Fluid Sexuality Quotes

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Man can never know the loneliness a woman knows. Man lies in the woman's womb only to gather strength, he nourishes himself from this fusion, and then he rises and goes into the world, into his work, into battle, into art. He is not lonely. He is busy. The memory of the swim in amniotic fluid gives him energy, completion. Woman may be busy too, but she feels empty. Sensuality for her is not only a wave of pleasure in which she is bathed, and a charge of electric joy at contact with another. When man lies in her womb, she is fulfilled, each act of love a taking of man within her, an act of birth and rebirth, of child rearing and man bearing. Man lies in her womb and is reborn each time anew with a desire to act, to be. But for woman, the climax is not in the birth, but in the moment man rests inside of her.
Anaïs Nin (The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934)
At any rate, Therese thought, she was happier than she ever had been before. And why worry about defining everything?
Patricia Highsmith (The Price of Salt, or Carol)
Does it make sense to boycott ourselves? Does it hold water to boycott the fluid course of our life? Is it consistent to commit self-sabotage by destroying wittingly our corporeal and mental structure? Those are the questions thousands of people may ask as they are confronted with the schizophrenic dilemma on the point of smoking, boozing, doping, sexual transgressing or environmental polluting. Many seem to be aware of their problem. Many have decided to stop from tomorrow on. But when tomorrow and after tomorrow come many tend to let slip their vow and their self-sabotage goes on to rule their life. Their dissonant behavior transforms them into social losers or hopeless patsies and depresses them into the class of forlorn pariahs. They realize, as such, that self-handicapping makes no sense, but are not able to protect themselves from themselves since they haven’t got the muscle to live down the spell of addiction. Thousands of people may feel having set the bar too high and recognize they are are failing to find the right angle and are missing sufficient insight to steer their life. If, however, they decide to give it a try they should be aware that the road may be very bumpy and that they have to be prepared for disappointments and regressions, that they might have to deal with very slowly crescent improvements, that they shouldn’t take themselves for a ride and that they could only possibly succeed by focusing painfully on the path to breaking free from the hornet's nest they have got themselves into.
Erik Pevernagie
My bisexuality is part of the expression of the flexibility, the changeability of my spirit that feels essential and precious to the center of my life. My bisexuality is a part of my desire to remain an outsider, to be able to "pass" into polarized worlds, to abandon expectation, to honor the mystery of being. My bisexuality is a celebration of the ever-opening flesh, the expansive, fluid mirror of social discourse.
Michelle T. Clinton
Things had changed between them nevertheless. They were children of a time and culture which mistrusted love, 'in love', romantic love, romance in toto, and which nevertheless in revenge proliferated sexual language, linguistic sexuality, analysis, dissection, deconstruction, exposure. They were theoretically knowing: they knew about phallocracy and penisneid, punctuation, puncturing and penetration, about polymorphous and polysemous perversity, orality, good and bad breasts, clitoral tumescence, vesicle persecution, the fluids, the solids, the metaphors for these, the systems of desire and damage, infantile greed and oppression and transgression, the iconography of the cervix and the imagery of the expanding and contracting Body, desired, attacked, consumed, feared.
A.S. Byatt (Possession)
Squirting isn’t easy, it has to be said. Then, neither is riding a unicycle. Just as some people sweat more than others, or eat more than others, some girls erupt in surging geysers of vaginal fluids with greater facility and in more generous quantities than others.
Chloe Thurlow (A Girl's Adventures)
I don’t think that loneliness is necessarily a bad or unconstructive condition. My own skill at jamming time may actually be dependent on some fluid mixture of emotions, among them curiosity, sexual desire, and love, all suspended in a solvent medium of loneliness. I like the heroes or heroines of books I read to be living alone, and feeling lonely, because reading is itself a state of artificially enhanced loneliness. Loneliness makes you consider other people’s lives, makes you more polite to those you deal with in passing, dampens irony and cynicism. The interior of the Fold is, of course, the place of ultimate loneliness, and I like it there. But there are times when the wish for others’ voices, for friendliness returned, reaches unpleasant levels, and becomes a kind of immobilizing pain. That was how it felt as I finished packing up the box of sex machines.
Nicholson Baker (The Fermata)
Maybe we can stop trying so hard to understand the gorgeous mystery of sexuality. Instead, we can just listen to ourselves and each other with curiosity and love, and without fear. We can just let people be who they are and we can believe that the freer each person is, the better we all are. Maybe our understanding of sexuality can become as fluid as sexuality itself.
Glennon Doyle (Untamed)
The physical stage of bonding is at its most powerful when all other forms of bonding have been achieved. If this has been done, the final petals of the flower have reached full maturity and unfold, leaving no restriction for pleasure, physical or otherwise. Having learned your partner and when to push, pull away or work together in fluid unison; having learned what enthuses and delights their senses, you are prepared to carry all of this knowledge into the sweet cadence of your unity.
Shykia Bell (CAMILEON: Beyond The Veil)
They still had sexual relations with another, slept in the same bed, shared kisses and intimacy and matrimonial fluid, however both were not married to each other in that sense, although there was a piece of paper that said otherwise.
Keira D. Skye
The energy that is wasted during one sexual intercourse is tantamount to the energy that is spent in physical labour for ten days or the energy that is utilized in mental work for three days. Mark how precious is the vital fluid, semen! Do not waste this energy. Preserve it with great care. You will have wonderful vitality. When Veerya is not used, it is all transmuted into Ojas Sakti or spiritual energy and stored up in the brain. Western doctors know little of this salient point. Most of your ailments are due to excessive seminal wastage.
