However, fascinating as Lawrence's essay is, it is even more entertaining to read various sentences out of context.
If you haven't read Lawrence, give him a whirl. Lady Chatterly's Lover is a fine place to start, but all of his novels are worth the effort, including The Rainbow, Women in Love, and Sons and Lovers.
SELECTIONS:
Even Michelangelo, who rather hated sex, can't help filling the Cornucopia with phallic acorns.
The man who said to his exasperating daughter: “My child, the only pleasure I ever had out of you was the pleasure I had in begetting you” has already done a great deal to release both himself and her from the dirty little secret.
But Hamlet shocked all the Cromwellian Puritans, and shocks nobody today, and some of Aristophanes shocks everybody today, and didn't galvanize the later Greeks at all, apparently.
The real masturbation of Englishmen began only in the nineteenth century.
When the police raided my picture show, they did not in the least know what to take.
Yet I find Jane Eyre verging towards pornography and Boccaccio seems to me always fresh and wholesome.
If a woman hasn't got a tiny streak of harlot in her, she's a dry stick as a rule.
And why a man should be held guilty of his conscious intentions, and innocent of his unconscious intentions, I don't know, since every man is more made up of unconscious intentions than of conscious ones.
When the grey ones wail that the young man and the young woman went and had sexual intercourse, they are bewailing the fact that the young man and the young woman didn't go separately and masturbate.
Sentimentality is a sure sign of pornography.
Anybody but a masturbator would have been glad and would have thought: What a lovely bride for some lucky man!
Ooray then for public opinion!
4 comments:
Speaking of context,
Barukh Shalev, Israeli expat turned free-lance journalist, once shared with me an article/ essay covering one of his visits to Central Asia, or at least that is how I remember it now. The article began innocently enough, but ended with a rather vivid description of his sexual encounter with a Muslim woman. He was trying to argue that the oppression of women in the region lead to unhealthy, rather strangled, feelings regarding human sexuality. The encounter he described was not a normal one, lets just say he was trying to demonstrate how much the woman he was with had to grapple with her own disgust of a basic urge she wanted more than anything to give into. At the time, I was so naïve and shocked by what I received in my mail box that I called him a sensationalist who was destroying peoples lives.
He talked about a few female Muslim writers around the world who were well known for speaking very openly about human sexuality and other topics considered taboo amongst Muslim conservatives. Again, I looked them up and dismissed them. Now I realize what he was trying to get at.
Context. Once the shock wore off, all that we had discussed, began to figure itself out in my head, subconsciously. It took me years, but I finally realized that though his means were extreme, he had a point. If we women choose to be open about our sexuality, it will no longer lend itself to being a means of our oppression. And the best part is, we get to enjoy it as opposed to dreading it.
Certainly doesn't oppress me.
We had a prostitution discussion panel a few weeks ago.. very interest especially with a real man-hater on panel.. a fight almost broke out about some famous pornstar.. anyway.. yes all context for sure.
Well have a very happy holiday with lots of turkey, you dirty beast. :) Miss you coz.
I am strictly speaking of women who grow up in, how shall I put it, cultures that do oppress women and their sexuality. I know it is strange that I bring up things that you all don't really have to deal with here, I just felt the need to get it out. Maybe my way of dealing with it myself.
And if ever anyone feels they are being used as pseudo therapist wthout getting paid for their services, please let me know!! (I won't pay u, I'll just find some other outlet ;)
I do love it when just about all topics are open to discussion, amongst adults of course.
I can't imagine anyone ever oppressing you Whitney, you make me so proud to be a woman!!!
Lina
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