Product Review

A funny, fresh, and moving antidote to conventional attitudes about sex and the single woman

Emily Witt is single and in her thirties. Up until a few years ago, she still envisioned her sexual experience “eventually reaching a terminus, like a monorail gliding to a stop at Epcot Center.” Like many people, she imagined herself disembarking, finding herself face-to-face with another human being, “and there we would remain in our permanent station in life: the future.”

But, as many of us have found, things are more complicated than that. Love is rare and frequently unreciprocated. Sexual experience doesn’t necessarily lead to a future of traditional monogamy―and why should it? Have we given up too quickly on the alternatives?

In Future Sex, Witt explores Internet dating, Internet pornography, polyamory, and avant-garde sexual subcultures as sites of possibility. She observes these scenes from within, capturing them in all their strangeness, ridiculousness, and beauty. The result is an open-minded, honest account of the contemporary pursuit of connection and pleasure.