Fucking Law
by Victoria Brooks

An urgent call for everyone to find inventive ways to question the ethics of sexuality.

Fucking Law is an urgent call for everyone, not just academics and researchers, to find inventive ways to question the ethics of sexuality. Since a sex life is full of so many diverse moments of joy and suffering, for each and everybody, the book attempts to bridge a gap between philosophical and non-philosophical questioning. Central to the book is the reality that everyone can challenge the ethics and laws of sexuality and ask questions, even where they seem frightening, or worse, even when we are told not to – by institutions and lovers alike. Non-philosophical and accessible, Fucking Law is risky, explicit and provocative as it bridges the gap between academic and every-day questioning of sexual encounters.

Reviews:
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars. Sex is still so taboo in our society, especially when it comes to women and their sexuality. Often women are shamed for not being chaste and vanilla. Brooks opens up a big discussion that needs to be had, from a philosophical POV with real-world experiences mixed in. This book is a must-read for those interested in destigmatizing sexuality especially in relationship to the feminine. ~ Liliyana Shadowlyn (Reviewer), NetGalley

I was so impressed by the personal testimonials in this book, which reflected many experiences I've had but have never put into words. And that's saying something, given that I've been a feminist sex writer for many years. Additionally, this book covers a lot of legal and philosophical ground, and even though I didn’t follow it all, I was impressed by how Brooks points the way for an updated, improved sexual ethic centered on kindness and care. So if you're not a scholar, don't be intimidated by the academic language -- there's plenty of raw, personal, direct observation that informs a higher analysis that's sorely needed! ~ Clarisse Thorn , author of the S&M Feminist

I thought it was brilliant. Reminded me of The Argonauts. ~ Stoya, writer, actress and author of Philosophy, Pussycats and Porn

Partaking equally of poetry, porn and post-structuralism,..... I'm also not sure it's a book to be followed so much as inhaled, gazed at, or rolled around in. .......... . And yet after all the dicks, disappointments and Deleuze, it ends up in the entirely wholesome suggestion that what would help most is more kindness. ~ Alex Sarll , NetGalley

......allow me to tell you how sublime and thought provoking this book is. Part memoir and part academic philosophical treatise, this book truly takes a hard and intriguing look at the philosophical ethics of human sexuality. It is a read that will make you think. ~ Jeff Sexton, NetGalley

Forget what you thought you knew about fucking.

Throughout Fucking Law, Brooks wants you to fuck. She calls for an ‘orgy of destruction’, for the destruction of ethical and sexual codes ‘that are not our own’ . For too long, she argues, your fucking has been determined not by your body but by someone else’s head. ‘Everything has become a concept,’ she writes, ‘and thus falls within the possibility of being known by philosophers’. But fucking can’t be known; knowledge of fucking can’t be discovered without first-hand experience—without doing it.

Brooks teases throughout Fucking Law. Like a dominatrix, her prose ties you up and plays with you: ‘You really need to lose your head in sexuality research, but you can’t, since the head is ever-so-sexy.’ She prods, pokes and strokes in all the right places, edging you closer and closer to ball-busting climaxes like: ‘A promise, until death do us part, is meaningless where a second is forever between two bodies who don’t know how to fuck each other’.

Fucking Law is Brook’s own ethnography, her study of sex, knowledge, and the experience of fucking. But she divorces herself into two identities in the book. On the one hand, she talks about her experiences, particularly on le Cap d’Agde, using the first person: ‘You think my eyes cry with laughter and with tears, and it is my pussy that craves and drips, but it’s the other way around. How could you be so wrong?’ On the other, italicised intrusions seep into the narrative as she talks about her body and her fucking as if it were someone else’s: ‘She ground her hips into the sand, feeling the walls of her sticky cunt rub together, as she looked right into the eyes of a man at the back of the beach’.

Much like the Cap—a nudist beach and the site of much fucking—this book is something of a transgressive space, which sets out to upset your knowledge and experience of fucking. Brooks’s narrative ejaculations come in and out, like a tide. This isn’t a work of academia in the traditional sense, but something extremely personal. Brooks bares it all, metaphorically lying down on her own Cap, spread-eagle, for us all to stare at every crevice, hole and curve. In Fucking Law Brooks is concerned with how kind you are and should be when you fuck, but she’s also concerned with what kind of text she’s writing.

