Quotes by Activists - Page 65

If you look at all the variables in nature that are saidto determine human “sex,” you can’t possibly find one that will unequivocally split the species into two. Each of the so-called criteria of sexedness is itself a continuum—including chromosomal variables, genital and gonadal variations,reproductive capacities, endocrinological proportions, and any other criterion you could think of. Any or all of these different variables may line up in any number of ways, and all of the variables may vary independently of one another.
John Stoltenberg
They have sex. They do not have a sex. In their erotic lives, they are not required to act out their status in a category system—because there is no category system. There are no sexes to belong to, so sex between creatures is free to be between genuine individuals—not representatives of a category. They have sex. They do not have a sex.
John Stoltenberg
In contemporary parlance, sex is biological and gender is socially constructed.
Rebecca Solnit
It would seem probable that the attachment of such a one is of a tender and profound character; indeed, it is possible that in this class of men we have the love sentiment in one of its most perfect forms—a form in which from the necessities of the situation the sensuous element, though present, is exquisitely subordinated to the spiritual.
Edward Carpenter
In my old age, I was at last being permitted to make the discovery that lovemaking gets better and better with time, if it's with someone you care for.
Patricia Nell Warren
It seemed to me, watching, that if you were dextrous enough to gift-wrap an independent-minded amphibian, you could just about manage a condom.
Naomi Wolf
We tend to think of the erotic as an easy, tantalizing sexual arousal. I speak of the erotic as the deepest life force, a force which moves us toward living in a fundamental way.
Audre Lorde
This religion gives you goals which are outside of reality. It enriches your fantasy life with ugliness. It fills you with ideas of guilt over the most common human experiences -- usually related to sex. In this room, right now, each of you, in your own lives, has agonized over the fact that you have masturbated. Masturbation isn't sinful. If it feels good -- do it. You have my blessing, and you yourself know how it relaxes you.
Madalyn Murray O'Hair
The anthropologist Margaret Mead concluded in 1948, after observing seven different ethnic groups in the Pacific Islands, that different cultures made different forms of female sexual experience seem normal and desirable. The capacity for orgasm in women, she found, is a learned response, which a given culture can help or can fail to help its women to develop. Mead believed that a woman's sexual fulfillment, and the positive meaning of her sexuality in her own mind, depend upon three factors:1: She must live in a culture that recognizes female desire as being of value;2: Her culture must allow her to understand her sexual anatomy;3: And her culture must teach the various sexual skills that give women orgasms.
Naomi Wolf
As selfishness and complaint pervert and cloud the mind, so sex with its joy clears and sharpens the vision.
Helen Keller
Nakedness has no color: this can come as news only to those who have never covered, or been covered by, another naked human being.
James Baldwin
Men who refuse to use condoms do not deserve to be fucked by anyone but other men who refuse to use condoms.
Inga Muscio
I couldn't possibly have sex with someone with such a slender grasp on grammar!
Russell Brand
What would it mean in practice to eliminate all the 'negative people' from one's life? It might be a good move to separate from a chronically carping spouse, but it is not so easy to abandon the whiny toddler, the colicky infant, or the sullen teenager. And at the workplace, while it's probably advisable to detect and terminate those who show signs of becoming mass killers, there are other annoying people who might actually have something useful to say: the financial officer who keeps worrying about the bank's subprime mortgage exposure or the auto executive who questions the company's overinvestment in SUVs and trucks. Purge everyone who 'brings you down,' and you risk being very lonely, or, what is worse, cut off from reality.
Barbara Ehrenreich
If you are positive, you'll see opportunities instead of obstacles.
Widad Akreyi
No matter what you face, don't forget if you're positive, positivity will find you and embrace you.
Widad Akreyi
Maybe being broken helps you become a better person.
Paige Rawl
Each day has the potential of being your best day. You decide what each day will bring.
Paige Rawl
If we can let ourselves, all of us, be united by the simple fact of having a difference, we will be bigger and stronger and more powerful than anyone who might otherwise make us feel small.
Paige Rawl
No matter what you are dealing with in life, be it resentment or regret, bitterness or sadness, anger or apathy, hatred or hesitation, depression or disempowerment, disappointment or other destructive anxieties, painful envy or emotional turmoil, fear of isolation or thoughts of failure, keep in mind that if you are positive, positivity will find you and embrace you!
Widad Akreyi
As a recent editorial in the Journal of Clinical Oncology put it: "What we must first remember is that the immune system is designed to detect foreign invaders, and avoid out own cells. With few exceptions, the immune system does not appear to recognize cancers within an individual as foreign, because they are actually part of the self.
