A Comedic Discussion of Sex, Power, & Money

A WRITER'S WIT
I see women as oppressed, but I don't see them as victims; I see them rising all the time. I see them as very strong.
​Grace Paley
Author of ​Long Walks and Intimate Talks
Born December 11, 1922

G. Paley

My Book World

Pascoe, Sara. Sex Power Money. London: Faber, 2019.

​I first saw Ms. Pascoe on BBC America’s Graham Norton Show and realized I must read this, her second book. In it she not only expresses her opinion on feminism but does so in a manner that is by turns hysterically funny, sobering concerning the reality for sex workers, and an honest reveal of her own life. She spends a great deal of time debating (with herself) the ins and outs and rights and wrongs of pornography. One keeps reading both because of her sharp humor and her incisive research.
 
Some nuggets:

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“With our beloved prairie voles the female has her ovulation induced by the smell of male urine. It’s a sure sign there’s a male nearby and so her body gets ready for mating. The exact opposite of a human female getting a whiff of urinals in a nightclub and her vagina falling off in disgust” (47).
 
“When I was at primary school there was a Tango advert where an orange blob man tapped people on the back, slapped them round the face and yelled informatively, ‘You’ve been Tangoed.’ This went whatever things went before they went viral. Crazy? Popular? It went crazy popular. The kids in my school did it all day long. We slapped and got slapped, and we loved it even though it hurt. We were unified by it for several cheek-smarting days. Then the advert got banned, orange blob man was elected President of the United States and the fun was over” (164).
 
“I don’t think that paying for someone’s dinner is explicitly  transactional—buying a homeless person a sandwich doesn’t mean you’re expecting a hand job in the park later. Your manager pays for lunch at a meeting without expecting you to drop your trousers, your mum cooks you a roast every Sunday with no sexual undertones whatsoever—it’s clear people can provide sustenance for each other without tensions and obligations. But where dating is concerned, expectations and implications could be different for the people either side of the table” (300).

Having heaped my praise upon Ms. Pascoe’s efforts, I wonder how combining humor with highly researched material concerning sex can work. Is the scientific a bit tainted by her insouciance, or is her humor, likewise, deadened a bit by the scientific? You read. You judge. I loved it!

NEXT FRIDAY: My Book World | Paul Carlson's The Plains Indians