Nymphomania

I wake up in the morning and think about sex. I go to bed at night and the last thing I think about is sex, which is just as well because it reminds me to take my contraceptive pill! I get in the car and go to work and think about sex. I have conversations on the way to work that make me think about sex. Every time I go to the toilet, I think about sex. I actually have to think about sex because of my job let alone the fact that I write about sex. When I am with my lover, my thoughts about sex increase from the frequent to the perpetual.
Let’s face facts, folks. I’m gagging for it!

So does that make me a nymphomaniac, or in new speak suffering from hypersexuality?
Or am I just a normal, honest woman who has rediscovered her sexuality and damn well wants to celebrate the fact?

Nymphomania implies abnormal. It suggests something that is uncontrollable, and despite all the jokes about guys happily meeting a nymph, it is seen as something that is debilitating, tiring and quite frankly, a bit of a problem.

Which indeed it is in the truest sense of the word. I pity women who need to have sex every minute of the day, think about it constantly, do not mind where it comes from and simply cannot cope without a cock up their fanny or arse.
However, as with so many things, it is all about balance. I also pity women who do not need to have sex, who do not think about it constantly, who are not open enough to appreciate the difference between loving sex and a bit of recreational fun and who are afraid to even touch their own bodies for fear that this is an abnormal desire.

So am I a nymphomaniac or not?

Time for a bit of research.

In history, women have really suffered. It is no wonder that they are worried about coming out, so to speak, as sexually enthusiastic.

As a woman, if you show the slightest bit of interest in your own body or that of others, then in the past you may well have been labelled as a sexual deviant. The official word is “nymphomania” or “furor uterinus”.
Here is a quote from Wikipedia
“Many Victorian era mental institutions treated nymphomania as an exclusively female mental illness. Women were classified as mentally ill for nymphomania if they were a victim of sexual assault, bore illegitimate children, masturbated or were considered to be promiscuous. Upon arrival at the asylum, doctors would give the woman a pelvic exam. If doctors felt that the woman had an enlarged clitoris, she would undergo treatments. These treatments included induced vomiting, bloodletting, leeches, restricted diet, douches to the head or breasts and at times, clitoridectomies”

Bloody hell! What on earth would they have made of my engorged organs that respond so dramatically to the sight of a certain cock? I think I might have been locked up. I think I would have classified as an over-sexed naughty madam under a couple of those characteristics written above.

And as for the treatment, douching the breasts? Why? Or are we back to the sexual desires of Victorian Doctors?

The famous sex researcher, Alfred Kinsey described a nymphomaniac as someone who “is having more sex than you”.
Excuse the pun, but this was a tongue in cheek statement but there is something quite valid in what he was saying. Isn’t it the case that some people measure everything by thinking that they are normal?
If you are someone who has sex once a week in a missionary position that lasts approximately five minutes, then the thought of someone having sex for over an hour three times a week – well it all sounds a little racy!
And those who get it three times a week think that those who are dropping their kegs more frequently must be right little nymphs (or in my opinion, bloody fortunate).

Okay, here is the tester.
On one website I saw there were some questions that one had to ask as to whether one might consider the “patient” to have nymphomaniac tendencies.
So here goes.

Over a period of at least six months, recurrent and intense sexual fantasies, sexual urges, and sexual behaviour in association with four or more of the following five criteria:

(1) A great deal of time is consumed by sexual fantasies and urges, and by planning for and engaging in sexual behaviour. (Yep)

(2) Repetitively engaging in these sexual fantasies, urges, and behaviour in response to dysphoric mood states (e.g., anxiety, depression, boredom, irritability). (Sometimes)

(3) Repetitively engaging in sexual fantasies, urges, and behaviour in response to stressful life events. (Well I might have been known to have a shag or a wank in response to a difficult day – and why the hell not?)

(4) Repetitive but unsuccessful efforts to control or significantly reduce these sexual fantasies, urges, and behaviour.(Nope. I have never made any attempt to control my sexual fantasies, urges or behaviour – well maybe a little)

(5) Repetitively engaging in sexual behavior while disregarding the risk for physical or emotional harm to self or others.(Oh yes- lots of times)

So apparently I am a nymphomaniac after all!