Sivananda Saraswati (PRACTICE OF BRAHMACHARYA)
She sank with an enormous sigh that carried all rigidity like a mythical fluid from her, down next to him; so weak she couldn't help him undress her; it took him 20 minutes, rolling, arranging her this way and that, as if she thought, he were some scaled-up, short-haired, poker-faced little girl with a Barbie doll. She may have fallen asleep once or twice. She awoke at last to find herself getting laid; she'd come in on a sexual crescendo in progress, like a cut to a scene where the camera's already moving. Outside a fugue of guitars had begun, and she counted each electronic voice as it came in, till she reached six or so and recalled only three of the Paranoids played guitars; so others must be plugging in.
Thomas Pynchon (The Crying of Lot 49)
Sexuality can be fluid, but
Julie Sondra Decker (The Invisible Orientation: An Introduction to Asexuality)
Sexuality was a fluid, infinitely malleable and indefinite condition. It permeated the streets of London like the smell of pies and sweetmeats.
Peter Ackroyd (Queer City: Gay London from the Romans to the Present Day)
Every time a man ejaculates, he uses five milligrams of zinc. Zinc is highly concentrated in both sperm and seminal fluid, and frequent ejaculation can lead to zinc depletion, especially if the diet is poor.
Stephen Harrod Buhner (The Natural Testosterone Plan: For Sexual Health and Energy)
The Church, though, has always held up a mirror in which society can see reflected some of its uglier aspects, and it does not like what it sees. Thus it becomes angry but not, as it should be, with itself, but with the Church. This is particularly noticeable when it comes to issues of personal gratification and sexuality and especially, apart from abortion, when issues of artificial contraception, condoms, and the birth-control pill are discussed. The Church warned in the 1960s that far from creating a more peaceful, content, and sexually fulfilled society, the universal availability of the pill and condoms would lead to the direct opposite. In the decade since, we have seen a seemingly inexorable increase in sexually transmitted diseases, so-called unwanted pregnancies, sexuality-related depression, divorce, family breakdown, pornography addiction, and general unhappiness in the field of sexual relationships. The Church's argument was that far from liberating women, contraception would enable and empower men and reduce the value and dignity of sexuality to the point of transforming what should be a loving and profound act into a mere exchange of bodily fluids. The expunging from the sexual act the possibility of procreation, the Church said, would reduce sexuality to mere self-gratification. Pleasure was vital and God-given but there was also a purpose, a glorious purpose, to sex that went far beyond the merely instant and ultimately selfish.
Michael Coren (Why Catholics are Right)
The idea that the stars literally influence men (by a falling fluid, an influenza) is plainly untenable. But that the movements of the constellations are a clock by which earthly changes can be measured is less easy to dismiss.
Camille Paglia (Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson)
As he turned back to her, Cassandra stood on her toes to kiss him. He claimed his reward immediately, fitting his mouth to hers and taking a long, ardent taste. Her head swam, and she welcomed the exploration of his tongue. He savored and consumed her, with a kiss more aggressive than any he'd given her before. It made her knees weak and turned her bones fluid. Her body listed toward his and was instantly gathered into the hard urgency of his embrace. Desire curled through her in hot tendrils that insinuated themselves in deep, private places. Her throat caught on a whimper of protest as his mouth lifted from hers. "We'd better start negotiating," he said raggedly. "The first issue is how much time you'll want to spend with me." "All of it," Cassandra said, and sought his lips again. Tom chuckled. "I would. I... oh, you're so sweet... no, I'm... God. It's time to stop. Really." He crushed his mouth against her hair to avoid her kisses. "You're about to be deflowered in the library." "Didn't that already happen?" she asked, and felt the shape of his smile. "No," he whispered, "you're still a virgin. Albeit slightly more experienced than two days ago." He brought his mouth closer to her ear. "Did you like what I did?" She nodded, her face turning so hot that she could feel her cheeks throb. "I wanted more." "I'd like to give you more. As soon as possible.
Lisa Kleypas (Chasing Cassandra (The Ravenels, #6))
When I decided to retire from the gender binary, the narrative that I had about being a man stuck in a woman's body didn't make sense anymore, unless I was a gender-neutral person who'd been stuck in a man's body stuck in a woman's body all along. I started to consider that I was not essentially a gender, and that bodies should not be gendered based on the rigid binary system. I decided that my gender and sexuality had been a fluid narrative that I had constructed based on the options that I was given. I had not been a man or a woman for any reason other than that I had believed that I was one. Now that I had the option of opting out of the binary, the story could expand and evolve to include that identification as part of my history.
Rae Spoon (Gender Failure)
Every single emergency room in every single hospital adjoining or near a college campus stocks extra supplies on Thursday nights — rape kits for the sexual assault victims, IV fluids for those who are dehydrated from alcohol-induced vomiting, and blood for drunk driving accidents.”11
Kara Powell (Sticky Faith: Everyday Ideas to Build Lasting Faith in Your Kids)
If queerness is too much, then straightness is too little, the relational manifestation of lack. Let us not forget that “straight” was originally something of an insult, a slang term first used by gay men in the mid-twentieth century to describe men who had once been sexually fluid but had returned, at least temporarily, to the confines of a straight and narrow life.7 The use of “straight” as an insult continued into the 1960s and ’70s among hippies, self-identified freaks, and counterculture enthusiasts who used the term to describe the stifling and uninspired quality of mainstream American life.
