Cake

My friend Emily the Beautiful Brainy Long-Lashed Sexpert cowrote this book. So don't just take it out of the library, go purchase yourself a brand new copy, and then Emily will have some pocket money to buy me expensive cocktails!

I lent my own copy to a chick at my old gym, and I guess she must have liked it, since she never gave it back. Since she was the most muscular, tough-ass Russian boxer I've ever met in my life, I was not about to bug her a lot about it.... Therefore, I can't flip through to refresh my memory about the details, but from what I recall this was a very fun read. I think it's an essential gift for the younger heterosexual lady who's maybe not enough of a hippie to own Our Bodies, Our Selves, and who isn't exactly hanging out around a lot of radical queer feminist sex industry organizers or vibrator saleswomen or anything like that.

This is not to say that the rest of us wouldn't also enjoy this book -- I certainly did -- only that that particular girl NEEDS this book, and may actually be harmed if she does not have it. I'd also recommend this to women of an older generation who're curious about what the girls are up to these days, because it's a good example of the feminist-informed, sex-positive attitude that champs like Emily are helpfully promoting for young female citizens of today's world. This book's basic message is that women need to be empowered to own and express their own sexuality, which should be an obvious point, but really is not, for several well-rehearsed reasons.

What's valuable about Cake is that it expresses a message of female sexual empowerment that is widely mouthed in the mainstream media these days, but in Emily's book it's presented minus the toxic, contradictory, misogynist bullshit accompanying and confusing this philosophy in your average women's magazine. Since I already felt I had permission to masturbate, watch porn, and also call myself a feminist while wearing backseam stockings and high heels, reading this book didn't change my life. But there are undoubtably a ton of women out there who do need to learn these lessons, and for the rest of us, it's a very helpful reminder. You basically can't live in our culture without being very screwed up when it comes to sexuality, and periodic refresher courses in what sex should be (pleasurable) are key.

The part of this book that really was educational for me was the section on pornography, which seemed very well-researched and reliable. I know little about this topic, and since this book disappeared from my shelf before I was able to follow through on its recommendations, I guess I'll have to buy myself another copy at some point