King Kong Theory

‘I write from the realms of the ugly, for the ugly, the frigid, the unfucked and the unfuckables, all those excluded from the great meat market of female flesh, and for all those guys who don’t want to be protectors, for those who would like to be but don’t know how, for those who are not ambitious, competitive, or well-endowed. Because this ideal of the seductive white woman constantly being waved under our noses – well, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t exist.’

Powerful, provocative and personal, King Kong Theory is a candid account of how the author of Baise-moi came to be Virginie Despentes. Drawing from personal experience, Despentes shatters received ideas about rape and prostitution, and explodes common attitudes towards sex and gender. King Kong Theory is a manifesto for a new punk feminism, reissued here in a brilliant new translation by Frank Wynne.

‘the testimony of an uncompromising life and its difficulties. The book has one theme that it reiterates over and over: don’t delude yourself that a life lived with freedom and in search of experience will be free of damage. Punishments will arrive, especially for women, but conformity is worse. Punk informs her sensibility as much if not more than any school of feminism. Like Simone de Beauvoir before her, she has made of her life a long critical inquiry into gender and sexuality, and her trauma is a fact of her personal history rather than a delicate porcelain object.’
— Emily Witt, New Yorker