quotes, quotations and passages on sexuality

In matters of sexuality we are
at present, every one of us,
ill or well, nothing but hypocrites.

Sigmund Freud

Many people are frightened of their sexual energy and have protected themselves by cutting it off and denying it. This kills the sexual energy and leaves them feeling frustrated, afraid of themselves and their passions. As you begin to recognize the universal source of this sexual energy, you can accept the feeling, knowing you do not have to "do" anything about it. You can just begin to allow yourself to feel and enjoy it. Shakti Gawain Reflections in the Light

In the twentieth century, nowhere on Earth was sex so vigorously suppressed as in America--and nowhere else was there such a deep interest in it. Robert A. Heinlein Stranger in a Strange Land

Perhaps the great renewal of the world will consist of this, that man and woman, freed of all confused feelings and desires, shall no longer seek each other as opposites, but simply as members of a family and neighbors, and will unite as human beings, in order to simply, earnestly, patiently, and jointly bear the heavy responsibility of sexuality that has been entrusted to them. Rainer Maria Rilke Letters to a Young Poet

Yes, sex is troublesome and beautiful. And only when we drop our expectations, and know that we'll have moments of great sex and moments when our sexuality confounds, pains, or infuriates us, will we be liberated to enjoy it in a way that's true to ourselves. Alexandra Katehakis Mirror of Intimacy

What freedom men and women could have, were they not constantly
tricked and trapped and enslaved and tortured by their sexuality!
The only drawback in that freedom is that without it, one would
not be a human. One would be a monster.

John Steinbeck
East of Eden

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If sexuality is one dimension of our ability to live passionately
in the world, then in cutting off our sexual feelings we diminish
our overall power to know and value deeply.

Judith Plaskow
Standing Again at Sinai

Yet rather than calling the earliest religions, which embraced
such an open acceptance of all human sexuality, "fertility cults,"
we might consider the religions of today as strange in that they
seem to associate shame and even sin with the very process of
conceiving new human life. Perhaps centuries from now scholars
and historians will be classifying them as "sterility cults."

Merlin Stone
When God Was a Woman

It is essential that we realize once and for all that
humans are much more of a sex creature than a moral
creature. The former is inherent, the other is grafted on.

Emma Goldman

Sadly, the signals that allow men and women to find the partners
who most please them are scrambled by the sexual insecurity initiated
by beauty thinking. A woman who is self-conscious can't relax to let
her sensuality come into play. If she is hungry she will be tense. If
she is "done up" she will be on the alert for her reflection in his eyes.
If she is ashamed of her body, its movement will be stilled. If she does
not feel entitled to claim attention, she will not demand that airspace
to shine in. If his field of vision has been boxed in by "beauty"--a box
continually shrinking--he simply will not see her,
his real love, standing right before him.

Naomi Wolf
The Beauty Myth

Boys will be boys, that's what people say. No one ever mentions how
girls have to be something other than themselves altogether. We are to
stifle the same feelings that boys are encouraged to display. We are to
use gossip as a means of policing ourselves--this way those who do
succumb to sex but are not damaged by it are damaged instead by peer
malice. Girls demand a covenant because if one gives in, others will be
expected to do the same. We are to remain united in cruelty, ignorance,
and aversion. Or we are to starve the flesh from our bones, penalizing
the body for its nature, castigating ourselves for advances we are
powerless to prevent. We are to make false promises then resist the
attentions solicited. Basically we are to become expert liars.

Hilary Thayer Hamann
Anthropology of an American Girl

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When women's sexuality is imagined to be passive or "dirty," it also
means that men's sexuality is automatically positioned as aggressive
and right--no matter what form it takes. And when one of the conditions
of masculinity, a concept that is already so fragile in men's minds, is that
men dissociate from women and prove their manliness through aggression,
we're encouraging a culture of violence and sexuality
that's detrimental to both men and women.

