Prude Quotes

A prude is a person who thinks that his own rules of propriety are natural laws.

you have to be the prude or the slut, and if you pick one, other people hate you for it, and you can’t trust anyone anymore, because they’re all after the same thing, and you see that you can never go back to how was before…

Calling Vikki a slut or a whore was just like calling somebody the Duff. It was insulting and hurtful, and it was one of those titles that just fed off the inner fear every girl must have from time to time. Slut, bitch, prude, tease, ditz. They were all the same. Every girl felt like one of these sexist labels described her at some point.

If there's one American belief I hold above all others, it's that those who would set themselves up in judgment on matters of what is "right" and what is "best" should be given no rest; that they should have to defend their behavior most stringently. ... As a nation, we've been through too many fights to preserve our rights of free thought to let them go just because some prude with a highlighter doesn't approve of them." [Bangor Daily News, Guest Column of March 20, 1992]

There are no more thorough prudes than those who have some little secret to hide.

I didn't want to be a virgin. That much I knew. I didn't want to feel like the immature prude who knew nothing about sex. I hated not knowing things. The trouble was...as much as I didn't want to be a virgin, I also didn't want to have sex.

Are you a prude?' He seemed genuinely curious. 'No!' But after a second, I said, 'But may be compared to you, yes! I like my privacy. I get to decide who sees me naked. Do you get my point?' 'Yes. Objectively speaking, you have beautiful points.' I thought the top of my head would pop off... (Sookie Stackhouse & Claude, Dead in the Family)

There’s no need to be a prude about it. Everyone has orgasms and the ones who don’t…God bless their souls.

For the love of all unholy things, why must you be so difficult? I apologized for calling you a prude. I’ll even apologize for yesterday. I scared you. I threw your cell in a toilet. See, I was raised in Hell. You could say I’m socially awkward.

--the ethereal, fine-nerved, sensitive girl, quite unfitted by temperament and instinct to fulfil the conditions of the matrimonial relation with Phillotson, possibly with scarce any man...

I mean, I wouldn't have wanted to be recognized. But I was kind of a prude about cheating on taxes, group sex, murder, and stuff.

Endelle:“Creator, save me from prudes.” Wings of fire

Sod off, you hopeless prude.

This looks like the red room of pain,” she says.  My mouth drops open. My little prude has been expanding her reading horizons. I choke on my laugh, and a couple of people turn to look at us. I narrow my eyes.  “You read Fifty?” I ask quietly. She blushes. Amazing! — the woman is capable of blushing.  “Everyone was reading it,” she says, defensively. Then she looks up at me with big eyes.  “You?”  “I wanted to see what all the hype was about.” She does that blink, blink, blink thing with her eyelashes.  “Did you pick up any new techniques?” she says, without looking at me. I squeeze her hand. “Would you like to try me out and see?” She turns her face away, pressing her lips together — horribly embarrassed. 

My birth sign is Scorpio and they eat themselves up and burn themselves out. I swing between happiness and misery. I am part prude and part nonconformist. I say what I think and I don’t pretend, and I am prepared to accept the consequences of my actions.

Any true ecstast is a sign you are going in the right direction...don't let any prude tell you otherwise

The label of asexual should be value neutral. It should indicate little more than sexual orientation. Instead, asexual implies a slew of other, negative associations: passionless, uptight, boring, robotic, cold, prude, frigid, lacking, broken. These, especially broken, are the words aces use again and again to describe how we are perceived and made to feel.

Lying mouth to mouth, kiss to kiss in the pillow dark, loin to loin in unbelievable surrendering sweetness so distant from all our mental fearful abstractions it makes you wonder why men have termed God antisexual somehow (p. 148)

Holmes, I'm a 24 year old prude.

I mean, I am totally not one of those prudes who believe having sex as a teenager is some kind of mortal sin or social death. I don't have a problem with sex. I just don't happen to be having it. And if I were having sex, I certainly wouldn't be getting it on in an airplane bathroom. Who wants to get down and dirty in a place so . . . cramped and dirty?

Why not? If you're not going to let me see you naked, we might as well be girlfriends." "You're a twisted little man." "Come on, Stretch, share with the class." "No!" I laughed. "Prude." "Perv." "Schoolmarm." "Some other word that essentially means perv.

We're a nation of hypocrites pretending to be prudes, that's what we are.

I never quite got the hang of the getting drunk & fondling the thighs [of all the cumbersome young males] business... whether that makes me a gallant & proper gentleman, a cowardly wuss or an unadventurous prude, I cannot make out

You could be a gambler. A thief, for all I know. Besides—” He captured her hand and stopped her from walking on, holding her in place. “Besides what, you insufferable prude?” “Prude, eh? Do you need another kiss to remind you what a prude I am?” “Don’t you dare.” “Then don’t call me names.” “You started it.

People label you the moment they meet you,” I tell her. “You’re an ice cold bitch. You’re a man-hating prude, a rich stuck-up brat. They only tell a fraction of the truth, and if you let them hurt you, you let them win.

