Words by Zing Tsjeng. Photography by Liz Seabrook

What do we do about all the bad sex in the world? That’s the question posed by Birkbeck academic and author Katherine Angel in her nonfiction book Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again. She argues that the options are currently limited to the “yes means yes” movement that emphasises confident affirmations of desire—but that alone doesn’t guarantee good sex. 

Katherine, with her PhD in the history of psychiatry and sexuality, uses consent culture as the starting point for a far more complex, probing conversation about the vagaries of desire and the ambiguities of sex—weaving Me Too, postfeminism, the Spice Girls, Kinsey sex research and French filmmaker Claire Denis into an utterly original treatise on female desire and sexual ethics. 

Zing Tsjeng

Why did you choose to focus on issues of consent and desire? What was it that interested you?

Katherine Angel

I’ve been thinking and writing about sexual desire and women for a while, but there was something about what happened in the last few years and in the wake of Me Too that just made me feel like this was such an important moment, a kind of opportunity. I felt kind of disturbed by how some of the old misapprehensions just seemed to be slipping under the radar again. So when I would hear stuff about consent in the media, on the one hand, I agreed with it: yes, of course, consent is absolutely vital. But sometimes, the tone of those discussions seemed to be really intent on portraying sexuality as something straightforward. And I am just not sure that helps us if we deny how difficult it actually is. So it came from feeling like this is an important moment, and we’re in danger of really fucking it up. (laughs) And we probably still are! 

Zing Tsjeng

You mentioned old misapprehensions—which ones were you spotting?

Katherine Angel

Partly the rhetoric about how in order to be a self-respecting and strong woman, you have to know your desire. In some of the stuff about consent, you (see) all these injunctions on women to be really clear and assertive. I find that really problematic, partly because it’s just empirically not true. Many women—and a lot of men—don’t experience sexual desire in that way. It’s much more complicated. There’s a lot of shame, inhibition and hesitation. Of course, women should be able to say what they want about their sexual desire in whatever loud and perverse ways they want to, but making that kind of a requirement of their safety is just empirically wrong. 

Zing Tsjeng

What was the kind of environment for you growing up, and what were the messages you were taught about sex and consent if anything?

Katherine Angel

It was quite a void. I don’t know what it was like growing up in the UK in the 80s, 90s, but in Belgium and France, I felt extremely unsafe. It felt like once you became a teenage girl, it was just this onslaught of attention and comments—and also physical; I was groped a lot. 

It’s so difficult to look back and see clearly, but I feel like I was always very interested in sex. I wanted sex, and I wanted to have sexual experiences, but I also felt very scared and at risk. So in a lot of my writing, it’s that bind that I’m really interested in—how do you remain interested in pleasure and desire? How do you insist on your right to it when you also feel scared? 

Zing Tsjeng

I’m sure you’ve heard about the murder of Sabina Nessa, who was killed on a five-minute walk, and then there was Sarah Everard’s murder. It seems like in the UK there’s this mounting sense of how, as women, you could do everything right and still be subject to something completely arbitrary.

Katherine Angel

Obviously, we live with a sense of very real risk. We are constantly managing the risk—the whole “text me when you’re home” thing; all that stuff is part of the fabric of our lives. When I’ve been talking about the book, I’ve often found myself saying: “I really think that a woman should be able to get blind drunk, pass out in the middle of the street, and somebody help her rather than assault her.” 

I think that women should be able to do everything wrong and still be safe. Obviously, that’s very utopian because there’s all kinds of violence in the world meted out—not just to women, men are huge victims of violence from men—but I really think that what we should be aiming for is that there’s nothing somebody can do in their behaviour that means anyone can shrug their shoulders, like “well, you know, she was walking late at night in the park, or she didn’t tell anyone where she was” — fuck that!

Zing Tsjeng

One of the things I really liked about the book is that it talks about how sex requires people to be vulnerable and the different ways in which genders are stopped from being vulnerable or feeling as if they can’t be. Why was it important to speak about that?

