Unwanted Advances: Sexual Paranoia Comes to Campus - Softcover

Laura Kipnis

 
9781788732574: Unwanted Advances: Sexual Paranoia Comes to Campus

Synopsis

Feminism is broken, argues Laura Kipnis, if anyone thinks the sexual hysteria overtaking American campuses is a sign of gender progress.

A passionate feminist, Kipnis was surprised to find herself the object of a protest march by student activists at her university for writing an essay about sexual paranoia on campus. Next she was brought up on Title IX complaints for creating a 'hostile environment.' Defying confidentiality strictures, she wrote a whistleblowing essay about the ensuing seventy-two-day investigation, which propelled her to the center of national debates over free speech, 'safe spaces,' and the vast federal overreach of Title IX.

In the process she uncovered an astonishing netherworld of accused professors and students, campus witch hunts, rigged investigations, and Title IX officers run amuck. Drawing on interviews and internal documents, Unwanted Advances demonstrates the chilling effect of this new sexual McCarthyism on intellectual freedom. Without minimizing the seriousness of campus assault, Kipnis argues for more honesty about the sexual realities and ambivalences hidden behind the notion of 'rape culture.' Instead, regulation is replacing education, and women's hard-won right to be treated as consenting adults is being repealed by well-meaning bureaucrats.

Unwanted Advances is a risk-taking, often darkly funny interrogation of feminist paternalism, the covert sexual conservatism of hook-up culture, and the institutionalized backlash of holding men alone responsible for mutually drunken sex. It's not just compulsively readable, it will change the national conversation.

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About the Author

Laura Kipnis is an American cultural critic and essayist. A feminist intellectual, her work focuses on sexual politics, gender issues, aesthetics, popular culture, and pornography.

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Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780062657862: Unwanted Advances: Sexual Paranoia Comes to Campus

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  0062657860 ISBN 13:  9780062657862
Publisher: Harper, 2017
Hardcover