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Sexuality..page 1........
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Eve Ensler on sexuality
I believe sexuality is the greatest gift we've been given. Its energy is the basis of creativity, love, ambition, desire, life.
Sexuality has gotten all these bad raps because it's so powerful.
Everybody wants to squash it, control it, define it, judge it -- as opposed to just rejoicing in it, following where it goes. ///
What's sexy to me? Being fully who you are. Complete presence. Inhabitating your own body and not being afraid of what comes from that. It's not physical perfection. ///
Jane Fonda, a good friend and supporter, is one of the sexiest women I've ever met. She's sexy because she's totally alive in the present tense. When she does anything, all her attention in that moment is on what she's doing.
Eve Ensler - from book Positive Energy : 10 Extraordinary Prescriptions for Transforming Fatigue, Stress, and Fear into Vibrance, Strength & Love - by Judith Orloff , MD
> one of Eve Ensler's books: The Good Body
> more quotes by Eve Ensler on the pages :
abuse & creative expression 2.....social activism 2~ ~ ~ ~
Alicia Erian on writing about sex
Few subjects are more of a tightrope-walk for the fiction writer than sexual molestation of a child.
It's all so intense, emotional, easy to get wrong, and hard to write about without offending or repulsing someone.
That was the challenge Alicia Erian, 37, undertook with her first novel, ''Towelhead."
The book includes graphic depictions of sex involving a 13-year-old girl, scenes some readers might find disturbing. ''It makes people feel like a pervert," Erian said, ''but I think that's my job."
''I really like writing about sex, a lot," she said in an interview in her campus office. ''Sex in life. Most of the adults I know think a lot about sex -- it colors the decisions they make and the things they say.
"Sex is often roped off in fiction. Here is this main stage, and the characters go behind this rope and have sex, and then they come back and they're in real life. And I really like integrating it."
> from article Passion & pain - For Alicia Erian, it's the dark side of sex that is the most intriguing - By David Mehegan
~ ~ ~ ~
 On Dec.
29, 2004, major gay and lesbian news organizations announced that
"lesbian writer Susan Sontag" had
died.
In its obituary of Sontag, the New York Daily News wrote,
"Famed photographer Annie Leibovitz had been her longtime companion." Meanwhile, most lesbians who achieve widespread fame — Ellen DeGeneres, Melissa Etheridge and Rosie O'Donnell — have to remain in the closet until they have gained enough power to weather the coming-out storm. This model victimizes those who are out and proud from the very beginning. |
The
obituaries, remembrances and appreciations in New York and Los Angeles
do anything but honor Sontag. They form a record that is, at best,
incomplete and, at worst, knowingly false. But don't look for
corrections, clarifications or apologies.
The New York writer and activist Sarah Schulman has been,
ironically, described as "the lesbian Susan Sontag." Schulman told me
recently that Sontag "never applied her massive intellectual gifts
toward understanding her own condition as a lesbian, because to do so
publicly would have subjected her to marginalization and dismissal." > from article Susan Sontag and a Case of Curious Silence
- > Patrick Moore is the author of : Beyond Shame: Reclaiming > book: Women - by Annie Leibovitz and Susan Sontag |
~ ~ ~ ~
Love is the answer, isn't it? But, sex raises a lot of
very interesting questions.Alfred Kinsey
~ ~ ~ ~
 ..The stated point of the hearing was to determine whether Congress should fund studies about the effects of pornography addiction on families and communities, and whether it should launch a public health campaign to warn people of the dangers of online porn. /// |
If
it's going to spend money in this arena at all, I'd rather Congress
fund
studies about the effects of pornography in general, including its
effect
on the economy, on technological innovation, on sexual function and
dysfunction,
and so on. ///
It seems to me that if Congress were to fund an in-depth, scientifically valid, nonpartisan study on porn's role in society, we could lay this question to rest. Then the porn prohibitionists would have to stop inventing scare tactics to support their agenda. They'll either be proven right, which they won't be, or they'll be exposed for the meddling, big-government proponents they are. Now, where can I get those erototoxins? > Regina
Lynn - from one of her Sex Drive columns
image
from CNN article Report: Net file-sharing |
~ ~ ~ ~
 Spencer Tunick..
