Podcast Summary

Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Eugenio Duarte
Episode: Oliver Davis and Tim Dean, "Hatred of Sex" (U Nebraska Press, 2022)
Date: December 1, 2025
Theme: Exploring the complex, unsettling, and disordering aspects of sex through psychoanalytic and political theory, and how contemporary culture tends to suppress or overlook these facets.

Episode Overview

In this interview, host and psychoanalyst Eugenio Duarte talks with authors Oliver Davis and Tim Dean about their collaborative book, Hatred of Sex. Drawing on philosophy (particularly Jacques Rancière), psychoanalysis (notably Jean Laplanche), and queer theory, Davis and Dean argue that antipathy toward sex is not an accidental or external social defect, but intrinsic to the very experience of sexuality—just as antipathy is intrinsic to democracy. The authors critique cultural tendencies—from therapy to queer theory itself—that attempt to regulate or suppress the disruptive, unruly, and often unpleasurable dimensions of sex. The conversation is rich, critical, and thought-provoking, with frequent attention to how theory and lived experience intertwine.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Genesis and Creative Process of the Book

• Collaboration Origins: The idea and title “Hatred of Sex” emerged during a dinner between Davis and Dean in 2013, inspired by philosophical conversations and personal academic interests (03:47).
  • Tim Dean: “The moment that we came up with that title, I knew the moment that we came up with that title, that we had to write the book because we had a great title... I continue to marvel that we managed to pull this off.” (02:43)
• Title Inspiration: The book title adapts Jacques Rancière’s Hatred of Democracy, moving the critique of disorder and antipathy from politics to sex (04:02, 07:29).

The Parallel Between Democracy and Sex

• Unruliness and Disorder: Both democracy and sex are fundamentally messy and destabilizing, creating an inherent tension between desire and societal attempts at order.
  • Oliver Davis: “Both sex and democracy are messy, disordering, and that’s the kind of point of similarity that we depart from.” (07:29)
• Internal Critique vs. External Defect: Antipathy towards sex, like antipathy towards democracy, is not a contingent flaw but a constitutive feature (09:53, 11:00).

Notable Quote:
“If Rancière claims that contempt for democracy is built into democracy... then we claim that antipathy towards sex subtends even the unmistakable joys of sex.” – (Duarte reading from book, 09:53)

The Disordering and Unsettling Nature of Sex

• Sexual Unruliness: Sex disorders personal identity and established relationships, invading attention and undermining coherent selfhood.
  • Oliver Davis: “Sexual fantasy, sexual thoughts colonize attentional space... sex kind of disorders the ways in which we like to kind of lead our Lives in planned and organized ways.” (12:32)
• Pleasure and Its Problem: Pleasure itself is implicated in the hatred of sex; it can be overwhelming, excessive, and tip into pain or distress.
  • Tim Dean: “Much of our lives are dedicated to organizing things so we don’t get overwhelmed by pleasure.” (13:21)

Distinguishing Sexuality from Eros

• Drawing on Laplanche and Freud, Davis and Dean distinguish “sexuality” (unbinding, shattering, destabilizing) from “Eros” (binding, organizing, loving).
  • Tim Dean: “Eros is what binds things together... sexuality at its most intense is what unbinds, what shatters, what perturbs the self.” (14:58)

Culture, Therapy, and the Suppression of Sexual Unruliness

• Management of Sex: Contemporary culture seeks to tame and sanitize sex—often treating it as dangerous, stigmatizing negative feelings, and eclipsing radical possibilities for unbinding.

  • Oliver Davis: “Our culture tries to... manage [sex] into corners of enjoyment that tend to eclipse that potential for radical unbinding.” (17:08)

• Trauma Therapy Critique: The authors critique trauma-focused therapy (especially Judith Herman’s framework) for sometimes pathologizing the disruptive effects of sex as abuse, conflating internal difficulties with external perpetrators.

