sex strike ***SOLD***

Ovidie

(Julliard, 160 pages, 2023)

***TRANSLATION SAMPLE AVAILABLE HERE***

Ovidie, an author and documentary filmmaker specializing in female sexuality, bodily intimacy and physical expression, retraces the trajectory that led her to go on sex strike for four years.

"I thought back to the countless times I'd forced myself to have sex out of politeness, so as not to bruise fragile egos. Of all the times when my pleasure had been optional, when I hadn't come. To all the coitus I'd had before, during and after. To the painful preparations with epilators, the lengthy penetrations, the uncomfortable positions, the next-day cystitis. To all the sacrifices you'll have to make in order to stay listed on the big market of fuckability. To all this masquerade designed to attract customers or maintain desire after years of living together. This voluntary servitude to which heterosexual women submit, for so little pleasure in return, no doubt out of fear of being abandoned, once crumpled up like those old maids we look on with pity. One day, I stopped having sex with men."

The tone is set in Ovidie’s striking and bold statement. The International Emmy Award winner takes on a sensitive subject to open a discussion that involves both women and men alike.

Ovidie was an adult film actress while being a PhD student in Philosophy in the 90s. Then she became a writer, a filmmaker and is now a leading feminist figure in France. She was awarded an Emmy in 2023 for her TV series Des gens bien ordinaires / A Very Ordinary World