has become very well-known over the past decade for his mass nude
photos taken everywhere from Central Park to Australia's Royal
Botanical Gardens...Nude bodies fill up landscapes and become almost unrecognizable, simply a sea of arms and legs and torsos and heads. /// I'm on the fence at first, but ultimately I know I can't pass up this extraordinary opportunity. I've wanted to pose for his photos ever since I first heard about them.. /// For me, the shoot wasn't about nudity or sex per se but about art, about the way that our bodies, which often cause us so much pain and trouble, can look to an outside eye, unadorned. In the few moments I had to glance at everyone, I realized how gorgeous we are in our natural state, and as much as I love a good outfit, I saw how beautiful we can all look without all the extras. |
 I also
respect that there was never a sense of being looked at sexually; there
were no once-overs in the traditional sense. Instead there were looks of awe as we took in so many naked people in a room together, something I usually only see at an orgy. All of us were equal in our nudity, left bare and beautiful and that is something we don't get to appreciate very often. Rachel Kramer Bussel - in her article Posing for Spencer ...one
of her books : Up
All Night : photo of Rachel Kramer Bussel from her site Spencer Tunick photos available on his site |
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I used to hide from my sexuality because I feared that that was the only way people would see me. But now, it's such a part of me.
Elle magazine article "The Making of a Bombshell" -
unknown date - posted on charlizetheron.com~ ~ ~
I think of myself as a highly sexual creature. I have to use that. I have no choice. I like it. I didn't grow up with a mother telling me what was under my clothes was bad or evil. .. [imdb.com bio]
Charlize Theron
~ ~ ~ ~
......
Talent is a very potent aphrodisiac. When someone is incredibly gifted,
I find them incredibly sexy.
Patricia Clarkson ... [Los Angeles Mag., Feb 2004]
~ ~ ~ ~
To me, sexuality comes from feeling safe and trusting enough to expose and express a whole other side of yourself. To communicate lovingly with passion and sexuality is the sexiest thing on earth. I'm old-fashioned about love and sex. ... I don't know why, but onscreen I can do anything that helps me understand the character. I'm not crazy about nudity, but acting out a woman's sexuality really tells me who she is and what drives her.
Laura Dern***[Redbook Magazine, Nov. 1999] / photo at left: Dern in "Rambling Rose"
~ ~ ~ ~
As Lula in Wild at Heart [1990], I was sex. In Rambling Rose [1991], Rose was desperate to be loved, and the only way she'd known affection from a man was physical.
So if sex was the way to get love and be appreciated, then she'd sleep with someone to get it.
But of all the movies I've done, probably the most symbolic sexual journey was in Blue Velvet [1986] [photo].
Isabella [Rossellini] and I were like twin sides of the Madonna/whore thing. In fact, doing Smooth Talk [the 1985 film in which Dern played a teenage girl stalked in her home by a creepy Treat Williams] and Blue Velvet back-to-back taught me a lot about the relationship between human expression and fear.
With each character I play, if I can understand something of their sexuality, then I know what drives their fears.
Laura Dern
from article : Laura's choice - Laura Dern in the movie 'Citizen Ruth' - by Mark Marvel, Interview, Dec, 1996
...related pages:......relationships.....self-esteem / self concept.....fear~ ~ ~ ~
Elizabeth Taylor is pre-feminist woman. This is the source of her continuing greatness and relevance. She wields the sexual power that feminism cannot explain and has tried to destroy. Through stars like Taylor, we sense the world-disordering impact of legendary women like Delilah, Salome, and Helen of Troy. Feminism has tried to dismiss the femme fatale as a misogynist libel, a hoary cliche. But the femme fatale expresses women's ancient and eternal control of the sexual realm. The specter of the femme fatale stalks all men's relations with women.
