Whether you’re celebrating love or embracing singledom, this Valentine’s Day is the perfect time to make a date with a book. These titles dive into the intricacies of love, from feminist takes on romance to the nuances of sex and sexuality.
The Tragedy of Heterosexuality
by Jane Ward
In a patriarchal system that expects intimacy to coexist alongside inequality, Jane Ward smartly explores how straight people have struggled to overcome alienation and violence in their relationships. Bitch Magazine calls the book “a loving lesbian intervention, a defamiliarized look at what we’ve come to expect from heterosexuality.”
Avidly Reads Guilty Pleasures
by Arielle Zibrak
Arielle Zibrak encourages readers to indulge in their love of romance novels in Avidly Reads Guilty Pleasures. She considers the specifically pleasurable forms of feminine guilt and desire stimulated by documents of femme culture long dismissed as “lowbrow” or “trash,” from from eighteenth-century epistolary novels to present-day romantic comedies, revealing the surprisingly cathartic experiences produced by tales of the patriarchy, domination, and privilege.
Raw: PrEP, Pedagogy, and the Politics of Barebacking
Edited by Ricky Varghese
Part of The Exquisite Corpse series, published by University of Regina Press
As new drugs like PrEP drastically reduce the transmission of HIV, our societal understanding of sex without condoms hasn’t kept up with the science. The authors in Raw show the urgent need to reconsider condomless sex, as it is still illegal for HIV-positive people in many jurisdictions.
Daddies of a Different Kind: Sex and Romance Between Older and Younger Adult Gay Men
By Tony Silva
Over the past several years, the term “daddy” has increased exponentially in popularity—just ask Pedro Pascal. In Daddies of a Different Kind, Tony Silva analyzes the stories of self-described gay and bisexual “daddies” to understand the commonality of age-gap pairings. In doing so, he breaks many commonly held stereotypes about gay and bisexual life and offers an intimate look at these partnerships.
Heavenly Sex: Sexuality and the Jewish Tradition
By Dr. Ruth K Westheimer and Jonathan Mark
Focusing specifically on Orthodox forms of Judaism and offering Dr. Ruth’s singular interpretations, this book answers such questions as: What night of the week is best for making love? How often should couples have sex? Can traditional Jewish notions of sex and sexuality be reconciled with contemporary beliefs? In Heavenly Sex, America’s favorite sex therapist takes readers on a frank and fascinating journey to the heart of Jewish sexuality as she fits twenty-first century sexual mores into an ancient—and lusty—spiritual tradition.
Six Classics of Queer Literature