American feminism has a man problem. The beaming Betty Crockers, hangdog dowdies, and parochial prudes who call themselves feminists want men to be like women. They fear and despise the masculine. The academic feminists think their nerdy bookworm husbands are the ideal model of human manhood. But

There is nothing more exasperating than reading in contemporary guidebooks disparagements of places that are deemed to be "seedy." Do the writers not notice that such places are invariably crowded with people? When a neighborhood is described as "seedy" by some Lonely Planet prude, I immediately head there.

Sam’s just dealing with some issues. He recently came to the realization that he’s a twenty-year-old virgin prude.

Don't you have any clothes?" "Quite honestly, no I don't." "Cover yourself up!" "Fine." There was a rustling sound. "Okay I'm covered. I had no idea you were such a prude.

Gay, straight, whore, prude, whatever. If it made someone happy and didn’t hurt someone else, do it. Life was too short.

Cheese and crackers? Really?" She looks at me skeptically. "Besides, he's not a gigolo, you prude! He's an escort. Big difference." "An escort who, at the end of the night for a little more cash, will have sex with people. What do you call that?" Sara's laugh has a wicked edge to it "I call it my good fortune.

I don't know," I admit. "I guess I'm just nervous about graduating and things changing. And I've had a shit week with the kids at school calling me a slutty prude." "Slutty prude?" He repeats. "How is that even a thing?" I throw my hands up. "I have no idea! Leave it to me to create some new form of loser. It's been total hell.

I don’t need to read the whole book, Prudence, to know how I feel about it. I knew you were the one ever since I read the first chapter..

You realize how wrong and outdated that is, right? Good girls aren’t supposed to have sex, but if they don’t, they’re prudes, and if they do, they’re sluts. And of course, none of that takes the spectrum of gender or sexuality into account. Things are starting to change slowly, but the fact is, it’s still completely different for guys.

One of the Christian's biggest fears is appearing 'too Christian'. God forbid, because that's often characterized as god-awful! We want to be one, but without being 'one of them'.

You probably think I’m a prude.’ ‘So? You shouldn’t care what we think, Célie- or anyone else, for that matter. Don’t forfeit your power like that.’ ‘Because who cares if you’re a prude? Who cares if we’re whores? They’re just words.’ ‘And we can’t get it right no matter what we do. We might as well do it our own way. Being a prude or being a whore are both better than being what they want us to be.’ ‘What do they want us to be?’ ‘Theirs.’ ‘Be prudish and proud, Célie. We’ll be whorish and happy.

Oh, Al, shut up! Stop criticizing me! First I'm criticized for being a prude and sounding like a social worker or something, then I'm criticized for looking like a cheap broad. How am I supposed to live? Under the water or something, coming up only to say 'I beg your pardon if I disturb you by coming up for air. I'll do my best to remain submerged.

what you and I have a receiver would never receive even if their soul is a fee to purchase what we feel

His grace lifts us in spite of us...it moves our lives forward on the conveyor belt of promise, even as we cling to our nagging doubts and unbelief.

When we look at Abraham, Sarah, Hagar and Ishmael, we see that God's grace can survive our three-ring-circuses of compromise, rationalization and weak faith.

Experience isn't any use. And yet, in quite another way, it might be. If only we weren't all such miserable fools and prudes and cowards.

For a man who’s so good in bed, you sure are a prude talking about it.

Give me the Black Death over a Victorian prude any day. At least the dying screw like it's their last day on earth.

On the inside, the copycats of the ruffians are more delicate than the copycats of prudes.

America was, alas, a country of great eccentrics and great prudes, of great writers and few readers.

Do an overwhelming number of respected scientists believe that human actions are changing the Earth's climate? Yes. OK, that being the case, let's undermine that by finding and funding those few contrarians who believe otherwise. Promote their message widely and it will accumulate in the mental environment, just as toxic mercury accumulates in a biological ecosystem. Once enough of the toxin has been dispersed, the balance of public understanding will shift. Fund a low level campaign to suggest any threat to the car is an attack on personal freedoms. Create a "grassroots" group to defend the right to drive. Portray anticar activists as prudes who long for the days of the horse and buggy. Then sit back, watch the infotoxins spread - and get ready to sell bigger, better cars for years to come.

Somehow the ideals of sexual liberation had become twisted until women were being told that if they didn't buy into an increasingly narrow image of what female sexiness looked like, then they must be prudes. No matter if they were looking for something freer rather than less free, nobody wants to be told they're frigid. So even though this wasn't about disliking sex, but disliking sexism, the label 'prude' had become an effective gag on dissent.

Maybe don't even be out there, on the street, no if it's dark, not if you're alone, not if you're a kid, not if you're a woman, not without a rape whistle around you neck, not without pepper spray clutched in your hand, not, anyway if you're wearing that outfit." "But, I mean, don't be a prude either," says Ashlee, pulling at the hem of her dress.

it was one of those titles that just fed off of an inner fear every girl must have from time to time. Slut, bitch, prude, tease, ditz. They were all the same. Every girl felt like one of these sexist labels described her at some point.

