There is a tendency today to neglect the issue of sexual pleasure or even to surrender it in favour of a politics of asceticism. Sexual pleasure, it is argued, keeps us caught up in unproductive codes of sexuality in terms of liberation and repression, fuels the nihilism of enjoyment of capitalism and prevents us from recognising other more enabling modes of engagement between self and other. While this ‘anti-sex’ position, or impasse, opens new and possibly rewarding venues of exploration, it is the contention of this book that giving up sexual pleasure is, and perhaps always will be, premature. It is like giving up the fight. Like letting the big boy take your toys and letting him keep them because you know he will always try to steal them again or, to pursue a more mature metaphor, to surrender the flows of desire because they are repeatedly channelled in the service of social and political control.

This book, therefore, is about the importance of sexual pleasure. It works to underline and explore, not so much the relevance of pleasure on an individual and personal level, but rather the political, cultural and conceptual significance of such pleasure. In the past decades, sexuality has been an important political question relating to issues such as the rights to and for various sexual identities and practices, sexual equality, sexual violence and abuse, reproductive rights and sexual health.