Women, sex, and pornography : a controversial and unique study /

Women get turned on by silk lingerie, they like being touched, and Marilyn Monroe used to enjoy acting the slattern, eating in bed and throwing chop bones down among the sheets. This is the news of this book--news to the Australian clubwomen Faust lectures to, perhaps, but not to us. Presumably, it's meant to reassure: Yes, there is a woman's pornography (in romantic fiction, that is). Yes, there is a difference between male and female sexuality, a difference we must all recognize if we hope to answer her question, ""Are men and women compatible?,"" in the affirmative. Male and female sexuality, she explains, ""exist like 'His' and 'Her' sweaters: the measurable difference is slight but it is highly significant in its own context."" Leading up to that non-conclusion is a lot of simple-minded prose, a rehash of everything from Kinsey to King Kong, some of it just routine, some of it wrong. Examples? Try her on rape: ""For rape to occur, the social controls over biology must have failed."" Or on female sexuality: ""The difference between process-orientation in female eroticism and performance-orientation among males may [?] even derive . . . from women's subordinate social, economic, and political status."" Or on women and pornography: "". . . The basic fact about women's treatment of pornography would fit on a postage stamp: among women, porn is a non-issue."" Doubtful that Laura Lederer (Take Back the Night, p. 892) or many other American feminists would agree with that one. A curious collection of claptrap, with a distinctly 1950s cast. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.