Jane Ward (The Tragedy of Heterosexuality (Sexual Cultures Book 56))
..and of AIDS. The virus too small to imagine travelling through our fluids, even a drop or two of saliva or cunt slime, and unlocking our antibodies with its little picks, so that our insides lose their balance and we topple into pneumonia, into starvation. Love and death, they can't be pried apart anymore.
John Updike (Rabbit at Rest (Rabbit Angstrom, #4))
Biological Exuberance is, above all, an affirmation of life's vitality and infinite possibilities: a worldview that is once primordial and futuristic, in which gender is kaleidoscopic, sexualities are multiple, and the categories of male and female are fluid and transmutable. A world, in short, exactly like the one we inhabit.
Bruce Bagemihl (Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity)
Herein lies the delicious torture, the 'flowery combat' of intimacy—the lover who really turns you on deep in your sexual heart will also really frustrate you in more superficial moments. If you have a feminine essence, then your masculine lover's deep confidence and integrity will turn you on, except when bulldozing your feelings and nit-picking the content of everything you say in a moment of conflict. If you have a masculine essence, then your feminine lover's spontaneous laughter and fluid sexual responsiveness will turn you on, except during times of whacko hysteria and unpredictable shutdowns. In moments of deep communion, the masculine and feminine open as a singular gift—two facets of one jewel.
David Deida (Blue Truth)
In the universe, two or more seemingly contradictory facts can be simultaneously true. How about on Earth? Can you be both male and female? Can you be neither? Can you move fluidly between being a man and a woman? Is your sexual preference fluid too? Maybe we're all male-female qubits. Such questions are hard for some people to grasp, embedded in a culture that sees the world as a landscape of rigid categories, where things must be one or the other, and not fall on a continuum.
Neil deGrasse Tyson (Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization)
Beyond the obvious demands - an end to sexual violence, an end to the wage gap - feminism must be class-conscious, and aware of the limiting culture of the gender binary. It needs to recognise that disabled people aren't inherently defective, but rather that non-disabled people have failed at creating a physical world that serves all. Feminism must demand affordable, decent, secure housing, and a universal basic income. It should demand pay for full-time mothers and free childcare for working mothers. It should recognise that we live in a world in which women are constantly harangued into being lusted after, but punishes sex workers for using that situation to make a living. Feminism needs to thoroughly recognise that sexuality is fluid, and we need to dream of a world where people are not violently policed for transgressing rigid gender roles. Feminism needs to demand a world in which racist history is acknowledged and accounted for, in which reparations are distributed, in which race is completely deconstructed.
Reni Eddo-Lodge (Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race)
It has been suggested that genders or even sexual distinctions among the Classic Maya were fluid and, in the jargon of present-day academic language, “performed” or “inscribed,” as though physical attributes could be reconfigured by force of will or caprice of thought (e.g., R. Joyce 2000a:6–10, 64–66, 78–79, 178). The distinction here between gender, a series of learned habits and attitudes linked with sex, and sex itself, a biological property, is basic, although a number of scholars have begun to assert that the latter, too, is culturally conditioned (Gosden 1999:146–150; cf. Astuti 1998:46–47; Stein 1992:340–350).
Stephen Houston (The Memory of Bones: Body, Being, and Experience among the Classic Maya (Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Series in Latin American and Latino Art and Culture))
The women’s bladders filled remarkably fast during sexual stimulation. There was urine before orgasm and their bladders were empty after squirting. The squirted fluid was identified in the lab as urine. Why does this happen? It is possible when women report squirting that they are simply having an orgasm strong enough for the pelvic floor muscles to empty their bladder, which is why it is associated with heightened pleasure. It is also possible that a more intense sexual response could result in a faster filling of the bladder. It is also possible that some women have a lot of transudate—meaning they get very wet—during sex. When they orgasm, that fluid could come out all at once.
Jennifer Gunter (The Vagina Bible: The Vulva and the Vagina: Separating the Myth from the Medicine)
Feminism must demand affordable, decent, secure housing, and a universal basic income. It should demand pay for full-time mothers and free childcare for working mothers. It should recognise that we live in a world in which women are constantly harangued into being lusted after, but punishes sex workers for using that situation to make a living. Feminism needs to thoroughly recognise that sexuality is fluid, and we need to dream of a world where people are not violently policed for transgressing rigid gender roles. Feminism needs to demand a world in which racist history is acknowledged and accounted for, in which reparations are distributed, in which race is completely deconstructed.
Reni Eddo-Lodge (Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race)
level, I lean forward and press my mouth against his, parting my lips and letting his tongue in. I feel his cum starting to drip down my chin as we kiss, and I don't mind that we're making a mess. In fact, I like the mess, and I know Jake does, too, based on how he reacts. He sucks on my tongue, and then rolls his inside of my mouth, stealing back all of his cum. The moment he pulls back from me, I wipe my chin with the back of my hand, swallowing whatever’s left inside of my mouth. Grinning, he does the same, his Adam’s apple moving up and down as his own fluids go down his throat. I love that Jake is such a sexual being. We share our bodies, we share our cum, and we both love every minute of it.
Alexis Angel (Baby Batter)
In a very distantly possible, scientific sense, yes, of course it’s possible that an asexual person who has never been sexually attracted to anyone could encounter someone in the world who inspires sexual attraction for them. If an experience is possible for most people, it makes sense to suggest that maybe a person who hasn’t experienced it still might. But responding to a non-straight orientation with “well, you never know, you might change” isn’t a practical or useful response; it suggests the responding person is processing asexuality as if it must be a passing phase. Sexual orientations are nothing but descriptions of patterns that have, so far in a person’s life, been predictable. Sexuality can be fluid, but there’s no reason to point this out as a way to suggest someone can, will, or should change.
