Pleasure and danger: exploring female sexuality

The papers, images, and poetry collected in this volume originated at the Scholar and the Feminist IX conference,
"Towards a Politics of Sexuality," held on April 24, 1982 at Barnard College in New York City. The conference, the ninth in
an annual series which explores the relationship between feminist scholarship and practice, was sponsored by the Barnard
College Women's Center and funded by the Helena Rubinstein Foundation. Over 800 women attended the conference, and their
comments and questions during formal presentations and work- shop sessions were incorporated by authors as they revised their
papers for publication. The views expressed in each paper, of course, are solely those of its author.
Organized by a planning committee of twenty-five diverse women over a nine-month period of study and discussion, the
conference explored the tension between sexual danger and sexual pleasure in feminist theory and in women's lives during
the past hundred years in Euro-America. The book, like the conference, does not attempt to provide definitive answers but
suggests frameworks within which feminist thought may proceed, and represents an opportunity for readers to question some of
their understandings and consider anew the complexity of women's sexual situation.