The Sex Obsession

Janet R. Jakobsen is Claire Tow Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University where she has also served as Director of the Center for Research on Women and Dean for Faculty Diversity and Development. She is the author of Working Alliances and the Politics of Difference: Diversity and Feminist Ethics, and the co-author, with Ann Pellegrini, of Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance.

"It has become common sense that U.S. politics around issues of sex, race, and gender are an intransigent political struggle between Christian conservatives and secular libertines. Yet how true is this narrative-and whom does it serve? Jakobsen argues this simplistic dichotomy of religious traditionalists vs. secular progressives shores up, rather than dismantles, persistent inequalities ... Highly recommended for those seeking greater clarity about how sex, race, and gender are mobilized in American political life." * STARRED Library Journal * "Janet Jakobsen's The Sex Obsession is a tremendous book; it makes a major contribution to our understanding of US culture. In four crisp chapters, Jakobsen convincingly demonstrates that many of our most strongly held assumptions about politics and sex are false-and also dangerous. She skillfully highlights the ways in which narratives of 'progress' produce skewed understandings of US culture and politics. Jakobsen's analysis of the complicated relationships between secular ideologies and religious ones is especially compelling. The Sex Obsession is both timely and brilliant."" -- David Harrington Watt, author of Antifundamentalism in Modern America "Jakobsen presents an interesting, loosely structured series of cases to support the thesis that American politics is characterized by a tension between a white, Protestant, and evangelical conception of the family animating conservatives and a secular mimicry of that ideal animating Liberals." * Choice * "An essential companion to this moment and all that troubles it, The Sex Obsession begins with the beguiling question, why is sex everywhere in US policy debates? It then refutes the commonsensical answer: because of religion. By showing how the secular/religious binary clouds an understanding of the dense intersections between myriad social forces, Janet Jakobsen offers a brilliant, riveting, and incisive study full of transformative conceptions of the possible and previously hidden passages to social change. Read this book to imagine life differently."" -- Mary Pat Brady, author of Extinct Lands, Temporal Geographies: Chicana Literature and the Urgency of Space "Shreds our common-sense narratives about sexual politics in the United States. The author dismantles the misleading opposition between religious regulation and secular freedom and leads us through a dynamic intersectional analysis to a provocatively thrilling call for theoretical promiscuity and relational perversity in the service of an expansive practice of social justice. This meticulously argued, groundbreaking book is a must-read for all of us engaged in building another world from the ground up." -- Lisa Duggan, author of Mean Girl: Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed "This original and deeply learned book provides a compelling examination of sexual politics over the past five decades in relation to religious intolerance as well as the possibilities for an expansive ethics of care. Jakobsen brings together queer, feminist, critical race, postcolonial, disability, and religious studies to analyze how and why sex has come to overshadow other progressive values for evaluating moral wellbeing, such as economic equality, racial justice, opposition to war, and environmental health. Jakobsen's argument is irrefutable: until we recognize the complex relations among the sexual, the economic, and the political, we undermine the prospects for alliance building and social justice." -- David L. Eng, author of The Feeling of Kinship: Queer Liberalism and the Radicalization of Intimacy "In The Sex Obsession, Janet R. Jakobsen offers a masterful analysis of a question that has drawn the attention of many commentators on US religions: "Why sex?" ... Should become required reading for scholars." * Journal of the American Academy of Religion *