Product Review

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

Emily Witt is single and in her 30s. 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 we all know, things are more complicated than that. Love is rare and frequently unreciprocated. Sexual acquisitiveness is risky and can be hurtful. And generalizing about what women want or don't want or should want or should do seems to lead nowhere. Don't our temperaments, our hang-ups, and our histories define our lives as much as our gender?

In Future Sex, Witt explores Internet dating, Internet pornography, polyamory, and other avant-garde sexual subcultures as sites of possibility. She observes her encounters with these scenes with a wry sense of humor, 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 and an inspiring new model of female sexuality - open, forgiving, and unafraid.