The Trouble With Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life

Rating:
Summary: If you care about progressive sex politics this is a must.
Review: With the sophistication of a leading political theorist and public philosopher, with clarity and wit, Michael Warner explains why those who care about public policy and morality should take as their point of departure the dignity of those at the bottom of the scale of respectability: "queers, sluts, prostitutes, trannies, club crawlers, and other lowlifes". It begins with a brilliant analysis of the ethical tradition queer culture has built up over the last fifty years, one that has been dismissed by mainstream moralists. He shows that civilization's role isn't just to preserve "natural" sexuality, but to create new types of sexuality through innovations like the pill, condoms, dildos, video, Viagra, hormones, vibrators, and others we can't predict. Little can be shown to be transhistorical about sex, he says, except men raping women. The goal of policy makers should be sexual autonomy for everyone, not just protection under the law for married couples, "good gays", and children. On the gay marriage debate, Warner separates the legal benefits of marriage from its mythology and shows how those benefits can be distributed among unmarried couples and single people, both gay and straight, without the discriminatory effects of marriage under the law. He goes on to show why public sexual culture, from pornography to bathhouses, is something to value, something whose accessibility is worth fighting for. Finally he shows how sexual shame grips U.S. heath policy, reducing it to little more than an abstinence program, where safer sex education lags far behind other developed countries. This is a life-changing book, I can't recommend it strongly enough if you care at all about progressive sexual politics.