But words like “consumed” “control” “disregard” are dangerous. By default they imply a lack of self-government. If you took these words and associated them with other things in life like work or raising children or eating, they would be equally bad.

Balance again, dear readers. Everything always comes back to those damn scales!

More research.

I was going to offer a link but every time I try and return to this link, it requires you to register.

If you wish to do so, please follow the link. Otherwise, concentrate on the extracts below.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/g/groneman-nymphomania.html

In 1841, Miss T., the twenty-nine-year-old daughter of a Massachusetts farmer, was diagnosed with nymphomania. According to the physicians who described the case in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, her conversation and actions left no doubt that she suffered from the disease: she uttered the "most disgusting obscenities" and moved her body in ways that expressed her uncontrolled "libidinous feelings." Although in good health, she had been restless and morose, exhibiting a "paroxysm of hysteria" when the doctors arrived. After a vaginal examination, they determined that her uterus was enlarged, her vagina over-abundantly moist, but her long and "tumid" clitoris was the telltale sign of nymphomania. They applied various caustics to her genitals to cool her ardor and tried other traditional remedies, such as bleeding and cold-water douches. After several weeks, the doctors pronounced her greatly improved, with "not a symptom remaining referable to nymphomania." This time when she was examined vaginally, she exhibited "every appearance of modesty," including a retracted and very diminutive clitoris.
Well, I suppose the good news is that they even acknowledged that there was a clitoris. Having attended my daughter’s school for some sex education discussions with other parents, many people were utterly horrified to even admit to the youth of today that there was indeed a body part known as the clitoris.

“Her vagina over abundantly moist” – Whoops, I’d have been sent straight to the asylum. Sod the leeches!

 In the Victorian period, both doctors and the patients who sought medical help believed that strong sexual desire in a woman was a symptom of disease. Self-control and moderation were central to the health of both men and women, but women's presumably milder sexual appetite meant that any signs of excess might signal that she was dangerously close to the edge of sexual madness. Not surprisingly, physicians registered the greatest concern when the disease appeared in "refined and virtuous" women.

Look at that phrase, “women’s presumably milder sexual appetite”. These poor women were ahead of their time. Perhaps we should have left feminism to these folk to get a clearer understanding of the truth of female sexual empowerment and what it could have been.
1841, dear readers. It is just about excusable then to make assumptions or presumptions about a woman’s sexuality. That we still think a woman’s sexual appetite should be/is milder than men’s is a real indictment and travesty. Where the hell have we actually advanced in the last 170 years?

Mrs. R., described as a short, stout, recently widowed twenty-year-old woman with a lively disposition, came to Dr. Bostwick out of desperation. She explained, "If I can't be relieved of this agonizing condition, I am certain that the struggle between my moral sense and lascivious longings must soon send me to the grave." She blamed reading novels and attending gay parties in her youth as the cause of "my imagination [being] wrought up to the highest point." She appeared to be familiar with the assumption that women's reason was thought to be inferior to men's. As a result, she understood that stimulating the imagination in these ways was very dangerous. Her passions were so strong, she told Dr. Bostwick, that "it was with the greatest difficulty that I could conduct myself in a decorous and ladylike manner in the presence of the other sex." Even after her marriage, her "inordinate desire" was not entirely subdued and she continued to practice "self-abuse" (masturbation). Since her husband's death, "my passion has been more inflamed than ever, and I fear that, unless something can be done to relieve me, I shall go crazy."

Here is a classic example of a woman who has unbalanced the scales between learned expectations and her instinct. She wanted to have sex, she wanted to think sexual thoughts. That was her instinct. That was her! And yet, she “knew” that she shouldn’t be behaving or thinking in this way and therefore had to suppress it with the help of a learned man!

This is scary, abhorrent stuff and please do not think that this is a history lesson. It is happening, here, now, today – women thinking that their instinctual thoughts are wrong.

This case, presented in Mrs. R.'s words, reads like one of the cases Bienville described in his classic study of nymphomania. It contains all the elements that shaped the eighteenth-century understanding of the disease: inflamed imagination, uncontrollable desire, novel reading, moral struggle, and an inevitable downward slide into madness. Mrs. R.'s assertion that" I am sure my lascivious feelings cannot be natural—they must be the effect of disease," suggests the influence of "medicalized" notions about female sexual desire and women's sense of proper conduct. It is unlikely that Mrs. R. read Bienville or other medical texts, and yet she was obviously affected by the ideas they contained, including the notion that sexual improprieties required a doctor's help.

