fbpx

THE
PRACTICAL
SEDUCTRESS

How I Learned to Take My Hat and Run

A memoir by Sue Camaione

Sue Camaione’s memoir, The Practical Seductress, exposes the dangerous path to sexual equality. Filled with humor and learned wisdom, Sue exposes the double standard of desire and turns it into a “practical” how-to approach while navigating treacherous and unpredictable paths. It’s an inspiring tale of resilience that defies social norms in a world where men seek adventure, and women find shame—all in the pursuit of pleasure. 

About The Practical Seductress

The virgin-whore dichotomy has doggedly persisted through generations. Today, the #MeToo movement, the loss of reproductive rights, and misogyny is the same tale of young women struggling to navigate sexual freedom and female joy. The Practical Seductress exposes gender double standards that defined the 1970s and ’80s. 

In this sexually charged memoir, Sue Camaione sets off on a rebellious course to make her way as a young woman determined to live on her own terms despite societal mores. She flees upstate New York to embark upon romantic adventures across the country. She discovers orgasmic joy in the Rocky Mountains, falls in love in Tucson, struggles with open marriage in San Diego, and explores forbidden intimacy in the arms of a Chilean graduate student in Boston. 

Full of a precocious curiosity about sexuality, Sue questions her religious education, challenges her school dress code, sets herself on a quest to lose her virginity, encounters challenges that at times leave her broke, sick, and homeless. These experiences with men, places, and friendships transform her.  

The Practical Seductress is uniquely unapologetic in its advocacy for women fully owning their sexuality and the right to express themselves freely. This is a story of desire and survival, of navigating treacherous and unpredictable paths, and of defying social norms to find redemption.

 

For Readers Who Liked . . . 

Untamed by Glennon Doyle

Bad Sex: Truth, Pleasure, and Unfinished Revolution by Nona Willis Arnowitz

The Women’s Room by Marilyn French

The Fear of Flying by Erica Jong

How to Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran

What Other Writers Are Saying About Sue

Sue Camaione is brutally candid and funny in describing her journey. She fiercely fights gender bigotry as she seeks to pursue a fulfilling and sensually satisfying life.

Chris Palmer, author of Finding Meaning and Success: Living a Fulfilled and Productive Life

Sue’s story left me alternately laughing and wincing with recognition at memories of the sexual revolution of the 1970s. Coming of age during that era, we were so incredibly naïve and hopeful that the gender double standard could be overcome by our passionate pursuit of equality. Young women today would be wise to learn from this book that our rights as women cannot be taken for granted.

Laurie Morin, author of Shero’s Journey

A quick read packed with emotional candor and wit, and all about sexual desire? Yes, please! In The Practical Seductress, Camaione inhabits a space between hilarity and heartbreak, and weaves between pain and sharp humor, while staying grounded and focused on desire.

Amy L. Freeman, essayist, The Washington Post, HuffPost, Parents.com

Candid, brave, and honest, The Practical Seductress should be required reading, if for no other reason than to help so many males… like me better understand and assist in overcoming the sexual double standards that continue to exist.

Rob Jolles, Bestselling author of How to Change Minds, and Why People Don’t Believe You

Check out my other writing while you wait for The Practical Seductress

Addicted to Advice

Addicted to Advice

Knowing that hundreds of millions read advice columns daily, with additional how-to improve yourself videos and podcasts, I began to feel a little less guilty in my obsession. I’ve indulged in other forms of advisement over the decades: Talk and Cognitive Behavior...

Sex and Sexuality – An Homage to Dr. Ruth

Sex and Sexuality – An Homage to Dr. Ruth

"An orgasm a day keeps the doctor away."  “What do you do if a woman is frigid?” asked the man in the auditorium. “No such thing,” Dr. Ruth Westheimer said in her distinctive German accent. “We do not use that word. We say ‘responsive’ to sex,” she added, rolling...

DoppleMadgester – My Life as Madonna

DoppleMadgester – My Life as Madonna

Recently, as I stood admiring the plethora of differently sized and shaped phalluses throughout human history displayed on the walls of the Penis room at the Barcelona Erotic Museum, I could see a couple eyeing a video positioned on the wall then back to me. Curious,...

Our Psychedelic Honeymoon – A Valentine’s Day Special

Our Psychedelic Honeymoon – A Valentine’s Day Special

Why Psychedelics? I, and my newly minted husband Rod, recently embarked upon a Psychedelic Honeymoon Retreat in Alicante, Spain. Full confession, we had engaged in the year prior to our wedding in several therapy-assisted drug experiments: MDMA (love drug), psilocybin...

Ken vs Jo Koy in the Barbie Universe

Ken vs Jo Koy in the Barbie Universe

While raising first a daughter and then a son, I soon discovered an all-encompassing destructive sexism in our culture, regardless of gender birth or identity. Since my daughter is older and female and rebelled against any ‘girly-girl’ stereotypes, I was on alert for...

A Toast to Jezebels

A Toast to Jezebels

Why are so many stories in the world’s literary canon on women cheating, written by men? Why do so many of these female heroines end up jumping from trains, dying from consumption, or drowning in lakes? Simply review a few classics: Wuthering Heights, Anna Karenina,...

SIGN UP
FOR UPDATES
FROM SUE
STRAIGHT TO
YOUR INBOX