Barbara Ehrenreich
Happiness, after all, is generally measured as reported satisfaction with one's life - a state of mind perhaps more accessible to those who are affluent, who conform to social norms, who suppress judgment in the service of faith, and who are not overly bothered by societal injustice...The real conservatism of positive psychology lies in its attachment to the status quo, with all its inequalities and abuses of power. Positive psychologists' tests of happiness and well-being, for example, rest heavily on measures of personal contentment with things as they are.
Barbara Ehrenreich
In matters of the heart as well, a certain level of negativity and suspicion is universally recommended. You may try to project a thoroughly positive outlook in order to attract a potential boyfriend, but you are also advised to Google him.
Barbara Ehrenreich
The failure to think positively can weigh on a cancer patient like a second disease.
Barbara Ehrenreich
Reality is an aspect of property. It must be seized. And investigative journalism is the noble art of seizing reality back from the powerful.
Julian Assange
This was not as real as my despairing sense that nothing was real for me, nothing would ever be real for me again – unless, indeed, this sensation of falling was reality…
James Baldwin
When we come face-to-face with our fears we are really confronting ourselves.
Bryant McGill
Dreams do come true for those who dare to believe in themselves.
Bryant McGill
Who you are is shaping your so-called reality. When you change — the world changes with you.
Bryant McGill
The world we create in our minds shapes the ultimate reality where we live
Bryant McGill
When we choose to engage reality as the best each moment can be, we are shaping more positive experiences for others.
Bryant McGill
Your attitudes are slowly shaping you at all times and calling your deepest truths to the surface of your reality.
Bryant McGill
The supreme hallmark of reality is balance.
Bryant McGill
Perception meets you at the intersection of your beliefs and reality.
Bryant McGill
Most so-called success in the world is slavery.
Bryant McGill
Life is calling you. The other life. The analogue life. The real. Nature is calling you. And people too. Wondrous royal souls are waiting to meet, appreciate and experience you.
Bryant McGill
If you can honor yourself and be real about your discomfort and pain, then your happiness will be just as real.
Bryant McGill
If some people came into contact with anything real they would be shocked out of their minds.
Bryant McGill
Your perspectives change your realities.
Bryant McGill
Real spirituality is about getting the bullshit out of your life and getting real.
Bryant McGill
If you can't be real and firm with others about who you are, you will be doomed to a phony, plastic bullshit existence, where you only live for others.
Bryant McGill
Dominant negativity cheats reality of its mutual positives.
Bryant McGill
People are living books. The real library of life is community.
Bryant McGill
We fake perfect so others don't have to experience any unpleasant realities, because their life is just as fake as ours.
Bryant McGill
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.” This touches on the heart of the argumentum ad populum fallacy. Physical reality does not require belief to sustain it, and belief will not modify the rules of the universe.
Armin Navabi
The world is awash with colours unseen and abuzz with unheard frequencies. Undetected and disregarded. The wise have always known that these inaccessible realms, these dimensions that cannot be breached by our beautifully blunt senses, hold the very codes to our existence, the invisible, electromagnetic foundations upon which our gross reality clumsily rests.
Russell Brand
If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform a million realities.
Maya Angelou
Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.
Simone Weil
It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you. But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.
Sophie Scholl
Outside of my professional life, I have known many couples over the years who had passion and electricity between them and who treated each other well. But unfortunately there is wide acceptance in our society of the unhealthy notion that passion and aggression are interwoven and that cruel verbal exchanges and bomblike explosions are the price you pay for a relationship that is exciting, deep, and sexy. Popular romantic movies and soap operas sometimes reinforce this image.
Lundy Bancroft
One passionate heart can brighten the world. From person to person the chain reaction burns through us — setting heart to heart ablaze, and lighting the way for us all!
Bryant McGill
Having a purpose is one thing, but the quickening is a total animation of passion.
Bryant McGill
Life wants you to live in total alignment with true love, passion and integrity.
Bryant McGill
There is no greater sensation of consciousness than to expend yourself completely through the quickening fires of passion.
Bryant McGill
It is essential that you follow your own idea of passion, even if to others it looks like suffering.
Bryant McGill
Brightly burning passion is the releasing of your essence, your specialness and your gifts to the world.
Bryant McGill
[A]though people get paid to do their jobs, you cannot pay someone to do their job passionately and wholeheartedly. Those qualities are not for sale; they are themselves gifts that can only be given freely, and are in many, many fields.
Rebecca Solnit
Being stigmatied by sex is being marked by its meaning in a human life of loneliness and imperfection, where some pain is indelible.
Andrea Dworkin
and I wonder if Beethoven held his breaththe first time his fingers touched the keysthe same way a soldier holds his breaththe first time his finger clicks the trigger.We all have different reasons for forgetting to breathe.
Andrea Gibson
Continue to be bold, courageous. Try to chose the wisest thing and once you’ve chosen the wisest thing go out and try to achieve it. Be it.
Maya Angelou