Camille Paglia ... [from her book Vamps & Tramps]
other books include :
Sexual Personae : Art & Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson [Amazon]
Sex, Art, and American Culture : Essays [Amazon]
~ ~ ~ ~
 Adult entertainment up until
now has been the sole domain of male desire and inclination. Now that women are seeking out equally fulfilling experiences in the bedroom, we're eager to explore erotic entertainment and to create a sexual language of our own. // Many people ask me what it's like to create these movies and if I run up against a lot of resistance in this male-dominated field. Before sharing some of my experiences with you, I will say that I have not found any opposition at all. |
At first, the big guys in the adult industry kind of patronized me, telling me that the idea of "couples" films was neat while assuring me that women are simply not interested in visual erotic entertainment. This just made me more determined than ever. Even though society has told us women are not visual, my hunch was always that if someone created visuals that appealed to us, we'd be very turned on by what we see! Candida Royalle, President, Femme Productions [site]
|
~ ~ ~ ~
 Here are
some interesting parallels I've found between sex and creativity:It's all about surrender. The more you can get out of your head, and simply let go, the further into your process you will go. And the grander the result will be. The real communication is entirely beyond words. When an actor gets up to deliver a monologue, or a poet composes a sonnet, the words take you only half the way there. The rest happens between the lines, in the emotional truth with which it's delivered. Same with sex. And without that emotional truth... well, it's all a lot of hooey. |
The
spiritual usually comes into play. My belief is that all of this gets
handed
to us on that big Universal platter.
And your choice is to accept or decline. So truly authentic creative or sexual endeavors can't help having a mystical or divine underlayer. You can't do it unless you really, truly want to. OK, sure. You can fake your way into bed with a relative stranger, or stumble along writing a book you don't care about. But you're not going to sustain it. The sex will be cheap and easy; the manuscript will sputter and die. Why? Because you don't really, truly want to be there. Suzanne Falter-Barns from
her article Creative Juice - A
Dozen photo : Joseph Fiennes in "Shakespeare in Love" |
~ ~ ~ ~....
 .A book
that was a big part of my childhood and a big part of my idea of being
a woman, and it would have been considered a kind of pornography that I
wouldn't have been allowed to read had I been discovered with it, was
Ovid's The Art of Love.
This was so provocative to me. So seductive. I want to read it again because I'd be very curious as to whether or not it's erotic to me now. ... To me this was a primer of pleasure. That was very influential. It's interesting that the books that were remarkable to me as a child all had to do with sex. Susanna Moore - from interview by Kurt Thometz novel: In the Cut - by Susanna Moore |
 .. ..image from book: Ovid : The Erotic Poems |
~ ~ ~ ~
The foundation for "The Vagina Monologues," Ms. Ensler said, lies in her childhood experience as a victim of sexual and physical abuse. The monologues have been an effort to redeem the experience with humor, to enable others to confront painful truths that have been repressed through fear and shame. ...
Because of the abuse, Ms. Ensler began drinking heavily in high school. "I was self-medicating," she said. "When you're abused on a regular basis, you come to believe you're bad."
from interview article: Eve Ensler: Today the Anatomy, Tomorrow the World by Dinitia Smith, The NY Times
~ ~ ~ ~
| Sex
is the most compressed set of circumstances that we've got. Everything
is in that collision. ...
Sex is always trouble. That's part of why it's so pleasurable -- because for a moment the cloud lifts and then descends again. ... The more sex the better. It may be a good thing to get it out in the open. You turn on the television now and they're screwing on the television. That's part of life. Why hide it in a basement someplace and get a lot of gangsters to distribute it? Playwright Arthur Miller, 87, from interview by John H. Richardson, Esquire, July 2003 - Photograph by Brigitte Lacombe - her book: Cinema/Theatre ...by Arthur Miller: The Crucible / Death of A Salesman |
 |
~ ~ ~ ~
 Jane
Juska, a former high school English teacher, felt tripped up by the
aging process... she felt like a young person trapped in an aged
body. "I didn't want to grow old never sleeping with a man again," she confides, admitting at the same time that she hadn't seen a naked male body in more than 10 years. ... Unfazed by practical considerations, Juska did what any ripe and ready person might do: She took out a personals ad declaring her availability. |
She
chose as her venue the well-regarded New York Review of Books. She
fielded
[63] responses, and she met men. ...
Juska turned 70 in March. ... "Participating in art and in sex allows us to transcend the certainty of our own death and the destruction of all that is beautiful and good," she writes. "Art compensates for life." [from review article by Suzanne Mantell, LA Times June 10 2003] ...Jane
Juska. A
Round-Heeled Woman: My |
~ ~ ~ ~
Rita Hayworth**[1918-87]**photo by George Hurrell
*-~ ~ ~ ~
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