Queer Pleasure Without Apology
Format:Paperback
Publisher:State University of New York Press
Publishing:1st Jun '25
£25.50
This title is due to be published on 1st June, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
Approaches stigmatized sex with candor and curiosity, interweaving experience and analysis to better appreciate the intricacies and intrigue of queer desires and pleasures.
Queer theorists have long defended stigmatized sexual desires and behaviors by demonstrating how they are either fundamentally harmless or have some higher political, psychological, or social value. While such defenses may be useful in combatting homophobia, the mandate that sex be either benign or virtuous has impeded our ability to apprehend the nuance and variety of the things that turn us on and get us off. Queer Pleasure Without Apology refuses this mandate, approaching stigmatized sex with curiosity rather than judgment. Greg Goldberg examines his own "bad" desires and behaviors-from anonymous sex to fetishization to playing games-to show how critics keep getting them wrong. Heady and humorous, Queer Pleasure Without Apology challenges us to think about sex in a way that is as playful and perplexing as sex itself.
"Once I started reading, I couldn't stop. An astute theorist and vivid storyteller, Greg Goldberg offers an original, witty, and bold treatise on desire, intimacy, and sexuality—a work that explores pleasure apolitically, on its own terms. The writing is stimulating, satisfying, and unapologetically queer. I love this book." — Tony E. Adams, author of Narrating the Closet: An Autoethnography of Same-Sex Attraction
"Finally, a heterodox critique of ethical sluttiness that isn't secretly conservative! Queer Pleasure Without Apology imagines freedom and desire distilled—no moral or political superiority needed. Goldberg has no use for defensiveness as he interrogates the seeds of pleasure and the function of intimacy (or lack thereof). It's refreshing and downright humbling. I feel implicated by this book in the best way." — Nona Willis Aronowitz, author of Bad Sex: Truth, Pleasure, and an Unfinished Revolution
"Queer Pleasure Without Apology is the best book in Queer Studies I’ve read in a long, long time. Eschewing apology, defense, or the inflated claims typically made on behalf of sex, Goldberg writes about the nitty-gritties of erotic practice with refreshing candor and bristling intelligence. The book is itself a generous and recurring source of pleasure." — Tim Dean, James M. Benson Professor in English, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
ISBN: 9798855802771
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
160 pages