Julie Sondra Decker (The Invisible Orientation: An Introduction to Asexuality)
He made her feel out of kilter, wholly off-balance. The other night in his arms, it had felt so good to lean on him, if only for a while. To forget the load she had borne for so long now. And she could see it, God help her, she could, an erotic vision that ran through her mind, filled her world; her hands running over his shoulders- dark and burnished as his face. His form, long and muscular and naked, all fluid masculinity as he raised himself above her. Heat seemed to gather at the place between her thighs. Her breasts were swelling, as if her nipples sought to stab through every layer of stiff, starched cloth. She knew that if she looked down- there would be no hiding the sight of her nipples standing pebbled and hard beneath her gown. She wanted to clamp her hands over them; better still, she wanted him to clamp those strong, masculine hands over them both and...
Samantha James (The Seduction Of An Unknown Lady (McBride Family #2))
[Bisexuality] is seen as threatening the homosexual/heterosexual and male/female dichotomies, or binarisms, which underpin our gender and sexual identities to such a large extent. In the case of the first three stereotypes, there is a refusal even to acknowledge the existence of bisexuality. It is simply wished out of existence. You can either be homosexual or heterosexual but anything else is just a phase, just playacting, not real. As Udis-Kessler argues [‘Challenging the Stereotypes’, in Rose and Stevens (eds), Bisexual Horizons: Politics, Histories, Lives. 1996. London: Lawrence and Wishart, pp. 45-57], this reflects an ideology of essentialism which dismisses the idea that sexuality may be fluid, not fixed, and that its forms can change over a person’s lifetime. This ideology assumes that there is a ‘true’ sexuality which we are working our way towards and that bisexuality is not really ‘true’ or ‘serious’ because it is a transition towards that other state… As Udis-Kessler points out, transitions are not a rehearsal for life. Life is a series of transitions: points of arrival become new points of departure, and vice versa. So why should we assume that the way we experienced our sexuality ten or twenty years ago is necessarily less ‘true’ or important than the way we experience it now, or that the way we experience it now will necessarily be the same in ten or twenty years time? Obviously this applies not only to bisexuality, but it is an argument which those - including some lesbian and gay activists - who accuse bisexuality of being a sort of ‘false consciousness’ seldom get to grips with… lesbians and gay men, anxious to create safe spaces where they are not subject to homophobic rejection or oppression, may (consciously or unconsciously) seek to exclude bisexuals[…].Unfortunately, as soon as this happens, as with every oppressed or stigmatised group, it can lead to others being oppressed or stigmatised in turn.
Richard Dunphy (Sexual Politics: An Introduction)
Have you ever been swept away by a toxic lover who sucked you dry? I have. Bad men used to light me up like a Christmas tree. If I had a choice between the rebel without a cause and a nice guy in a sweater and outdoorsy shoes, you can imagine who got my phone number. Rebels and rogues are smooth (and somewhat untamed); they know the headwaiters at the best steak houses, ride fast European motorcycles, and start bar fights in your honor. In short, the rebel makes you feel really alive! It’s all fun and games until he screws your best friend or embezzles your life’s savings. You may be asking yourself how my pathetic dating track record relates to your diet. Simple. The acid—alkaline balance, which relates to the chemistry of your body’s fluids and tissues as measured by pH. The rebel/rogue = acid. The nice solid guy = alkaline. The solid guy gives you energy; he’s reliable and trustworthy. The solid guy calls you back when he says he will. He helps you clean your garage and does yoga with you. He’s even polite to your family no matter how whacked they are, and has the sexual stamina to rock your world. While the rebel can help you let your hair down, too much rebel will sap your energy. In time, a steady rebellious diet burns you out. But when we’re addicted to bad boys (junk food, fat, sugar, and booze), nice men (veggies and whole grains) seem boring. Give them a chance!
Kris Carr (Crazy Sexy Diet: Eat Your Veggies, Ignite Your Spark, And Live Like You Mean It!)
According to Egyptian texts, to eat of this fruit was to eat of the flesh and the fluid of the Goddess, the patroness of sexual pleasure and reproduction. According to the Bible story, the forbidden fruit caused the couple's conscious comprehension of sexuality. Upon eating the fruit, Adam and Eve became aware of the sexual nature of their own bodies, "And they knew that they were naked." So it was that when the male deity found them, they had modestly covered their genitals with aprons of fig leaves. But it was vitally important to the construction of the Levite myth that they did not both decide to eat the forbidden fruit together, which would have been a more logical turn for the tale to take since the fruit symbolised sexual consciousness. No, the priestly scribes make it exceedingly clear that the woman Eve ate of the fruit first - upon the advice and counsel of the serpent. It can hardly have been chance or coincidence that it was a serpent who offerred Eve the advice. For people at that time knew that the serpent was the symbol, perhaps even the instrument, of divine counsel in the religion of the Goddess. It was surely intended in the Paradise myth, as in the Indo-European serpent and dragon myths, that the serpent, as the familiar counsellor of women, be seen as a source of evil and be placed in such a menacing and villainous role that to listen to the prophetesses of the female deity would be to violate the religion of the male deity in the most dangerous manner. {...} We are told that, by eating the fruit first, women possessed sexual consciousness before man and in turn tempted man to partake the forbidden fruit, that is, to join her sinfully in sexual pleasures. This image of Eve as a sexually tempting but god-defying seductress was surely intended as a warning to all Hebrew men to stay away from the sacred women of the temples, for if they succumb to the temptations of these women, they simultaneously accepted the female deity - Her fruit - Her sexuality and, perhaps most important, the resulting matrilineal identity for any children who might be conceived in this manner. It must also, perhaps even more pointedly, have been directed at Hebrew women, cautioning them not to take part in the ancient religion and its sexual customs, as they appear to have continued to do so, despite the warnings and punishments meted out by the Levite priests.
