pornography or worked in the industry.
The feminist fracturing wasn't what crashed the Second Wave - larger forces were at play. Reagan rode to power on counter-countercultural backlash and nostalgia, legitimizing evangelical Christians as a political force. The AIDS crisis spread terror about homosexuality and unconstrained sexual desire, creating fertile ground for abstinence-only education.
Despite Reagan's efforts to turn back time, popular culture continued pushing boundaries. Madonna humped a veil on MTV while celebrating her lack of virginity, and Salt-N-Pepa ordered listeners to "Push It." These countercultural celebrations often drew from Black or gay culture as straight white Americans traded hippie ideals for Reagan-era respectability.
Though feminism wasn't dead, it was fractured. Some white feminist leaders sought common ground with the new political majority, with NARAL shifting to libertarian arguments for abortion rights rather than insisting on the state's affirmative duty to ensure access - effectively abandoning poor women, mostly women of color.
In response, Black feminist activists like Loretta Ross coined the term "reproductive justice" - framing reproductive freedom not just as privacy but as a human right requiring economic means to raise children, safety from violence, freedom from coerced sterilization, and full healthcare access. This framework allowed for addressing interconnected issues: "It allows you to talk about the prison-industrial complex, gentrification, sterilization, immigration, all in one conversation. Which you couldn't do under the pro-choice framework."
As Riot Grrrl gained cultural power as the soundtrack to Third Wave feminism, the Spice Girls emerged with a sanitized "Girl Power" slogan that stripped the movement of its patriarchy-challenging politics. By the late 1990s, the Spice Girls had hundreds of licensing deals and earned a record-setting $49 million in 1998, the same year Bikini Kill disbanded. Notably, men wielded power over each of these projects, suggesting something fundamentally wrong with men profiting from every prominent Girl Power message.
4장
The Mystery of Female Desire
Despite being in the twenty-first century, we still lack basic scientific understanding of female sexuality. The internal clitoral structure wasn't even discovered until Helen O'Connell's MRI studies in the late nineties, decades after male anatomy was mapped. The clitoris - the only body part whose sole purpose is pleasure - extends far beyond the visible nub with arm-like structures deep inside the pelvis.
Many assumptions about female sexuality are historically inaccurate. While today's "common wisdom" suggests men are naturally more sexual than women, for most of Western history through the nineteenth century, women were considered the ones with uncontrollable sex drives. These myths harm everyone. Cultural products like the book "Porn for Women" (showing men doing housework) reinforced the idea that women don't really want sex. Modern assumptions about what women want sexually - focusing on faces not genitals, sensuality over "crass fucking," or sex only in loving relationships - are largely unsupported by research.
Few scientists study female sexuality, but Meredith Chivers has made it her life's work. Her research on "sexual concordance" reveals fascinating disparities: men's physical arousal largely matches their self-reported arousal and aligns with their stated orientation. Women, however, respond physically to almost all sexual stimuli regardless of orientation, while reporting arousal to a much narrower range. This "concordance gap" is widest in heterosexual women. Chivers notes this research gap stems from male-centered priorities: "If knowing more about clitoral structure was going to get more men laid, I'm sure we'd know more about it."
Chivers rejects simplistic conclusions about the concordance gap that treat women as liars and men as normal. Her hypotheses suggest revolutionary possibilities: perhaps straight men's stress response to gay porn indicates they're less sexually functional than women, who show no similar stress watching lesbian porn. Maybe vaginal lubrication evolved as a "preparation hypothesis" to reduce injury during rape. The gap might even be adaptive, giving women "increased flexibility to think clearly even when physically aroused."
Women pay dearly for society's ignorance about female sexuality. Chivers points out that "vagina is just a space" surrounded by organs - essentially an absence defined by where "the penis goes," highlighting how female anatomy is conceptualized through a male lens. The media compounds these problems, with underpaid journalists lacking scientific expertise sensationalizing research for clicks. Fortunately, younger women are using social media to educate each other, while innovations like the Lioness vibrator help women track their unique arousal patterns.
5장
Media's Sexual Double Standards
When female celebrities express sexuality publicly, they face impossible expectations to simultaneously represent empowerment and modesty. Beyonce standing pantless before giant "FEMINIST" letters sparked debate between those who saw liberation and those who saw male voyeurism. But these debates miss the point: no single image can satisfy all representation needs, and we should focus instead on who controls media creation.
