Sexually Explicit Quotes

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Rejection is an opportunity for your selection.
Bernard Branson
There's more to the erotic life than explicitness.
Jess C. Scott (The Art of Erotic Writing)
Dear Collector: We hate you. Sex loses all its power and magic when it becomes explicit, mechanical, overdone, when it becomes a mechanistic obsession. It becomes a bore. You have taught us more than anyone I know how wrong it is not to mix it with emotion, hunger, desire, lust, whims, caprices, personal ties, deeper relationships that change its color, flavor, rhythms, intensities. "You do not know what you are missing by your micro-scopic examination of sexual activity to the exclusion of aspects which are the fuel that ignites it. Intellectual, imaginative, romantic, emotional. This is what gives sex its surprising textures, its subtle transformations, its aphrodisiac elements. You are shrinking your world of sensations. You are withering it, starving it, draining its blood. If you nourished your sexual life with all the excitements and adventures which love injects into sensuality, you would be the most potent man in the world. The source of sexual power is curiosity, passion. You are watching its little flame die of asphyxiation. Sex does not thrive on monotony. Without feeling, inventions, moods, no surprises in bed. Sex must be mixed with tears, laughter, words, promises, scenes, jealousy, envy, all the spices of fear, foreign travel, new faces, novels, stories, dreams, fantasies, music, dancing, opium, wine. How much do you lose by this periscope at the tip of your sex, when you could enjoy a harem of distinct and never-repeated wonders? No two hairs alike, but you will not let us waste words on a description of hair; no two odors, but if we expand on this you cry Cut the poetry. No two skins with the same texture, and never the same light, temperature, shadows, never the same gesture; for a lover, when he is aroused by true love, can run the gamut of centuries of love lore. What a range, what changes of age, what variations of maturity and innocence, perversity and art . . . We have sat around for hours and wondered how you look. If you have closed your senses upon silk, light, color, odor, character, temperament, you must be by now completely shriveled up. There are so many minor senses, all running like tributaries into the mainstream of sex, nourishing it. Only the united beat of sex and heart together can create ecstasy.
Anaïs Nin (Delta of Venus)
Sex loses all its power and magic when it becomes explicit, mechanical, overdone, when it becomes a mechanistic obsession. It becomes a bore. You have taught us more than anyone I know how wrong it is not to mix it with emotion, hunger, desire, lust, whims, caprices, personal ties, deeper relationships that change its color, flavor, rhythms, intensities.
Anaïs Nin (Delta of Venus)
Sexual abuse is also a secret crime, one that usually has no witness. Shame and secrecy keep a child from talking to siblings about the abuse, even if all the children in a family are being sexually assaulted. In contrast, if a child is physically or emotionally abused, the abuse is likely to occur in front of the other children in the family, at least some of the time. The physical and emotional abuse becomes part of the family's explicit history. Sexual abuse does not.
Renee Fredrickson (Repressed Memories: A Journey to Recovery from Sexual Abuse (Fireside Parkside Books))
society tolerates sexually explicit images of women as long as they conform to an ideal that doesn’t relate to women’s autonomous erotic pleasure. Encouraged to be hyper-sexualised and available spectacles from a young age, when women focus on their own erotic desires and satisfaction, they are seen as monsters, and even more so when they get rich doing it.
Catherine McCormack (Women in the Picture: What Culture Does with Female Bodies)
It is already taken for granted that sexual desire doesn’t need to include infatuation or caring. One-night stands and fuck-buddy arrangements are all explicitly sexual and explicitly non-romantic. The opposite conclusion—that for some, infatuation never included and never turns into sexual desire—is harder for people to accept, at least in the West.
Angela Chen (Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex)
Fascist politics does not necessarily lead to an explicitly fascist state, but it is dangerous nonetheless. Fascist politics includes many distinct strategies: the mythic past, propaganda, anti-intellectualism, unreality, hierarchy, victimhood, law and order, sexual anxiety, appeals to the heartland, and a dismantling of public welfare and unity.
Jason F. Stanley (How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them)
Alliance-based activism begins with the recognition that we are all individuals, each with a limited history and experiencing a largely unique set of privileges, expectations, assumptions, and restrictions. Thus, none of us have "superior knowledge" when it comes to sexuality and gender. By calling ourselves an alliance, we explicitly acknowledge that we are working toward a common goal [...], while simultaneously recognizing and respecting our many differences.
Julia Serano (Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity)
As the world confronts the challenges of globalisation, the entertainment Industry and a web saturated with explicit sexual content, is increasingly making it difficult for young people to make informed decisions about sex
Oche Otorkpa (The Unseen Terrorist)
As attentive readers may have noted, the standard narrative of heterosexual interaction boils down to prostitution: a woman exchanges her sexual services for access to resources. Maybe mythic resonance explains part of the huge box-office appeal of a film like Pretty Woman, where Richard Gere's character trades access to his wealth in exchange for what Julia Roberts's character has to offer (she plays a hooker with a heart of gold, if you missed it). Please note that what she's got to offer is limited to the aforementioned heart of gold, a smile as big as Texas, a pair of long, lovely legs, and the solemn promise that they'll open only for him from now on. The genius of Pretty Woman lies in making explicit what's been implicit in hundreds of films and books. According to this theory, women have evolved to unthinkingly and unashamedly exchange erotic pleasure for access to a man's wealth, protection, status, and other treasures likely to benefit her and her children.
Christopher Ryan (Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality)
Suspense, murder, revenge, scandal; a delicious cocktail party.
Kat Kaelin (LONE WALK FROM PANTHER CREEK: BASED ON A TRUE STORY - Dirty Little Secrets - Reader Discretion Advised)
Warning: This title is sexually explicit with mild bdsm. If you like it rough and spanky, this may be for you.
Tasha L. Harrison (In Her Closet (The Lust Diaries, #1))
Although we may deplore the film's scatological language, sexual explicitness and gratuitous gore as seemingly designed only to shock, in the manner of an angry, attention-craving child, we must remember that this movie was actually made by an angry, attention-craving child.
Mark Leyner (The Tetherballs of Bougainville)
It’s like that in the Watch, too.” said Angua. “You can be any sex you like provided you act male. There’s no men and women in the Watch, just a bunch of lads. You’ll soon learn the language. Basically it’s how much beer you supped last night, how strong the curry was you had afterwards, and where you were sick. Just think egotesticle. You’ll soon get the hang of it. And you’ll have to be prepared for sexually explicit jokes in the Watch House.
Terry Pratchett (Feet of Clay (Discworld, #19))
Starting in 1897, Henry Havelock Ellis devoted six volumes to it: his pioneering Studies in the Psychology of Sex, sprinkled with case studies of unexpected explicitness and perversity. One memorable phrase from volume four, Sexual Selection in Man: “the contact of a dog’s tongue with her mouth alone afterward sufficed to evoke sexual pleasure.
Erik Larson (Thunderstruck)
There is no such thing as a relationship without a contract. All relationships are governed by contracts, be they implied or explicit. Relationship contracts are not legal contracts, though sometimes societal expectations of relationships get worked into law (this can come into play in situations like divorce as well as the legal establishment and relinquishment of paternity). The society in which you grew up provided you with a set of template contracts to which you implicitly agree whenever you enter a relationship, even a non-sexual one. For example, a common clause of many societal template contracts among friends involves agreeing to not sleep with a friend's recent ex. While you may never explicitly agree to not sleep with a friend's ex, your friend will absolutely feel violated if they discover that you shacked up with the person who dumped them just a week earlier. Essentially, these social contracts tell an individual when they have “permission” to have specific emotional reactions. While this may not seem that impactful, these default standards can have a significant impact on one’s life. For example, in the above reaction, a friend who just got angry out of the blue at a member of their social group would be ostracized by others within the group while a friend who became angry while citing the “they slept with my ex” contract violation may receive social support from the friend group and internally feel more justified in their retaliatory action. To ferret out the contractual aspects of relationships in which you currently participate, think through something a member of that relationship might do that would have you feeling justifiably violated, even though they never explicitly agreed to never take such action. This societal system of template contracts may have worked in a culturally and technologically homogenous world without frequent travel, but within the modern world, assumed template contracts cause copious problems.
Simone Collins (The Pragmatist's Guide to Relationships: Ruthlessly Optimized Strategies for Dating, Sex, and Marriage)
Pope John Paul II returned to this theme, condemning state-recognized same-sex unions as parodic versions of authentic families, “based on individual egoism” rather than genuine love. Justifying that condemnation, he observed, “Such a ‘caricature’ has no future and cannot give future to any society”. Queers must respond to the violent force of such constant provocations not only by insisting on our equal right to the social order’s prerogatives, not only by avowing our capacity to promote that order’s coherence and integrity, but also by saying explicitly what Law and the Pope and the whole of the Symbolic order for which they stand hear anyway in each and every expression or manifestation of queer sexuality: Fuck the social order and the Child in whose name we’re collectively terrorized; fuck Annie; fuck the waif from Les Mis; fuck the poor, innocent kid on the Net; fuck Laws both with capital ls and small; fuck the whole network of Symbolic relations and the future that serves as its prop.
