Cover Image: Fucking Law

Fucking Law

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Member Reviews

While the idea of the book was intriguing, I struggled with the execution. I found the book a bit difficult to follow and what I did read often left me with mixed emotions.

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Sex is still so taboo in our society, especially when it comes to women and their sexuality. Often women are shamed for not being chaste and vanilla. Brooks opens up a big discussion that needs to be had, from a philosophical POV with real-world experiences mixed in. This book is a must-read for those interested in destigmatizing sexuality especially in relationship to the feminine.

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This is quite a difficult book to read both due to the content and the way its written. It is farly inaccessible and often lacks coherence. I think there are more interesting conversations happeing in both research ethics and sexuality studies than this text makes space for.

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I was intrigued by the synopsis but this one was a bit strange for me. The third person narration and the autobiography as erotic fiction style was too jarring for me personally. I found I couldn't take it seriously. I would have rather left this unrated than give it 1 star, but NetGalley requires a star rating.

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This book is a little harder to review than I thought it was going to be. It deals with sex and the issues that surround it. This one went deep into the ethics and philosophy of sexuality. I will say that you could really tell that the author did a lot of extensive research on this title. In the end this book was a lot to handle and unload. And if its your cup of tea I would totally check it out!

Trigger Warnings: rape, detailed sex, sexual assault, abusive relationships.

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Confusing disjointed and pretentious.
The way I felt when reading this is the same way I feel when watching foreign independent films- frustrated by reading the peiced together subtitles, angered wondering why she just threw a live cod into a busy metropolitan street, and just plain pissed that now I will never understand just why was that frog smoking a cigarette???

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This book was something I've never read before but I absolutely love it. I will read more by this author in the future.. highly recommend.

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* I received this book on Net Galley*

TW: rape, detailed sex, sexual assault, gas-lighting, abusive relationships.

This book is a lot to handle. I knew that going in but I had deemed it the sort of work I should read as someone who is trying to better understand how we can progress through the #metoo movement and how I could be supportive of situations that are very different than my own.

This review will be a short one because, frankly, I'm a but lost for words. I knew the detailed sex would likely make me feel uncomfortable but that is not the most discomfiting thing in this work. The overarching theme of the author trying to negotiate her own beliefs of sex while having a truly abusive relationship with a man who was married was a lot to handle. It was interesting but so, so horrifying.

Brooks brought up points I agreed with and points I emphatically did not-- this is one of the reasons I requested this book as I knew that no matter how I felt about it in the end I knew I'd be exposed to new ideas and concepts. I was correct but now after reading it I'm not sure quite how to feel.

The author has an interesting view about judgement and how it effects her academic and personal lives. I do not judge her for her sexual research but it does fill me with immense worry having finished the book and not seeing any indication that she is in a healthier mindset than she was during her research. She seems spectacularly unwell-- not because she decided to investigate ethics and not because of her partners but because of her toxic relationship with her 'philosopher' (who could have ended up on her PhD panel) that she seems to not have healed from.

The book ends with her discussing kindness and I absolutely agree that kindness is important. However, I found it hugely disturbing when she muses that "perhaps a better question, rather than 'will you be safe,' is 'will you be kind?" (pg 110). This is in reference to the questions posed by her ethics committee in order to do her research. While, again, kindness is important and people doing social experiments should not be abusive, this is such a problematic thing to wonder about. It's all well and good to be kind but of course a committee will have to ensure her safety and its alarming that she seems to think that her kindness is more important than her safety.

This was a book that was quite different than my usual pick and while I am not quite sure how I feel about it, it is important to realise how under-represented women tend to be in sexual studies and most other studies as well. I am glad I read this, even though I take issues with parts of it, but I would HEAVILY CAUTION anyone with any sexual/mental/physical trauma to be very careful. Someone got somewhat triggered just by me discussing some parts of the book that were not even (to me) the most upsetting bits and I would hate for people to have their trauma exacerbated.

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This was an interesting read, as it was part memoir and part fiction. It is thought provoking and erotic at the same time. An enjoyable read.

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I received an ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I tried my best to enjoy this book but it just didn't grasp my attention like I thought it would. I had really high hopes for it's philosophical view on sex, law and everything in between but it feel flat for me. The flow seemed a bit off and the usage of complex words throughout just seemed a bit pretentious.

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My



Friday introduction yo this author. I loved the writing style. Great sexy characters. Steamy sexy romance book. Relatable characters. Welll written.

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I was very disappointed in this and I had been looking forward to it, what could have been a very powerful book just felt lifeless and very dry and uninteresting

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion

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This was a complimentary copy courtesy of netgalley - thank you

This is a modern treatise on feminism and sexuality. The language is to the point which could put some people off. At times, I think I found this deliberately provocative and this was probably to shock its audience.

If you are prudish this isn't for you, however, I found it quite interesting. I did find myself removing myself emotionally from the piece and to this end, found it a little difficult to really get the best of this piece

I think it is more of an academic piece which I don't think I fully appreciated until starting to read

Would make an interesting book club addition but would need to be a group that is open-minded

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The title is true in all senses, though in a sense doesn't go far enough because this is not just about fucking, law and fucking the law, it's also about the philosophy of sex, and philosophy as sex, and sex as philosophy. Partaking equally of poetry, porn and post-structuralism, I'm not sure I necessarily followed all of it, but then I'm also not sure it's a book to be followed so much as inhaled, gazed at, or rolled around in. It also serves as one in the eye (or somewhere, at any rate) for all those recent think-pieces about whether the age of offence has prevented the publication of transgressive books. Really, no – they're just happening a little more towards the margins, just as they used to back in the day outside those brief periods of celebrity notoriety. Seriously, the notion of finding Heidegger a turn-on is far wilder and more disturbing than anything Ellis or Houllebecq ever came up with. And yet after all the dicks, disappointments and Deleuze, it ends up in the entirely wholesome suggestion that what would help most is more kindness.

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I was looking forward to reading this book and delving into the ethics of sexuality, but I couldn't get into this book. The writing was dry and it wasn't an enjoyable read, and with far too many books on my to-read list I didn't force myself to finish.

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Fucking Ethics and Fucking Judgments. First, I will tell you that if the word “fucking” disturbs you, this book isn’t for you (but you may have suspected that from the title). If the various “raunchy” and “vulgar” words for human genitalia disturb you, this book isn’t for you.

But if you’re still reading this review, then I assume you’re at least ok with these words. In which case, allow me to tell you how sublime and thought provoking this book is. Part memoir and part academic philosophical treatise, this book truly takes a hard and intriguing look at the philosophical ethics of human sexuality.

This isn’t a light read. It isn’t a beach read (unless maybe you’re at a nudist/ swinger beach?). It is likely a read that will make you horny without actually being erotica. It is a read that will make you think. And maybe, just maybe, it is a read that will open you to the author’s own brand of sexual ethics, even though it is one she does not explicitly recommend – quite the opposite – herself.

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