Katherine Angel

Pleasure and joy require vulnerability, but in order to have an experience that feels meaningful, we generally do have to give ourselves over to something. Lots of people have difficulty reaching orgasm because it involves letting go. It’s no wonder that sex really frightens us in lots of ways because it’s a powerful experience of powerlessness that we spend so much time warding off in life, and that’s what’s so pleasurable about it. I think that’s why the stakes feel so high because, of course, you can only give up control if you feel some kind of relative safety. Actually, nobody feels that which is partly why men assert themselves over women to make themselves think, “I’m safe, I’m in control by dominating you”, and that’s often why women find it difficult to experience sexual pleasure because they don’t feel that there’s a container that is safe enough for them to do it in.

Zing Tsjeng

Do you think that’s also partly why it’s important to actually talk about sex? Because it is this almost unique experience in powerlessness?

Katherine Angel

Sometimes some of the stuff that we have to do to try and improve the problems of sex is to really think about sex as sex. There is something very particular about sex, and it is very irrational and pre-rational. But sex is also just like any other social interaction—it’s about how you figure out what you want, how you negotiate with another person and how you deal with the fact that the interaction might not be going as you want it to. I don’t have very grandiose hopes for what a book can do, but I do think it’s very important that we speak the truth about these things, rather than what tends to happen, which is: “Okay, we’ve got this model, and it’s going to make things very clear and it’s also going to provide insurance for men. If a man has asked, and a woman has said yes, then he won’t get accused of assault.” What we’re doing in the process is not allowing people to explore what it’s like to be in relation to another person. 

Zing Tsjeng

Some critics might go, “Well, this quasi-contractual wrangling of consent... right now, it’s the best thing that we’ve got.” What would you say to that?

Katherine Angel

I would say that we’ve allowed consent to stand in for other values and aims that we need to prioritise, the main of which is pleasure. You can have sex that is completely by the book in terms of affirmative consent, and it could still be bad sex. It could still leave you feeling indifferent, humiliated or gross. I think sometimes sex is like that if what’s missing is an interest in the other person’s pleasure; a curiosity about the other person’s experience. 

Zing Tsjeng

Do you think this is all a hangover from when marriages were seen as the accepted containment for sexual relations between heterosexual men and women? 

Katherine Angel

I certainly think there’s a long history of thinking about sex as something that women give in exchange for other things, for the security of marriage. Obviously, that’s changed to a considerable extent in various places, but that thinking is still there, and it’s amazing how ingrained it is. It’s quite well documented that for women in long-term relationships, their desire falls off a cliff. There’s lots of really interesting advice about (it), and it’s amazing how a lot of it invokes that sense of “you get certain things from being in a long-term relationship, you get love and support and companionship, so maybe it’s fine to have sex when you don’t think you want it, and hopefully, if you open yourself up to it then you might find you enjoy it.” You know, still, this really interesting model whereby women are expected to make certain bargains. 

Zing Tsjeng

Was there anything you wish you could have explored or mentioned more in the book?

Katherine Angel

I was torn because it really does focus overwhelmingly on men and women having sex. I felt that was important partly because this book—like anything one writes—comes out of you and your experience. I think there’s so much to be said about the differences and the similarities that arise in other kinds of relationships, but I felt like it wasn’t my place to do that. 

Zing Tsjeng

What do you think of as a potential solution to that issue of desire?

Katherine Angel

In some sex advice material, there’s an emphasis on equality, that you’re more likely to want to have sex with your husband if you’re not the one always cleaning the bathroom. So there is a line of thought that’s like, “if social life were more equal, then women would maybe have more room to feel sexual.” That’s one of the difficulties. Women live in a particular kind of quandary because we’re urged to be very sexual; to be attractive and conform to certain standards—but don’t be too sexual because God forbid what might happen. 

I find it almost impossible to think of a solution because I just think that the world is not conducive to sexual flourishing for heterosexual women. The thing is, obviously, people experience a lot of sexual joy, even in very bad circumstances. It doesn’t mean you can’t experience sexual desire, but I think the conditions are so complicated that I don’t find it surprising that many women shut down or get paralysed around sex. 

Zing Tsjeng

In fact, while I was reading the book, I thought to myself that it’s a miracle that any woman feels any kind of desire at all.

Katherine Angel

I mean, it’s actually a testament to the strength of sexuality, isn’t it? That we can feel excitement and pleasure in a world that is literally on fire (laughs). And maybe that’s also a survival thing—you have to find release and joy, and that’s a good thing. 

This conversation features in Riposte #13 - The Care Issue. Click through to our shop to order your print copy.