Sophie raised her head. Light filtering through the trees dappled her face. “Hawk.” Charlotte looked up as well. A bird of prey soared above the treetops, circling around them. “It’s dead,” Sophie said. “George is guiding it. He is very powerful.”The realization washed over Charlotte in a cold gush of embarrassment. “Is George spying on Richard and me?” “Always,” Sophie said. “All those perfect manners are a sham. He spies on everyone and everything. Declan hasn’t been able to conduct a single business meeting in the past year without George’s knowing all the details. He does let go when you make love. He is a prude.” “‘Prude’ is a coarse word. He has a sense of tact,” Charlotte corrected before she caught herself. “A sense of tact,” Sophie repeated, tasting the words. “Thank you. The other one is somewhere around here, too.” “The other one?” Sophie surveyed the woods. “I can smell you, Jack!” “No, you can’t,” a distant voice answered

He gave a wry smile. With all this vigilant vigils on virginity, you would think the country would have controlled its population by now.

I'm fine.My father's an arse, and my mum is dying and-oh my God,I'm so pissed." St. Clair looked at me again. His eyes were glassy like black marbles. "Pissed.Pissed.Pissed." "We know you're pissed at your dad," I said. "It's okay. You're right, he's a jerk." I mean what was I supposed to say? He just found out his mother has cancer. "Pissed is British for 'drunk,'" Mer said. "Oh," I said. "Well. You're definitely that, too." Meanwhile,The Couple was fighting. "Where have you been?" Rashmi asked. "You said you'd be home three hours ago!" Josh rolled his eyes. "Out.We've been out. Someone had to help him-" "And you call that helping? He's completely wasted. Catatonic. And you! God,you smell like car exhaust and armpits-" "He couldn't drink alone." "You were supposed to be watching out for him! What if something happened?" "Beer. Liquor. Thatsswhat happened. Don't be such a prude,Rash.

But it was not merely her choice to be a witness of the dirty work on Tier 1A. It was her role. As a woman she was not expected to wrestle prisoners into stress positions or otherwise overpower them, but rather just by her presence, to amplify their sense of powerlessness. She was there as an instrument of humiliation...The MPs knew very little about their prisoners or the culture they came from, and they understood less. But at Fort Lee, before they deployed, they were given a session of “cultural awareness training,” from which they’d taken away the understanding—constantly reinforced by MI handlers—that Arab men were sexual prudes, with a particular hang-up about being seen naked in public, especially by women. What better way to break an Arab, then, than to strip him, tie him up, and have a "female bystander," as Graner describer Harman, laugh at him? American women were used on the MI block in the same way that Major David DiNenna spoke of dogs—as "force multipliers." Harman understood. She didn’t like being naked in public herself. To the prisoners, being photographed may have seemed an added dash of mortification, but to Harman, taking pictures was a way of deflecting her own humiliation in the transaction—by taking ownership of her position as spectator.

Hey!” I wave my index finger in his face, “No shitting on pop music. Everyone needs some light, fun, sexy pop music. It’s summer, and that right there, is the perfect summer song. It’s hot.” “You’re right, it is hot,” he says, scanning my body with his eyes.

There are people whom a lowered position degrades morally, to whom loss of connection costs loss of self-respect: are not these justified in placing the highest value on that station and association which is their safeguard from debasement? If a man feels that he would become contemptible in his own eyes were it generally known that his ancestry were simple and not gentle, poor and not rich, workers and not capitalists, would it be right severely to blame him for keeping these fatal facts out of sight--for starting, trembling, quailing at the chance which threatens exposure? The longer we live, the more our experience widens; the less prone are we to judge our neighbor's conduct, to question the world's wisdom: wherever an accumulation of small defences is found, whether surrounding the prude's virtue or the man of the world's respectability, there, be sure, it is needed.

my days in love are filled with the universe the stars are unified to resemble our union a bond even love cannot undo my days in love reverse time while moving it forward making it slow for a while helping me catch my breath

with this love I vow to show you the moon when we go over it at noon we'll make love for it's something good that we do for one another in full

Prude. All these standards will lead to dryness.

You're such a prude. It's pathetic." Eesh. "What I am is too much of a lady to say what you are.

He was no prude, but he had those decent prejudices of which no self-respecting man can wholly rid himself, however broad-minded he may try to be.

Slut, bitch, prude, tease, ditz. They were all the same. Every girl felt like one of those sexist labels described her at some point. So, maybe, every girl felt like the Duff, too?

The wine must have done its job, because I am relaxed and finally at ease. Yes, it’s definitely the wine. Otherwise I wouldn't have started singing out of the blue in a million years.

You're such a prude, she would say to me, in a tone of voice that was on the whole pleased. She liked being more outrageous than I was, more rebellious. Adolescents are always such prudes.