Lee Edelman (No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive)
it's going great. Two months in, and I've created three apps." "Apps?" "For people who buy my book as an e-book --which will be everybody. The first is called Don't Look. It's for the overly sensitive. It blurs and turns the type red when a dog dies or a baby is born with a birth defect. Stuff like that. My second is It's Not Okay When You Say It, and it delivers an electrical zap if the reader laughs at a racial slur. My third is Jesus Thesaurus, which replaces explicit sexual language with church words. So, when one of my characters 'saints' a guy's 'disciple', He'll beg her to 'cavalry' his 'Baptists' and 'shout amen'.
Helen Ellis (American Housewife)
Sex - Emotion explicitly expressed!” 
Ramana Pemmaraju
What's the best way to say because it's too embarrassing to talk to a crush about sex and read an explicit thing they wrote while they're right there?
C.B. Lee (Not Your Sidekick (Sidekick Squad, #1))
...While many who have debated the image of female sexuality have put "explicit" and "self-objectifying" on one side and "respectable" and "covered-up" on the other, I find this a flawed means of categorization. [...] There is a creative possibility for liberatory explicitness because it may expand the confines of what women are allowed to say and do. We just need to refer to the history of blues music—one full of raunchy, irreverent, and transgressive women artists— for examples. Yet the overwhelming prevalence of the Madonna/whore dichotomy in American culture means that any woman who uses explicit language or images in her creative expression is in danger of being symbolically cast into the role of whore regardless of what liberatory intentions she may have.
Imani Perry (Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop)
Romance is feminist. The reply was on the tip of my tongue. Romance is one of the few genres that explicitly puts a woman’s dreams and desires, sexual and otherwise, front and center. It’s one of the many reasons I love reading it.
Jessica Peterson (Southern Charmer (Charleston Heat, #1))
Pornography is the explicit artistic depiction of men and/or women as sexual beings.' This is not merely a working definition. It is a definition I propose as a new and neutral starting point for a more fruitful discussion of pornography.
Wendy McElroy (XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography)
Adjusting her legs, he opened her thighs so that she straddled him. Her pussy was directly over his cock, instinctively recognizing the appropriate sensual route, and she spread and slumped further, dramatically increasing the explicit contact. Tugging at the belt at his waist, he loosened it, and pushed at the lapels of his robe, exposing only his chest. "Touch me," he said and, when she vacillated, he gripped her hand and laid it over his heart, then rasped it in a slow circle. "Like this.
Cheryl Holt (Total Surrender)
It's difficult to make the argument that one female fist inserted into one male ass--or, for that matter, dozens or even hundreds of fists inserted into as many asses--can really make a difference for, say, lesbian mothers fighting for custody of their children. -Katherine Raymond
Carol Queen (PoMoSexuals: Challenging Assumptions About Gender and Sexuality)
As any lawyer knows, the four stages of crime are intention, preparation, attempt, and commission. Nowhere does our law punish the (evil) intentions of an individual since it’s not explicitly seen. Ironically every crime/wrong primarily begins with a (mala-fide) intention. Jesus of Nazareth captured it succinctly when he pointed “What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.
Royal Raj S
Equally eyebrow-raising, at least in secular circles, is his linking of contraception to the breakdown of families, female impoverishment, trouble in the relationship between the sexes, and single motherhood. Tiger has further argued—as Humanae Vitae did not explicitly, though other works of theology have—that “contraception causes abortion”.10
Mary Eberstadt (Adam and Eve After the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution)
Actually, some asexual people celebrate sex—up to and including engaging in it themselves despite lack of sexual attraction. Some asexual people write stories or produce art depicting sexual situations and/or nudity. Some asexual people have no problem with consuming media that contains sexual content. They do not have to be attracted to other people to appreciate or create positive portrayals of these relationships. This can be especially difficult to explain if an asexual artist does create sexually explicit material, because people want to know whether they’re creating this because they secretly desire it. Or they might reverse the issue and suggest asexual people have no business creating this media—or that they can’t be good at it—if they don’t have personal experience. What artists choose to make art about has absolutely no bearing on what they’re attracted to or what they might want to experience themselves. Art can be used to express personal desires, but no one should assume someone must be doing so if that person depicts experiences or images contrary to personally expressed desires, and no one should use a person’s artwork or subject matter to invalidate claims. Asexual artists cannot be restricted to creating media that is devoid of sex. Asexual artists know and accept that most people are attracted sexually to others, so if they want to write realistic books or movies, they generally have to create at least some of their subjects with that dimension attached to them.
Julie Sondra Decker (The Invisible Orientation: An Introduction to Asexuality)
White feminists did not challenge the racist-sexist tendency to use the word "woman" to refer solely to white women; they supported it. For them it serves two purposes. First, it allowed them to proclaim white men world oppressors while making it appear linguistically that no alliance existed between white women and white men based on shared racial imperialism. Second, it made it possible for white women to act as if alliances did exist between themselves and non-white women in our society, and by so doing they could deflect attention away from their classism and racism. Had feminists chosen to make explicit comparisons between the status of white women and that of black people, or more specifically the status of black women and white women, it would have been more than obvious that the two groups do not share an identical oppression. It would have been obvious that similarities between the women under patriarchy and that of any slave or colonized person do not necessarily exist in a society that is both racially and sexually imperialistic. In such a society, the woman who is seen as inferior because of her sex, can also be seen as superior because of her race, even in relationship to men of another race. Because feminists tended to evoke an image of women as a collective group, their comparisons between "women" and "blacks" were accepted without question. This constant comparison of the plight of "women" and "blacks" deflected attention away from the fact that black women were extremely victimized by both racism and sexism - a fact which, had it been emphasized, might have diverted public attention away from the complaints of middle and upper class white feminists.
bell hooks (Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism)
Further, although pornography is predefined as a form of violence against women, several clauses of this definition have nothing to do with such abuse. Instead, they deal with explicit sexual content-e.g. women as sex objects who "invite penetration." This is more of an attack on heterosexual sex than it is on pornography. After all, if there isn't an "invitation to penetration," how can the man know that consent is present?
Wendy McElroy (XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography)
Intellectual, imaginative, romantic, emotional. This is what gives sex its surprising textures, its subtle transformations, its aphrodisiac elements. Sex loses all its power and magic when it becomes explicit, mechanical, overdone, when it becomes a mechanistic obsession. It becomes a bore. You are shrinking your world of sensations. You are withering it, starving it, draining its blood. If you nourished your sexual life with all the excitements and adventures which love injects into sensuality, you would be the most potent human being in the world. The source of sexual power is curiosity, passion. You are watching its little flame die of asphyxiation. Sex does not thrive on monotony. Sex must be mixed with tears, laughter, words, promises, scenes, jealousy, envy, all of the spices of fear, foreign travel, new faces, novels, stories, dreams, fantasies, music, dancing, opium, wine.
Anaïs Nin (The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 3: 1939-1944)
It is recognised now that Freud never gave proper attention, even in man, to growth of the ego or self: 'the impulse to master, control or come to self-fulfilling terms with the environment'. Analysts who have freed themselves from Freud's bias and joined other behavioural scientists in studying the human need, and that interference with it, in any dimension, is the source of psychic trouble. The sexual is only one dimension of the human potential. Freud saw women only in terms of their sexual relationship with men. But in all those women in whom he saw sexual problems, there must have been very severe problems of blocked growth, growth short of full human identity -- an immature, incomplete self. Society as it was then, by explicit denial of education and independence, prevented women from realising their full potential, or from attaining those interests and ideals that might stimulated their growth. Freud reported these deficiencies, but could only explain them as the toll of 'penis envy'. He saw that women who secretly hungered to be man's equal would not enjoy being his object; and in this, he seemed to be describing a fact. But when he dismissed woman's yearning for equality as 'penis envy', was he not merely stating his own view that woman could never really be man's equal, any more than she could wear his penis?
Betty Friedan (The Feminine Mystique)
Warning: “Good Intentions” contains violence, explicit sex, nudity, inappropriate use of church property, portrayals of beings divine and demonic bearing little or no resemblance to established religion or mythology, trespassing, bad language, sacrilege, blasphemy, attempted murder, arguable murder, divinely mandated murder, justifiable murder, filthy murder, sexual promiscuity, kidnapping, attempted rape, arson, dead animals, desecrated graves, gang activity, theft, assault and battery, panties, misuse of the 911 system, fantasy depictions of sorcery and witchcraft, multiple references to various matters of fandom, questionable interrogation tactics, cell phone abuse, reckless driving, consistent abuse of vampires (because they deserve it), even more explicit sex, illegal use of firearms within city limits, polyamory, abuse of authority, hit and run driving, destruction of private property, underage drinking, disturbances of the peace, disorderly conduct, internet harassment, bearers of false witness, mayhem, dismemberment, falsification of records, tax evasion, an uncomfortably sexy mother, bad study habits, and a very silly white guy inappropriately calling another white guy “nigga” (for which he will surely suffer). All characters depicted herein are over the age of 18, with the exception of one little girl who merely needs to get her cat out of a tree. Don’t worry, nothing bad happens to her. She makes it through the story just fine.
