Sexual Life Catherine M.

by Catherine Millet

  One of the comforting effects of the book’s success is that it demonstrates that, to some extent, my “permissiveness” has found an ally in the freedom that a great many people have shown by going into bookshops and uninhibitedly buying this Sexual Life, and then by discussing it among themselves. At the risk of further irritating those who are afraid I am appropriating their Marquis de Sade, I would even add that mothers have told me that they have talked about it with their daughters, and daughters with their mothers. On one page of the book, I amuse myself imagining a society sufficiently tolerant for people to swap pornographic magazines quite happily with complete strangers in the same train compartment. On another page I suggest this fantasy: fucking in a station concourse without causing offense to any passersby. Surely the circulation of this book and of conversation around it mean we can envision, within the realm of possibility, a realization of this easing of human relations, an easing facilitated by an acceptance and tolerance of sexual desire, and which some passages in my book represent in a clearly utopic, fantastical way. And surely we should take pleasure and rejoice in this vision.

  Table of Contents

  1. Numbers

  2. Space

  3. Confined Space

  4. Details

  Afterword: Why and How