The great are deceived if they imagine they have appropriated ambition and vanity to themselves. These notable qualities flourish as notably in a country church and churchyard as in the drawing room or in the closet. Schemes have indeed been laid in the vestry, which would hardly disgrace the conclave. Here is a ministry, and here is an opposition. Here are plots and circumventions, parties and factions equal to those which are to be found in courts. Nor are the women here less practiced in the highest feminine arts than their fair superiors in quality and fortune. Here are prudes and coquettes; here are dressing and ogling, falsehood, envy, malice, scandal -- in short everything which is common to the most splendid assembly or politest circle.

This is where we come," he said. Albie and I look at each other. “We?” “Me and, you know.” Albie’s eyes got wide. “I really don’t think I want to know about this.” I surprised myself. “I do,” I said. I guess I was tired of having to withhold the truth from Toby. Other than Ben, he and Albie we’re easily my best friends at Natick. Toby looked a little surprised, like he’d just assumed we wouldn’t want to hear the details. “You do?” “Yeah.” He looked around to make sure we were alone. We definitely were. No one came back here to my knowledge. Also it was cold. Like twenty degrees. Only three idiots would be in the woods in the winter, it seemed to me. “Robinson” he said. “Gorilla Butt,” I said, nodding. “I know.” “You know?” “Yup.” Toby crossed his arms an then deflated into a fake pout. “You’re stealing my scene, bitch. Scene stealer.” “Sorry,” I said. “So you and Gorilla Butt. Wow.” He flipped me off. “He hates that,” Toby said. “But, yeah. It’s hairy.” “Oh, look, almost anything else in the universe,” Albie said, heading back to campus and leaving us in the clearing. “He’s such a prude,” Toby said rolling his eyes.

Putting money aside to enable life to change when you want or need it to isn’t about being a financial prude. It’s about not being trapped. It allows for spontaneity on a much grander scale.

If you’re offended by crass, tasteless, scatological humor, scrawled on a Chardonnay-soaked cocktail napkin, then bite me, you oversensitive prude. If not, step up to the bar, baby! You’ve got my number.

If you even think about getting prude on me, I’ll put you on your stomach, tie your arms and legs to each corner of this bed and eat your ass until you fucking cry,” he growls as his tongue circles my hole.

Women who are sexual are often shamed through the use of words like "slut," and "whore." Women who are not overly sexual or sexual at all are shamed through words and phrases like "frigid bitch," and "prude”.

Once on a hot summer night, I had spent an hour kissing a hairy, ape-shaped law student from Yale because I felt sorry for him, he was so ugly. When I had finished, he said, “I have you typed, baby. You’ll be a prude at forty.

You have to be the prude or the slut, and if you pick one, other people hate you for it, and you can't trust anyone anymore, because they're all after the same thing, and you see that you can never go back to how it was before...

Nim looked aghast. “Of course not. Do you think my future wife would be a servant? No—it’s Number Seven of the wives. Her name is Begonia.” “Oh, no, Nim,” Vesper said. “You can’t fall for one of the wives! She’s married. And to the king, no less. That’s illegal. Maybe it shouldn’t be, but you’ll still probably be arrested if anyone finds out—or worse.” “I knew you’d say that,” Nim said, turning away. “You’re such a prude, Vesper. Love is above things like rules. And the king has so many wives and mistresses—he doesn’t even remember all of them.

I guess that after three straight years of my not being anything -- not emo, not Christian, not prep, not jock, not ghetto, not punk, not hipster, not skank, not prude, just a half-assed band geek -- no one can believe I'd do anything so well defined as lie. I like my new superpower.

Ellie feels that dissent is being muffled by the identification of sexual liberation with this hypersexual culture. 'Now, women get told they are prudes if they say they don't want their boyfriend to go to a club where he gets to stick his fingers in someone else's vagina, or if they say they don't want to watch porn with their boyfriend. But being sexually liberated ...' Ellie paused for a while as she thought about it. 'Well, I don't think it means that we have to enjoy and accept the forms of sexual entertainment that were invented by men for their own pleasure.

It starts before you can remember: you learn, as surely as you learn to walk and talk, the rules for being a girl... Put a little color on your face. Shave your legs. Don’t wear too much makeup. Don’t wear short skirts. Don’t distract the boys by wearing bodysuits or spaghetti straps or knee socks. Don’t distract the boys by having a body. Don’t distract the boys. Don’t be one of those girls who can’t eat pizza. You’re getting the milk shake too? Whoa. Have you gained weight? Don’t get so skinny your curves disappear. Don’t get so curvy you aren’t skinny. Don’t take up too much space. It’s just about your health. Be funny, but don’t hog the spotlight. Be smart, but you have a lot to learn. Don’t be a doormat, but God, don’t be bossy. Be chill. Be easygoing. Act like one of the guys. Don’t actually act like one of the guys. Be a feminist. Support the sisterhood. Wait, are you, like, gay? Maybe kiss a girl if he’s watching though—that’s hot. Put on a show. Don’t even think about putting on a show, that’s nasty. Don’t be easy. Don’t give it up. Don’t be a prude. Don’t be cold. Don’t put him in the friend zone. Don’t act desperate. Don’t let things go too far. Don’t give him the wrong idea. Don’t blame him for trying. Don’t walk alone at night. But calm down! Don’t worry so much. Smile! Remember, girl: It’s the best time in the history of the world to be you. You can do anything! You can do everything! You can be whatever you want to be! Just as long as you follow the rules.

should have been plotting to one-up her in some way by planting a story that she was a prude or sleeping around. That is the fastest way to ruin a woman’s reputation, after all—to imply that she has not adequately threaded the needle that is being sexually satisfying without ever appearing to desire sexual satisfaction.