Elliott Kay (Good Intentions (Good Intentions, #1))
At first I found it inexplicable that boys used such violent words in reference to sex. Why would you be proud of being a lousy lover? If they were truly talking about sex in those situations, they might bring up pleasure, connection, finesse: they wouldn't weaponize it. But the whole point of "locker room banter" is that it's not actually about sex, and that, I think, is why guys were more ashamed to discuss it as openly with me as topics that were equally explicit. Those exaggerated stories are in truth about power: about asserting masculinity through control of women's bodies. And that requires- demands- a denial of girls' humanity... Dismissing that as locker room talk denies the ways that language can desensitize and abrade boys' ability to see girls as people deserving of respect and dignity. And, in fact, by the time they are in college, athletes are three times more likely than other students to be accused of sexual misconduct or intimate partner violence.
Peggy Orenstein (Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New Masculinity)
His own children were not members of the Clemson incoming freshman class, but two of his nieces and a nephew were. On the news, he outlined his problems with the summer-reading committee’s selection. “The book talks in graphic terms about pornography, about fetish, about masturbation, about multiple sex partners . . . The book contains a very extensive list of over-the-top sexual and antireligious references. The explicit message that this sends to students is that they are encouraged to find themselves sexually.
Ann Patchett (This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage)
When it comes to porn, women have to be particularly aware of the effect it has on men. While studies have found that both men and women are more open to straying after viewing porn, this impacts men a lot more than women, as does relationship dissatisfaction in general. While many women can watch porn and still maintain intimacy with their partner, men struggle to do the same. Their thoughts are fixated on images more than women's are. One study found that men considered their partners less attractive after viewing sexually explicit pictures of other women. Researchers believe this is because exposure to these images causes men to undergo a kind of rewiring in their brain about what a typical naked body should look like. So while women might be able to view porn and honestly say it doesn't affect how they view their partner, they can't assume the same is true for their guy. He might not admit it or even realize it, but studies have shown this to be true and it fits with a man's highly visual nature. If a woman doesn't want another woman in her partner's thoughts, she shouldn't tolerate him watching porn - not when he's alone or even with her.
Pamela Anderson (Lust for Love: Rekindling Intimacy and Passion in Your Relationship)
1990 was a totally political time. George Bush was president, people were dying of AIDS, a lot of our friends, and there was no money being spent by the government either on AIDS or art. So a lot of extreme sexual and political work was made at that time. It was in response to the situation. But that kind of "edgy" political work wasn't exactly what I was doing. I felt a little like my mother. I just wasn't surprised that the government wouldn't support this work. What would you expect. I had personally grown up in a world of total censorship so I wasn't surprised to see politicians wanting to take money away from the art that was explicitly talking about this entire reality of ours. It seemed like the real desire from them (the politicians) was to have no description. That's what they would have paid for. ...Doing their business, wars or whatever, behind the scenes and meanwhile propagating a giant nothing which has become a something the government and the media have only perfected since. To a very large extent people don't even know. I mean it's kind of the great product of this country. The American Way. A big nothing. A cataclysmic unawareness in the face of evil.
Eileen Myles (Inferno (A Poet's Novel))
So much of sex is what it is because you are allowed to be yourself. This individuality– which can be anything in a lover: fierceness, clumsiness, coyness – is what makes sex different every time, this is what changes the nature of pleasure from one act to the next, from one lover to another. To play the role of the still, passive and submissive woman day after day leaves a woman in a relationship with the ceiling, not with her man. My husband lacks this kind of basic knowledge because Marx and Lenin and Mao have not explicitly written this down, and the declassing classes do not address the sexual pleasure of comrades.
Meena Kandasamy (When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife)
The literature on ritualistic abuse suggests that ritualistic sexual practices with young children are a characteristic of particularly abusive groups, and that such practices typically occur alongside a diverse range of other abusive practices, such as child prostitution and the manufacture of child abuse images. One of the shortcomings of the available literature, however, is the general presumption (implicit or explicit) that abusive groups are motivated by a religious or spiritual conviction. In clinical and research literature, abusive groups are generally referred to as 'cults', and 'cult abuse' is a term that has been used interchangeably with 'ritual abuse'." p38
Michael Salter (Organised Sexual Abuse)
North American LGBT activists, wedded to epistemologies of the closet, often implicitly or explicitly equate this culture of semivisibility with the Global South’s lack of progress. In Sirena Selena, the Puerto Rican novelist Mayra Santos-Febres parodies the North’s conflation of “developing” nations’ electrical power outages and their lack of sexual enlightenment through the words of a Canadian tourist in Santo Domingo. He sighs, “I don’t want to criticize, you know — with all the problems these islands have, it’s understandable that they’re less evolved. . . . You can’t compare our problems with the atrocities a gay man has to face in these countries. . . . It’s all hanky-panky in the dark, like in the fifties in Canada.
Omise'eke Natasha Tinsley (Thiefing Sugar: Eroticism between Women in Caribbean Literature (Perverse Modernities))
All of us, actors and spectators alike, live surrounded by mirrors. In them, we seek reassurance of our capacity to captivate or impress others, anxiously searching out blemishes that might detract from the appearance we intend to project. The advertising industry deliberately encourages this preoccupation with appearances. In the twenties, "the women in ads were constantly observing themselves, ever self-critical. ... A noticeable proportion of magazine ads directed at women depicted them looking into mirrors. . . . Ads of the 1920s were quite explicit about this narcissistic imperative. They unabashedly used pictures of veiled nudes, and women in auto-erotic stances to encourage self-comparison and to remind women of the primacy of their sexuality." A booklet advertising beauty aids depicted on its cover a nude with the caption: "Your Masterpiece-Yourself.
Christopher Lasch (The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectations)
Of course the results of the election were shocking at the time, but in hindsight, they were consistent with the trends of previous elections. Trump continued to build on Republican advantages with the middle class and the non-college educated whites. Meanwhile, the power of identity liberalism to boost turnout among the minority community proved to be a mirage. African American turnout was down significantly from 2008 and 2012 without the nation's first black president on the ticket. And Trump actually increased the share of the vote received from African Americans and Hispanic over Mitt Romney. It turns out the identity liberalism even alienates members of minority groups more concerned about economic issues than niche social justice fights. Furthermore, Donald Trump was making an appeal based on identity as well -- that of being an American. His patriotic call to Make America Great Again overwhelmed explicit appeals to race, gender and sexual orientation. This universal appeal based on broad issues and common culture trumped identity liberalism.
Newt Gingrich (Understanding Trump)
There’s nothing inside. Only the scungilli shell. Dear girl—” saying it as phony as he knew how—“schlemihls know this and use it, because they know most girls need mystery, something romantic there. Because a girl knows her man would be only a bore if she found out everything there was to know. I know you’re thinking now: the poor boy, why does he put himself down like that. And I’m using this love that you still, poor stupe, think is two-way to come like this between your legs, like this, and take, never thinking how you feel, caring about whether you come only so I can think of myself as good enough to make you come . . .” So he talked, all the way through, till both had done and he rolled on his back to feel traditionally sad. “You have to grow up,” she finally said. “That’s all: my own unlucky boy, didn’t you ever think maybe ours is an act too? We’re older than you, we lived inside you once: the fifth rib, closest to the heart. We learned all about it then. After that it had to become our game to nourish a heart you all believe is hollow though we know different. Now you all live inside us, for nine months, and whenever you decide to come back after that.” He was snoring, for real. “Dear, how pompous I’m getting. Good night . . .” And she fell asleep to have cheerful, brightly colored, explicit dreams about sexual intercourse.
Anonymous
...Cleveland was the first war over the protection of children to be fought not in the courts, but in the media... Given that most of the hearings took place out of sight of the press, the following examples are taken from the recollection of child protection workers present in court. In one case, during a controversy that centred fundamentally around disputes over the meaning of RAD [reflex anal dilatation], a judge refused to allow ‘any evidence about children’s bottoms’ in his courtroom. A second judge — hearing an application to have their children returned by parents about whom social services had grave worries told the assembled lawyers that, as she lived in the area, she could not help but be influenced by what she read in the press. Hardly surprising then that child protection workers soon found courts not hearing their applications, cutting them short, or loosely supervising informal deals which allowed children to be sent back to parents, even in cases where there was explicit evidence of apparent abuse to be explained and dealt with. (p21) [reflex anal dilatation (RAD): a simple clue which is suggestive of anal penetration from outside. It had been recognised as a valuable weapon in the armoury of doctors examining children for many decades and was endorsed by both the British Medical Association and the Association of Police Surgeons. (p18)]
Sue Richardson (Creative Responses to Child Sexual Abuse: Challenges and Dilemmas)
The largest and most rigorous study that is currently available in this area is the third one commissioned by the British Home Office (Kelly, Lovett, & Regan, 2005). The analysis was based on the 2,643 sexual assault cases (where the outcome was known) that were reported to British police over a 15-year period of time. Of these, 8% were classified by the police department as false reports. Yet the researchers noted that some of these classifications were based simply on the personal judgments of the police investigators, based on the victim’s mental illness, inconsistent statements, drinking or drug use. These classifications were thus made in violation of the explicit policies of their own police agencies. There searchers therefore supplemented the information contained in the police files by collecting many different types of additional data, including: reports from forensic examiners, questionnaires completed by police investigators, interviews with victims and victim service providers, and content analyses of the statements made by victims and witnesses. They then proceeded to evaluate each case using the official criteria for establishing a false allegation, which was that there must be either “a clear and credible admission by the complainant” or “strong evidential grounds” (Kelly, Lovett, & Regan,2005). On the basis of this analysis, the percentage of false reports dropped to 2.5%." Lonsway, Kimberly A., Joanne Archambault, and David Lisak. "False reports: Moving beyond the issue to successfully investigate and prosecute non-stranger sexual assault." The Voice 3.1 (2009): 1-11.
