Future Sex

June 27, 2016
Witt’s debut provides an illuminating, hilarious account of sex and dating in the digital age, when hook-up culture and technology have vastly altered the romantic landscape. As a 30-something single woman, Witt explores her own sexual and romantic ambivalence as a symptom of society’s expectations and challenges herself to abandon her comfort zone. She gamely participates in an orgasmic meditation session and a public BDSM performance, uses nitrous oxide at a group sex party, and guides readers down the rabbit hole of Chaturbate, a website where women on camera get paid to perform everything from naked yoga routines to ennui-laden existential monologues. Witt is a master at pithy observations, describing a bland man as having “the human neutrality of an Apple Store or IKEA” and the Northern California New Age atmosphere “where one intellectual stumble can turn you into a wild-eyed apostle of pet acupuncture or shadow healing.” While discussing polyamory, Witt hits on the crux of her problem: being part of a reactionary post-sexual revolution generation culturally molded to push back against certain rules while maintaining the legitimacy of others, to embrace change but “not to tamper with the fundamental structures of the family and society.” This is a vital conflict at the center of many women’s lives, and Witt explores it with remarkable nuance, intelligence, and an admirable commitment to experimentation.

August 1, 2016

Situated within a long tradition of sex writing by straight, white women, this work blends personal memoir with cultural commentary. Journalist Witt positions herself as a young (anxiously growing older) single woman, slightly embarrassed by both her own yearning for the conventional and her curiosity about the outre. In eight thematic chapters, the author ambivalently explores such topics as orgasmic meditation, webcam sex, and polyamory. Witt is an engaging writer and a keen observer of her own responses to the sexual subcultures she investigates. Unfortunately, her skepticism and recurring disappointment leaves the overall impression that nonnormative sexual pleasures are weird experiments doomed to failure. This work does little to pull readers' attention beyond the privileged perspective of young white professionals with enough education and disposable income to explore the future of sex through meditation workshops, sex parties, and dates attending concerts at Juilliard. While we catch glimpses of nonstraight, nonwhite, or poor people, their sexual subjectivity is never brought fully into focus. VERDICT While no single title can be expected to counteract an industry-wide lack of diversity, this book is a disappointing reminder that American culture continues to promote a narrow range of voices on the subjects of sexual desire and experience.--Anna J. Clutterbuck-Cook, Massachusetts Historical Soc. Lib., Boston

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