ABSTRACT

In this series of provocative essays on culture, art, and film, former Screen editor Mandy Merck explores the paradoxes of sexual representation. Whether writing on romantic fiction or hardcore pornography, on robots or sex goddesses, Radclyffe Hall or the Marquis de Sade, she finds the perversions and deviances. Illustrated.

chapter |10 pages

introduction

part |48 pages

case histories

chapter |12 pages

the critical cult of Dora

chapter |14 pages

a case of AIDS

part |59 pages

Portraits

part |73 pages

heroines

chapter |41 pages

the Amazons of ancient Athens

chapter |15 pages

Lianna and the lesbians of art cinema

chapter |15 pages

from robot to romance

part |74 pages

Sexual politics

chapter |22 pages

the fatal attraction of Intercourse

chapter |31 pages

the feminist ethics of lesbian s/m