It’s a fascinating read, with a fucking-rhythm that oscillates from fast-paced sex-diary-cum-confessional to high-brow analysis of philosophical theory (especially Gilles Deleuze). It’s also sad. Charting a failed relationship with one of her academic inspirations (who’s married, a father and forces Brooks into all kinds of polyamorous adventures against her will), Fucking Law also reminds you how fucking can fuck you up, make you fall in love and make you desperate for kindness and for the fucking to be kind. The voice of this male academic also dribbles into the spunky pages of the narrative and comes to sound strikingly like that of a university Ethics Committee whom Brooks must persuade to fund her research trip to the Cap. Patriarchal forces try and get Brooks and her research to assume all kinds of vanilla positions—unlike her male researcher counterparts—but she—and her text—are beyond their control. She isn’t submissive.

And neither, she argues, should you be when you’re thinking about whatever fucking you get up to. But at the same time, she warns, too much head—too much thinking—can be a bad thing: best just to get down and dirty. Fucking Law is enlightening, kinky and arousing and, though a little more interested in philosophy than law, a moving encounter about the politics and perversions of fucking and about fucking. ~ The Erotic Review , http://eroticreviewmagazine.com/reviews/review-fucking-law/

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars. This book was something I've never read before but I absolutely love it. I will read more by this author in the future.. highly recommend. ~ Julie Jackson (Reviewer), NetGalley

Sexual ethics, having pride and unabashedness in one’s body and their sexual intimate activities, reading erotic texts, and having an intellectual and intuitive dialogue with one’s partner; all from the perspective of a ‘she’ who lives in France and is reactionary in the third person to events with others and muses on philosophy and fact. Rather a lot like Beat poetry with the pulsing narrative vein of research. ~ Kristine Fisher (Reviewer) , NetGalley

This was an interesting read, as it was part memoir and part fiction. It is thought provoking and erotic at the same time. An enjoyable read. ~ Cristie Underwood (Reviewer), NetGalley

3:AM Magazine: You’ve written this incredibly powerful book that you’ve described as an orgasmic attack on western philosophy. In particular, there’s a character in the book called “Her Philosopher”, who you describe as someone you were in an abusive relationship with. In many ways the problems you found you had in that relationship represent a lot of the problems you have with philosophy. There’s a question you pose to try and test the philosophy of sexuality and to test the sexuality of philosophy: do philosophers fuck differently? Your answer seems to be yes—on the pillow afterwards they can talk incessantly.

Victoria Brooks: There’s a bit in the book where I’m having a heated conversation on the phone with the man called Her Philosopher. I throw the phone across the room in frustration. When I pick it up, he was still talking, without noticing any interruption. That endless talking can be the norm with philosophers. There’s no way in. And that’s what happens from the point of view of female sexuality. When I teach philosophy I find myself apologising to the women in the room—and the men too— that all of what we are studying is written by men. Philosophy is often long and boring and it speaks from up on high.

3:AM: So philosophy is like the ultimate mansplain.

VB: Exactly—it’s the ultimate mansplain. I wrote an article about female sexuality recently and in the comments I got mansplains telling me ‘Actually Kant’s not racist.’ Despite all of the clearly racist things he said. I’m not saying men’s comments are always invalid. But when it comes to female sexuality it might not be valid. Don’t get me wrong I love philosophy. I love long works of philosophy, like Deleuze’s stuff. But these texts need to be understood just as thinking rather than the paradigm to which we must always defer.

3:AM: There’s a love-hate relationship with philosophy in your writing. Lines like “Destroy me with your words, I can’t orgasm otherwise” and you say “you really have to lose your head in sexuality research, but you can’t because your head is ever so sexy.” You’re interested in the paradoxes of sex, aren’t you?

VB: I think those paradoxes trouble me a lot. These philosophers often have a power, a very toxic power. But that is sexy too, it’s a turn on. That line “Destroy me with your words, I can’t orgasm otherwise”, I’m saying that in frustration.