Merlin Stone (When God Was a Woman)
In this sense the practices of Sex Magick can be seen as devices leading to the re-birth or twice born experience often referred to by modern day evangelical Christians. In the Holy Bible it is written that "Except a man be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." [John 3:5]. It is impossible to be born again unless one dies. Let us infer, for a moment, that a "little death" occurs at the point of orgasm. A spiritual rebirth, then, might be in the process of dying consciously and willfully, as well as awakening consciously and willfully. That is, after one "suffers," through discipline, the little death of orgasm, one becomes conscious of completely letting go and is consciously "reborn" of water (sexual fluids) and through the God invoked during orgasm.
Christopher S. Hyatt (Taboo: Sex, Religion & Magick)
She’s watching me in the dawn’s first light with an intensity that melts me. Her face a vivid world, I no longer know if I exist inside a photograph or if I once existed in the whiteness of the morning in front of this slow-gesturing woman who, never taking her eyes off me, is lying there in front of me, naked more naked than the night, more physical than a whole life spent caressing the beauty of the world. Sustaining her gaze is painful. I imagine, I breathe and imagine her once more. A few centimetres below the manubrium glints a little diamond that seems to stay on her chest by magic. The diamond, no doubt held there by a little ring inserted into the flesh, sparkles like a provocation, an object of light that lies in wait for desire, engulfs the other. I am that other. I am pure emotion lying in wait for the fate crouched inside this woman. The woman offers her desire, sows sentences in me whose syntax is unfamiliar and which I’m unable to follow and pronounce. Words there I cannot clearly distinguish – breasts, gusts, ships, stext – and, in between them, the woman’s lips move like some life-giving water that cleanses away all clichés, promises that every imprint of the gaze will be sexual, will be repeated and fluid as vivid as the morning light absorbing one’s most intimate thoughts. Her arms are open. She opens herself to the embraces that, in mother tongue, suspend reality. The woman has turned her head slightly and her throat astonishes. Her gaze contains traces of that water which, it is said, gushes when memory becomes verb and rekindles desire at the edge of the labia. The woman’s gaze sweeps into the future. Simone sometimes finds herself comparing herself to the woman of action, of business and of spirit, wise to intrigue, that was Marie de l’Incarnation.
Nicole Brossard (Yesterday, at the Hotel Clarendon)
During the survivors’ recovery period, the skin peeled off their faces, hands, feet, and genitals. Some of the men suffered from blown up, inflamed, semirotten testicles. One of the worst cases of this testicular infection appeared in a morgue attendant who had handled Marburg-infected bodies and who himself came down with Marburg, having caught it from the cadavers. The virus also lingered in the fluid inside the eyeballs of some victims for many months. No one knows why Marburg has a special affinity for the testicles and the eyes. One man infected his wife with Marburg through sexual intercourse.
Richard Preston (The Hot Zone)
...much overt sex work, as well as the subtler forms of commodified sexuality for sale, is the result of an economic system that provides little material security for women, and encourages all people to turn everything they have (their labor, their reputations, their emotions, their bodily fluids and ova, and so forth) into a product that can be sold on a market where prices are determined by the caprices of supply and demand.
Kristen R. Ghodsee (Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism: And Other Arguments for Economic Independence)
The mess we are living in is a deliberate one. If it was created by people, it can be dismantled by people, and it can be rebuilt in a way that serves all, rather than a selfish, hoarding few. Beyond the obvious demands - an end to sexual violence, an end to the wage gap - feminism must be class-conscious, and needs to recognise that disabled people aren't inherently defective, but rather that non-disabled people have failed at creating a physical world that services all. Feminism must demand affordable, decent, secure housing, and a universal basic income. It should demand pay for full-time mothers and free childcare for working mothers. It should recognise that we live in a world in which women are constantly harangued into being lusted after, but punishes sex workers for using that situation to make a living. Feminism needs to thoroughly recognise that sexuality is fluid, and we need to dream of a world where people are not violently policed for transgressing rigid gender roles. Feminism needs to demand a world in which racist history is acknowledged and accounted for, in which reparations are distributed, in which race race is completely deconstructed.
Reni Eddo-Lodge (Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race)
The mess we are living in is a deliberate one. If it was created by people, it can be dismantled by people, and it can be rebuilt in a way that serves all, rather than a selfish, hoarding few. Beyond the obvious demands - an end to sexual violence, an end to the wage gap - feminism must be class-conscious, and needs to recognise that disabled people aren't inherently defective, but rather that non-disabled people have failed at creating a physical world that serves all. Feminism must demand affordable, decent, secure housing, and a universal basic income. It should demand pay for full-time mothers and free childcare for working mothers. It should recognise that we live in a world in which women are constantly harangued into being lusted after, but punishes sex workers for using that situation to make a living. Feminism needs to thoroughly recognise that sexuality is fluid, and we need to dream of a world where people are not violently policed for transgressing rigid gender roles. Feminism needs to demand a world in which racist history is acknowledged and accounted for, in which reparations are distributed, in which race race is completely deconstructed.
