Celibacy is commonly associated with cloistered religious groups, or more recently with extremist incels. Yet in a world where 'Yes' to desire has dominated narratives of sexual liberation, Lisabeth During invites us to reconsider the radical potential of 'No' and examine how celibacy challenges norms and offers unique avenues for political dissent.

“We must not think that by saying yes to sex, one says no to power...It is the agency of sex that we must break away from.” - Michel Foucault

Was the sexual revolution worth the trouble? It is easy enough to make a case in its defense.  Pleasure is rare enough: we should welcome any effort to improve the conditions for its enjoyment. Before the call for liberation, sex was a magnet for taboo, for contradictory and confusing messages. Ignorance was dangerous to physical as to mental health. Drawing a veil over the world of the bedroom hindered the work of doctors, educators, and those simply desiring a better understanding of their own inclinations and imaginations. And expecting women to carry the burden of sexual morality as well as the responsibilities for reproduction and childcare was an injustice too blatant to ignore. A greater openness to sexuality removed one of the key arguments supporting the subordination of women, the worry about their sexual vulnerability, the stigma of the 'fallen woman'. The emancipation of the libido was a heady political promise. In its most radical it encouraged a principled assault on the sacred institutions of marriage and the family. Reproduction, no longer the alibi of intercourse, could be unyoked from sex; happiness, not the duties imposed by God and nature, was enough of a reason; and shorn of its reproductive rationale, heterosexuality lost its inevitability, perhaps even its power to determine the patterns of mind and culture.