Many women, particularly young women, have claimed the right to use the most explicit sex terms, including extremely vulgar ones, in public as well as private. But it is men, far more than women, who have been liberated by this change. For now that women use these terms, men no longer need to watch their own language in the presence of women. But is this a gain for women?

I was staying in a hotel in San Francisco for a couple of nights, before flying back to the UK. My hotel was a desperate grey block made from paper and people’s screams. At night the sound of strangers having icy sex echoed off the building and poured through the broken air conditioning, like tiny daggers I couldn't see, reminding me of just the tip of what I was missing.

The one thing that has changed dramatically when you talk to the people of New Zealand and people from Ireland? They feel a darned-sight better about themselves because they made the decision to do what they've done, and I can say to you, we would feel a bloody darned sight better about ourselves once we get an opportunity to put this [vote on same-sex marriage] out there.

If your definition of homosexuality is being able to do whatever you want to, and that you should be able to go and engage in sex with another person, and that because of that, the disease you have is going to spread to that person and they're going to take it home and give it to their wife, how much tolerance should we have for that? We should have zero tolerance for that.

Look, nearly everything in the culture says we're freaks. Doing sex work, we're desired; we can get rewarded for being what we've always wanted to be. What's so bad about that? My own notion is I wish sex work would be decriminalized (not legalized, please note the distinction) so that more trannies could get into the field if they wanted to and not get into trouble for it.

It is a lesson of the sixties: liberals get in the biggest political trouble - whether instituting open housing, civilian compliant review boards, or sex education programs - when they presume that a reform is an inevitable comcomitant of progress. It is then they are most likely to establish their reforms by top-down bureaucratic means. A blindsiding backlash often ensues.

If same-sex relationships are really sinful, then why do they so often produce good fruit-loving families, open homes, self-sacrifice, commitment, faithfulness, joy? And if conservative Christians are really right in their response to same-sex relationships, then why does that response often produce bad fruit-secrets, shame, depression, loneliness, broken families, and fear?

What daughter thinks of her parents in flagrante delicto? Yet, my mother, even after years with him, dropped hints such as, 'You know, your father enjoys his matinees.' I never even saw them go to the movies together. What could she mean? All those afternoons, I thought she was upstairs listening to La Traviata, and those high notes apparently were not coming from the radio.

If insemination were the sole biological function of sex, it could be achieved far more economically in a few seconds of mounting and insertion. Indeed, the least social of mammals mate with scarcely more ceremony. The species that have evolved long-term bonds are also, by and large, the ones that rely on elaborate courtship rituals. . . . Love and sex do indeed go together.

I wouldn't want to promote teenage girls having sex. But the reality is, it's happening, and they're just a little too young to understand how careful they need to be. That's a big battle with me, because I'm 23, and a lot of my fans are eight years younger than I am, so there's a bit of a tug-of-war there. I want to set the right example and, at the same time, live my life.

When I was four, I think I just wanted to make noise. When I was about 10 years old I was given five CDs for my birthday: Pink Floyd's 'Dark side of the Moon,' the Sex Pistols, Prodigy, Jimi Hendrix, and I can't remember the fifth one, but really different kinds of music. That's when I started to grasp it and enjoy it, listening to it. Then I started being in bands at school.

On two subjects the overwhelming majority of people regarded their own opinions as Absolute Truth, and sincerely believed that anyone who disagreed with them was immoral, outrageous, sinful, sacrilegious, offensive, intolerable, stupid, illogical, treasonable, actionable, against the public interest, ridiculous, and obscene. The two subjects were (of course) sex and religion.

He'd noticed that sex bore some resemblance to cookery: it fascinated people, they sometimes bought books full of complicated recipes and interesting pictures, and sometimes when they were really hungry they created vast banquets in their imagination - but at the end of the day they'd settle quite happily for egg and chips. If it was well done and maybe had a slice of tomato.

Does sex education encourage sex? Many parents are afraid that talking about sex with their teenagers will be taken as permission for the teen to have sex. Nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, the more children learn abour sexuality from talking with their parents and teachers and reading accurate books, the less they feel compelled to find out for themselves.

I guess I think that sex and desire and humiliation are central to my experience of consciousness - to my experience of humanness - and I wanted to explore the ways that they circle around and approach and fail to add up to love, or the ways that those three terms - sex, desire, love - can in some lights seem synonymous and in others like elements entirely alien to one another.

Until quite recently I've been wholly cut off from [the Shias] because their tenets forbid them to look upon an unveiled woman and my tenets don't permit me to veil Nor is it any good trying to make friends through the women - if they were allowed to see me they would veil before me as if I were a man. So you see I appear to be too female for one sex and too male for the other.

Mercedes nursed a special grievance - the grievance of sex. She was pretty and soft, and had been chivalrously treated all her days. But the present treatment by her husband and brother was everything save chivalrous. It was her custom to be helpless. They complained. Upon which impeachment of what to her was her most essential sex pregorative, she made their lives unendurable.