Jessica Valenti
The Purity Myth

While the repression of a memory is a psychological process, the
suppression of feeling is accomplished by deadening a part of the
body or reducing its motility so that feeling is diminished. The
repression of the memory is dependent upon and related to the
suppression of feeling, for as long as the feeling persists, the memory
remains vivid. Suppression entails the development of chronic
muscular tension in those areas of the body where the feeling would
be experienced. In the case of sexual feeling, this tension
is found in and about the abdomen and pelvis.

Alexander Lowen
Fear of Life

The American ideal of sexuality appears to be rooted in the American ideal
of masculinity. This idea has created cowboys and Indians, good guys and
bad guys, punks and studs, tough guys and softies, butch and faggot, black
and white. It is an ideal so paralytically infantile that it is virtually forbidden--as
an unpatriotic act--that the American boy evolve into the complexity of manhood.

James Baldwin

Making someone feel obligated, pressured or forced into doing
something of a sexual nature that they don't want to is sexual
coercion. This includes persistent attempts at sexual contact
when the person has already refused you. Nobody owes you
sex, ever; and no means no, always.

Miya Yamanouchi
Embrace Your Sexual Self

Sex is always about emotions. Good sex is about free emotions;
bad sex is about blocked emotions.

Deepak Chopra

When we touch the place in our lives where sexuality and spirituality
come together, we touch our wholeness and the fullness of our power,
and at the same time our connection with a power
larger than ourselves.

Judith Plaskow
Standing Again at Sinai

Sex is. . . perfectly natural. It’s something that’s pleasurable. It’s
enjoyable and it enhances a relationship. So why don’t we learn as
much as we can about it and become comfortable with ourselves as
sexual human beings because we are all sexual?

Sue Johanson

Sex lies at the root of life, and we can never learn to reverence
life until we know how to understand sex.

Havelock Ellis

I think it is funny that we were freer about sexuality
in the 4th century B.C. It is a little disconcerting.

Angelina Jolie

We are all born sexual creatures, thank God, but it's a
pity so many people despise and crush this natural gift.

Marilyn Monroe

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Sexuality is a private matter; some believe that broadcasting
it destroys the very things that make it sacred.

Lance Loud

Sexuality is one of the ways that we become enlightened, actually,
because it leads us to self-knowledge.

Alice Walker

Sexuality has always been for humans a form of communication,
a way we express love and caring and bonding, not only
a way we have children if we choose to.

Gloria Steinem

Men have constructed female sexuality and in so doing have
annihilated the chance for sexual intelligence in women. Sexual
intelligence cannot live in the shallow, predestined sexuality
men have counterfeited for women.

Andrea Dworkin

We need a fundamental change of mindset with regards to the way
we speak and behave about sex and sexuality. Boys and men have a
particularly critical role in this regard, changing the chauvinist and
demeaning ways sexuality and women were traditionally dealt with
in both our actions and speaking.

Nelson Mandela

Your sexuality is the engine of your humanness. Freed of your self,
it is an engine of movement. It isn’t there to move your experience,
but to move your being into your experience, bringing your being
into the physicality of your self.

John de Ruiter

Sexuality leads to tremendous confusion and difficulty in human
beings. The spiritual being has no sexuality of its own; it can only
experience sexuality from an outside source. But the body is
driven by needs and urges that the human being must understand
and accept. Some behavior patterns and perceptions contribute
to the growth and development of the individual and others
contribute to degeneration and confusion. When we listen
to ourselves, we can act wisely.

unattributed
Happiness One Day at a Time

I can ask for affection without involving anything sexual. My need
for love and human warmth is not linked to my sexual desire. I do
not need to have sex with someone for the person to be my friend.

Rokelle Lerner

In other words, the most common problem now is not social taboos
on sexual activity or guilt feeling about sex in itself, but the fact that
sex for so many people is an empty, mechanical and vacuous experience.

Rollo May
Man's Search for Himself