Sexuality Quotes - Page 21

• We live in a funny time, a funny era, when desire, to be adult desire, has to be conceived as sexual. And that didn't used to be the case. Sexuality is a social construction as much as anything else and I think the realities of sexuality don't always fit into the social constructions that we have, and we live in a goal-oriented time - on all fronts.

  Claire Messud

  Reality, Thinking, Desire

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Sexuality is a place where people are very vulnerable and can be experiencing and embodying very raw forces that they don't really understand and there's a question of how much you should control and how much you should play with those and what those forces really are, how you really feel about them. That's perennial.

  Mary Gaitskill

  People, Vulnerable

  Source: www.elle.com

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• Women's sexuality is something that is a very touchy subject for a lot of women...I had to free my body from all of the binding, all the shutting down, and all of the censorship I had already put on it. When I did that, everything in my life changed. My relationship with my husband changed. My relationship to the world changed. My relationship to my body changed. My relationship to my female friends changed in huge ways.

  Sheila Kelley

  Husband, Life Changing, World

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• I think women in our global patriarchal culture are told to shut their body down. And when we don't know why, we start to cut our body off. You cut off your curves. You cut off your breasts. You cut off the curve of your tush. You cut off your sexuality... and it's relegated to the bedroom.

  Sheila Kelley

  Cutting, Thinking, Culture

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• I think women don't see themselves and their sexuality as wholesome. And yet men's sexuality is everywhere. We experience it as a culture in stadiums, thousands of raging fans of male sexuality, screaming, "Kick the ball over the goal post. Get the ball in the hoop. Score a home run." Male sexuality lives in that prowess of the scoring, of conquering, of getting, of that beautiful male energy of domination, aggression, and the competition.

  Sheila Kelley

  Beautiful, Running, Home

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• When women start to bond over their sexuality, it's very similar to the way that men bond over their sexuality in sports. Men bond over their sexual prowess - their strength, their agility, their power. Women bond over their undulation, their curves, their sensuality - things that are innately feminine. Once you do that, there is no turning back.

  Sheila Kelley

  Sports, Men, Feminine

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• Making photographs that dealt with the understanding of who I am as a gay man and dealt with the process of accepting that, and also accepting what I'm into sexually, what sexually arouses me. So I was making these images not necessarily knowing what they were about, but just putting it out there - that mode of thinking or consideration of my own desires, and also the much larger conversation around images that deal with ideas of sexuality and how those images are distributed and then accepted or understood by whoever is viewing those images.

  Wardell Milan

  Gay, Thinking, Men

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Sex work is a completely unregulated industry and to make the affront even worse, the product and the labourers are the same thing! The product is the sexuality of the actual labourers: flesh. I think in that sense, the exploitative nature of unencumbered capitalism is made even more dramatic.

  David Simon

  Thinking, Dramatic, Capitalism

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• When we were kids coming up, if you stole your dad's Playboy magazine, that was about as much of an education as you were gonna get. You finish looking at the centrefold and you read 'The Playboy Adviser' that told you about what stereo to buy and something about sex which you didn't quite understand, and you were still just as confused. Now if you're ten the entire world of human sexuality, and a very misogynistic version of that, is available to you on a laptop after a couple of key strokes. I think it's changed the vernacular in the way men address women.

  David Simon

  Couple, Confused, Kids

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• Since I first started acting, I never separated a character's sexuality from what they eat for breakfast. I just think it's sort of silly. If I can be a part of helping to overcome that puritanical thing in our culture, so be it. I'm happy about it.

  Maria Bello

  Silly, Thinking, Acting

  Source: www.movieweb.com

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• The first idea of Young and Beautiful was to have a young boy and to explore the sexuality of boys. But, I realized, with a boy doing prostitution, of course it has to deal with homosexuality. And I had a feeling it was too much for the film, you know, sexuality, prostitution, adolescence ... there were too many films for one film.

  Francois Ozon

  Beautiful, Boys, Feelings

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I think our society is fragmented. Messages regarding human sexuality have always been mixed in America. We are a schizophrenic nation. We were founded initially by Puritans, who escaped repression only to establish their own. Then the founding fathers gave us the Constitution to separate church and state. But the one thing that got left out of all those laws was human sexuality.

  Hugh Hefner

  Father, Thinking, Church

  Source: www.chicagotribune.com

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• Americans are fascinated by our sexuality and frightened by it. And during the Reagan and Bush era you got an entire decade of anti-sex government. Sex is not the enemy. It is the beginning of civilization, family and tribe. Sex can be twisted and exploited, but in its most essential form, it's the best part of who we are. And it frightens us.

  Hugh Hefner

  Enemy, Twisted

  Source: www.chicagotribune.com

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• My life has been devoted to trying to bring a little more understanding to human sexuality - not just in society, but also inside myself. The struggle has been internal as well as external. One of the reasons that I have such tremendous satisfaction at this point in my life is because I know I've made a difference. I've made a difference in a way that really matters to me. I see a lot of terrible things going on in the world, but there are some good things going on too, and I feel I've been a part of that. I really do feel I have been on the side of the angels.

  Hugh Hefner

  Struggle, Angel, Understanding

  "Los Angeles Times Interview: Hugh Hefner: in the Shadow of Aids, Examining What's Left of the Sexual Revolution". articles.latimes.com. July 31, 1994.