Yvonne, then, was the exotic and the sunlit when I could easily have had a boyhood of stern and dutiful English gray. She was the cream in the coffee, the gin in the Campari, the offer of wine or champagne instead of beer, the laugh in the face of bores and purse-mouths and skinflints, the insurance against bigots and prudes. Her defeat and despair were also mine for a long time, but I have reason to know that she wanted me to withstand the woe, and when I once heard myself telling someone that she had allowed me "a second identity" I quickly checked myself and thought, no, perhaps with luck she had represented my first and truest one.

He sighed, Selange was perplexing, and an adulterous prude seemed a contradictory term. She had a fierce spirit one minute and the next she cried like a baby. Damn, he missed her silly ass. [Right now, he could see so damn clear--he wanted the crybaby-fierce adulterous prude in his arms-- He loved this goddamn woman. Period. End of story!]

I'm fond of her." Oh yeah? Fond are you? I've heard of fond. I expect old erection here" - she pointed to the tube of DNA - "was fond of his victim. Fond is a prude's word, Ben. You fancy her. That's what you say. You fancy Miss Library something painful. And who knows?" She grinned, gap-toothed, like the Wife of Bath. "Maybe she fancies you.

While men had the right to obey their biological urges, women had to suppress theirs until the perfect moment. From television, movies, books, magazines, my peers, and even some of my relatives, I was taught that if a woman allowed a man to penetrate her too soon, she was too easy of a conquest for him. He would move on to pursue greater challenges after he was finished using her body to relieve his sexual urges. If the woman waited too long to let the man enter her body, she was a prude and the man would eventually give up on her. Women needed to time this process perfectly so that she could “keep” a man in her life at all times. It was the man’s goal to catch the woman and the woman’s goal to keep the man.

He's God....and his grace is a part of him working relentlessly on our behalf...never leaving, never abandoning, never stopping.

We've been brought up to think of the Victorians as prudes, horrified by a glimpse of table leg, but that myth was constructed in the 1920s out of whole cloth, to give their rebellious children an excuse to point and say, "We invented sex!" The reality is stranger: the Victorians were licentious in the extreme behind closed doors, only denying everything in public in the pursuit of probity.

By now, the party had wound down. Only four people remained: Zephyr and Moss and Trixie and Jason. Trixie had managed to avoid finishing out the Rainbow game by playing Quarters in the kitchen instead with Moss and Jason. When Zephyr found her there, she had pulled Trixie aside, furious. Why was Trixie being such a prude? Wasn't this whole night supposed to be about making Jason jealous?

The Media Message: “You Are Inadequate.” Spanking, food play, ménages à trois . . . you’ve done all these things, right? Well, you’ve at least had clitoral orgasms, vaginal orgasms, uterine orgasms, energy orgasms, extended orgasms, and multiple orgasms? And you’ve mastered at least thirty-five different positions for intercourse? If you don’t try all these things, you’re frigid. If you’ve had too few partners, don’t watch porn, and don’t have a collection of vibrators in your bedside table, you’re a prude. Also: You’re too fat and too thin; your breasts are too big and too small. Your body is wrong. If you’re not trying to change it, you’re lazy. If you’re satisfied with yourself as you are, you’re settling. And if you dare to actively like yourself, you’re a conceited bitch. In short, you are doing it wrong. Do it differently. No, that’s wrong too, try something else. Forever.

« De son regard dolent, mon mal d’amour procède. À mon cœur, l’évoquant, portez un doux remède ! Ce ramier ânonnant sa plaintive élégie Depuis l’ouche, ravive en moi la nostalgie ! Je donnerais mon sang pour cette jouvencelle, Qui fuyant des douars la jalouse tutelle, Et qui se soustrayant aux courtisanes prudes, Paradait, adoptant une snobe attitude ! De son astre, le fard comblait l’azur une heure, Embrasant, au déclin, l’horizon de mon cœur. »

A song is not a tool for changing a human heart in the way that a wrench is a tool for changing a bolt, but it was the tool I had, and I was the tool the OSP had. The cansos in "Songs from Underneath" were not really as subtle as a wrench. Their primary trope was the ancient trick of making the viewpoint character a victim of oppression, because people identify passionately with a strong viewpoint character, and there is intense pleasure in identifying with the narrator of a sad story or song. In "Black Beauty" that trick had made people begin to think that beating horses was bad; it was the trope that make privileged white children burn with outrage at "Native Son" and prudes weep over prostitutes in "Elle frequentait la rue Pigalle" and "My Name is Not Bitch." They also received, at no extra cost, the delicious smug superiority of sympathizing with an underdog, unlike their less-enlightened neighbors. Their primary

Liberals sometimes say that religious conservatives are sexual prudes for whom anything other than missionary-position intercourse within marriage is a sin. But conservatives can just as well make fun of liberal struggles to choose a balanced breakfast—balanced among moral concerns about free-range eggs, fair-trade coffee, naturalness, and a variety of toxins, some of which (such as genetically modified corn and soybeans) pose a greater threat spiritually than biologically.

