Mariana Valverde

EXPLODING MANY TRADITIONAL notions, Sex, Power & Pleasure is a controversial and excit-ing work which adds a new. creative dimension to our under-standing of women's sexuality and women's lives. Highlighting both the experiential and the theoretical, Valverde explores with wit and insight such issues as pornography and censorship, eroticism and power. Not a "sexual cookbook" or a "how-to-do-it" book, Sex, Power & Pleasure engagingly examines the varying ideas and implicit assumptions that most of us have about sex and sexuality. Valverde argues that women are not simply victims of social conditioning but are, both in the mainstream and on the fringes, redefining the relationship between pleasure and ethics in our culture.

"Accessible and always interesting,... [it] contributes to the idea that our sexuality is not some sort of static, inherent 'given, that it is possible to discuss the 'problems' it presents in this culture, and that, above all, we do not need to be afraid to do so. Valverde is impressively well readi and her approach combines an eclectic theoretical approach wa insights gained from personal experience."

The Whig Standar

"Discussing the ways in which desire is socially constructed disputes the libertarian notion that sex is purely individual and anything goes between consenting adults; [it] is a fresh and welcome contribution to the feminist discussion of sexuality."