ABSTRACT
As an introduction to Women, Sex, and Madness, this chapter presents the idea that we live in a culture of madness around sexuality, one where the fundamental terms in which women learn to become sexual beings operates as if on a precarious, shaking fault-line. After reviewing the central arguments of the book—that madness is not one of individual psychopathology and individual reactions, but instead one of cultural madness—this chapter examines the moral panics of sexuality, the political frameworks that govern sexuality, conflicts around women’s sexual liberation, and tensions about sexual knowledge-making and sex education. I then consider the figure of the “madwoman” and instead argue for the centrality of mad (that is, angry) women as a way to understand gendered and sexual precarity. The chapter ends with a consideration of the importance of notes and narratives, mixed methodologies in the book, and the necessity of multiple, sometimes conflicted, voices in the shaping of the field of feminist psychology and feminist storytelling.
