Retrospective: Tangled Up in Pleasure and Danger

At the 1982 Barnard conference on sexuality, anthropologist Carole Vance observed that women’s sexuality is marked by a persistent tension between pleasure on the one hand and danger on the other. In the years that followed, Vance’s “pleasure and danger” formulation assumed an outsized influence both inside and outside the academy. This essay takes stock of the work performed by this influential couplet, particularly its influence on queer studies and activism and on scholars working at the intersection of women’s/gender history and the history of sexuality. While arguing for the continued relevance of “pleasure and danger,” I acknowledge that the political contentiousness of the 1980s—the period of the feminist sex wars—shifted the formulation’s meaning in ways that have proven both limiting and productive.