You see what you get from reading, imagining etcetera. Gawd only knows what would have happened if they had had to contend with the availability of hard core porn on the internet. I’d say the poor woman was lucky that she could actually find any arousing reading materials, and yet, surely it is what the mind chooses to do with text as well?
One person may find a passage of discreet sexual descriptiveness arousing where another would just glide over it without a thought.

 Dr. Bostwick used a speculum to examine the "irritated" and "inflamed" genitals, including an elongated clitoris. He treated Mrs. R. with various remedies: hip baths, spare diet, douches, bags of pounded ice applied to the genital region, and leeches to the uterus, presumably to draw off the noxious blood. After several weeks, Dr. Bostwick declared that he had completely cured this "highly respectable" Boston widow. She even married again.
“She even married again” – Oh yes, she was definitely cured!


    Here, as in several other cases Dr. Bostwick described, defining nymphomania was not simply the physician's prerogative. Patients shared similar ideas about the body and the passions. They, too, were highly suspicious and fearful of "unnatural" feelings and interpreted them to mean sexual disease.
That is because everyone at that time thought that women’s sexuality was an abomination. As I said earlier, how much has life really changed? People are still very suspicious of a woman who ‘outs’ herself as a sexually liberated and free woman who is prepared to admit that she likes sex.
Hence, pseudonyms for writers such as me.

In 1856, Mrs. B., a twenty-four-year-old, middle-class married woman, went to the Boston office of gynecologist Dr. Horatio R. Storer, future vice president of the American Medical Association. Described by Dr. Storer in his published case notes as small and pale, Mrs. B. sought the doctor's help for decidedly un-Victorian feelings. Excessively lascivious images of sexual intercourse with men not her husband, she told Dr. Storer, filled her dreams. Recently, whenever she met and talked to a man, she dreamed about having intercourse with him. Even during the daytime, if she conversed with a man, erotic feelings overwhelmed her. Up to that moment, she had resisted any actual sexual encounters, but she greatly feared that if the malady increased, she might not be able to restrain herself in the future.

Mrs. B. came to Dr. Storer not because she was concerned about the strong sexual desire she felt for her husband, the frequency of their marital intercourse, or her husband's possible impotence, but because she was afraid she was not going to be able to limit her sexual desire solely to her husband in the future. At a time when women were supposed to be innately less passionate than men, and during a period when Victorian modesty prevented many women from speaking about sexual matters to their physicians, Mrs. B.'s revelations to Dr. Storer suggest just how worried she must have been by her potentially adulterous feelings.
I always said that enforced monogamy was abnormal. We should have listened to the likes of Mrs B. She was not abnormal. All she was doing was expressing a genuine and real issue, i.e. that just because you are married, it doesn’t stop you feeling sexual desires for other people, be they out of reach or sitting next to you in the office.
It is perfectly normal. Sexual desire is a fact. It is there. It is normal. Doing something about it would be normal too but we have conditioned ourselves and our society to think that this is wrong.
What have we done to ourselves and our real liberty?

 Dr. Storer, like most nineteenth-century doctors, looked to Mrs. B.'s body to explain her disorder and interpreted her libidinous dreams about a man other than her husband as a symptom of nymphomania. After a general physical examination, the physician pronounced her in tolerably good health: normal heart and lungs; regular but scanty menstrual flow; daily bowel movement; and good appetite.
    He then turned his attention to her genitals. Like most gynecologists of the time, he undoubtedly was extremely careful in examining Mrs. B. Deciding that a speculum was unnecessary in this case, Storer reported on his examination: Mrs. B.'s clitoris was normal-sized, her vagina slightly overheated, and her uterus somewhat enlarged. According to Mrs. B., her clitoris constantly itched. In order to determine the seriousness of her condition, Dr. Storer gently touched it, at which point she shrieked, not with pain, but with excitement. Shocked and concerned about the extent of her disorder, Storer warned her that if she continued without treatment, she would most likely end up in an asylum.
Wow, lucky woman. Sounds as though she didn’t need much stimulation at all. I wonder if she ever had a vaginal orgasm? Her “disorder” was that, despite not having a pronounced clitoris, it seemed to work rather well. Instead of glorifying the fact that she was in full working order, she was messed around with and warned that such sexual excitement would lead her straight to the loony bin.