David Lisak
Respect but do not fear your own fear. Do not let it come between you and something that might be deeply enjoyable. Remember it is quite normal to be a bit frightened of being alone. Most of us grew up in a social environment that sent out the explicit message that solitude was bad for you: it was bad for your health (especially your mental health) and bad for your 'character' too. Too much of it and you would promptly become weird, psychotic, self-obsessed, very possibly a sexual predator and rather literally a wanker. Mental (and even physical) well-being, along with virtue, depends, in this model, on being a good mixer, a team-player, and having high self-esteem, plus regular, uninhibited, simultaneous orgasms with one partner (at a time). Actually, of course, it is never this straightforward because at the same time as pursuing this 'extrovert ideal', society gives out an opposite - though more subterranean - message. Most people would still rather be described as sensitive, spiritual, reflective, having rich inner lives and being good listeners, than the more extroverted opposites. I think we still admire the life of the intellectual over that of the salesman; of the composer over the performer (which is why pop stars constantly stress that they write their own songs); of the craftsman over the politician; of the solo adventurer over the package tourist. People continue to believe, in the fact of so much evidence - films, for example - that Great Art can only be produced by solitary geniuses. But the kind of unexamined but mixed messages that society offers us in relation to being alone add to the confusion; and confusion strengthens fear.
Sara Maitland (How to Be Alone (The School of Life))
North American LGBT activists, wedded to epistemologies of the closet, often implicitly or explicitly equate this culture of semivisibility with the Global South’s lack of progress. In Sirena Selena, the Puerto Rican novelist Mayra Santos-Febres parodies the North’s conflation of “developing” nations’ electrical power outages and their lack of sexual enlightenment through the words of a Canadian tourist in Santo Domingo. He sighs, “I don’t want to criticize, you know — with all the problems these islands have, it’s understandable that they’re less evolved. . . . You can’t compare our problems with the atrocities a gay man has to face in these countries. . . . It’s all hanky-panky in the dark, like in the fifties in Canada.”5 But the “dark” or semivisibility of Caribbean same-sex sexuality can be something other than a blackout. It can also read as the “tender and beautiful” night that Ida Faubert imagines in “Tropical Night,” a space of alternative vision that nurtures both eroticism and resistance. The tactically obscured has been crucial to Caribbean and North American slave societies, in which dances, ceremonies, sexual encounters, abortions, and slave revolts all took place under the cover of night. Calling on this different understanding of the half seen, Édouard Glissant exhorts scholars engaging Caribbean cultures to leave behind desires for transparency and instead approach with respect for opacity: a mode of seeing in which the difference of the other is neither completely visible nor completely hidden, neither overexposed nor erased.6 The difference that Glissant asks us to (half ) look at is certainly not that of sexuality (since it is never mentioned) nor of gender (since he includes in his work a diatribe against feminism).
Omise'eke Natasha Tinsley (Thiefing Sugar: Eroticism between Women in Caribbean Literature (Perverse Modernities))
Robert Askins Brings ‘Hand to God’ to Broadway Chad Batka for The New York Times Robert Askins at the Booth Theater, where his play “Hand to God” opens on Tuesday. By MICHAEL PAULSON The conceit is zany: In a church basement, a group of adolescents gathers (mostly at the insistence of their parents) to make puppets that will spread the Christian message, but one of the puppets turns out to be more demonic than divine. The result — a dark comedy with the can-puppets-really-do-that raunchiness of “Avenue Q” and can-people-really-say-that outrageousness of “The Book of Mormon” — is “Hand to God,” a new play that is among the more improbable entrants in the packed competition for Broadway audiences over the next few weeks. Given the irreverence of some of the material — at one point stuffed animals are mutilated in ways that replicate the torments of Catholic martyrs — it is perhaps not a surprise to discover that the play’s author, Robert Askins, was nicknamed “Dirty Rob” as an undergraduate at Baylor, a Baptist-affiliated university where the sexual explicitness and violence of his early scripts raised eyebrows. But Mr. Askins had also been a lone male soloist in the children’s choir at St. John Lutheran of Cypress, Tex. — a child who discovered early that singing was a way to make the stern church ladies smile. His earliest performances were in a deeply religious world, and his writings since then have been a complex reaction to that upbringing. “It’s kind of frustrating in life to be like, ‘I’m a playwright,’ and watch people’s face fall, because they associate plays with phenomenally dull, didactic, poetic grad-schoolery, where everything takes too long and tediously explores the beauty in ourselves,” he said in a recent interview. “It’s not church, even though it feels like church a lot when we go these days.” The journey to Broadway, where “Hand to God” opens on Tuesday at the Booth Theater, still seems unlikely to Mr. Askins, 34, who works as a bartender in Brooklyn and says he can’t afford to see Broadway shows, despite his newfound prominence. He seems simultaneously enthralled by and contemptuous of contemporary theater, the world in which he has chosen to make his life; during a walk from the Cobble Hill coffee shop where he sometimes writes to the Park Slope restaurant where he tends bar, he quoted Nietzsche and Derrida, described himself as “deeply weird,” and swore like, well, a satanic sock-puppet. “If there were no laughs in the show, I’d think there was something wrong with him,” said the actor Steven Boyer, who won raves in earlier “Hand to God” productions as Jason, a grief-stricken adolescent with a meek demeanor and an angry-puppet pal. “But anybody who is able to write about such serious stuff and be as hilarious as it is, I’m not worried about their mental health.” Mr. Askins’s interest in the performing arts began when he was a boy attending rural Texas churches affiliated with the conservative Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod denomination; he recalls the worshipers as “deeply conservative, old farm folks, stone-faced, pride and suffering, and the only time anybody ever really livened up was when the children’s choir would perform.” “My grandmother had a cross-stitch that said, ‘God respects me when I work, but he loves me when I sing,’ and so I got into that,” he said. “For somebody who enjoys performance, that was the way in.” The church also had a puppet ministry — an effort to teach children about the Bible by use of puppets — and when Mr. Askins’s mother, a nurse, began running the program, he enlisted to help. He would perform shows for other children at preschools and vacation Bible camps. “The shows are wacky, but it was fun,” he said. “They’re badly written attempts to bring children to Jesus.” Not all of his formative encounters with puppets were positive. Particularly scarring: D
Anonymous
Unfortunately, the impact of sexually explicit media content can also be damaging.
Sharon L. Nichols (America's Teenagers--Myths and Realities: Media Images, Schooling, and the Social Costs of Careless Indifference)
gender-bending among men is often an artifact of the sexualized female avatars, rather than an explicit attempt to explore gender roles.17
Nick Yee (The Proteus Paradox: How Online Games and Virtual Worlds Change Us - and How They Don't)
Far too many advocates rail against this or that sexual practice; few state clearly and explicitly what we are for.
Michael Rittenhouse (Sex: What Your Parents Didn't Tell You)
He slid Gay Whore back onto the shelf, and then saw Mansfield Park by Jane Austen, which didn't seem to fit with the more sexually explicit titles. He began to read it, sitting in the armchair, and discovered that the central character's name was Funny. Was this supposed to be a joke?
Todd Young (Subject 19)
Liberals always have had a love-hate relationship with the Constitution—they love it when they can use it to abort babies or let gay people get married. They hate it when its language gets in the way of their big-government schemes, like censoring conservative media outlets or investigating troublesome, truth-telling journalists. They especially hate the fact that the Constitution explicitly—yes, explicitly—protects gun owners. To get around that inconvenient truth, the left does what it does best: It denies that things say what they actually say, or mean what they actually mean. Or as everyone’s favorite sexual harasser once famously put it, “It depends on what the meaning of is is.” The gun grabbers’ useful idiot, Sen. Chuck Schumer, once claimed that his fellow Democrats needed to admit that there was such as thing as a Second Amendment that gave people “a constitutional right to bear arms.” But before we think Senator Schumer was actually on our side, he went on in the same breath to call for a “compromise” that allowed the left to ban a whole bunch of different guns and thus infringe on that aforementioned constitutional right to bear arms.
Dana Loesch (Hands Off My Gun: Defeating the Plot to Disarm America)
In a tenderness so explicit, sexuality can become obsolete
Anonymous
The British lady, trying to make conversation, asked Zoe and me what our parents did if we were “bad girls.” “When I’m bad, I get a time-out,” Zoe said. “When I’m bad,” I announced, “my father sticks a fork in my vagina.” This is hard to share without alarm bells sounding. We’re taught to listen to little girls, particularly when they say things about being sodomized with cutlery. Also my father makes sexually explicit artwork so he’s probably already on the FBI’s fork-in-vagina radar.
