Always Wanting More: Love, Sex, and the Lives of Highly Sexual Women

Women are often considered to be the ones who want less sex. What happens when they want more?

Always Wanting More follows women whose desire has shaped their lives since adolescence. These women push back against the idea that female sexuality should be constrained, sanitized, or policed. Their stories—complex and unapologetic—suggest new pathways toward sexual autonomy and pleasure.

Always Wanting More is a bold, necessary intervention on gender and desire, against chastity discourses that insist a women’s desire is immoral and that the “good” woman be sexually passive. Meanwhile, women who embrace their sexuality face scrutiny and shaming. Alicia M. Walker weaves together personal narratives, cultural commentary, and sociological analysis to revise women’s sexual scripts. By centering the voices of women who refuse to apologize for their sexuality, she challenges cultural norms and redefines what it means to be a sexual woman today.

Instead of dismissing a woman’s desires as “too much,” Walker expands the terrain of possibility, revealing what happens when a woman dares to want a life that’s different from what she’s supposed to.

Encourages women to reclaim sexual agency and to define their desires on their own terms, rather than conforming to societal expectations, while offering new perspectives for all who are interested in reconsidering sexual dynamics

Offers insights into different ways women experience and negotiate desire, leaving readers with a more inclusive and research-backed perspective on what it means to be a sexually autonomous woman in today’s world.

Contributes new perspectives on the issue of mismatched sex drive among couples, by defining erotic centrality, pleasure literacy, cultural illegibility, and erotic accommodation, thereby adding nuance to an over-simplified narrative.