    The recommended course of therapy involved her whole family. First, Mrs. B. must totally abstain from intercourse with her husband. Because she was "unable to restrain herself," her husband was required to leave home temporarily. Her sister moved in and oversaw that Mrs. B. restricted her intake of meat, brandy, and all other stimulants that might excite her animal desire. The patient was ordered to replace her feather mattress and pillows with ones made of hair to limit the sensual quality of her sleep. To cool her passions, she was to take a cold sponge bath morning and night, a cold enema once a day, and swab her vagina with borax solution. Finally, she had to give up working on the novel she was writing. We learn nothing more about Mrs. B.'s literary output, but Dr. Storer was obviously concerned that dwelling on romance and passion was dangerous to her highly excitable mind.
Ah! So there you go. She mustn’t think about lurve or naughty rampant thoughts. And she certainly shouldn’t be writing about sex.
My downfall, apparently, as I am utterly aroused whenever I write about this subject.
And I love that feeling. Bloody love it!


So, according to all of this, I probably am a nymphomaniac.


Only I don’t see myself as such, and the purpose of adding all this Victorian melodrama is to try and explain why I do not see myself as a nympho.


What these women were allegedly “suffering” from was an openmindedness to their sexuality. It was not abnormal. The society in which they found themselves was abnormal and going against the grain of intelligent thought about sexuality.
‘Twas ever thus because I still think, despite pornography, despite the swinging sixties, despite the laws being relaxed on sexuality, we are still living in the Victorian times when it comes to that fact of women admitting that they are sexual creatures.
I know that some would disagree but there has been such a disservice to women and their sexuality over the centuries and it is still there.

I cannot “come out” properly as a woman who likes sex, as a woman who likes looking at other women, as a woman who is happy to feel the inside of her own cunt, as a woman who loves to suck and stroke cock because it is still seen as unseemly. I cannot “come out” as a woman with more than one or two unfulfilled sexual fantasies. I cannot “come out” and have sex whenever I want it despite being given the go-ahead to do so, because there are still rules and regulations in place, moral ones as well, that do not enable me to be sexually free.

And yet, I have far more sexual freedom than most. I’m one of the lucky ones.


But am I a nymphomaniac?


Well, the answer is probably yes for some and no for others.
I don’t want to have sex with anyone and yet, I would happily fuck my lover three or four times a day if there was opportunity to do so.
I do think about sex and have sexual fantasies, some of which I don’t necessarily want to actually do.
I look at porn and love seeing beautiful men and women enjoying their sexuality. I actually get a real kick out of watching women enjoying their sexuality, more so than seeing a man get his rocks off. I do not think that any time spent thinking or doing sex is wasted. It has to be the most important thing in life.
I want sex often. I need sex often but at the moment, I need and want that sex with a particular loving partner. Does the fact that I want his cock in my mouth, in my pussy, in my hand at any given point make me a nymphomaniac?


If it does, then I happily concede to such a wonderful affliction!

Aging sex

There’s been quite a lot in the press this week about age, ageism and what we should all be doing with ourselves once we have reached a time when someone else determines that we are officially old.

The government are now preventing employers from insisting that their employees retire at the age of 65. Miriam O’Reilly won her case against the BBC who had laid her off because she was a little over an alleged attractiveness at her age.

Even the middle ageds don’t get off lightly when it comes to sex. Young people are appalled that that their parents or people of their parents age (because they really cannot stomach the thought of their parents bits) are out there having sex.

There is a ridiculous assumption that sex is a young person’s domain, and that the oldies and the middle aged cannot enjoy a healthy and wonderful sex life.

If I am half way through my life then I am a very fortunate person indeed. Nonagenarian status is something that I aspire to, and I hope that whether I am physically having sex at that time or not, my mind will still be alive enough to remember and even to look at the odd pornographic photo.

Eeuchh! I can hear people screeching. A ninety year old who still thinks about sex? Unthinkable.

Well why not? Who says that just because our bodies get a little bit more tired we cannot still have a healthy brain full of exciting sexual thoughts.