Reni Eddo-Lodge (Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race)
HIV is infectious in all four stages, and the virus is present in all bodily fluids. It is minimal in sweat, tears, and saliva; significant in semen and vaginal fluids; and maximal in blood. Historically, HIV/AIDS has been predominantly a sexually transmitted disease. Studies suggest that more than three-quarters of cases to date have originated through sexual intercourse.
Frank M. Snowden III (Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present)
The full-blown, the absolute catastrophe would be a true omnipresence of all networks, a total transparency of all data - something from which, for now, computer viruses preserve us. Thanks to them, we shall not be going straight to the culminating point of the development of information and communications, which is to say: death. These viruses are both the first sign of this lethal transparency and its alarm signal. One is put in mind of a fluid travelling at increasing speed, forming eddies and anomalous countercurrents which arrest or dissipate its flow. Chaos imposes a limit upon what would otherwise hurtle into an absolute void. The secret disorder of extreme phenomena, then, plays a prophylactic role by opposing its chaos to any escalation of order and transparency to their extremes. But these phenomena notwithstanding, we are already witness to the beginning of the end of a certain way of thinking. Similarly, in the case of sexual liberation, we are already witness to the beginning of the end of a certain type of gratification. If total sexual promiscuity were ever achieved, however, sex itself would self-destruct in the resulting asexual flood. Much the same may be said of economic exchange. Financial speculation, as turbulence, makes the boundless extension of real transactions impossible. By precipitating an instantaneous circulation of value - by, as it were, electrocuting the economic model - it also short-circuits the catastrophe of a free and universal commutability - such a total liberation being the true catastrophic tendency of value.
Jean Baudrillard (The Transparency of Evil: Essays in Extreme Phenomena)
It occurs to me that my sexuality is more fluid in my mind than it is in 3D. I often wish that my sexual desires were more malleable than they are. Being solely attracted to men sucks. It's like suffering from an irreversible case of Stockholm syndrome. I'm drawn to the very creature that has violated, oppressed, exploited, raped, kidnapped, subjugated, controlled, made fun of, manipulated, abused, belittled, objectified, persecuted, and condescended me and my people for centuries.
Madeleine Ryan (A Room Called Earth)
In 1994, Bill Clinton was forced by Republicans to fire his surgeon general, Joycelyn Elders, for saying—at a UN conference on AIDS—that perhaps schools should teach young students to masturbate. But two years later, her replacement, Audrey F. Manley, went on television to talk about “outercourse”—all the sexually pleasurable activities that one could enjoy without exchanging bodily fluids. And
Moira Weigel (Labor of Love: The Invention of Dating)
Nature has designed the human body to maintain its reproductive sexual potency at all costs, in order to ensure the propagation of the species. Therefore, whenever sexual essence and energy are depleted, especially in the male immediately after ejaculation, the body promptly tries to restore sexual potency by producing more sperm, semen, and sexual hormones. If any of the vital nutrients required for this task are missing or deficient, which is often the case, the body 'borrows' them from other organs, glands, and tissues, particularly from the cerebrospinal fluid and sexual glands. Sexual excess therefore causes a constant drain of vital nutrients and hormones from the brain, spine, and adrenals as the body struggles to maintain sexual potency and fertility. This is primarily a male problem, because only the male of the species loses his potent semen-essence during intercourse. Nature has designed the female in such a way that sexual activity does no deplete her vital resources, thereby ensuring her ability to nourish and protect her offspring.
Daniel Reid
Lesbianism and male homosexuality also appear to be quite different: Male sexual orientation tends to appear early in development, whereas female sexuality appears to be more flexible or fluid over the lifespan (B aumeister, 2000). Future theories should attend to the large individual differences within those currently classified as lesbian and gay. For example, mate preferences vary across lesbians who describe themselves as “butch” as opposed to “femme” (B ailey et al., 1997; B assett, Pearcey, & Dabbs, 2001). Butch lesbians tend to be more masculine, dominant, and assertive, whereas femme lesbians tend to be more sensitive, cheerful, and feminine. The differences are more than merely psychological; butch lesbians, compared to their femme peers, have higher levels of circulating testosterone, more masculine waist-to-hip ratios, more permissive attitudes toward casual sex, and less desire to have children (S ingh, Vidaurri, Zambarano, & Dabbs, 1999). Femme lesbians place greater importance than butch lesbians on financial resources in a potential romantic partner and experience sexual jealousy over rivals who are more physically attractive. Butch lesbians place less value on financial resources when seeking partners but experience greater jealousy over rival competitors who are more financially successful. The psychological, morphological, and hormonal correlates imply that butch and femme are not merely arbitrary labels but rather reflect genuine individual differences.