3:AM: Much of your book is written in the third person and you also write from the first person in italics. Was it like that from the first draft or did you discover it needed to be like that as you started writing it?

VB: I think from the start of writing it I needed that safe space of ambiguity, the way the third person allowed me to say things and the reader could be asking did this happen or didn’t this happen? I also think It’s nice to use the third person because it makes you complicit with the reader a little bit, like you’re both watching the story unfold. The third person is more fun, more free and less painful.

3:AM: Less painful…?

VB: If someone reads it and he makes a judgement then I can take it as judging the story and not judging me. The strange thing is my work is a lot about objectivity and how you shouldn’t distance yourself from the truth of the matter. But here that distance was nice.

3:AM: The book ends with you breaking up with Her Philosopher. Does that mean you’ve broken up with philosophy too?

VB: I still love philosophy as an action. But yes I wanted to break up with an incarnation of philosophy as this overbearing theory that tried to claim more knowledge of me and my sexuality than I had myself. I have my embodied set of desires and the white western conceptual framework often contradicts that. So I had to end it. ~ Andy West, Writer and Philospher , https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/toward-a-sexual-ethics-of-kindness-an-interview-with-victoria-brooks/

What a fresh breath of air! It smells like freedom and autonomy, like a female sexual revolution, like a big vagina devouring what she craves. "Fucking Law“ fucks with law or what we thought it is. It fucks with methodology, it fucks with fucking and it does so in a compelling, witty, and necessary way. After centuries of (academic) body hatred and suppression and patriarchal and Victorian sexual ethics - best represented in the uptight and fear driven legal discourse - this book asks exactly the right questions and it shows you that Law can be different, that Law ought to be and will be - like the Nana figures of Niki de Saint Phalle - the embodiment of female power, autonomy and sexuality. By doing so, it does exactly what it asks for, it is very kind to the reader and it’s body, it never stops to communicate with it. While getting explicit and intimate it never oversteps your boundaries, rather invites you to communicate and explore yours at the same time. Victoria Brooks takes you on an intimate journey reaching for the unknown and unseen areas of legal and academic discourse and your (own) sexuality at the same time. You can’t miss that! ~ Nicole Zilberszac (Nicole Noze, Artist)

Fucking Ethics and Fucking Judgments. First, I will tell you that if the word “fucking” disturbs you, this book isn’t for you (but you may have suspected that from the title). If the various “raunchy” and “vulgar” words for human genitalia disturb you, this book isn’t for you.

But if you’re still reading this review, then I assume you’re at least ok with these words. In which case, allow me to tell you how sublime and thought provoking this book is. Part memoir and part academic philosophical treatise, this book truly takes a hard and intriguing look at the philosophical ethics of human sexuality.

This isn’t a light read. It isn’t a beach read (unless maybe you’re at a nudist/ swinger beach?). It is likely a read that will make you horny without actually being erotica. It is a read that will make you think. And maybe, just maybe, it is a read that will open you to the author’s own brand of sexual ethics, even though it is one she does not explicitly recommend – quite the opposite – herself. ~ Jeff Sexton, http://bookanon.com/2019/05/22/bookreview-fucking-law-by-victoria-brooks/

Fucking Law is an urgent call for everyone, not just academics and researchers, to find inventive ways to question the ethics of sexuality. Since a sex life is full of so many diverse moments of joy and suffering, for each and everybody, the book attempts to bridge a gap between philosophical and non-philosophical questioning. Central to the book is the reality that everyone can challenge the ethics and laws of sexuality and ask questions, even where they seem frightening, or worse, even when we are told not to – by institutions and lovers alike. Non-philosophical and accessible, Fucking Law is risky, explicit and provocative as it bridges the gap between academic and every-day questioning of sexual encounters. ~ Janet Pole Cousineau, NetGalley

