Just Talking

Award-winning author and journalist Peggy Orenstein explores how a new generation of young women experience sex, gender and pleasure

Across the world, young people are having sex later and less often than ever before. Their early sexual experiences happen through screens; their real-world relationships are distorted by deepfakes, rewritten by extreme pornography and polarised by politics. In this brave new world, it may come as no surprise that for a new generation of girls, sex is more fraught than ever.

Reporting from the front lines of the sexual landscape, Peggy Orenstein draws on hundreds of interviews with young women to examine their generation's reluctance to engage with men and the cynical, violent or simply boring encounters that result when they do. With her characteristic intimacy and urgency, Peggy's thought-provoking research ultimately comes down to one thing: young women just want more.

PRAISE FOR PEGGY ORENSTEIN:

'Girls & Sex should be mandatory for anyone who cares about the present and future cultural landscape for girls, women, humans' Rashida Jones

'Peggy Orenstein holds a mirror not only to girls' experiences but to our own judgements' Rosalind Wiseman, author of Queen Bees and Wannabes

'Girls & Sex may do more to change how sex education is rethought and how parents and daughters discuss pleasure and sexuality than any book since the landmark Our Bodies, Ourselves' San Francisco Chronicle