David M. Buss (Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind)
There is a fear of catching AIDS , but a fear also of simply catching sex. There is a fear of catching anything whatever which might seem like a passion, a seduction, a responsibility. And, in this sense, it is once again the male who has most deeply fallen victim to the negative obsession with sex. To the point of withdrawing from the sexual game, exhausted by having to bear such a risk, and no doubt also wearied by having historically assumed the role of sexual power for so long. Of which feminism and female liberation have divested him, at least dejure (and, to a large extent, de facto). But things are more complicated than this, because th e male who has been emasculated in this way and stripped of his power, has taken advantage of this situation to fade from the scene, to disappear — doffing th e phallic mask of a power which has, in any event, become increasingly dangerous. This is the paradoxical victory of the movement for feminine emancipation. That movement has succeeded too well and now leaves the female faced with the (more or less tactical and defensive) defaulting of the male. A strange situation ensues, in which women no longer protest against male power, but are resentful of the 'powerlessness' of the male . The defaulting of the male now fuels a deep dissatisfaction generated by disappointment with a sexual liberation which is going wrong for everyone. And this dissatisfaction finds expression, contradictorily, in the phantasm of sexual harassment. This is, then, a very different scenario from traditional feminism. Women are no longer alienated by men, but dispossessed of the masculine, dispossessed of the vital illusion of the other and hence also of their own illusion, their desire and privilege as women. It is this same effect which causes children secretly to hate their parents, who no longer wish to assume the role of parent and seize the opportunity of children's emancipation to liberate themselves as parents and relinquish their role. What we have, then, is no longer violence on the part of children in rebellion against the parental order, but hatred on the part of children dispossessed of their status and illusion as children. The person who liberates himself is never who you though the was. This defaulting o f the male has knock-on effects which extend into the biological order. Recent studies have found a fall in the rate of sperm in the seminal fluid, but, most importantly, a decline of their will to power: they no longer compete to go and fertilize the ovum. There is no competition any more. Are they, too , afraid of responsibility? Should we see this as a phenomenon analogous to what is going on in the visible sexual world, where a reticence to fulfil roles and a dissuasive terror exerted by the female sex currently prevail? Is this an unintended side-effect of the battle against harassment - the assault of sperm being the most elementary form of sexual harassment?
Jean Baudrillard (Screened Out)
Maybe we can stop trying so hard to understand the gorgeous mystery of sexuality. Instead, we can just listen to ourselves and each other with curiosity and love, and without fear. We can just let people be who they are and we can believe that the freer each person is, the better we all are. Maybe our understanding of sexuality can become as fluid as sexuality itself. We can remember that no matter how inconvenient it is for us to allow people to emerge from their glasses and flow, it’s worth it. Our willingness to be confused, open, and kind will save lives.
Glennon Doyle (Untamed)
Sexual pleasure, uncoupled once and for all from reproduction, which was its original purpose, continuously leaked fluids all over the planet, in every season. And there was no controlling it, whatever had to happen would happen no matter what; it was the careening force of bodies that ruthlessly wiped out wives, husbands, children, affections, economies.
Domenico Starnone (Trick)
Yet this new form of virulence is ambiguous, and AIDS is an example of it. AIDS provides an argument for a new sexual prohibition, but it is no longer a moral prohibition: it is a functional prohibition on the circulation of sex. This breaks all the commandments of modernity . Sex, like money , like information , must circulate freely. Everything must be fluid, and acceleration is inevitable. To revoke sexuality on the grounds of a viral danger is as absurd as stopping international trade on the grounds that it is fuelling the cancerous rise of th e dollar. No one seriously envisages such a thing. Now , at a stroke with AIDS: a stopping of sex. A contradiction in the system? Perhaps this suspension has some enigmatic purpose, linked contradictorily to the equally enigmatic purpose of sexual liberation? The spontaneous self-regulation of systems is something well-known. We know how they produce accidents of their own , put a brake on their own operation , in order to survive on a basis contrary to their own principles. All societies survive against their own value-systems: they have to have such a system, but they also have to deny it and operate in opposition to it. Now , we live by at least two principles: the principle of sexual liberation and that of communication and information . But it is entirely as though the species were , through the AIDS threat, producing an antidote to its principle of sexual liberation, and, through cancer, which is a disruption of the genetic code and therefore a pathology of information, a resistance to the all-powerful principle of cybernetic control. What if all this signified a rejection of the obligatory flows of sperm, sex, signs and words, a rejection of forced communication , programmed information and sexual promiscuity? What if all this were a vital resistance to the expansion of flows, circuits and networks - admittedly, at the cost of a new lethal pathology, but a pathology which would in the end protect us from something even more serious? With AIDS and cancer, we might be said to be paying the price for our own system: we are exorcising its banal virulence in a fatal form.
