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200 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2022
And, from Deborah Spar's book, “In purely economic terms,….women are not better off giving away something they once bartered. No, women do not gain by losing the power they once had to force men to buy their favors .... a trio of leading economists [found]…the advent of abortion and contraception in the U.S. may actually have worsened the fate of women, or at least weakened their ability to bargain with men. Specifically, they demonstrate that just as women gained the power to prevent pregnancy so, to, did they lose the power to commit men to marriage in the case of an unwanted pregnancy.” And, a young woman who wants a relationship but does not want to engage in sex will be at a competitive disadvantage to her willing peers.
"This ideal liberal subject can move to wherever the jobs are because she has no connection to anywhere in particular; she can do whatever labour is asked of her without any moral objection derived from faith or tradition; and, without a spouse or family to attend to, she never needs to demand rest days or a flexible schedule. And then, with the money earned from this rootless labour, she is able to buy consumables that will soothe any feelings of unhappiness, thus feeding the economic engine with maximum efficiency" (9).
"And the liberal feminist appeal to consent isn't good enough. It cannot account for the ways in which the sexuality of impressionable young people can be warped by porn or other forms of cultural influence. It cannot convincingly explain why a woman who hurts herself should be understood to be mentally ill, but a woman who asks her partner to hurt her is apparently exercising her sexual agency. Above all, the liberal feminist faith in consent relies on a fundamentally false premise: that who we are in the bedroom is different from who we are outside of it" (131).