While representation matters, fixating on individual examples overlooks systemic issues. Beyonce didn't construct her sexuality in a vacuum but within a culture that hypersexualizes Black women and a music industry requiring female sexuality as currency. Though female artists can subvert objectification, they often sell "fauxpowerment" as rebellion while their fans would face real-world consequences for similar behavior. Behind the scenes, men dominate leadership across media industries, creating a world where female bodies are primarily presented as ornamental, sexual rewards, or obstacles.
Rather than calling for censorship of objectifying content, we should demand a diverse media ecosystem. Like a grocery store stocked only with junk food, our current media landscape offers limited options. A healthier range would include women of all types being portrayed with sexual agency without punishment, sexual violence treated as horror rather than plot device, and women shown as complex beings rather than mere accessories.
Despite claims that "sex sells," films passing the Bechdel test (featuring two named female characters talking about something other than men) actually provide better financial returns than those failing it. Yet Hollywood executives resist change, clinging to gender stereotypes and protecting their existing pipelines.
In today's media landscape, curation determines what most people see. Traditional gatekeepers-overwhelmingly male editors, producers, and critics-still control what gets greenlit and promoted. Only 22 percent of "top critics" on Rotten Tomatoes are female. Meanwhile, newer "peer review" systems are easily manipulated by motivated minorities (like those attacking the female Ghostbusters reboot) or plagued by implicit bias, with male reviewers consistently downrating female-oriented content.
Self-appointed "family values" groups like One Million Moms and Parents Television Council act as additional gatekeepers, treating all depictions of sexuality as dangerous. But their moral panic misses the point-frank depictions of sexuality aren't harmful; sexualization is. The American Psychological Association found that objectifying women leads to eating disorders and self-esteem issues for women while giving men unrealistic sexual expectations.
6장
Economics of Sexual Control
Our sexuality is deeply intertwined with economic forces in ways both visible and hidden. The porn industry exemplifies this relationship - independent producers who create more thoughtful content struggle against financial discrimination while MindGeek, a near-monopolistic corporation, dominates the industry by prioritizing volume over quality. Credit card processors charge porn sites 12-16% per transaction instead of the standard 2-4%, disproportionately burdening small producers.
MindGeek exploits this system by aggregating stolen content on free "tube" sites, devaluing all porn production until they could buy up competing companies. Their business model not only shapes our sexual imagination but endangers performers by sidestepping regulations that ensure consent and safety.
When we leave our sexual culture to the "free market," we face troubling consequences beyond pornography. Neoliberalism - the belief that unregulated capitalism produces optimal outcomes - treats women's sexuality as worthless while corporations control our sexual discourse with profit as their only motive. Facebook bans ads suggesting sex can be pleasurable while allowing dangerous diet pills and weapons, preventing feminist sex shops from reaching audiences.
Market feminism convinces us that buying sexy products isn't just fun-it's activism. But empowerment that can be purchased is always individualistic, a temporary day pass out of systemic problems that not everyone can afford. These companies require and cultivate our sexual insecurity, constantly creating new "problems" to solve.
Meanwhile, women spend on fauxpowerment from a position of economic disadvantage, earning just 83 cents for every dollar men make-with women of color earning even less. Money forces countless women into unwanted sexual situations, whether through sex work or staying with partners they can't afford to leave. The market will never liberate us-we must resist the capitalist narrative that equates financial assets with human value.
7장
Religion's Sexual Politics
Despite constitutional separation of church and state, right-wing Christianity exerts extraordinary influence over American sexual politics. This influence traces back to 1976 when evangelical leaders mobilized against IRS actions targeting Bob Jones University's racist policies, eventually pivoting to abortion as their rallying issue. The resulting Religious Right has since worked with Republicans to oppose sexual freedom while defending institutional racism, despite numerous hypocrisies in their platform that contradict Jesus's teachings.
The 2012 Hobby Lobby case dramatically expanded the Religious Freedom Restoration Act from its original purpose, allowing businesses to impose religious beliefs on employees and spawning discriminatory state laws targeting LGBTQ people-a strategy with roots in segregation-era tactics. In response, the nontheistic Satanic Temple has launched creative protests and lawsuits challenging whether "religious freedom" truly protects all beliefs or just conservative Christian ones.
Federal welfare dollars are even diverted to promote heterosexual marriage through TANF block grants, despite no evidence these programs reduce poverty. Voter suppression through gerrymandering has helped maintain this power, though courts have sometimes intervened. Meanwhile, state-level battles over abortion rights continue through TRAP laws, personhood amendments, and waiting periods, all while lawmakers claiming to protect children simultaneously cut social services that would actually help families.
