After all, every one of us is a potential scandal in the making: failed self-knowledge and colossal self-deceptionâthe necessary ingredientsâare our collective plight. How to become a scandal is âan extremely smart, funny, acid, and beautifully written meditation on a scary truth that we all try desperately to ignoreâ David Shields, author of Reality Hunger: A Manifesto.

. A new york times book review Editorsâ ChoiceWe all relish a good scandal. Why do people feel compelled to act out their tangled psychodramas on the national stage, and why do we so enjoy watching them? The motifs are classicârevenge, ambition, betrayal, madnessâthough the pitfalls are ones we all negotiate daily.

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The Female Thing: Dirt, envy, sex, vulnerability

From the author of the acclaimed against Love comes a pointed, audacious, and witty examination of the state of the female psyche in the post-post-feminist world of the twenty-first century. Women remain caught between feminism and femininity, between self-affirmation and an endless quest for self-improvement, between playing an injured party and claiming independence.

Is anatomy destiny after all? an ambitious and original reassessment of feminism and women’s ambivalence about it, The Female Thing breathes provocative new life into that age-old question. Rather than blaming the usual suspects–men, the media–Kipnis takes a hard look at culprits closer to home, namely women themselves.

. Kipnis serves up the gory details of the mutual displeasure between men and women in painfully hilarious detail.

The Female Thing: Dirt, Sex, Envy, Vulnerability

For every advance toward sexual equality on the part of women in recent years, she argues, some new impediment just “seems” to appear. As audacious as it is historically and socially grounded, The Female Thing explores age-old quandaries: the war between the sexes, what women “really” want, and to what extent anatomy is destiny after all.

Feminism is bedeviled by the same impasses and contradictions it seeks to rectify. Which makes relations between the sexes rather thorny at the moment, and Kipnis serves up the gory details of the mutual displeasure between men and women in painfully hilarious detail. For all the upbeat “you go, between self-affirmation and an endless quest for self-improvement, girl” slogans, women remain caught between feminism and femininity, between playing the injured party and claiming independence.

In the female psyche nowadays, “contradictions speckle the landscape, like ingrown hairs after a bad bikini wax. So writes laura kipnis, author of the widely acclaimed polemic Against Love. Ironically, feminism ran up against an unanticipated opponent: the inner woman. But rather than blaming the usual suspects–men, namely women themselves and their complicity in upholding male privilege, the media–Kipnis takes a hard look at culprits closer to home, even as they resent men deeply for it.

An ambitious and original reassessment of feminism and women’s ambivalence about it, The Female Thing brims with bracing and funny social observations informed by psychological acuity. With “the gleeful viperish wit of dorothy Parker” Slate, Kipnis now offers a fresh and provocative assessment of the female condition in the post-post-feminist world of the twenty-first century.

Men: Notes from an Ongoing Investigation

From the notoriously contrarian author of against love, on and off the pageit's no secret that men often behave in intemperate ways, erotically desperate professors, a witty and probing examination of why badly behaved men have been her lifelong fascination, but in recent years we've witnessed so many spectacular public displays of male excess―disgraced politicians, fallen sports icons―that we're left to wonder whether something has come unwired in the collective male psyche.

In the essays collected here, laura kipnis revisits the archetypes of wayward masculinity that have captured her imagination over the years, scrutinizing men who have figured in her own life alongside more controversial public examples. Slicing through the usual clichés about the differences between the sexes, longings, jealousies, Kipnis mixes intellectual rigor and wit to give us compelling survey of the affinities, and erotics that structure the male-female bond.

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Unwanted Advances: Sexual Paranoia Comes to Campus

Next she was brought up on Title IX complaints for creating a "hostile environment. Defying confidentiality strictures, she wrote a whistleblowing essay about the ensuing seventy-two-day investigation, "safe spaces, which propelled her to the center of national debates over free speech, " and the vast federal overreach of Title IX.

In the process she uncovered an astonishing netherworld of accused professors and students, campus witch hunts, rigged investigations, and Title IX officers run amok. Harper. Anyone who thinks the sexual hysteria overtaking American campuses is a sign of gender progress is deranged. It's not just compulsively readable, it will change the national conversation.