It may be that a second wave of the sexual revolution might at last accomplish its aim of freeing half the race from its immemorial subordination--and in the process bring us all a great deal closer to humanity. It may be that we shall even be able to retire sex from the harsh realities of politics, but not until we have created a world we can bear out of the desert we inhabit.

If you want to change from sex towards love, try to understand your sexuality. Watch it, watch the mechanicalness of it. See the futility, see the whole absurdity of it - it is not leading you anywhere. Become a little more refined, become a little more subtle. Look not for the body, but somebody's being. Watch, explore. Sooner or later you will find somebody who fits with you.

A split personality can never become non-greedy. It can try, but it can never become. A split personality can never go beyond anger. It can try, but it can never go beyond. A split personality can never go beyond sex. It can fight. So many monks in the monasteries are doing it. They don't go beyond sex; at the most their sexuality becomes perverted, their love becomes poisoned.

I don't care who wins because I go to sporting events to scream. It's the one place on the planet you can shout anything you want. You can bellow at will, and nobody will bother you. I yell things like, 'My life sucks! Dan Quayle is a schmuck! If I don't have sex soon, I'm going to explode!' Parents turn to their kids as I leave the stadium and go, 'Hey, there goes a great fan.

Cultivating whatever gave pleasure to my senses was always the chief business of my life; I have never found any occupation more important. Feeling that I was born for the sex opposite mine, I have always loved it and done all that I could to make myself loved by it. I have also been extravagantly fond of good food and irresistibly drawn by anything which could excite curiosity.

It occurs to me that there's been a relatively recent tendency in the media to see prostitutes as victims and johns as exploiters. I don't think most prostitutes see themselves as victims or see their clients as exploiters, but that way of seeing prostitutes and johns is pretty common now outside of sex-work circles, and it's more shameful to be the exploiter than the exploited.

People don't mind immoral messages. They don't mind art which says that murder is good, cruelty is good, sex for sex's sake is good. They like it, provided the message is wrapped up a little. And they like messages saying that murder is bad, cruelty is bad, and love is love is love is love. What they can't stand is to be told it all doesn't matter, they can't stand formlessness.

Sneezing absorbs all the functions of the soul just as much as the [sexual] act, but we do not draw from it the same conclusions against the greatness of man, because it is involuntary; although we bring it about, we do so involuntarily. It is not for the sake of the thing in itself but for another end, and is therefore not a sign of man's weakness, or his subjection to this act.

And now you're off to Port Caynn. Watch them sailor lads. They'll have your skirts up and a babe in your belly afore you know what you're about." "Everyone keep warning me about sailors," I complained. "Why can't someone tell the sailors to stay clear of me?" Granny snorted. "Oh, you're the fierce one now! Just take care no one else catches you unawares and knocks you on the nob!

This is God's standards [against same-sex marriage and abortions]. And just because public opinion may have changed or somebody takes a poll - this is just one of the issues. And it doesn't matter what people say or what people think. It doesn't matter about the opinion polls. It's what God says, and God says this is a sin. And it's a sin against him, and he's going to judge sin.

Those who have prophesied dreadful consequences as a result of the greater sexual freedom which the young assert - unwanted babies, venereal disease and so on - are usually the very same people who seek the fulfillment of their prophecies by opposing the free availability to the young of contraception and the removal of the stigma and mystification that surround venereal disease.

Should or can there be a single standard of behavior for both sexes? Is there such a thing as a biologically rooted female culture that should remain separate from male culture, partly because it is different than or superior to male culture? Women must convert their love for and reliance on strength and skill in others to a love for all manner of strength and skill in themselves.

I'm a very dull passenger. I don't speak. I don't have sex. No alcohol. I don't do drugs. The thing that I like about flying is that I feel like I can really concentrate. I used to write many things, and many ideas for my movies belong to this moment where I'm not anywhere specifically in terms of time and space and geography. I am suspended, and this suspension fits me very well.

I think because of these big issues of life and death that maybe sex feels like a crass question. But for Christ sake, this is a book that is so interested in an elemental human condition. And one of the ideas about surrender is an erotic surrender, too. These folks are surrendered by destiny; they surrender to each other in certain moments, but there is a lot of erotic surrender.

The person who is free of sexuality, whose sexuality has become a transformed phenomenon, is also free of money, is also free of ambition, is also free of the desire to be famous. Immediately all these things disappear from his life. The moment sex energy starts rising upwards, the moment sex energy starts becoming love, prayer, meditation, then all lower manifestations disappear.

My music teacher offered twittering madrigals and something about how, in Italy, in Italy, the oranges hang on the tree. He treated me - the humiliation of it - as a soprano.These, by contrast, are the six elements of a Sacred Harp alto: rage, darkness, motherhood, earth, malice, and sex. Once you feel it, you can always do it. You know where to go for it, though it will cost you.