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• Capitalism, in the realm of sexuality, I figure, thinks that we behave in specific ways, like a breast is always going to produce a hard-on for some product, whereas the truth is that sexuality is always a continuum, which can be characterized by reversals.

  Rick Moody

  Thinking, Truth Is, Behave

  Source: www.salon.com

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• Right now everything is pumped up. Cars look like someone took an air pump and pumped them up. They look engorged. Lips pumped up, breasts pumped up, everything is pumped up. And it's also kind of off-putting. It's sexual but in such a hard way that it's, for me, not sexual at all. Whereas the 1970s, breasts were smaller. People were not wearing bras. Farrah Fawcett's sexuality and sensuality was a very touchable sexuality. She was kissable. She was friendly.

  Tom Ford

  People, Car, Friendly

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• Many couples have never had a conversation about sexuality and sexual boundaries. The presence or lack of sex, the quality of it, the satisfaction and dissatisfaction, the unmet needs. An affair upsets the status quo by not only bringing the subject of sexuality to the forefront but every other aspect of their relationship as well. An affair yields conversation that should have happened in the beginning, but that people were afraid to have because, well, what would that mean about their relationship?

  Esther Perel

  Couple, Mean, People

  "The Deeper Reasons Why People Have Affairs". Interview with Mark Matousek, www.psychologytoday.com. October 20, 2017.

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• People grow up learning to be silent about their sexuality, so where are they going to learn to talk about it when they are in a relationship? Shame, guilt, ignorance, reservation, prudishness, all kinds of different cultural systems and social stereotypes shroud sexuality in secrecy and in silence. And there's the romantic notion. "If I say in the beginning, that I am missing something, you are instantly going to think that means you are not enough."

  Esther Perel

  Growing Up, Ignorance, Mean

  "The Deeper Reasons Why People Have Affairs". Interview with Mark Matousek, www.psychologytoday.com. October 20, 2017.

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• Real sexual conversations are enormously intimate and beautiful because they reveal so much about who we are and what we want. What are the emotional needs we bring to our sexuality and how do we connect to ourselves and connect to a partner? There's such a rich tapestry that can be revealed, but the vast majority of couples have never had those talks.

  Esther Perel

  Beautiful, Couple, Real

  "The Deeper Reasons Why People Have Affairs". Interview with Mark Matousek, www.psychologytoday.com. October 20, 2017.

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• One of the big misconceptions is that affairs or trysts are flings about sex. And sometimes they are, but much more often they are about desire. And that is very different. The desire to feel special, to feel seen, to feel appreciated, to be laughed at or with. The desire to be desired. That does not manifest in a sexual act per se. Affairs make you feel alive. Alchemy means it's not about the actual sex, but the sexuality, the energy, the aura. It's the imagination and anticipation of it as much or instead of the actual experience of it.

  Esther Perel

  Mean, Imagination, Special

  "The Deeper Reasons Why People Have Affairs". Interview with Mark Matousek, www.psychologytoday.com. October 20, 2017.

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• Secrecy fuels erotic intensity because it makes you feel like you're doing something that is entirely yours. It gives you the sense of autonomy, the sense of freedom, and the sense of sovereignty. And then you add to that the sexual energy. In many affairs, people will tell you they slept with the person three or four times, but the story went on for months. That's an important thing because many people who have affairs often have very good sexual relationships at home. It's not necessarily a compensation story. But affairs offer a different sexuality with a different context.

  Esther Perel

  Home, People, Giving

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

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• I say no to a double standard that men can roam and women must stay put at home. I say no to the fact that men are allowed to claim their sexuality and women just have to pretend that it doesn't matter to them. It's resisting poor relational arrangements. An affair is a way of saying, "No. I'm not playing by the rules." And sometimes betrayal is part of that because you deceive somebody else but you feel like you are, for the first time, being honest with yourself. Sometimes when people have affairs, they feel like they have been lying to themselves for years.

  Esther Perel

  Betrayal, Lying, Home

  "The Deeper Reasons Why People Have Affairs". Interview with Mark Matousek, www.psychologytoday.com. October 20, 2017.

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• For some people, the experience of sexuality is that they are entirely inside their body, but others feel they have totally transcended the physical boundaries of their body. Transcendence is the ability to no longer feel you are contained within the physical world. For many people, the definition of spiritual is a sense of complete abdication of the self. For some people, it's union with another that transcends the borders between where one stops and where the other person starts and creates a sense of infiniteness and timelessness.

  Esther Perel

  Spiritual, People, World

  "The Deeper Reasons Why People Have Affairs". Interview with Mark Matousek, www.psychologytoday.com. October 20, 2017.

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• Sometimes we are outright rude when we interact with people. We meet a gay guy or a couple living together, and we think we have the obligation and right to warn them what God thinks about their sexuality on our first meeting. As if their sex life is the first thing on God's agenda.It's not.Love is. Grace is. Mercy is. Jesus is.

  Judah Smith

  Jesus, Sex, Couple

  Judah Smith (2013). “Jesus Is: Find a New Way to Be Human”, p.31, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• And I believe that public broadcasting has an important trust with the American people, it's an intimate medium of television, and that we can do reading and language development for young children without getting into human sexuality.

  Margaret Spellings

  Trust, Children, Reading

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