Then a trove of revealing documents fell into her lap, plunging her behind the scenes in an especially controversial case. From a highly regarded feminist cultural critic and professor comes a polemic arguing that the stifling sense of sexual danger sweeping American campuses doesn't empower women, it impedes the fight for gender equality.

Feminism is broken, argues Laura Kipnis. A committed feminist, kipnis was surprised to find herself the object of a protest march by student activists at her university for writing an essay about sexual paranoia on campus. Drawing on investigative reporting, cultural analysis, and her own experiences, Unwanted Advances demonstrates the chilling effect of this new sexual McCarthyism on higher education.

Without minimizing the seriousness of campus assault, Kipnis argues for more honesty about the sexual realities and ambivalences hidden behind the notion of "rape culture.

Against Love: A Polemic

Hence the necessity for a polemic against it. Who would dream of being against love? No one. Love is, a mysterious and all-controlling force, as everyone knows, with vast power over our thoughts and life decisions. But is there something a bit worrisome about all this uniformity of opinion? Is this the one subject about which no disagreement will be entertained, about which one truth alone is permissible? Consider that the most powerful organized religions produce the occasional heretic; every ideology has its apostates; even sacred cows find their butchers.

. Except for love. Harper. It won’t injure you well not severely; it’s just supposed to shake things up and rattle a few convictions. A polemic is designed to be the prose equivalent of a small explosive device placed under your E-Z-Boy lounger.

Against Love: A Polemic

Will all the adulterers in the room please stand up?” So begins Laura Kipnis’s profoundly provocative and waggish inquiry into our never-ending quest for lasting love, and its attendant issues of fidelity and betrayal. Rather it intends to engage you in a commonsensical and brave examination of the plight of the modern personality, caught between the vicissitudes of desire and the decrees of social conformity.

In the tradition of social critiques such as christopher lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism, Against Love keenly examines the meaning and cultural significance of adultery, arguing that perhaps the question concerns not only the private dilemma of whether or not to be faithful, but also the purpose of this much vaunted fidelity.

With a novelist’s eye for detail, and linguistic panache, Kipnis at once humorously and seriously explores the rules and rituals of modern coupledom and domesticity from the establishment of curfews and whereabouts to actual searches and seizures, psychological acuity, even as she deftly analyzes the larger power structures that they serve.

She wonders: might adulterers be regarded not only as sexual renegades but as unwitting social theorists posing essential political questions about the social contract itself? What is the trade-off between personal gratification and the renunciations society demands of us? And is “working at your relationship” just another way of propping up the work ethicæas if we weren’t all overworked enough as it is? If adultery is ultimately a referendum on the sustainability of monogamy, how credible is the basic premise of modern coupledom: that desire for your one and only love can and will persist through a lifetime of togetherness despite so much evidence to the contrary?Against Love offers no easy answers.

Harper.

Men: Notes from an Ongoing Investigation

Slicing through the usual clichés about the differences between the sexes, jealousies, longings, Kipnis mixes intellectual rigor and wit to give us a compelling survey of the affinities, and erotics that structure the male-female bond. The patriarchal world, through Kipnis's eyes, is consistently and quietly funny.

. Her coolheaded, ironical assessments of modern masculinity read like perfectly timed eye rolls. The new york times book review it's no secret that men often behave in confusing ways, but in recent years we've witnessed so many spectacular public displays of male excess-disgraced politicians, erotically desperate professors, fallen sports icons-that we're left to wonder whether something has come unwired in the collective male psyche.

In the essays collected here, revisiting the archetypes of wayward masculinity that have captured her imagination over the years, and scrutinizing men who have figured in her own life, Laura Kipnis draws out the angst and emotional contradictions implicit in what look like exercises of male privilege, alongside more controversial public examples.

Harper.

Ecstasy Unlimited: On Sex, Capital, Gender, and Aesthetics

Used book in Good Condition. Book by kipnis, Laura Harper.

Bound and Gagged: Pornography and the Politics of Fantasy in America

Used book in Good Condition. Harper. A feminist professor and filmmaker addresses the anti-pornography stance of such feminists as Andrea Dworkin, arguing that pornography is too extensive and too pervasive to be eradicated and that pornography does not incite men to rape. Used book in Good Condition.