8.6 /10 1 Votes
Country United Kingdom Pages 360 Originally published 1990 Subject Sexual revolution | 4.3/5 Goodreads Language English ISBN 978-1742198071 Editor Sheila Jeffreys | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Media type Print (Hardcover and Paperback) Similar Sheila Jeffreys books, Gender studies books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Anticlimax: A Feminist Perspective on the Sexual Revolution (1990; second edition 2012) is a book about the sexual revolution by Sheila Jeffreys.
Contents
Summary
Jeffreys argues that the hidden agenda of the sexual revolution of the 1960s was to teach women to eroticize and enjoy their own subordination within heterosexual sex. She contends that heterosexuality is the root of women's oppression and therefore incompatible with feminist struggle. She also critiques recent developments in the women's movement: the mutual influence between gay and lesbian culture which, she believes, has led to the proliferation of role-playing, sado-masochism and lesbian pornography in the lesbian community. Her ultimate conclusion is that women's liberation will never be achieved without destroying the link between sex and power that underpins heteropatriarchy.
Scholarly reception
Anticlimax was reviewed favorably by Ann Jones in the January/February 1991 issue of Ms. Feminist Rene Denfeld found Jones's review to be an example of an anti-sexual trend within feminism.
Feminist Julie Bindel wrote that in Anticlimax, Jeffreys "laid bare the myth of the 1960s sexual revolution".