Author(s): Laurie Penny

Gender & Sexuality | Politics

This is a story about how modern masculinity is killing the world, and how feminism can save it. It’s a story about sex and power and trauma and resistance and persistence. It’s a story about how you can track the crisis of democracy against the crisis of White masculinity, and how the far right is rising in response to both. It’s a story about a social change. And at the centre of that story is one simple idea: we are in the middle of a sexual revolution. Laurie Penny charts how, in our era of crisis, we are also witnessing a productive transformation: profound and permanent changes in how we define gender, sex, consent and whose bodies matter. These changes threaten the social and economic certainties that form our world. They threaten existing power structures, and they undermine the authority of institutions from the waged workplace to the nuclear family. No wonder the far right is fighting back so hard. Sexual Revolution is a hand grenade of a book: both a manifesto for social change and a story of how feminism can save us.

Review: Laurie Penny's searing critique of male dominance, violence and supremacy traces the link between everyday sexism and the far right's project of biopower. Penny's quiet but incandescent anger burns through every page, guiding with wit and erudition us towards solutions that involve a hitherto discounted possibility: that men might change -- Paul Mason
Laurie Penny's electric new book boldly announces that the feminist sexual revolution is here; we are in the midst of a 'fundamental reimagining of gender roles and sexual roles, work and love, trauma and violence, pleasure and power.' Captivating, emphatic, and deeply inspiring, Sexual Revolution lifted me greatly by envisioning the possibilities of our moment -- V (formerly Eve Ensler), author of THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES and THE APOLOGY
Brilliant; vital; revolutionary -- Kate Manne
Laurie Penny is a true gift. Their excoriation of the patriarchy and its continued harm against all humans is life-giving, and perhaps only matched by the exceptional warmth and good humour they express while making great strides to change the world -- Clementine Ford, author of FIGHT LIKE A GIRL
I can't really think of another writer who so consistently and bravely keeps thinking and talking and learning and trying to make the world better -- Caitlin Moran (praise for Laurie Penny)

Author Biography: Laurie Penny is an author, journalist and screenwriter from London. They are a culture writer for Wired magazine and have written for the Guardian, New Statesman, New York Times, Longreads, Time Magazine and many more. They are a graduate of the Nieman Foundation Fellows' programme at Harvard University and the Clarion West Writer's Workshop. Sexual Revolution is their ninth book.

An urgent, hopeful, and unapologetically radical new book about consent, democracy, desire and the future of sexual politics from award-winning writer Laurie Penny.