I love the idea of people having sex and as I veer away from middle agedness towards the big 5-0, I rather hope that my sexual prime will continue well into my fifties and indeed my sixties.
But apparently, I may be in a minority.

A recent survey suggested that just 40% of women between the ages of 65 and 74 had been sexually active in the last year! Not the last week, folks, the last year. That is appalling! I feel like lending my older friends out to redress the balance and give these poor women a good seeing to.
Furthermore, the sex expert (I refuse to use the word sexpert!) Laura Godman states that “Many women will notice a loss of libido in the advent of their menopause, which generally takes place between the ages of 45 and 55”. So not only do we apparently get no sex after we are 65, we have a diminishing of excitement in the twenty years preceding this.

It’s not looking good!

In the same report, it stated that men have, on average, 15 years more of sexual activity when they are 55, whereas women have only 10.5, which by my crude mathematics means that in order to synergise the loss of libido, a heterosexual woman should partner up with a bloke about 4.5 years older than them, or alternatively swap them for a younger model.

Or alternatively, they could ignore this generalised bollocks and get on with enjoying their sex lives rather than reading horrendous surveys that make them feel as though their life is beginning to disappear before their very eyes, assuming that they can still see as a sexagenarian!

Two dirty old rockers in or approaching their sixties have also been in the news this week with something of a sex theme.
Rod Stewart was happily parading around LA with his 39 year old wife who is heavily pregnant. Admittedly, the conception was IVF but I don’t suppose that means that old Rodney is not getting his end away.
And look how good she is looking! Voluptuous indeed.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1346732/Pregnant-Penny-Lancaster-looks-ready-drop-lunches-Rod-Stewart.html

But looking at that survey, I am beginning to worry about the girl. She will be around menopausal time just as Rodney’s libido allegedly disappears for good. I wonder if she will become one of the 60% who don’t get anything after the age of 65.

Now I know that some people are pathologically turned off by my next couple but one has to admire their determination to let the world know that old rockers and their film-making wives are still happy to fuck away into their sixties.

http://www.harpersbazaar.com/fashion/fashion-articles/sting-trudie-styler-interview-0211

A few years ago, Sting and Trudie were reprimanded by many for talking tantric. At their age!
Disgusting! Horrendous! Toe-curlingly vile! – These were some of the comments that were particularly apparent at the time.

But why shouldn’t they have sex? And why shouldn’t they tell the world about it, if it educates others in post 50 sexual excitement?

So Sting and Trudie are not bashful about their sexuality. Neither are they shy about the fact that like it dirty, or indeed the fact that that they play away.
"Romantic? We like TAWDRY." They said, and good for them.

Sex is not the domain of young people. They can learn a hell of a lot from the older generations and I think those in their fifties and sixties should start educating the rest of us, and remind a very uneducated world that stupid statistics can be damn lies and should be ignored in order to live a bit and fuck a lot.

Thinking D.H. Lawrence

One of the greatest joys of my life at present is being able to share my sex and love with a man who fully appreciates, acknowledges and understands the importance of female sexuality.

Having someone to share this vital ingredient of life is so damned important that I feel this urgent need to tell the world about it and make others realise that they should not settle for anything less than a full understanding of female sexuality from their partners.

I am fortunate though. We are fortunate. We can openly discuss our sexuality, our desires, our views on sexuality without any inhibitions whatsoever. Consequently, there are no boundaries to what we can ‘achieve’ sexually and how we might explore one another’s sexuality. In giving I receive and visa versa because the depths of my sexuality open his sexuality further. It’s not a quid pro quo situation because it is far less contrived than that but there is an incredible brilliance in knowing that my developing sexuality is also furthering knowledge of his own.

Of course, the other issue is that it is not just about the physical act of sex. If only people could understand that!

They say that women are from Venus and men from Mars as though that excuses every misunderstanding between the sexes.

It doesn’t.

There is no excuse for not understanding female sexuality. There is no excuse for ignoring it.

There is no excuse for thinking that sex is just about a penetration.

What good sex requires is an understanding that the mind, body and soul are all wrapped gloriously together and when you want the very best sex ever then one has to be prepared to understand the mind and the desire of your partner as well as giving them a right good seeing to.

