Just Talking

Ten years after her groundbreaking New York Times bestseller Girls and Sex, award-winning author and journalist Peggy Orenstein revisits the sexual landscape and makes some fascinating and sometimes disturbing discoveries. How does a new generation define sexuality? Gender? Pleasure? Ten years ago, journalist Peggy Orenstein explored those questions in her landmark New York Times bestseller, Girls & Sex, engaging young women in honest, compelling conversations about their private lives. But times have changed: young men and women are more polarized than ever; porn and social media have rewritten sexual scripts; rough sex—especially “choking” of female partners by men—is as common as oral sex; girls have grown cynical and despairing over their schools’ response to sexual assault; some are embracing celibacy. Meanwhile, queer identities and gender transition are changing ideas about sex and femininity. And through it all the pleasure gap stubbornly persists. With compassion and candor, Orenstein once again gives voice to dozens of girls who describe their joys and frustrations with sex and connection. The result is an urgent, sometimes startling, always enlightening and deeply important portrait of young women’s expectation and experience in their most intimate relationships.