Reviews for Female perversions

The average rating for Female perversions based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-02-17 00:00:00 Mark Davis i especially liked the way the author connects the individual aspects of perversions with the larger social structure they grow in - and which breeds them: sex is political. it has to do with power. so, it is only when we question the social, political and, above all, economic mechanisms that trigger our perverse behaviors that we will be able to evolve into freer, more self-fulfilled individuals.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-09-01 00:00:00 Tacara Baumler I have been carting this book around (along with hundreds others) since its publication more than 20 years ago, but have only now gotten around to reading it. Frankly, I wish I hadn't bothered. I'm not sure what I was expecting from Kaplan's book, but I'm sure it wasn't the rambling, largely aimless Freudian dissertation circling around the loose centre of sexual 'perversion.' It starts promisingly enough, with a rough catalogue of major recognised outré sexual behaviours, and an attempt to categorise just what it is she'll be talking about in the text. From there it just kind of spirals out of control, though, taking in sociology, anthropology, feminism and a BIG dose of literature (the editors wisely excised the subtitle 'The Temptations of Emma Bovary' from the front cover, surely out of concerns of alienating those readers who might be engaged by the main title). The common thread (as suggested by the subtitle) throughout is Flaubert's novel Madame Bovary, used as a sort of template for Kaplan's expostulations on the roots of female perversion. This loses a lot if the reader hasn't read Bovary, naturally, but she does a decent job of keeping us up on who everyone is and what they do. Unfortunately, the whole thing is so painfully overwritten, with sentences and paragraphs that follow labyrinthine paths of punctuation and syntax, it's hard to follow or care most of the time just what concepts we're meant to take away. This may sound like this was a bad book. It wasn't. It just needed better focus, simpler language and less allusion to...well, everything in the world. The concept is solid and Kaplan clearly has the knowledge and erudition to pull off a better examination of the subject matter, this just wasn't it. In the 20-odd years since Female Perversions was originally published, there has been enough change in the world -- and in the world of our sexual understandings -- to merit another stab at the topic. Here's hoping it works out better than this one did.