Absolutely vital reading' - Stylist
'Brave, searching' - Coco Mellors
'The book you didn't know you needed' - Roxie Nafousi
Pleasure explores why so many women feel disconnected from their bodies and from sex, and what it takes to change that.
Part memoir, part cultural investigation, the book traces Emma-Louise Boynton's journey from being unable to orgasm and battling a years-long eating disorder, to rebuilding her relationship with sex, desire and intimacy.
The story begins in the sex therapy room, where Boynton first discovered that her struggle with bulimia was deeply entangled with her experience of sexual numbness. From there, Pleasure expands outward - drawing on expert interviews, cultural analysis and immersive research (including four days on a porn set) - to reveal that this rupture between women and their bodies is not a personal failure, but a systemic one.
From narrow ideals around desirability and sexist narratives about aging, to the policing of women's pleasure, and the emotional alienation of app-based intimacy, Boynton interrogates the forces that teach women to mistrust their bodies and perform rather than feel their pleasure.
Crucially, Boynton offers a clear and practical roadmap for rebuilding desire, confidence and connection. Provocative, intimate and timely, Pleasure reframes women's relationship to sex and embodiment, arguing that reclaiming pleasure is not indulgent, but essential.
The audiobook includes bonus conversations with Emma's sex therapist, Aleks Trkulja, and adult film director, Erika Lust. Emma also takes us on an Erotic Visualisation to close the audiobook. A truly immersive listen. Emma-Louise Boynton is a writer, broadcaster and the creator and host of the sell-out live event series and media platform, Sex Talks.
Inspired by her own experience doing sex therapy, Sex Talks exists to engender more open and honest conversations around typically taboo topics: sex, gender and the future of intimacy.
Emma previously worked as a producer for the BBC and Sky News here in London, and for Tina Brown's 'Women in The World Summit' in New York. She is the co-founder of female-focused creative production agency, Her Hustle. An exploration of women's sexuality through unmet needs and unspoken thoughts which radically recalibrates our relationship to sex and intimacy. This is a timely read - discussions around sex and sex therapy particularly have become more prominent in recent years, and this could sit brilliantly in the vein of books like Want. The author is extremely well connected and has been doing her events - Sex Talks - to great acclaim to a number of years.