Lena Dunham (Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned")
Feminists remain bitterly divided in their attitudes towards sexually explicit material in fiction and the media. They differ in their interpretation of the meaning and social function of pornography. One group, the radical feminists, adopt an anti-pornography position which posits that all sexually explicit material is defamatory to women. Andra Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon are its key proponents. In the past, they have attempted to make the production of pornography a violation of civil rights.
Cathia Jenainati (Introducing Feminism: A Graphic Guide)
Secondly, the critical approach to Social Justice encourages tribalism and hostility by its aggressively divisive approach. Whereas the Civil Rights Movements worked so well because they used a universalist approach—everybody should have equal rights—that appealed to human intuitions of fairness and empathy, Social Justice uses a simplistic identity politics approach which ascribes collective blame to dominant groups—white people are racist, men are sexist, and straight people are homophobic. This explicitly goes against the established liberal value of not judging people by their race, gender, or sexuality, and it is incredibly naive to expect it not to produce a counter-revival of old right-wing identity politics. Arguments that it is acceptable to be prejudiced against white people, men, straight, or cisgender people because of historical power imbalances do not work well with human intuitions of reciprocity.
Helen Pluckrose (Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody)
discovered womanism, a term coined by Alice Walker that explicitly focuses on the experiences of Black women. For some time, that label felt more apt because of Walker’s spotlight on Black women’s needs and her inclusion of queer women, writing that a womanist is ‘a woman who loves another woman, sexually and/or non sexually’. I
June Eric-Udorie (Can We All Be Feminists?: Seventeen writers on intersectionality, identity and finding the right way forward for feminism)
Our bodies have been created not only by God but also for God..We are driven today by whatever can bring our bodies the most pleasure. What can we eat, touch, watch, do listen to, or engage in to satisfy the cravings of our bodies?..in his love, gives us boundaries for our bodies: he loves us and knows what is best for us..[there are] clear and critical distinctions between different types of laws in Leviticus. Some of the laws are civil in nature, and they specifically pertain to the government of ancient Israel..Other laws are ceremonial..However, various moral laws..are explicitly reiterated in the New Testament..Jesus himself teaches that the only God-honoring alternative to marriage between a man and a woman is singleness..the Bible also prohibits all sexual looking and thinking outside of marriage between a husband and a wife..it is sinful even to look at someone who is not your husband or wife and entertain sexual thoughts about that person..it is also wrong to provoke sexual desires in others outside of marriage..God prohibits any kind of crude speech, humor, or entertainment that remotely revolves around sexual immorality..often watch movies and shows, read books and articles, and visit Internet sites that highlight, display, promote, or make light of sexual immorality..God prohibits sexual worship-- the idolization of sex and infatuation with sexual activity as a fundamental means to personal fulfillment..Don't rationalize it, and don't reason with it-- run from it. Flee it as fast as you can..We all have a sinful tendency to turn aside from God's ways to our wants. This tendency has an inevitable effect on our sexuality..every one of us is born with a bent toward sexual sin. But just because we have that bent doesn't mean we must act upon it. We live in a culture that assumes a natural explanation implies a moral obligation. If you were born with a desire, then it's essential to your nature to carry it out. This is one reason why our contemporary discussion of sexuality is wrongly framed as an issue of civil rights..Ethnic identity is a morally neutral attribute..Sexual activity is a morally chosen behavior..our sexual behavior is a moral decision, and just because we are inclined to certain behaviors does not make such behaviors right. His disposition toward a behavior does not mean justification for that behavior. "That's the way he is" doesn't mean "that's how he should act." Adultery isn't inevitable; it's immoral. This applies to all sexual behavior that deviates from God's design..We do not always choose our temptations. But we do choose our reactions to those temptations..the assumption that God's Word is subject to human judgement..Instead of obeying what God has said, we question whether God has said it..as soon as we advocate homosexual activity, we undercut biblical authority..we are undermining the integrity of the entire gospel..We take this created gift called sex and use it to question the Creator God, who gave us the gift in the first place..[Jesus] was the most fully human, fully complete person who ever lived, and he was never married. He never indulged in any sort of sexual immorality..This was not a resurrection merely of Jesus' spirit or soul but of his body..Repentance like this doesn't mean total perfection, but it does mean a new direction..in a culture that virtually equates identity with sexuality..Naturally this becomes our perception of ourselves, and we subsequently view everything in our lives through this grid..When you turn to Christ, your entire identity is changed. You are in Christ, and Christ is in you. Your identity is no longer as a heterosexual or a homosexual, an addict or an adulterer.
David Platt (A Compassionate Call to Counter Culture in a World of Poverty, Same-Sex Marriage, Racism, Sex Slavery, Immigration, Abortion, Persecution, Orphans and Pornography)
The opposition between women who are people and women who are something less does not only rest in the vague contrast between the women of the comedies and the women of the tragedies. There are more explicit examples of women who may earn love, like Helena who pursued her husband through military brothels to marriage and honour in All’s Well, and women who must lose it through inertia and gormlessness, like Cressida. In The Taming of the Shrew Shakespeare contrasted two types in order to present a theory of marriage which is demonstrated by the explicit valuation of both kinds of wooing in the last scene. Kate is a woman striving for her own existence in a world where she is a stale, a decoy to be bid for against her sister’s higher market value, so she opts out by becoming unmanageable, a scold. Bianca has found the women’s way of guile and feigned gentleness to pay better dividends: she woos for herself under false colours, manipulating her father and her suitors in a perilous game which could end in her ruin. Kate courts ruin in a different way, but she has the uncommon good fortune to find Petruchio who is man enough to know what he wants and how to get it. He wants her spirit and her energy because he wants a wife worth keeping. He tames her like he might a hawk or a high-mettled horse, and she rewards him with strong sexual love and fierce loyalty. Lucentio finds himself saddled with a cold, disloyal woman, who has no objection to humiliating him in public. The submission of a woman like Kate is genuine and exciting because she has something to lay down, her virgin pride and individuality: Bianca is the soul of duplicity, married without earnestness or good-will. Kate’s speech at the close of the play is the greatest defence of Christian monogamy ever written. It rests upon the role of a husband as protector and friend, and it is valid because Kate has a man who is capable of being both, for Petruchio is both gentle and strong (it is a vile distortion of the play to have him strike her ever). The message is probably twofold: only Kates make good wives, and then only to Petruchios; for the rest, their cake is dough.
Germaine Greer (The Female Eunuch)
An evolutionary consciousness also has much to offer those whose childhood was marred by the archetypal Death Mother. Growing up with an indifferent, ambivalent, or hostile mother is likely to compromise emotional development and trigger the formation of a 'trauma-world'. Most of the clinical community is now aware of this dynamic; however, because popular discourse has focused on the harm caused by explicit sexual and physical abuse, many people who have grown up feeling 'merely' unloved find it difficult to understand their own feelings and behavior. This leaves them little choice but to mistakenly deduce that their suffering is rooted in some kind of intrinsic inadequacy of their own. Once such a conviction forms, shame takes hold, whereupon these individuals tend to become imprisoned by the belief that they are victims to their own supposed inadequacy. Incarcerated in this distorted belief system, there can be no genuine healing. Again, an evolutionary consciousness can help to instigate change. Understanding that the Death Mother was all too real during our species’ evolutionary history, and that human infants and children have evolved to feel the emotional ambivalence of caregivers as a concrete threat to survival, frees people to change the context in which they experience themselves. Instead of believing that their feelings and behavior result from their own inadequacy, they can begin to understand them as a response to what, for most of our evolutionary history, would have meant actual death. Such a shift in perspective can help people develop a more compassionate and accepting relationship with themselves, and, as already emphasized, compassionate self-acceptance is a vital step in the process of change.
Daniela F. Sieff
Through social pressure, implicit and explicit value systems perpetuate the very destructiveness that they were originally set up to control in primitive communities. Because people tend to conform to external standards and norms, society is able to place prohibitions on spontaneity and sexuality, which in turn creates hostility and tension. By reinforcing moral lessons learned in the family, social institutions help to maintain and perpetuate the toxic effects of neurotic family interactions. Children and, later, adults are bound by conventional thinking and conformity which influences them to act out of “shoulds,” form, and obligation, generally denying their real preferences, due to feelings of guilt.
Robert W. Firestone (The Fantasy Bond: Structure of Psychological Defenses)
It is a well-documented fact that pornography as a separate category did not exist until the nine-tenth century, when lawmakers throughout Europe ostensibly sought to protect a predominantly white, middle-class female population from sexually explicit material and - by extension - knowledge of their own sexuality.