Antifeminism breaks down into contempt for particular kinds of women—as men envision the kinds of women there are. There is a spectrum of insult. Lesbians, intellectuals, and uppity women are hated for their resumption, their arrogance, their masculine ambition. Prudes, spinsters, and celibates may not want to be like men but they seem able to live without them; so they are treated with contempt and disdain. Sluts, “nymphos, ” and tarts are hated because they are cheap, not expensive, and because they are their sex raw or sex itself.

I don’t understand,” she said at last. She understood very well, but she no longer wished to be absolutely truthful. “How are you going to stop him talking about it?” “I have a feeling that talk is a thing he will never do.” “I, too, intend to judge him charitably. But unfortunately I have met the type before. They seldom keep their exploits to themselves.” “Exploits?” cried Lucy, wincing under the horrible plural. “My poor dear, did you suppose that this was his first? Come here and listen to me. I am only gathering it from his own remarks. Do you remember that day at lunch when he argued with Miss Alan that liking one person is an extra reason for liking another?” “Yes,” said Lucy, whom at the time the argument had pleased. “Well, I am no prude. There is no need to call him a wicked young man, but obviously he is thoroughly unrefined. Let us put it down to his deplorable antecedents and education, if you wish. But we are no farther on with our question. What do you propose to do?” An idea rushed across Lucy’s brain, which, had she thought of it sooner and made it part of her, might have proved victorious. “I propose to speak to him,” said she. Miss Bartlett uttered a cry of genuine alarm.

 On one hand, I think it’s natural to be curious about sexuality. But on the other hand, I think girls are caught in this terrible net of perpetual disappointment. We’re not really allowed to talk about sex, or ask questions about it, or be interested in it. If we are interested and if we like it, then we’re labeled as easy or sluts. If we’re not interested, then we’re frigid and repressed…we’re prudes. It’s like, we see images of women being objectified everywhere. And then we’re told to act and dress like a man at work and school, or else no one will take us seriously—even other women won’t take us seriously. Basically, women are fucked.” “That’s depressing.

But while women had more rights these days, I feel like they never actually gained any more respect. The boys around me still used the word ‘girl’ as an insult. They called girls who slept with them sluts, but girls who didn't were prudes, and they didn’t even bother to show girls basic courtesy anymore when they were courting them. They didn’t pull out chairs for their girlfriends or take off their hats or stand when they went in or out of a room. My father — my real father — raised me to do those things to show a woman respect, and my father had always had a tremendous amount of respect for women. Maybe there were new ways, more modern ways, to show respect to a woman. But if so, I didn’t know what they were

I guess he’s kind of hot, for a Therian. I bet he’s huge.” “Oh my God, Lou!” Dex nearly spit out his beer. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and stared at his ex-boyfriend. Lou gave a delicate snort. “You’re such a prude. Well, is he?” He knew Lou wasn’t going to let up until he got his answer. Dex had never been shy about this sort of thing, but talking about Sloane’s sexy parts with his ex was wrong on so many levels. “It is proportionate to the rest of him.” “In other words, he’s hung.” Dex pinched the bridge of his nose, resigned to the absurdity that was this evening. “Yes. I can’t believe I’m discussing my guy’s dick with my ex.” Lou’s face went beet red, and Dex wished he’d ordered Bradley’s “special” instead of beer. Over

I know her very well,” said Sancho, “and I can say that she can throw a metal bar just as well as the brawniest lad in the village. Praise our Maker, she’s a fine girl in every way, sturdy as a horse, and just the one to pull any knight errant or about to be errant, who has her for his lady, right out of any mudhole he’s fallen into! Damn, but she’s strong! And what a voice she has! I can tell you that one day she stood on top of the village bell tower to call some shepherds who were in one of her father’s fields, and even though they were more than half a league away, they heard her just as if they were standing at the foot of the tower. And the best thing about her is that she’s not a prude. In fact, she’s something of a trollop: she jokes with everybody and laughs and makes fun of everything.

Do I go in the bathroom, or do you?” He frowned at me. “Why?” “I’m not comfortable with you dressing in front of me.” He gave a half-laugh. I think I’d surprised him. “You live with shapeshifters, and they go around nude all the time.” “Seeing my friends and lovers nude is fine, but seeing you nude, no.” He studied my face. “It really would bother you.” “Yes.” He frowned again. “Why?” “If I’m having sex with someone it’s okay to see them nude, but if sex isn’t an option, then no nudity.” He laughed, abrupt and surprised. “You’re still a prude, and you always will be.” “It wouldn’t bother you to strip in front of me?” “No, why should it?” I sighed. “Fine, I’m a prude. I’ll go into the bathroom while you dress.” “No, I’ll dress in the bathroom.” He was still smiling, his face shining with the remains of his laughter, as he gathered up his clothes.

