Sex. Birds do it. Bees do it. Even educated trees do it. And of course you and I. But we

don't talk about it enough. I'm James Butler and you're listening to Navara FM and if

you're a regular listener, you won't have heard my voice in a while. It's good to be with

you again. Is there a politics of sex? Over 100 years of feminist thought tells us yes,

but we're still reluctant about going there. And some, perhaps with good reason, are very hesitant

to admit it ought to be a discussion among the left or that beyond certain basic prescriptions

around consent, violence and power, politics ought to stop at the bedroom door. The politics of sex,

brings us face to face with profound issues of power, equality and even how we should order our

societies. And perhaps even asks us to look unflinchingly at the ways in which desire or entitlement

or belief in ownership can upturn basic principles or undermine what we thought to be politically

secure. How a society treats sex, both heterosexual and dissident, might tell you quite a lot

about what that society doesn't want to tell itself. Amir Srinivasan's book The Right to Sex

deals with these questions head on. It's a book about how we might think about sexual violence,

about the treatment of women by men and by other women, and by institutions of power and in private

relationships. It grew out of an essay published in the London Review of Books on Insells,

often young men who feel entitled to sexual pleasure and who hate and kill women they perceive

as withholding it from them. But it's about much more besides, about the law, about justice,

education, and how the women's movement has thought about sex and power. A little while ago,

I travelled down to Oxford where Amir holds the chitually chair in social and political theory

to talk about all these questions. It is a deep, far-ranging and rigorous conversation and I am

delighted to share it with you.

So, I said I would start with asking what was the kind of obvious question and it's, you know,

...