  • Tim Dean: “The feeling of being violated in sex does not always mean you have been violated by somebody.” (18:54, 21:08)
  • Oliver Davis: “We identify... a clear kind of line of persuasion and suggestion [in trauma therapy]... to dig around... to find evidence for abuse, even when it’s not immediately presenting itself.” (21:51)

Leo Bersani and the "Secret" About Sex

• Influential Figure: Leo Bersani’s insight (“There is a big secret about sex. Most people don’t like it”) is central to the book, reframed for a new historical moment.
  • Tim Dean: “Sex is what brings out the deplorable part of ourselves... the deplorable in all of us.” (24:24, 26:04)

The Contradictions of Queer Theory

• Queer Theory’s Avoidance of Sex: Despite its origins, queer theory (and queer studies as an academic field) increasingly sidelines the troubling, “deplorable” aspects of sexuality in favor of respectability and political utility.
  • Tim Dean: “Queer theory and queer studies actually instantiate and exemplify the hatred of sex... in becoming a discipline... Queer studies has actually left behind what is most troubling, deplorable, unsettling, and that is sex.” (30:15, 31:26)
• Critique of Sociologism/Intersectionality: The authors caution against reducing identity and sexuality solely to sociological categories.
  • Oliver Davis: “To analyze somebody or a population sociologically is not a very instructive way to proceed.” (33:39)

The Limits and Dangers of Identitarianism

• Identity as Defense Mechanism: Rigid adherence to identity categories is seen as limiting and as a defense against the destabilizing effects of sex/subjectivity.
  • Tim Dean: “Identity is imprisoning. I do not think it’s liberating... Identity is always a defense against sex because sex is unbinding, unsettling, whereas identity is always a form of binding.” (34:49)

Notable Exchange:

• Eugenio Duarte: “If I move through the world identifying as a gay man... what am I defending myself against?”
• Tim Dean: “I routinely forget that I am a gay man... it just seems to me a kind of artificial and actually very limiting kind of category.” (38:13)

Collaboration and Process

• Collaborative Writing: Despite living in different countries and time zones, Davis and Dean achieved a unified authorial voice through years of deep conversation, mutual editing, and shared critical outlook.
  • Oliver Davis: “We didn’t sit down and write absolutely every sentence together. That would be excruciating for both of us. But I think it is, it’s genuinely a common, common project.” (42:22)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Difficulty of Sex:
  “The difficulty of sex is not simply the result of patriarchy, capitalism, imperialism... but it’s, in fact, there’s a difficulty within sex itself. And it doesn’t help to simply recode that as abuse.”
  – Tim Dean (18:54)

• On Pleasure:
  “Much of our lives are dedicated to organizing things so we don’t get overwhelmed by pleasure.”
  – Tim Dean (13:21)

• On Identity:
  “Identity is always a defense against sex because sex is unbinding, unsettling, whereas identity is always a form of binding, a form of defining, putting boundaries around things, making something coherent and intelligible.”
  – Tim Dean (34:49)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Introduction and Book Genesis: 01:32–04:59
• Mapping Democracy onto Sexuality: 05:05–09:53
• The Internal Problem of Sex: 09:53–12:32
• The Problem of Pleasure: 13:04–14:47
• Sex vs. Eros (Laplanche/Freud): 14:58–16:30
• Critique of Trauma Therapy & Judith Herman: 17:08–23:50
• Leo Bersani’s Influence: 24:24–27:46
• Queer Theory and Avoidance of Sex: 29:26–31:26
• Critique of Intersectionality/Sociologism: 31:32–33:17
• Limits of Identity & Defense Mechanisms: 34:49–41:19
• Collaboration Process: 42:02–44:24
• Takeaways and Hopes for Readers: 44:38–47:33
• Upcoming Projects: 47:33–49:11

Final Takeaways

• Oliver Davis: Hopes the book will help move culture away from its current “sex-hating” impasse, reminding us that sex is inherently complex and should not be over-sanitized or treated only as “danger.”
  • “I think we turned into inadvertently really quite a sex hating culture. And I’m hoping that this book will help lead us out of it.” (44:38)
• Tim Dean: Sees the book as a tool to understand cultural schizophrenia about sex—its simultaneous elevation and suppression—hoping readers better understand, if not solve, this predicament.
• Eugenio Duarte: Hopes the book will help individuals “own those deplorable parts of themselves” and reclaim these as integral to sexual experience.

For further engagement, Davis can be reached via the University of Warwick, and Dean at timdean123mail.com.