What I cannot understand is how your uncle could consider these two men suitable when they aren’t. Not one whit!” “We know that,” Elizabeth said wryly, bending down to pull a blade of grass from between the flagstones beneath the bench, “but evidently my ‘suitors’ do not, and that’s the problem.” As she said the words a thought began to form in her mind; her fingers touched the blade, and she went perfectly still. Beside her on the bench Alex drew a breath as if to speak, then stopped short, and in that pulsebeat of still silence the same idea was born in both their fertile minds. “Alex,” Elizabeth breathed, “all I have to-“ “Elizabeth,” Alex whispered, “it’s not as bad as it seems. All you have to-“ Elizabeth straightened slowly and turned. In that prolonged moment of silence two longtime friends sat in a rose garden, looking raptly at each other while time rolled back and they were girls again-lying awake in the dark, confiding their dreams and troubles and inventing schemes to solve them that always began with “If only…” “If only,” Elizabeth said as a smile dawned across her face and was matched by the one on Alex’s, “I could convince them that we don’t suit-“ “Which shouldn’t be hard to do,” Alex cried enthusiastically, “because it’s true!” The joyous relief of having a plan, of being able to take control of a situation that minutes before had threatened her entire life, sent Elizabeth to her feet, her face aglow with laughter. “Poor Sir Francis,” she chuckled, looking delightedly from Bentner to Alex as both grinned at her. “I greatly fear he’s in for the most disagreeable surprise when he realizes what a-a” she hesitated, thinking of everything an old roué would most dislike in his future wife-“a complete prude I am!” “And,” Alex added, “what a shocking spendthrift you are!” “Exactly!” Elizabeth agreed, almost twirling around in her glee. Sunlight danced off her gilded hair and lit her green eyes as she looked delightedly at her friends. “I shall make perfectly certain to give him glaring evidence I am both. Now then, as to the Earl of Canford…” “What a pity,” Alex said in a voice of exaggerated gloom, “you won’t be able to show him what a capital hand you are with a fishing pole. “Fish?” Elizabeth returned with a mock shudder. “Why, the mere thought of those scaly creatures positively makes me swoon!” “Except for that prime one you caught yesterday,” Bentner put in wryly. “You’re right,” she returned with an affectionate grin at the man who’d taught her to fish. “Will you find Berta and break the news to her about going with me? By the time we come back to the house she ought to be over her hysterics, and I’ll reason with her.” Bentner trotted off, his threadbare black coattails flapping behind him.

As priest he asked himself whether he took this woman to be his wedded wife, and as bridegroom he answered in the affirmative, he slipped the ring upon her finger. As priest he invoked a blessing, and as groom he knelt to receive it. It was a fantastic ceremony; but in defiance of law and custom, of Church and state, they chose to believe in its validity. Loving one another, they knew that, in the sight of God, they were truly married.* In the sight of God, perhaps—but most certainly not in the sight of men. So far as the good people of Loudun were concerned, Madeleine was merely the latest of their parson’s concubines—a little sainte nitouche, who looked as though butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, but in fact was no better than she should be; a prude who had suddenly revealed herself as a whore and was prostituting her body in the most shameless manner to this cassocked Priapus, this goat in a biretta. Among

Damian smirks. “Why don’t you tell him what we were discussing, Keats? Peyton and I are going to kayak for a bit.” When Peyton walks out of the house, Damian jumps up, kisses her in greeting, then grabs her hand and pulls her toward the boat.   Aiden puts his smoothie glass against mine. “This is really good. So, what were you talking about?” “Seeing a, um, penis for the first time.” “Is it an embarrassing story?” “No, I just . . . it’s just hard to comprehend the mechanics of sex when you’re young and you see it in its, um, natural state.” “Natural state? Like, out in the wild?” “No, not in the wild. I saw a boy’s—” I wave my hand slowly across my body. “— in its natural state.” “As opposed to its unnatural state?” “Its, um, softer state,” I finally say, trying not to think about how his felt in my hand. How I wanted to rip those sliders off his body. Touch it. Feel it. Taste it.   He leans in. “You’re thinking about last night right now, aren’t you?” I feel my cheeks turn red. Why am I such a prude about sex when it comes to Aiden? You’d think I’d never done it before. “I, uh . . .” Aiden arches an eyebrow at me. “Maybe tonight you can see it in its, uh, unnatural state,” he says with a laugh as he kisses my cheek.