Jean Baudrillard (Screened Out)
In classical computing, all calculations—and all data—exploit whether a "bit" has the value of 0 or 1. Yes, it's all 0s and 1s. Our info-tech universe is binary. Quantum computing instead uses "qubits." A qubit can be a 0 or 1, just like its classical cousin. But a qubit can also be a continuous combination of 0 or 1: a little bit of 0 and a lot of 1; a lot of 0 and a little bit of 1; equal amounts of both; and everything in between. In quantum-speak we call this a superposition of the two states. Not knowing whether a qubit is a 0 or 1 is not a shortcoming of quantum computing; it's a coveted feature that challenges our binary brains to embrace it. In the universe, two or more seemingly contradictory facts can be simultaneously true. How about on Earth? Can you be both male and female? Can you be neither? Can you move fluidly between being a man and a woman? Is your sexual preference fluid too? Maybe we're all male-female qubits. Such questions are hard for some people to grasp, embedded in a culture that sees the world as a landscape of rigid categories, where things must be one or the other, and not fall on a continuum.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
This transmutation of the reproductive energy gives great vitality to those practicing it. They will be filled with great vital force, which will radiate from them and will manifest in what has been called "personal magnetism." The energy thus transmuted may be turned into new channels and used to great advantage. Nature has condensed one of its most powerful manifestations of prana into reproductive energy, as its purpose is to create. The greatest amount of vital force is concentrated in the smallest area. The reproductive organism is the most powerful storage battery in animal life, and its force can be drawn upward and used, as well as expended in the ordinary functions of reproduction, or wasted in riotous lust. The majority of our students know something of the theories of regeneration; and we can do little more than to state the above facts, without attempting to prove them. The Yogi exercise for transmuting reproductive energy is simple. It is coupled with rhythmic breathing, and can be easily performed. It may be practiced at any time, but is specially recommended when one feels the instinct most strongly, at which time the reproductive energy is manifesting and may be most easily transmuted for regenerative purposes. The exercise is as follows: Keep the mind fixed on the idea of Energy, and away from ordinary sexual thoughts or imaginings. If these thoughts come into the mind do not be discouraged, but regard them as manifestations of a force which you intend using for the purposes of strengthening the body and mind. Lie passively or sit erect, and fix your mind on the idea of drawing the reproductive energy upward to the Solar Plexus, where it will be transmuted and stored away as a reserve force of vital energy. Then breathe rhythmically, forming the mental image of drawing up the reproductive energy with each inhalation. With each inhalation make a command of the Will that the energy be drawn upward from the reproductive organization to the Solar Plexus. If the rhythm is fairly established and the mental image is clear, you will be conscious of the upward passage of the energy, and will feel its stimulating effect. If you desire an increase in mental force, you may draw it up to the brain instead of to the Solar Plexus, by giving the mental command and holding the mental image of the transmission to the brain. The man or woman doing metal creative work, or bodily creative work, will be able to use this creative energy in their work by following the above exercise, drawing up the energy with the inhalation and sending it forth with the exhalation. In this last form of exercise, only such portions as are needed in the work will pass into the work being done, the balance remaining stored up in the Solar Plexus. You will understand, of course, that it is not the reproductive fluids which are drawn up and used, but the etheripranic energy which animates the latter, the soul of the reproductive organism, as it were. It is usual to allow the head to bend forward easily and naturally during the transmuting exercise.
William Walker Atkinson (The Hindu-Yogi Science Of Breath)
Faith, sexuality, and gender are fluid. No glasses—all sea.
Glennon Doyle (Untamed)
In a privately printed work entitled Paneros, author Norman Douglas cautions his readers against putting their trust . . . in Arabian skink, in Roman goose-fat or Roman goose tongues, in the Arplan of China . . . in spicy culinary dishes, erongoe root, or the brains of lovemaking sparrows . . . in pine nuts, the blood of bats mingled with asses’ milk, root of valerian, dried salamander, cyclamen, menstrual fluid of man or beast, tulip bulbs, fat of camel’s hump, parsnips, hyssop, gall of children, salted crocodile, the aquamarine stone, pollen of date palm, the pounded tooth of a corpse, wings of bees, jasmine, turtles’ eggs, applications of henna, brayed crickets, or spiders or ants, garlic, the genitals of hedgehogs, Siberian iris, rhinoceros horn, the blood of slaughtered animals, artichokes, honey compounded with camel’s milk, oil of champak, liquid gold, swallows’ hearts, vineyard snails, fennel-juice, certain bones of the toad, sulphurous waters and other aquae amatrices, skirret-tubers or stag’s horn crushed to powder: aphrodisiacs all, and all impostures.
Lawrence Block (Eros & Capricorn: A Cross-Cultural Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Techniques)
To most children I suppose there is a difference in degree between their imaginary and their real lives—the one being more fluid, freer and more beautiful than the other. To me fantasy and reality were not merely different; they were opposed. In the one I was a woman, exotic, disdainful; in the other I was a boy. The chasm between the two states of being never narrowed.
Quentin Crisp (The Naked Civil Servant)
For many gay men and women the idea that sexuality is fluid and that what goes one way may go another (what goes up must come down) is an attack on their person.
Douglas Murray (The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity)
The Three Fundamentals are: 1. Creating an attractive and enriching lifestyle. 2. Overcoming your fears and anxiety around socializing, intimacy and sexuality. 3. Mastering the expression of your emotions and communicating fluidly.
Mark Manson (Models: Attract Women Through Honesty)
People go on and on about boobs and butts and teeny waists, but the clavicle is the true benchmark of female desirability. It is a fetish item. Without visible clavicles you might as well be a meatloaf in the sexual marketplace. And I don’t mean Meatloaf the person, who has probably gotten laid lotsa times despite the fact that his clavicle is buried so deep as to be mere urban legend, because our culture does not have a creepy sexual fixation on the bones of meaty men. Only women. Show us your bones, they say. If only you were nothing but bones. America’s monomaniacal fixation on female thinness isn’t a distant abstraction, something to be pulled apart by academics in women’s studies classrooms or leveraged for traffic in shallow “body-positive” listicles (“Check Out These Eleven Fat Chicks Who You Somehow Still Kind of Want to Bang—Number Seven Is Almost Like a Regular Woman!”)—it is a constant, pervasive taint that warps every single woman’s life. And, by extension, it is in the amniotic fluid of every major cultural shift.
Lindy West (Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman)
My hunch is that folks have always been fifty shades of gay. I wonder if instead of adding more glasses, we should stop trying to contain people within them. Perhaps, eventually, we’ll rid ourselves of the glass system altogether. Faith, sexuality, and gender are fluid. No glasses—all sea.
Glennon Doyle (Untamed)