I'll never accept that I'm a sex symbol. That will mean that someone is a bit too fond of himself. If it happens, I think it's certainly going to be odd. People shouldn't see me as a sex symbol. I'm really just Henry. I'm just telling a story. I could be playing an incredibly unpleasant character who's not sexually attractive at all in my next movie. So I've no expectations at all.

Everyone's sex life is funny except your own. Every person's is, and yours never is. The lengths people go to — and the extremes and the conditions and the mental exercises and guilt and shame and happiness that everybody goes through — and what they'll do for sex is never-ending and mind-boggling and very interesting to me. And I don't think a lot of times people choose any of it.

When I was in high school, it was the beginning of hippies and free love and sleeping with people was a sign of your liberation and your freedom. Then we [had to worry about] AIDS, so they started lecturing my kids in elementary school about safe sex. Sex turned from something joyful into something kind of dangerous, and it was hard to avoid that sense that it was a different world.

It’s an odd term, 'girlfriend,' particularly for grown persons. And in practice it provides an even odder concept. Generally speaking, in adults it described a woman, not a girl, who was willing to provide sex, not friendship. In fact, from what I had observed it was quite possible for one to actively dislike one’s girlfriend, although of course true hatred is reserved for marriage.

Sex is a doorway to something so powerful and mystical, but movies usually depict it in a completely flat way. Being explicit doesn't tap into the mystical aspect of it either in fact, that usually kills it because people don't want to see sex so much as they want to experience the emotions that go along with it. These things are hard to convey in film because sex is such a mystery.

Classically, there are three ways in which humans try to find transcendence--religious meaning--apart from God as revealed through the cross of Jesus: through the ecstasy of alcohol and drugs, through the ecstasy of recreational sex, through the ecstasy of crowds. Church leaders frequently warn against the drugs and the sex, but at least, in America, almost never against the crowds.

I think if you were to sever the connection between arousal and shame, you might actually come up with something liberating and socially useful. It might be healthier for us, and lead to a situation such as they enjoy in Holland, Denmark, or Spain, where they have pornography all over the place - quite hardcore pornography - but they do not have anywhere the incidence of sex crimes.

The two biggest hits (by Machito)... were about that enduring Cuban song topic-food: 'Sopa de pichn' [pigeon soup] and 'Paella'. If you think that all songs about food are double entendres for sex... Well, maybe all songs about food can be double entendres, but in many periods of Cuban history, for many people, food has been harder to get, and the subject of more fantasies, than sex.

The ethics of sex is a thorny problem. Each of us is forced to grope for a solution he can live with - in the face of preposterous, unworkable, and evil code of so-called 'Morals.' Most of us know the code is wrong, almost everybody breaks it. But we pay Danegeld by feeling guilty and giving lip service. Willy-nilly, the code rides us, dead and stinking, an albatross around the neck.

When you peel back the layers of the anti-choice motivation, it always comes back to two things: What is the nature and purpose of human sexuality? And second, what is the role of women in the world? Sex and the role of women are inextricably linked, because if you can separate sex from procreation, you have given women the ability to participate in society on an equal basis with men.

Sex gets people killed, put in jail, beaten up, bankrupted, and disgraced, to say nothing of ruined - personally, politically, and professionally. Looking for sex can lead to misfortune, and if you get lucky and find it, it can leave you maimed, infected, or dead. Other than that, it's swell: the great American pastime. ... You probably won't see it on a bumper sticker, but sex kills.

For some that will mean getting the help or expertise of a counselor that can help them walk through and navigate through some of the traumatic things that they've been through in their life. But to say that people who have same-sex attractions are the only group of people who need to go to a therapist to completely resolve those attractions isn't something I find biblically accurate.

I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be. All novels are or should be, written for both men and women to read, and I am at a loss to conceive how a man should permit himself to write anything that would be really disgraceful to a woman, or why a woman should be censured for writing anything that would be proper and becoming for a man.

Every American wants MORE & MORE of the world and why not, you only live once. But the mistake made in America is persons accumulate more & more dead matter, machinery, possessions & rugs & fact information at the expense of what really counts as more: feeling, good feeling, sex feeling, tenderness feeling, mutual feeling. You own twice as much rug if you're twice as aware of the rug.

If you have a conversation "Why is it you think masculinity is linked with heterosexuality? Or why is it you think masculinity is linked with sexual dominance or the sexually active position in the sex act?" If you start to ask people those questions, then they realize "Maybe gender is not one thing. Maybe I have collected a number of things under one category and I've made a mistake".

My mom [comes] to see my shows because she's so proud, but I'm talking about losing my virginity, my ex-wife and our sexual problems, and she's sitting in the front row smiling. I just go, "Mom, you can't sit in the front row, you can't smile. You have to go way in the back and dress in black. If I see you it's like you're breaking in when I'm having sex with my wife. It's just wrong."

Except for their genitals, I don't know what immutable differences exist between men and women. Perhaps there are some other unchangeable differences; probably there are a number of irrelevant differences. But it is clear that until social expectations for men and women are equal, until we provide equal respect for both sexes, answers to this question will simply reflect our prejudices.

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