Annie Sprinkle (Hardcore from the Heart: The Pleasures, Profits and Politics of Sex in Performance (Critical Performances))
Bernard Law, the former cardinal of Boston, mistaking (or maybe understanding too well) the degree of authority bestowed on him by the signifier of his patronymic, denounced in 1996 proposed legislation giving health care benefits to same-sex partners of municipal employees. He did so by proclaiming, in a noteworthy instance of piety in the sky, that bestowing such access to health care would profoundly diminish the marital bond. "Society," he opined, "has a special interest in the protection, care and upbringing of children. Because marriage remains the principal, and the best, framework for the nurture, education and socialization of children, the state has a special interest in marriage." With this fatal embrace of a futurism so blindly committed to the figure of the Child that it will justify refusing health care benefits to the adults that some children become, Law lent his voice to the mortifying mantra of a communal jouissance that depends on the fetishization of the Child at the expense of whatever such fetishization must inescapably queer. Some seven years later, after Law had resigned for his failure to protect Catholic children from sexual assault by pedophile priests, Pope John Paul II returned to this theme, condemning state-recognized same-sex unions as parodic versions of authentic families, "based on individual egoism" rather than genuine love. Justifying that condemnation, he observed, "Such a 'caricature' has no future and cannot give future to any society." Queers must respond to the violent force of such constant provocations not only by insisting on our equal right to the social order's prerogatives, not only by avowing our capacity to promote that order's coherence and integrity, but also by saying explicitly what Law and the Pope and the whole of the Symbolic order for which they stand hear anyway in each and every expression or manifestation of queer sexuality: Fuck the social order and the Child in whose name we're collectively terrorized; fuck Annie; fuck the waif from Les Mis; fuck the poor, innocent kid on the Net; fuck Laws both with capital Ls and with small; fuck the whole network of Symbolic relations and the future that serves as its prop.
Lee Edelman (No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive)
Even movie and romance magazines, whose beauty ads explicitly connected makeup and sex appeal, maintained a logic that downplayed women's sexual assertion: A woman acted upon her desire for a man by making herself beautiful, in order to catch his attention and awaken his desire.
Kathy Peiss (Hope in a Jar: The Making of America's Beauty Culture)
English-speaking practitioners generally use the four following terms to refer to the influence of evil spirits: Oppression – demonic influence which seems to come from outside a person, causing heaviness, weariness or discouragement. Oppressive spirits may be acquired through exposure to a heavy presence of evil: e.g. by participating in deliverance ministry (defined below), by being in a place where occult activities are taking place, by being placed under a curse, by coming into contact with items of witchcraft. Oppressive spirits may be dispelled by a simple command to leave in the name of Jesus. Obsession – demonic influence which seems to reside inside a person, usually afflicting a certain area of a person’s life in the form of strong habitual temptations. A person may open oneself to such influence by deliberately seeking the presence or power of evil spirits through witchcraft, Satanism, or fortune-telling (ouija, tarot etc.); demonic obsession may also occur through other grave sins which are not explicitly associated with the occult, e.g. sexual activity by consecrated or ordained persons pledged to celibacy. The obsessing spirit usually needs to be identified by name and cast out (i.e. commanded to leave) or bound (i.e. forbidden from exerting any further influence). Possession is very rare, and only occurs when human beings wilfully hand over complete control of their life to Satan, by expressly doing so or by embracing grave sin. Formal exorcism, sanctioned by the diocesan bishop, is always required in such cases.Infestation is used to refer to the influence of evil spirits over objects, animals, houses or places.
Michael Freze (The Rite Of Exorcism The Roman Ritual: Rules, Procedures, & Prayers of the Catholic Church...Updated! Deliverance, solemn exorcisms, the authority of the exorcist through the Catholic Church.)
The Way of the Superior Man is a book written explicitly for people who have already achieved respect for other genders and sexual preferences, and who consider men and women to be social, economic, and political equals. Now, we are ready to move to the next stage, grounded in this mutual respect and equality, but celebrating the sexual and spiritual passions inherent in the masculine/feminine polarity.
David Deida (The Way of the Superior Man: A Spiritual Guide to Mastering the Challenges of Women, Work, and Sexual Desire)
When he was with his fellow pastors, they challenged each other with these seven questions: 1. Have you been with a woman anywhere this past week that might be seen as compromising? 2. Have any of your financial dealings lacked integrity? 3. Have you exposed yourself to any sexually explicit material? 4. Have you spent adequate time in Bible study and prayer? 5. Have you given priority time to your family? 6. Have you fulfilled the mandates of your calling? 7. Have you just lied to me? To these questions I would add at least one statement. “Now that I have asked you these questions, let me tell you how you have been a blessing to me. Let me tell you how you have pointed me to Christ.
Edward T. Welch (When People Are Big and God Is Small: Overcoming Peer Pressure, Codependency, and the Fear of Man)
The idea that sex can be reduced to fixed components as it is in pornography—blow job, doggie style, money shot, girl-on-girl—is adolescent: first base, second base, all the way. It is ironic that we think of this as adult entertainment. I don’t see why we should regard porn as a way to enjoy “sexuality in all of its explicitness” any more than we consider looking at a chart of the food pyramid to be a feast.
Ariel Levy (Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture)
I read the books very quickly, and might have missed something,” said Bethel, “Did Hermione give Ron a handjob?” “This is too vulgar,” said Amaryllis. “And no, she didn’t.” “It’s implied in the text,” began Valencia. “Is it?” asked Amaryllis in disbelief. Valencia huffed. “Well, you have to understand that the books were written for children, but given that sexual curiosity is completely normal in the early and late teens, their close proximity with one another, their history of dating others, then yes,” said Valencia. She folded her hands. “The lack of explicit sexual activity probably has more to do with the marketing of the books and the social mores of both the author and audience.
Alexander Wales (Worth the Candle)
What exactly is he trying to sell?’ Ignoring Catherine Austin, Dr Nathan walked over to the photographs of the isolation volunteers on the enamel wall beside the window. The question revealed either astonishing ignorance or a complicity in that conspiracy of the unconscious he had only now begun to unravel. He turned to face the young woman, irritated as always by her strong, quizzical gaze, an overlay of her own potent sexuality. ‘ You, Dr Austin. These advertisements constitute an explicit portrait of yourself, a contour map of your own body, an obscene newsreel of yourself during intercourse.’ He rapped the magazines with his gold cigarette case. ‘These images are fragments in a terminal moraine left behind by your passage through consciousness.
J.G. Ballard (The Atrocity Exhibition)
I hope that even as Sorrrowland delves into the pain these colonial states have wrought, one might see the joy, triumph, and humor of those who resist, resist, resist. That said, there is no mincing words about some of the darker themes in this book. Note discussion and instances of racism, misogyny, self-harm, suicidality, and homophobia, inclusion of animal death and explicit violence, and references to sexual violence that have taken place off the page. I hope you find in this book whatever it is you need right this moment.
Rivers Solomon (Sorrowland)
ROOT CHAKRA—MULADHARA The Root Chakra is at the root of your tailbone and is your equilibrium hub. You feel stressed, shaky, and dizzy or as if you have a vertigo when it's out of balance. You feel unable to make progress in your life, on personal or professional grounds, when this chakra becomes overactive and you feel stuck in your key relationships. All situations feel deeply unsettling to you, as if the change rests on your very being. This is because the Root Chakra is your prime balance point between the ‘Below and the Above’. An unbalanced or unattended Root Chakra can influence any aspect of your life, which is why many energy workers and Reiki practitioners take a bottom-up approach to chakra practice, beginning from the Root (or even deeper from the Earth Star) and moving upward to the Third Hand, Crown, and Soul Star Core networks. You are free to move freely in the universe when your Root Chakra is healthy, visible and working well, realizing you are safe, protected and seen. In Sanskrit, this chakra's name, Muladhara, means "foundation" or "pillar." That's where male sexual energy resides in the physical body (the Sacral Chakra sits on feminine sexual energy). Where the Earth Star Chakra is a gateway to the Earthly Kingdom of rocks, stones, and subterranean pathways of spirit animals and insects, the Root Chakra is a portal to our connection with our own physical realm— the physical goods and systems that keep us safe in the three-dimensional world we inhabit right now. The Root Chakra's masculine strength isn't explicitly male; it's a protective force field that can offer anybody a profound sense of comfort regardless of their sexual orientation or affiliation. You will find a stable partner for your journey as you begin to communicate with the masculine energy source, one that can support, sustain, and lead you toward the best outcome for your work and life. In terms of energy, manifestation is the act of forming thought, or of creating your desires. The very act of creation demands that you indulge in a greater density of matter, drawing in forces to create new form that involves a strong binding of your soul to the Earth. If you manifest from an ungrounded place, it will be temporary and fleeting to your creations. Imagine building a building without a firm foundation. You wouldn't even imagine doing this, would you? Well then, neither should you try to create or manifest from an ungrounded floating position within the ethers.
Adrian Satyam (Energy Healing: 6 in 1: Medicine for Body, Mind and Spirit. An extraordinary guide to Chakra and Quantum Healing, Kundalini and Third Eye Awakening, Reiki and Meditation and Mindfulness.)
Romance is feminist. The reply was on the tip of my tongue. Romance is one of the few genres that explicitly puts a woman’s dreams and desires, sexual and otherwise, front and center.
