Enlarging the landscape of sexual pleasure.

Good Sex: Feminist Perspectives from the World's Religions. Edited by Patricia Beattie Jung, Mary E. Hunt, and Radhika Balakrishnan. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001, 220 pages. Cloth, $50.00; paper, $20.00.

That sexual pleasure includes physical and erotic satisfaction is a matter of universal agreement, but can sexual definitions expand to include other pleasures, such as meaningful work, healthy children, and delivery from racism and violence? "Surely," writes Mary E. Hunt, one of the editors of Good Sex, Feminist Perspectives from the World's Religions, "these linkages can only deepen sexual pleasure as commonly appreciated, whereas the severing of them from sex steals energy from struggles for social justice" (p. 172). For example, how "good" can sex feel to a wife trapped in an arranged marriage? Or to a woman forced to conceal herself beneath hijab and chador? How does not having enough to eat affect the quality of her sexual pleasure? What about fear of excommunication or being beaten, sold, or killed? Can lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered women create conditions for thoroughly good sex in a world that marginalizes them? Questions like these inform this provocative collection of essays, and the emerging discussion exponentially enlarges the navigable landscape of sexual pleasure.

This is not your usual collection of feminist essays. It ventures well beyond deconstructing traditional sexual scripture: that often-revisited litany of genital stimulation and orgasm, intercourse and reproduction, abuse and dysfunction. Rather, this collection views sexual relationship and pleasure through a multidisciplinary, interreligious, global lens. If this sounds like a grand vision, it is. For the most part, it works, producing a kind of intergalactic discourse on good, if not virtuous, sex.

This is not your usual collection of essayists, either. Eleven women from seven faith traditions and eight cultures (Brazil, China, India, Nigeria, Thailand, Turkey, the U.K., and the U.S.) formed a "Good Sex Group," an intellectual collaboration whose focus was "feminist/womanist/ mujerist." Meeting periodically at conferences in various parts of the globe, they shared their thinking about sexual norms and practices and critiqued each others' evolving work. The resulting book is divided into three parts: "Creation of Desires," "Prices of Sex," and "Reconstruction of Sexualities." Essay topics range from the sexual implications of dress codes, motherhood, and capitalism to inside perspectives on how the world's major religions conceptualize women as sexual beings. Detailed references and an index make the book particularly useful to scholars.

Several essays concern traditional Roman Catholic sexual scripts. Mary Hunt, a Catholic feminist theologian and author, is cofounder of the Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual (WATER) in Silver Spring, Maryland. She tackles Vatican logic on a number of sexual issues, including the evils of homosexuality and the sanctity of motherhood. For instance, she argues on behalf of lesbian rights, "if one mother is great, why aren't two mothers greater?" (p. 160). Patricia Beattie Jung, another of the book's editors and an associate professor of moral theology at Loyola University, Chicago, points out that the Church's devaluation of sexual pleasure for women represents a deep cultural anomaly well beyond the private sphere of sexual relationships. It undermines women's jouissance and ability to relate creatively to the world. A true sexual revolution, she opines, would mean reconstructing relationships in terms of shared delight. Wanda Diefelt, chair of feminist theology at Escola Superior de Teologica in Sao Paulo, introduces the Brazilian counterpart of the custom of male machismo. It is marianismo, after the Virgin Mary, the ultimate mother, supreme sufferer: strong, pure, semi-divine, and in whose name women bear child after child to overcome the guilt of sexual pleasure. Diefelt points out that such "compulsory motherhood" poses its own problems, of course, including the burden of continual childbearing, grinding poverty, and ownership by machismo husbands.

From the viewpoint of Jewish feminism, there is Judith Plaskow, professor of religious studies at Manhattan College, who quotes scripture to support a nonsexist and nonheterosexist discourse about sexual pleasure. However, she warns about entering into "a shouting match in which each party claims God is on its side" (p. 136). Another Jewish feminist, Rebecca Alpert, is codirector of women's studies at Temple University in Philadelphia. In "Guilty Pleasures," she pleads for revisioning sexual desire, not to define a "new erotic" for women, but to remove gender as a characteristic that defines desire.