Cherisse Scott's Sister Reach embodies a different approach, rejecting power dynamics and domination while embracing multiple biblical narratives rather than singular interpretations. Sister Reach has developed resources including a reproductive justice faith toolkit and built a cohort of over 200 clergy nationwide who participate in Bible studies addressing modern issues like slut-shaming and domestic violence.
Scott forcefully challenges the Christian Right's hypocrisy in forcing women-especially poor women and women of color-to have children while showing no concern for those children afterward. Ultimately, Sister Reach focuses not on opposing the Religious Right but on healing "church hurt" and affirming that people can "still love God and God can still love you" regardless of sexuality, abortion history, or other life choices.
8장
The Harm of "Protection"
Our culture's obsession with "protecting" women from sexuality often backfires, making us more vulnerable rather than safer. From parental restrictions to laws against teen sexting, these interventions frequently isolate women and girls from support systems while failing to hold men accountable for actual violations.
When Friedman was a teenager, her parents' strict rules left her with no one to confide in about sexuality except her boyfriend-fortunately a decent person, but this isolation could have made her vulnerable to manipulation. Similarly, laws meant to protect teens from sexting consequences often treat consensual sharing and coerced distribution equally, traumatizing girls through interrogations by adult authorities.
The "rescue narrative" treats women as damsels incapable of making decisions, while the concept of "sexualization" creates a harmful binary between "innocent" girls and "corrupted" ones. This framework particularly harms girls like "Briana," who was shunned by her community after a boy shared her coerced photo, while the boys who distributed images faced minimal consequences.
The sexualization narrative falsely portrays innocence as a natural state where girls have no sexual curiosity or desire, creating a harmful division between "good girls" and "sluts." This framework is inherently classed and raced, primarily focusing on white middle-class heterosexual girls. It does girls a disservice by portraying them as passive blank slates needing protection from media that might "brainwash" them, rather than recognizing their ability to critically engage with sexual messages.
The "rescue narrative" creates what sex workers call a "whorearchy," ranking women's value based on sexual purity, with "high-class call girls" at the top and street workers (often poor, trans, or women of color) at the bottom. Even anti-trafficking efforts frequently treat sex workers as helpless victims rather than autonomous individuals, denying them basic respect and choice while failing to provide promised resources.
Organizations like HIPS in Washington DC demonstrate a better approach through harm reduction, helping sex workers make safer decisions while respecting their autonomy. Criminalization only perpetuates stigma, making sex workers more vulnerable to abuse and preventing them from accessing other employment. Decriminalizing and destigmatizing sex work would allow women to set better terms for themselves, as other intimate service providers do.
9장
Rebuilding Masculinity
The current conception of masculinity in America is fundamentally unstable, defining itself in opposition to women and requiring constant protection from the possibility that women are complex, three-dimensional people. This fragility manifests in everything from men refusing to buy products marketed to women to violent backlash against feminism.
Despite this defensiveness, masculinity isn't inherent to men but rather a shifting set of cultural standards that many men feel insecure about meeting. This insecurity can be dangerous - men with something to prove about their manhood perpetrate most violence in the world, including mass shootings that frequently target women and children.
Even men who would never commit violence often maintain their sense of masculinity by diminishing women - firing attractive employees they "can't help" being attracted to, avoiding dating women their own age, or feeling threatened by women who outperform them intellectually. Studies show men rate "attractive" and "sweet" as priorities for partners but "independent" and "strong" for their daughters.
The paradox of masculinity reveals itself in two contradictory truths: individual men's gender identity can be undermined by something as trivial as buying tampons, yet the rigid culture of masculinity remains deeply entrenched throughout society.
This toxic masculinity replicates itself particularly around sexual violence, where men either give each other passes for rape or actively pressure each other into it. The former includes judges who refuse to sentence "respectable" rapists, police who disbelieve victims, and men who look away when teammates or friends commit assault. The latter consists of fraternity brothers creating "rapebait" guides and pick-up artists selling courses on overcoming women's resistance.
Building a complete narrative about toxic masculinity requires acknowledging that men are also its victims. Men suffer at the hands of other men through hazing rituals, homophobic slurs targeting vulnerability, and racial stereotypes that either demonize or emasculate them based on ethnicity.
Research across 78 studies found that men who value power over women and "playboy behavior" experience higher rates of depression, body image issues, and substance abuse, yet are less likely to seek help for these problems.