There she is,” he said. I scanned the room for Mason’s current love interest. “Where?” “Pink top, brown ponytail.” “She’s cute. But a little too innocent for your taste.” “Looks can be deceiving.” He grinned. “How did a girl like me end up with a man-whore like you for a best friend?” “I’m the one who should be asking how a guy like me ended up with a prude like you.” “Hey, I’m not a prude. Well, at least I don’t think I am. Who knows?” “I already volunteered my services. Telling you, once you’re devirginized you’re gonna go wild. Might as well get it out of the way.” I hushed him and looked around. “Someone will hear you.” “A guy who likes sex and a girl who’s a virgin. Yeah, that’s something no one’s ever seen before.” He shrugged. “I’m just trying to do you a favor.” I laughed. “Your thoughtfulness amazes me.” “No-strings-attached sex is very generous. You laugh now but one day you’ll come around.” “No thanks. I know where you’ve been.” “Good point.” He glanced back at the girl. “And you know where I’m going.” I rolled my eyes. “Go. It’s fine.” “That’s okay. I’ll find her later. I promised not to abandon you.” “Go. Seriously. I’m fine. I’ll practice blending in with the walls.” “Now I really can’t leave you.” He shifted his weight and stared at me. “It was a joke. Anyway, I see a girl from one of my classes. I’ll go say hi.” I walked away and glanced back. With a shooing motion, I said, “Go.” He shrugged and went to find his brunette. I hadn’t really seen a friend but Mason came to have fun. I didn’t want to be his party paperweight.

It’s all right, I got off the ship okay. I’m alive,” he said again. But his voice sounded different now. “I said I’m alive, Camille. Open your eyes and look at me.” Camille’s heart shriveled as her eyelids fluttered open and she saw the ceiling of Monty’s shack. “Camille?” Oscar leaned over her, his calloused hand on her cheek. “Thank God. You’ve been delirious for nearly an hour.” Tears slipped down her cheeks as the truth stung her with renewed vigor. Her father wasn’t alive. He was truly gone. It had been nothing but a hallucination. “Why are you crying? Does something hurt?” Oscar asked, lightly prodding her arms and then checking her head. She was lying on a cot in front of the blazing stove, blankets covering her. They were scratchy and too heavy. She tried to push them away. “No.” Oscar blocked her arms. “Don’t do that.” “Why?” she asked, her throat dry and sore. Oscar looked apprehensive as he tucked the blankets tightly around her arms and neck. “Your clothes were soaked. You were shivering and flush with fever.” “Had to take ‘em off, love,” Ira said, coming to the foot of the cot. “You gave us quite a scare. That lump on the back of your head worked you over something nasty.” Camille stared at Ira, then Oscar. The crushed hope of her father being alive withered under the heat of embarrassment. “You…you removed my dress?” she whispered. Oscar backed away from her, as if he’d just slid his hand over an open flame. “No, no, I didn’t.” She looked to Ira. “Much as I’d been honored, the Irish bastard wouldn’t hear of it. Quite the prude.” Frustrated and head still piercing with pain, Camille felt the blood rush to her cheeks. “Well, then, who?” “Nothin’ I ain’t seen before, woman,” Monty grumbled from his seat at the table as he sprinkled tobacco into a pipe. Camille gasped and pressed her lips together. She caught sight of her dress hanging on a rack by the fire.

Herbenick invited me to sit in on the Human Sexuality class she was about to teach, one of the most popular courses on Indiana’s campus. She was, on that day, delivering a lecture on gender disparities in sexual satisfaction. More than one hundred fifty students were already seated in the classroom when we arrived, nearly all of them female, most dressed in sweats, their hair pulled into haphazard ponytails. They listened raptly as Herbenick explained the vastly different language young men and young women use when describing “good sex.” “Men are more likely to talk about pleasure, about orgasm,” Herbenick said. “Women talk more about absence of pain. Thirty percent of female college students say they experience pain during their sexual encounters as opposed to five percent of men.” The rates of pain among women, she added, shoot up to 70 percent when anal sex is included. Until recently, anal sex was a relatively rare practice among young adults. But as it’s become disproportionately common in porn—and the big payoff in R-rated fare such as Kingsman and The To Do List—it’s also on the rise in real life. In 1992 only 16 percent of women aged eighteen to twenty-four said they had tried anal sex. Today 20 percent of women eighteen to nineteen have, and by ages twenty to twenty-four it’s up to 40 percent. A 2014 study of heterosexuals sixteen to eighteen years old—and can we pause for a moment to consider just how young that is?—found that it was mainly boys who pushed for “fifth base,” approaching it less as a form of intimacy with a partner (who they assumed would both need to be and could be coerced into it) than a competition with other boys. Girls were expected to endure the act, which they consistently reported as painful. Both sexes blamed that discomfort on the girls themselves, for being “naïve or flawed,” unable to “relax.” Deborah Tolman has bluntly called anal “the new oral.” “Since all girls are now presumed to have oral sex in their repertoire,” she said, “anal sex is becoming the new ‘Will she do it or not?’ behavior, the new ‘Prove you love me.’” And still, she added, “girls’ sexual pleasure is not part of the equation.” According to Herbenick, the rise of anal sex places new pressures on young women to perform or else be labeled a prude. “It’s a metaphor, a symbol in one concrete behavior for the lack of education about sex, the normalization of female pain, and the way what had once been stigmatized has, over the course of a decade, become expected. If you don’t want to do it you’re suddenly not good enough, you’re frigid, you’re missing out, you’re not exploring your sexuality, you’re not adventurous.