Essays from other parts of the world address the relationship of sexual pleasure to public policy and discuss the power of discourse to shape national attitudes. Ayesha Imam, a Nigerian scholar of Muslim social structure, writes on the fundamentalism of the Muslim religious right, pointing out how restrictions on women's sexuality affect the whole "ideological terrain" from physical gratification to self-esteem, work, and organization of social space (p. 20). This view is confirmed by Pinar Ilkkaracan, cofounder of Women for Women's Human Rights in Istanbul, who observes that sexual conditions of Turkish women under Islam include honor killing, bride price, and arranged marriages, all practices that could be at least mitigated by more widespread education. Dorothy Ko, a Rutgers University historian and native Chinese, explores the loss of autonomy for women symbolized by footbinding, and looks to a "contemporary ecology of pleasure" that involves both personal and cultural affirmation of the whole body. Grace Janzen, a British Quaker feminist philosopher, makes a case for changes that would limit the exploitation of poor women by pharmaceutical companies, and by such "designer baby" practices as genetic testing and selective abortion.

Radhika Balakrishnan, the third editor of this collection and a professor of economics at Marymount Manhattan College, discusses capitalism as the "world's fastest growing religion." She describes the ambiguities created by transnational commercial interests, from fast-food companies to the media. While these interests are effectively destroying traditional cultures, she posits, they are also opening up new sexual choices for poor women. For instance, "The same media that has India watching Baywatch almost as much as it watches the Ramayana [also feature] young women talking about romantic love and arranged marriage" (p. 55).

The relationship between sexuality and enlightenment is the subject of the essay by Suwanna Satha-Anand, former chair of the philosophy department of Chulanlongkorn University, Bankok. She details the ideological split between sexuality and spirituality in both Buddhism and Hinduism, which holds that attachment to sex--not women--is the enemy of enlightenment. She writes that women are nonetheless feared as sexual partners with the power to doom men to a low-caste rebirth. Buddha, it seems, was a radical critic of the caste system but no reformer of gender relationships, and she quotes him as fanning the flames of this male sexual fear in words that foreshadow Freud's notion of vagina dentata: "`It would be better, foolish man, to put your male organ into the mouth of a terrible and poisonous snake than into a woman ...'" (p. 115).

This book admittedly presents no common conclusions, no nifty how-to section, no ringing call to action. Rather, at this most timely moment in history, it presents diverse and supremely intelligent perspectives on the systematic terrorizing of women through sexual slavery, marital rape, domestic violence, and rules of behavior designed to numb mind, body, and spirit. These practices vary from culture to culture and religion to religion, but they are age-old, they are world-wide, and they are pervasive. They possess in common a genius for dehumanizing and demonizing the "other," in this case women. In short, they are tactics that serve admirably as a template for terrorizing entire nations. At the same time, the major message of the book is one of optimism. It offers eloquent language for redefining sexual pleasure beyond immediate, goal-oriented gratification and for discussing ethical principles that locate sex at the center of public policy, not only in the bedroom or the family law courts.

Good Sex brings a vibrant body politic into the spiritual dimensions of sexual experience. It contains insightful arguments for sexual justice, inviting us to rethink and expand our stock definitions of what constitutes good sex, or even sex itself, and to reevaluate the contexts in which such redefined sex can be enjoyed. This collection of essays deserves to be on the shelf of every library on the planet as well as standard issue in women's study courses and all courses dealing with sexuality, spirituality, and religion. Clinicians would do well to read these essays too, and recommend them to clients for clues to the religious roots of their sexual dilemmas and for mind-opening ways to expand their sexual gestalts to encompass better sex.

Reviewed by Gina Ogden, Ph.D., Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, Wellesley, MA 02481; e-mail: [e-mail].