Relax, it’s just sex?

From the times of the so-called sexual revolution onward, several kinds of US-American and European movements have viewed sexuality, sexual practices, desire, and fucking as revolutionary forces. Sex and politics belonged together, the private and the sexual were political, sex and liberation were viewed as entangled. The firm believe in the liberatory power of sexuality and the feminist realization that the private is political went hand in hand with a culture of discussion in which highly intimate aspects of social life were up for debate. With the Aids crises sex became a question of life or death and queer and sexpositive feminist movements championed a culture where sexual dissidence was viewed as a signifier of avantgarde politics. However, queer and critical race theory started discussing sexuality itself as shaped by power relations, colonial logics, and racializations. With so much at stake, no wonder that feminist and queer debates surrounding sexuality and sexual practice were often highly dramatic, vitriolic, and forged decades of enmity, such as the so-called feminist sex wars, for example.

We're going to read queer theoretical and feminist takes on sexuality, figure out what the feminist sex wars were about, read about sexuality and fascism, vaginal orgasms, contrasexuality, sexuality and colonial rule, consent and censorship…