In my opinion, there are very few men who appreciate that when women want a fuck, they want their minds fucked as well. They may, at times, just want a damn good shafting because the body needs a fuck but what they really want out of a long-term sexual commitment is that their lover wants to move them in more ways than one.

A woman wants to know that her man understands her wholly and not just where the triggers are inside her cunt that will make her orgasm.

I’m always on the lookout for good writers and commentators who have something significant to say about female sexuality. One would hope that in these allegedly more enlightened days there would be a well-known contemporary writer who got to the heart and soul of female sexuality. I daresay they are out there. I daresay there are plenty of men who can write about female sexuality and fully understand that the needs of women have to be addressed and will further their own delights sexually but it is the soul, dear readers, the soul that is sometimes ignored.

D.H. Lawrence knew women. He understood them and there is part of me that thinks that the banning of his books was part of the great conspiracy to ignore the issue of female sexuality. He knew that sexuality was not just about the physical penetration. It is all there in his writing. He might have acknowledged that women were from a different planet than men but he did not stop there. He did not sit and accept the differences. He wanted to explore the minds of women. He appreciated that learning about these strange characters from Venus would make his life on Mars far more enticing and exciting. He did not accept that there was a void between the two that could not be mended and conjoined. He knew that in order to understand himself, he needed to understand women.

And he wrote about it.

He used naughty words like ‘cunt’ and ‘fuck’. He tackled concepts and issues that had not been thoroughly explored since the times when the Greek tragedies were written.

And in doing so, he was silenced but thankfully not completely.

D.H. Lawrence was, quite frankly, a God in the eyes of a woman who is desperate to see this liberation in contemporary man. As I said, I am one of the fortunate ones who happily shares my sex life with a man who understands precisely what D.H. Lawrence was trying to do, and having read his work at an early age, understood the need to appreciate women for more than that wonderful hole between their legs!

It’s about the mind and the soul as well as the fuck!

Upon going for a search around the internet, I came across a few quotes from D.H. Lawrence that I would like to share with you all to demonstrate how much this man knew. Of course, it helps that he was a brilliant writer too. The combination of a man who understands female sexuality and the ability to actually write about it, conveying the essence of it with such empathy is indeed a rare thing. Lucky me!

So I am now going to introduce you or remind you of a few quotes from the great man.

These quotes are eclectic in some ways but demonstrate to me the depth of his understanding and his willingness to get to know the psyche and the sexuality of women. And indeed about men. And indeed about positive relationships.

He talks about his characters at times. At other times, he is talking generally but in doing so he talks about me. All great writers manage to do this; convey a message through the generic that gets to the heart, reason and purpose of the individual.

.................................................................................................................................................................

"A woman has to live her life, or live to repent not having lived it." 

For many years, I spent time living my life, or so I thought. Only it was a half life because the sexuality was dormant and I didn’t think I needed it. There is an argument that would say what you do not know, you do not miss. However, having once found it, I sure as hell would miss it now!

Repentance is a harsh word but I would sorely repent had I not lived my life to the full.

But how can a woman know whether she is living her life to the full? How can she know if she is being sexually fulfilled?

Listen to me, women out there. If you are not getting complete fulfilment from your man, when you want him to jump inside you at every given opportunity, when you want to share kisses and the warmth of human touch whenever you can, when you want to sit in silence or conversing enthusiastically and feel content at either, then you are not living your life and you should expect more. Not acknowledging this means you may well repent for not having lived.

"Obscenity only comes in when the mind despises and fears the body, and the body hates and resists the mind." 

What an utterly brilliant statement! You see, I told you. This man knows and understands the connection between the body, mind and soul. How could sex be dirty or obscene if it has this trinity at its heart? If you fear the body and fear the sexual capabilities of the body then you can easily turn this into a thing of obscenity. If you embrace the potential of the sexual body and embrace it in your mind to something resonant with adoration and appreciation then the obscenity disappears.

This is where feminists got it so wrong! They went along with the misogynistic view of female sexuality rather than taking the ewe by the horns and empowering women to see sexuality as vital to feminism. They have a lot to answer for!

"She was always waiting, it seemed to be her forte." 

