PositiveArt ReviewSrinivasan is one of those philosophers who is, first and foremost, an exceptional prose stylist – an exemplar of what academic writing, specifically, both could and should be. Her writing is unadorned and perfectly-tuned, like listening to someone play the piano incredibly well: at times her sentences resonate with an almost luminous clarity, reducing some horrendously tangled rat-king of philosophical concepts and material concerns to an insight which beams out perfectly in the relations between her paragraphs ... Unlike most analytic philosophy, Srinivasan’s book is angry – icily calm and clear, yes; at times almost terrifyingly restrained; righteously and appropriately angry – but angry, nonetheless ... Srinivasan’s feminism is ultimately utopian – her analysis never seeks to reconcile itself to a world which is anything other than finally, universally free. In this, The Right to Sex is an almost uniquely unedifying book. Its effect is not to leave the reader feeling confident and optimistic and sure of what is to be done, but rather to catch a glimpse of the horrible severity of reality, as Srinivasan sees it. In a way, she writes like Nietzsche (though with a lot less storm and stress): the point here is to undo you; you’re going to have to build yourself back up ... There were points when I felt Srinivasan let herself have things too easy ... If Srinivasan is right about how bad sex is, under presently-existing conditions, then really: who would ever want to have it at all? ... Sex may well be an appropriate site for moral and political critique. But there are times when, let’s face it, none of that can possibly feel like it matters. Real, good sex can only be experienced as a zone of reprieve.