What kind of book is this? A pornographic journal? A philosophical diary? A treatise of ethics of love and sex? Could anyone quote Hannah Arendt while having an orgasm without getting immediately cold? Can a brilliant cis-woman have sex with straight men without losing her critical convictions? Victoria Brooks explores the paradoxical condition of cis-women having sex with cis-men and develops a queer ethics for straight love to survive: A libertine love treatise in the times of #Metoo. ~ Paul B. Preciado, author of Testo Junkie

This book is written by a body, not by a mind: the pages are sweaty flesh, the writing is body fluids, the structure has brittle bones. It is already rare to open a book and feel as if you are looking into a body; but this book does the even rarer and infinitely more generous thing of placing you in the middle of a female sexual explosion. This a remarkably brave book, relentlessly exposing and yet curing the wounds of the body. This is a remarkably beautiful book, with stunning changes of rhythm and language, but always personal, ondoyant, kind, intimate, culminating in a vociferous howl reminiscent of Tennessee Williams’s harrowing finales. And finally, this is the book that the law has been waiting for: a book that prises the law open and pours in sex, literary rhythm, corporeal emancipation, female and male desire, French philosophy, and an invigorating full-frontal attack against philosophers. Victoria Brooks is the Anais Nin of the #MeToo generation.

~ Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, Professor of Law & Theory, The Westminster Law & Theory Lab

For too long, law has been for nobody. Or, to be more precise, law has been for bodies that didn’t come as trouble. It is this assumption that Victoria Brooks has tackled in her virtuoso first book, exploring intimately and provocatively what is the most troubling with bodies: their sexuality. In doing so, she has not only proved as irritating as one could be vis-à-vis the certainties of law, but also vis-à-vis the ones of ethics and sexuality. With a little bit of chance, none of them will ever be the same afterwards, for you, as for me. ~ Laurent de Sutter, author of Narcocapitalism

Like a dominatrix, her prose ties you up and plays with you...It’s a fascinating read, with a fucking-rhythm that oscillates from fast-paced sex-diary-cum-confessional to high-brow analysis of philosophical theory...Patriarchal forces try and get Brooks and her research to assume all kinds of vanilla positions—unlike her male researcher counterparts—but she—and her text—are beyond their control. She isn’t submissive... Fucking Law is enlightening, kinky and arousing and, though a little more interested in philosophy than law, a moving encounter about the politics and perversions of fucking and about fucking. ~ The Erotic Review , http://eroticreviewmagazine.com/reviews/review-fucking-law/

Victoria Brooks' legal lubrications are a radical fucking to, and with, law, philosophy and academia in general. A brave and honest call for the body as method, touching us and no doubt the bounds of theory to come, giving us access to law as it is through her succulent text. ~ Lucy Finchett-Maddock, author of Protest, Property and the Commons: Performances of Law and Resistance

In Fucking Law, Victoria Brooks presents a fierce examination of the relationships between law, ethics, embodiment and spaces of female sexual desire. In doing so, this book offers a bold and scintillating critique of the academy’s regulation of sexuality research. ~ Jon Binnie, Reader in Law at Manchester Metropolitan University

Part memoir, part polemic, Fucking Law is an experiment in form which should be read by anyone with more than a passing interest in sexuality, ethics or sexual ethics. Brooks invites her reader to join her in ‘fucking law’, in confronting and questioning the judgements that shape our embodied experiences and knowledges of sex. She argues that we might encounter sexuality otherwise, imagining a new and vivid kindness that would protect our desires from abuse. In searching for an ethics of sex, from university ethics committees to hotel bedrooms to the sands of Southern France, Fucking Law offers an unflinching and deeply personal meditation on the messiness of sex, love and philosophy that is at once salty, lucid and moving. ~ Alex Dymock, Lecturer in Criminology and Law, leader of the @Pharmacosex Project

What kind of book is this? A pornographic journal? A philosophical diary? A treatise of ethics of love and sex? Could anyone quote Hannah Arendt while having an orgasm without getting immediately cold? Can a brilliant cis-woman have sex with straight men without losing her critical convictions? Victoria Brooks explores the paradoxical condition of cis-women having sex with cis-men and develops a queer ethics for straight love to survive: A libertine love treatise in the times of #Metoo. ~ Paul B. Preciado, author of Testo Junkie and Pornotopia