Jessica Peterson
The attitude that homosexual activity is not "genuine" sexual, courtship, or pair-bonding behavior is also sometimes made explicit in the descriptions and terminology used by researchers... This attitude is also encoded directly in the words used for homosexual behaviors: rarely do animals of the same sex ever simply "copulate" or "court" or "mate" with one another (as do animals of the opposite sex). Instead, male walruses indulge in "mock courtship" with each other, male African elephants and gorillas have "sham matings", while female sage grouse and male hanuman langurs and common chimpanzees engage in "pseudo-matings". Musk-oxen participate in "mock copulations", mallard ducks of the same sex form "pseudo-pairs" with each other, and blue-bellied rollers have "fake" sexual activity. Male lions engage in "feigned coitus" with one another, male orang-utans and savanna baboons take part in "pseudo-sexual" mountings and other behaviors, while mule deer and hammerheads exhibit "false mounting"... Even the use of the term 'homosexual' is controversial. Although the majority of scientific sources on same-sex activity classify the behavior explicitly as "homosexual" - and a handful even use the more loaded terms 'gay' or 'lesbian' - many scientists are nevertheless loath to apply this term to any animal behavior. In fact, a whole "avoidance" vocabulary of alternate, and putatively more "neutral", words have come into use... The use of "alternate" words such as 'unisexual' is sometimes advocated precisely because of the homophobia derived by the term 'homosexual': one scientist reports that an article on animal behavior containing 'homosexual' in its title was widely received with a "lurid snicker" by biologists, many of whom never got beyond the "sensationalistic wording" of the title to actually read its contents.
Bruce Bagemihl (Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity)
As we have seen, one way in that zoologists have tried to avoid classifying same-sex activity as "homosexual" is by using terminology and behavioral categories that deny it is a sexual activity at all. This approach also extends to the interpretations, explanations, and "functions" attributed to same-sex behavior, even when it involves the most overt and explicit of activities. Astounding as it sounds, a number of scientists have actually argued that when a female bonobo wraps her legs around another female, rubbing her own clitoris against her partner's while emitting screms of enjoyment, this is actually "greeting" behavior, or "appeasement" behavior, or "reassurance" behavior, or "reconciliation" behavior, or "tension-regulation" behavior, or "social bonding" behavior, or "food exchange" behavior - almost anything, it seems, besides *pleasurable sexual* behavior. Similar "interpretations" have been proposed for many other species (involving both males and females), allowing scientists to claim that these animals do not really engage in "genuine" (i.e., purely sexual) homosexual activity. But what heterosexual activity is ever "purely" sexual?
Bruce Bagemihl (Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity)
Have you been in a compromising situation this week? Have any of your financial dealings lacked integrity? Have you viewed any sexually explicit material? Have you spent quality time in Bible study and prayer? Have you given priority time to your family? Have you fulfilled the mandates of your calling? Have you just lied to me?
Chris Hodges (Out of the Cave: Stepping into the Light when Depression Darkens What You See)
Instead, they simply felt more drawn toward some women than others, for reasons they couldn’t quite put a finger on. So who was doing the choosing? In the largely inaccessible workings of the brain, something knew that a woman’s dilated eyes correlates with sexual excitement and readiness. Their brains knew this, but the men in the study didn’t—at least not explicitly.
David Eagleman (Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain)
One evening, as I carefully prepared my dollies for bed with their silky pajamas and pin curls, my mom literally threw a red book at me from across the room with a 'Here. Read this. Let me know if you have any questions.' It took me half a day to get through, and afterward, oh, did I have questions. The book contained the most explicit descriptions of every sexual proclivity in existence - I had a lot of questions: 'Is it the man that pees on the woman or the woman that pees on the man?' 'What if you forget your safe word?' 'Do we have any shlurp bars in Toronto?' 'What's your safe word?' 'What if you go to shrimp someone and they haven't washed their feet?' 'What should my safe word be? Is alphabet soup to obvious?' Soon, not only was I familiar with the basics of male-female sexual intercourse, I could explain in great detail what bukkake was. I could give you a rundown on a Cincinnati Bowtie, or perhaps even take you through the intricacies of a German Scheisse video.
Samantha Bee (I Know I Am, But What Are You?)
The PMRC pressured the music industry to establish a rating system that would warn potential record buyers of sexually explicit and violent lyrics. Their purchases may as well have carried stickers emblazoned with ‘THIS RECORD CONTAINS SEX AND DRUGS AND ROCK’N’ROLL!
Dylan Jones (Sweet Dreams: The Story of the New Romantics)
Lui started a nonprofit organization called Unify Carmel, which was among the first groups in the country to bring up to their school boards that shockingly explicit books were in their school libraries. After discovering the books, Lui says, “We read the sexually explicit and gender-propaganda books during open comments at a school board meeting.
Bethany Mandel (Stolen Youth: How Radicals Are Erasing Innocence and Indoctrinating a Generation)
Incidentally, the claim that watching sunsets is no different that viewing porn was actually tested and debunked in a 2000 brain scan study.[ 121] Cocaine addicts and healthy controls viewed films of: 1) explicit sexual content, 2) outdoor nature scenes, and 3) individuals smoking crack cocaine. The results: cocaine addicts had nearly identical brain activation patterns when viewing both porn and a crack pipe. However, for all subjects brain activation patterns when viewing nature scenes were completely different from the porn-viewing patterns. All subjects had the same brain activation patterns for porn. The important takeaway is that drugs can activate the ‘sex’ neurons and trigger a buzz without actual sex. So can internet porn. Golf and sunsets cannot.
Gary Wilson (Your Brain On Porn: Internet Pornography and the Emerging Science of Addiction)
Under the contract that Boies helped revise, Black Cube’s mission became much more explicit: to halt Jodi and Megan’s investigation
Jodi Kantor (She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement)
I have metabolised my sexual trauma by writing columns, blogs, books and a one-woman show. I also regularly participate in erotic photoshoots. My brand of ‘fierce female sexuality’ doesn’t sit well with a lot of people. How dare I control my image and narrative by exploiting my sexual self online? Instead I should wait around to be the victim of revenge porn and have my explicit images shared without permission.
Vanessa de Largie
Although any woman can be deemed a slut, more explicit erotic actions are an express ticket to the top of the list. And contrary to what some might think, slut-shaming (aka being judged for your real or perceived sexual expression) isn’t solely perpetrated by men. A 2014 study by a cross-party think tank found that women on Twitter slut-shame other women almost as much as men do.
Kristen J. Sollee (Witches, Sluts, Feminists: Conjuring the Sex Positive)
If you are as ardent a fan of the National Geographic channel as I am, some of or all the following scenes should be familiar to you. A male lion roaring to assert his dominance over a pride; female baboons with their bright sexual swelling indicating their readiness to mate; bees performing their waggle dance to show the direction and distance of flowers; a female elephant caressing her calf to soothe him; a deep-sea squid emitting light to attract prey; and a meerkat squealing to warn her family of a predatory eagle. All these are examples of signals, and no textbook on evolutionary theory is complete without a lengthy discussion on them.1 Signals emitted by a “sender” have explicitly evolved to alter the behavior of the “receiver” and are used to communicate with and influence the behavior of prey, predators, mates, competitors, friends, and family.
Pulak Prasad (What I Learned About Investing from Darwin)
Pornographic literature depicts sex in explicit or bizarre or even intentionally degrading and dehumanizing detail. Designed by the author and used by the reader specifically for sexual stimulation, it serves no literary end. It commodifies sex. It is a product, not literature, and the person who uses it is primarily a consumer, not a reader. In its baser forms the pornographic appeals to the baser instincts, the selfish, the violent in us. In its milder forms, pornography presents the physical/sexual to appeal only to the physical/sexual in us, and hence tells less than half the story of being human. And we are left with a world in which, contrary to a spirituality that finds God in all things, including sex, nothing is sacred, everything is profane.
Nancy M. Malone (Walking a Literary Labyrinth)
was praised by liberal commentators, who interpreted the pornified aesthetic and explicit lyrics as, in the words of one Guardian columnist, ‘an unabashed celebration of female sexuality’.45
Louise Perry (The Case Against the Sexual Revolution: A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century)
Translated literally, Jesus replies, "I am, the (one) speaking to you" [John 4:26]. This word-for-word translation comes out awkwardly in English, so it's often broken up in our Bibles. But as New Testament scholar Craig Evans observes, Jesus's statement is "emphatic and unusual" in the original Greek as well. Smoothing it out in translation masks the fact that this is the first of Jesus's "I am" statements. ...This is the first time in John that Jesus explicitly declares he's the Messiah. And as he does so, Jesus makes an even more extraordinary claim. Each of Jesus's "I am" statements gives us fresh insight into who he is. At first, his words to the Samaritan woman seem like an exception. But if we look more closely, Jesus is giving us more insight about his identity when he says to the Samaritan woman, "I am, the (one) speaking to you." Jesus claims he's the Messiah and the one true covenant God. But he is also the one who is speaking to this sexually suspect, foreign woman. He could have just said "I am he!" But as we look at Jesus through this woman's eyes, we see him as the long-promised King and everlasting God, who chooses to converse with her.