Better models of masculinity exist everywhere. When Trump dismissed his sexual assault comments as "locker room talk," high school athletes in Oregon posed in "wild feminist" t-shirts to reject that characterization. Research from Kenya shows the impact of alternative masculinity models: a program teaching boys about consent and intervention reduced sexual violence by 20% simply by offering an alternative vision of manhood that values women as equals.
Prevention rather than intervention offers the most promising path forward. Research suggests middle school is an ideal intervention point, as boys' ability to resist traditional masculine norms weakens by high school. Maine Boys to Men has expanded from high school programs to middle school curricula, reaching over 500 boys in its first year and 1,000 in its second.
10장
Transforming Sex Education
Sex education in America exists in a troubling paradox: we meticulously prepare students for rare emergencies like fires with regular drills, yet provide minimal preparation for the sexual situations they'll inevitably face, despite staggering rates of sexual violence among teens.
Sex education in America is a chaotic patchwork of inconsistent policies. Only 24 states and DC mandate any sex education at all, while 26 states leave it to individual districts with minimal oversight. Even in supposedly progressive districts like Juneau, Alaska, students receive minimal sex education - typically just one or two weeks during freshman year of high school, with little meaningful content.
This contrasts sharply with countries like the Netherlands, where age-appropriate sex education begins in kindergarten and continues every year. Dutch teens have their first sexual encounters at similar ages to American teens but report "wanted and fun" experiences and overwhelmingly use contraception, resulting in low STI rates and one of the world's lowest teen pregnancy rates.
American schools' silence about sexual pleasure particularly harms girls and queer students, reinforcing the dangerous notion that sex isn't for them. When schools refuse to acknowledge pleasure while simultaneously allowing sexualization and harassment to flourish, they're teaching girls to expect abuse.
Sexual harassment and assault are normalized in American schools. As one thirteen-year-old girl described: "They grab you, touch your butt, and try to touch you in the front, and run away, but it's okay... I never think it's a big thing because they do it to everyone." Heather Hlavka's research at Marquette University found girls routinely expect abuse and rarely report it, believing men aren't in control of their desires and fearing backlash if they speak up.
School dress codes further reinforce these harmful dynamics, disproportionately targeting girls while teaching all students that girls' bodies are shameful and boys can't control themselves. Girls of color and larger-bodied girls face particularly harsh enforcement, with Black girls 5.5 times more likely to be suspended than white girls.
After twelve years of education trying to keep teens from wanting sex, we send them to college expecting them to become well-functioning sexual adults overnight. The result is the paradox of "hookup culture" - a collective myth with no evidence that today's young adults are having more sex than previous generations.
College students vastly overestimate how much sex their peers are having while reporting little sexual activity themselves. This delusion creates pressure to have emotionless sexual encounters, though as sociologist Lisa Wade found, most students secretly desire meaningful relationships.
Real progress is happening, though unevenly. The CDC evaluated 140 sexual assault prevention programs and found only three effective ones: RealConsent (for college men) and two programs designed for middle schoolers. A separate study found the Green Dot bystander intervention curriculum successfully reduced sexual violence in high schools. This evidence confirms what should be obvious: college is too late to begin healthy sex education.
11장
Joining the Resistance
The epilogue reflects on how cultural change happens through persistent action rather than grand visions. The story of California's "Yes Means Yes" law, which seemed impossible when first proposed but passed in 2014, spreading to New York and influencing campus culture nationwide, demonstrates how change-makers aren't magical visionaries - they simply refuse to accept that change is impossible.
Several key principles emerge about creating change: Always give people the chance to do the right thing before becoming adversarial. Identify vulnerabilities in powerful institutions - like targeting Facebook through its advertisers. Break overwhelming goals into smaller steps. Celebrate incremental victories to avoid burnout. Support existing organizations if you're not an organizer yourself. Share whatever skills you have, from graphic design to baking.
Live your values daily by supporting politicians who aren't beholden to the Religious Right or by creating alternative media that depicts women with real sexual power. Remember Rabbi Tarfon's wisdom: "It is not yours to complete the work, neither is it yours to desist from it." Do what you can - nothing more and nothing less.
The path to genuine sexual liberation requires "articulating an irresistibly bold vision of pleasure and freedom that's truly for everyone." It means valuing "genuine pleasure, consent, health, connection, and sovereignty over commodification, competition, and 'sexiness.'" Most importantly, it means recognizing that we don't need to fix the internet or any single institution - we need to fix the culture that expresses itself through all these channels. Only by addressing the root causes of sexual oppression can we create a world where everyone's sexuality is respected, celebrated, and truly free.
