There's a lengthy review of this book by Joanna Williams on Spiked, which is quite informative as to the theme and what the author is arguing. JW concludes it amounts to replacing biological determinism with social determinism (involving patriarchy, racial hierarchy, identity and power relations) and leading to political authoritarianism. It doesn't take account of the reality of people and aspects of humanity that go into the mix with sex, such as individuality, emotions and love.
Some extracts:
"In her new book, The Right to Sex, philosopher Amia Srinivasan discusses the politics and ethics of sex. Writing about sex opens up a private act to public discussion. For Srinivasan, this opening up is important because sex, she explains, is ‘a cultural thing posing as a natural one’. We ‘think of [sex] as the most private of acts’, but it is ‘in reality a public thing’. Her analysis is firmly grounded in an older tradition of feminism which sees sex ‘as a political phenomenon’.
"Srinivasan’s key argument is that although both who we have sex with and how we have sex seem natural, they are, in reality, a product of the cultural context in which we exist. Rather than sexual attraction being a genetic instinct that emerges, fully formed, at the moment of our birth, it is entirely a product of chance historical circumstances, of the ‘voices that have spoken to us since birth’, as Srinivasan puts it. She argues that no one is born gay or straight, or with an innate desire for blonde white women or tall black men. It’s a provocative argument. And it could be exciting and potentially liberating. Unfortunately, in The Right to Sex, it is neither."
"Incels want to redistribute sex – horrifically, through force, if necessary. #MeToo feminists want to regulate our interactions through consent classes backed up with legal sanctions for transgressors. Srinivasan, meanwhile, wants to discipline ‘the political forces that presume to instruct us’. In other words, she proposes wholesale cultural and social revolution in order to re-educate our base instincts and desires. The ethical issues this proposed cultural reprogramming of desire raises are revealed only in asides."
"Srinivasan is contemptuous of lesbian feminists who ‘want to resist any possible analogy between the white person who as a matter of policy doesn’t sleep with black people, and the cis lesbian who as a matter of policy doesn’t sleep with trans women’. She doesn’t resist the analogy and clearly thinks lesbians can be equated to racists. Srinivasan is too sophisticated to argue that lesbians should be obligated to remove the cotton ceiling and allow anyone who insists access to their genitals. Instead, she argues, what is needed is ‘a discourse not of entitlement but of empowerment and respect’. Her intersectional framework means we can safely assume it is cis women who must give up their entitlement and trans women who need to be empowered and afforded respect."
Aaagh, I can't post a link. If someone else can, please do.