Ah yes. Such a simple statement that tells me that this man knows about women.  Women wait. They do not assert. That is what people have expected throughout history. That is why female sexuality has taken less precedence than its male counterpart. Women wait to be asked out. Women wait for the man to make the first move. In doing so, their sexuality is lessened. It has seemed to be their forte and surely the time is right to turn this submissive behaviour on its head?

"But the act, called the sexual act, is not for the depositing of seed. It is for leaping off into the unknown, as from a cliff's edge, like Sappho into the sea." 

Another piece of exceptional writing that conveys the real understanding of sexuality.

Procreation: leave it to the religious. The real reason for sex is to delve into the realms of another world, to embrace sexuality and make it the core of your being. Real sex, real full-on, all encompassing sex is like diving off into the unknown every single time you have sex. It is release from one world into another. It is the glorious embodiment of the unknown even if you think it is something that you are familiar with.

"Those that go searching for love only make manifest their own lovelessness, and the loveless never find love, only the loving find love, and they never have to seek for it." 

Not only did the man understand women, he knew a thing or two about Zen as well! You cannot find love by seeking it, just as you cannot find happiness by searching constantly for something that will only emerge when you are not looking for it. Lovelessness is for those who think that love is something that can be ‘found’. Lawrence is talking about the soul. The soulful will find love but not by searching for it. They will follow a path and it may or may not be there. They do not preciously seek for in doing so they will never feel love in the way that it ought to be felt. The mere fact of seeking diminishes the true essence of love.

Utterly brilliant!

"His body was urgent against her, and she didn't have the heart anymore to fight...She saw his eyes, tense and brilliant, fierce, not loving. But her will had left her. A strange weight was on her limbs. She was giving way. She was giving up...she had to lie down there under the boughs of the tree, like an animal, while he waited, standing there in his shirt and breeches, watching her with haunted eyes...He too had bared the front part of his body and she felt his naked flesh against her as he came into her. For a moment he was still inside her, turgid there and quivering. Then as he began to move, in the sudden helpless orgasm, there awoke in her new strange thrills rippling inside her. Rippling, rippling, rippling, like a flapping overlapping of soft flames, soft as feathers, running to points of brilliance, exquisite and melting her all molten inside. It was like bells rippling up and up to a culmination. She lay unconscious of the wild little cries she uttered at the last. But it was over too soon, too soon, and she could no longer force her own conclusion with her own activity. This was different, different. She could do nothing. She could no longer harden and grip for her own satisfaction upon him. She could only wait, wait and moan in spirit and she felt him withdrawing, withdrawing and contracting, coming to the terrible moment when he would slip out of her and be gone. Whilst all her womb was open and soft, and softly clamouring, like a sea anemone under the tide, clamouring for him to come in again and make fulfilment for her. She clung to him unconscious in passion, and he never quite slipped from her, and she felt the soft bud of him within her stirring, and strange rhythms flushing up into her with a strange rhythmic growing motion, swelling and swelling til it filled all her cleaving consciousness, and then began again the unspeakable motion that was not really motion, but pure deepening whirlpools of sensation swirling deeper and deeper through all her tissue and consciousness, til she was one perfect concentric fluid of feeling, and she lay there crying in unconscious inarticulate cries." 

Nobody could possibly write such prose without considering female sexuality in all its glory. Many women could not write this about themselves let alone a man. Many women cannot accept that they are from Venus whereas this man knows entirely where they are coming from.

Read this last passage and make it your own. Feel every syllable passing through you, remembering, accepting, understanding that this sort of sexuality belongs to you, be you male or female. There is a world of total sexuality out there waiting and waiting to be acknowledged. Isn’t it about time that we broke down the definition of sexuality by gender and just opened our eyes and our minds to sexuality as a whole?

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There are more Lawrence quotes that I want to write about at a later date. This is merely a starting point but it is vital that people recognise that sexuality cannot be disentangled from living.

Sex is living and living well. Female sexuality is an intergral part of that as much as male sexuality is.

We need modern day D.H. Lawrence’s. We need people to look at his work and embrace the brilliance of it.

We need empowerment and liberation that discussing and living sex can bring.

I’m glad that I have rediscovered Lawrence. I’m eternally grateful that I have rediscovered sex and I feel a need to tell the world that they need to consider their lives in this context.

It is too important to ignore.