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.

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"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.