Review: Screwed: How Women Are Set Up to Fail at Sex

Monday 18 March 2019

This review originally appeared on rabble.ca.

"The man screws; the woman is screwed." This is the assertion at the centre of journalist and television host Lili Boisvert's book, Screwed: How Women Are Set Up to Fail at Sex. First released in French Canada as Principe du cumshot, or The Cumshot Principle, Screwed argues that the dominant principle behind heterosexual encounters is that "desire is a male phenomenon and women are merely its object."

In "Me Hunter, You Prey: Passivity as the Cornerstone of Femininity," the first of seven chapters in Screwed, Boisvert explains: "In pornography, the 'cumshot' is the moment when the camera captures a man ejaculating onto a woman’s body or face. It's the final scene, and leaves the actress covered in sperm," she writes. "This image is a perfect representation of the principle underlying a typical heterosexual relationship: in our dominant conception of sexuality, desire originates with a man and is directed upon the woman."

A small book at only 200 pages, Screwed explores the idea that women's lives are dictated by their status as sex objects, and that from girlhood, women are conditioned to be passive.

Click here to read the complete review. 
 
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