In the #MeToo age, US debate over licit sex has split into two camps: one insists that consent solves the problem of sexual coercion, while the other equates sexual pleasure with the patriarchal erotics of silence and mystery. Manon Garcia rejects both positions, arguing that consent is a faulty legal threshold but essential to the joy of good sex.
"We Are Not Born Submissive is the first in-depth philosophical exploration of female submission. Focusing on Simone de Beauvoir and more recent feminist thinkers, Manon Garcia argues that to understand female submission we must invert how we examine power and see it from the woman's point of view. Historically, philosophers, psychoanalysts, and even some radical feminists have conflated femininity and submission. But we can grasp the ways gender hierarchies shape women's experiences only by taking account of women's lived experiences--their economic, social, and political situations--and how women adapt their preferences to maintain their well-being. Ultimately, Garcia says, women don't actively choose submission. Rather they consent to--and sometimes take pleasure in--what is prescribed to them through social norms within a patriarchy." --