Filmed at the Battle of Ideas festival 2023, the panel discuss contemporary attitudes to sexual freedom.
Sex has never been so fetishised. We hire experts to portray it ‘consensually’ on TV series, we plan classes on how to talk to our kids about it and we row, constantly, about what is the right way to have it.
Is chastity really the only answer to a fraught sexual landscape, or are we too obsessed with theorising instead of doing? With all its flaws, didn’t the sexual revolution and reproductive technologies give women the ability to choose which and how many sexual partners they have? Does the backlash against sexual freedom risk turning back the clock on women’s freedom?
The speakers are:
Ralph Leonard - author, Unshackling Intimacy: Letters on Liberty; contributor, Areo
Nina Power - philosopher; senior editor, Compact Magazine; author, What Do Men Want? Masculinity and its discontents
Ella Whelan - co-convenor, Battle of Ideas festival; journalist; author, What Women Want
Rosie Wilby - award-winning comedian; broadcaster; author, Is Monogamy Dead? and The Breakup Monologues: the unexpected joy of heartbreak
The chair is: Dr Tiffany Jenkins - writer and broadcaster; author, Strangers and Intimates (forthcoming) and Keeping Their Marbles

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