Rebecca McLaughlin (Jesus through the Eyes of Women: How the First Female Disciples Help Us Know and Love the Lord)
It is a reason why so many who seek holiness or spiritual improvement impose on themselves a strict austerity. And it is why schools and colleges used to emulate the ways of monasteries. The first Christian hermits and monastics who practiced extreme austerity in the desert saw themselves as emulating Jesus during his sojourn in the wilderness. Once monastic life became institutionalized, removing oneself from carnal temptation was a major reason why religiously minded individuals would choose to take vows. The Rule of St. Benedict, set down around the year 530, included commitments to poverty, humility, chastity, and obedience, and this became the paradigm for most Christian monastic orders. The vow of poverty generally involved renouncing all individual property, although the monastic community was allowed to hold property, and of course some monasteries eventually became quite wealthy. But the lifestyle of most monks in the Middle Ages was kept deliberately austere. Here is how Aelred of Rievaulx, writing in the twelfth century, describes it: Our food is scanty, our garments rough, our drink is from the streams and our sleep upon our book. Under our tired limbs there is a hard mat; when sleep is sweetest we must rise at a bell’s bidding. . . . self-will has no scope; there is no moment for idleness or dissipation.4 Strict precautions to eliminate the possibility of sexual encounters, regular searches of dormitories to ensure that no one was hoarding personal property, a rigid and arduous daily routine to occupy to the full one’s physical and mental energy: by means of this sort monasteries and convents did their best to provide a temptation-free environment. More than a trace of the same thinking lay behind the preference for isolated rural locations among those who sought to establish colleges in nineteenth-century America. Sometimes the argument might be conveyed subtly by a brochure picturing the college surrounded by nothing but fields, woods, and hills, an image that also appealed to the deeply rooted idea that the land was a source of virtue.5 But it was also put forward explicitly. The town of North Yarmouth sought to persuade the founders of Bowdoin College of its advantageous location by pointing out that it was “not so much exposed to many Temptations to Dissipation, Extravagance, Vanity and Various Vices as great seaport towns frequently are.”6 And the 1847 catalog of Tusculum College, Tennessee, noted that its rural situation “guards it from all the ensnaring and demoralizing influences of a town.”7 Needless to say, reassurances of this sort were directed more at the fee-paying parents than at the prospective students. One should also add that not everyone took such a positive view of the rural campus. Some complained that life far away from urban civilization fostered vulgarity, depravity, licentiousness, and hy
Emrys Westacott (The Wisdom of Frugality: Why Less Is More - More or Less)
Therein lies the double standard: If a child is gender-nonconforming, this is interpreted as biological and something that shouldn’t be dissuaded or tampered with. But if a child is gender-conforming, this is seen as the result of social influence and something that parents should actively try to change. I often see boys who are gender-atypical, allowed by their parents to express themselves in a hyperfeminine and in some cases, inappropriately sexualized way, pouting with duck lips in photos and posing seductively. In the case of child drag queens, for example, little boys—some as young as age eight—perfect their makeup and hair and put on skimpy outfits to gyrate to, in many cases, explicitly sexual songs onstage. As someone who spent more nights than I can count in drag clubs with my friends when I was younger, I fully support young kids, especially feminine boys, expressing themselves. But I find the hypocrisy mind-numbing—would the adults cheering on drag kids allow their daughters to pose in the same way?
Debra Soh (The End of Gender: Debunking the Myths about Sex and Identity in Our Society)
Under the influence of activists like Jim Fouratt these alliances extended (though were not limited) to domestic movements like the Black Panthers and foreign ones such as the Viet Cong, Mao’s regime in China, Castro’s Cuba and more. The fact that these movements were explicit in their varied opposition to homosexuals (Mao’s China, for instance, being willing to publicly castrate ‘sexual degenerates’) was merely one of those contradictions that needed to be got over.
Douglas Murray (The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity)
FUEL FOR THE IDENTITY POLITICS OF THE EXTREME RIGHT One of the biggest problems with the identity politics of the identitarian left is that it validates and emboldens identity politics on the identitarian right. Right-wing identity politics have long held that white people should hold all the power in a society, that Western culture should dominate the world, and that men should take a dominant role in the public sphere and women a passive one in the home. Heterosexuality was regarded as normal and morally good (within certain gendered frameworks) while homosexuality was a perversion and morally bad. When the liberal left explicitly challenged all of this and advocated the view that people should not be evaluated by their race, sex or sexuality, it held a convincing moral highground over right-wing elements who argued that they should.
Helen Pluckrose (Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody)
When the females are ready to shed their shells and soften up a bit, they become interested in mating. They start hanging around the dominant lobster’s pad, spraying attractive scents and aphrodisiacs towards him, trying to seduce him. His aggression has made him successful, so he’s likely to react in a dominant, irritable manner. Furthermore, he’s large, healthy and powerful. It’s no easy task to switch his attention from fighting to mating. (If properly charmed, however, he will change his behaviour towards the female. This is the lobster equivalent of Fifty Shades of Grey, the fastest-selling paperback of all time, and the eternal Beauty-and-the-Beast plot of archetypal romance. This is the pattern of behaviour continually represented in the sexually explicit literary fantasies that are as popular among women as provocative images of naked women are among men.)
Jordan B. Peterson (12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos)
Highlighting supposed threats to the ability of men to protect their women and children solves a difficult political problem for fascist politicians. In liberal democracy, a politician who explicitly attacks freedom and equality will not garner much support. The politics of sexual anxiety is a way to get around this issue, in the name of safety; it is a way to attack and undermine the ideals of liberal democracy without being seen as explicitly so doing.
Jason F. Stanley (How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them)
The political left’s cultural revolution on the sexual-gender-family front is ubiquitous, as is its intolerance of any dissenters. We see it in the culture of fear and intimidation by the self-prided forces of “diversity” and “tolerance” who viciously seek to denounce, dehumanize, demonize, and destroy anyone who disagrees with their brazen newfound conceptions of marriage and family, even as their inventions are at odds with the prevailing position of 99.99 percent-plus of human beings who have bestrode the earth since the dawn of humanity. Instead, traditional Christians are the ones portrayed as the outliers, as abnormal, as extremists, as bigots, as “haters.” That is a fundamental transformation of a culture and a nation. That is evidence of a true revolution by the heirs of Marx and other radicals. “The Most Radical Rupture in Traditional Relations” To “fundamentally transform.” Here was, in essence, an inherently Marxist goal declared to a sea of oblivious Americans, whether Barack Obama explicitly or fully understood or meant it himself. It is highly doubtful that Obama had Marx (or a Marcuse or Millett or Reich) on the mind at that moment.665 Obama was merely riding a wave that began as a ripple over a century or so ago. And typically, most of those surfing or floating along have little notion who or what helped give the initial push. Nonetheless, the goal of Karl Marx and the Marxist project from the outset was one of fundamental transformation, permanent revolution, and unrestrained criticism of everything—nothing less than “the ruthless criticism of all that exists.”666 Marx’s ideas were so radical, and so (as Marx openly conceded) “contrary to the nature of things,” that they inevitably lead to totalitarianism; that is because they are totalitarian in the strictest sense, as they seek to transform human nature and the foundational order. We have seen passages from Marx to that effect throughout this book. Here is a short summary: Marx in the Manifesto said that communism represents “the most radical rupture in traditional relations.” Marx in the Manifesto acknowledged that communism seeks to “abolish the present state of things.” Marx in the Manifesto stated that “they [the Communists] openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.” Marx in the close of the Manifesto: “Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.” Marx in a letter to Arnold Ruge called for the “ruthless criticism of all that exists.” Marx had a favorite quote from Goethe’s Faust, “Everything that exists deserves to perish.” • Marx in his essay declaring religion “the opium of the people” said that “the criticism of religion is the beginning of all criticism.” (Recall that in that essay he used the word “criticism” twenty-nine times.) Beyond
Paul Kengor (The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism's Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration)
The current backlash of censorship is an alliance between the Moral Majority (the Right) and the politically correct (the Left). This alliance is threatening the freedom of both women and sexual expression. The Right defines the explicit depiction of sex as evil; the Left defines it as violence against women. The result is the same.
Wendy McElroy (XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography)
As pornography flourished, it became part of the changing view of sexuality. Sex was no longer tied, with a nooselike knot, to procreation, marriage, or romance. Pornography presented a kaleidoscope of sexual possibilities: as pleasure, with a stranger, as self-exploration, as power, with groups or with another woman... The old stereotypes of pornography began to fade away. The caricature of the type of person who enjoyed pornography e.g., dirty old men and nervous perverts-was superseded by the sight of millions of people subscribing to Playboy. Couples viewed pornography together; explicit sex manuals, such as The Joy of Sex, became best sellers, which were prominently stocked by mainstream bookstores.
Wendy McElroy (XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography)
Frequently through online pre-orientation courses, college students today are taught that the absence of "no" does not mean that sex is consensual, and that they only way it can be is if both parties explicitly say "yes". But as we'll show, promoting affirmative consent is insufficient to prevent sexual assault.
Jennifer S. Hirsch (Sexual Citizens: A Landmark Study of Sex, Power, and Assault on Campus)