Girls
Quotes - Sorry girls, not every man is running after what you think
“Herbenick
invited me to sit in on the Human Sexuality class she was about to teach, one
of the most popular courses on Indiana’s campus. She was, on that day,
delivering a lecture on gender disparities in sexual satisfaction. More than
one hundred fifty students were already seated in the classroom when we
arrived, nearly all of them female, most dressed in sweats, their hair pulled
into haphazard ponytails. They listened raptly as Herbenick explained the
vastly different language young men and young women use when describing “good
sex.” “Men are more likely to talk about pleasure, about orgasm,” Herbenick
said. “Women talk more about absence of pain. Thirty percent of female college
students say they experience pain during their sexual encounters as opposed to
five percent of men.”
The
rates of pain among women, she added, shoot up to 70 percent when anal sex is included.
Until recently, anal sex was a relatively rare practice among young adults. But
as it’s become disproportionately common in porn—and the big payoff in R-rated
fare such as Kingsman and The To Do List—it’s also on the rise in real life. In
1992 only 16 percent of women aged eighteen to twenty-four said they had tried
anal sex. Today 20 percent of women eighteen to nineteen have, and by ages
twenty to twenty-four it’s up to 40 percent. A 2014 study of heterosexuals
sixteen to eighteen years old—and can we pause for a moment to consider just
how young that is?—found that it was mainly boys who pushed for “fifth base,”
approaching it less as a form of intimacy with a partner (who they assumed
would both need to be and could be coerced into it) than a competition with
other boys. Girls were expected to endure the act, which they consistently
reported as painful. Both sexes blamed that discomfort on the girls themselves,
for being “naïve or flawed,” unable to “relax.” Deborah Tolman has bluntly
called anal “the new oral.” “Since all girls are now presumed to have oral sex
in their repertoire,” she said, “anal sex is becoming the new ‘Will she do it
or not?’ behavior, the new ‘Prove you love me.’” And still, she added, “girls’
sexual pleasure is not part of the equation.” According to Herbenick, the rise
of anal sex places new pressures on young women to perform or else be labeled a
prude. “It’s a metaphor, a symbol in one concrete behavior for the lack of
education about sex, the normalization of female pain, and the way what had
once been stigmatized has, over the course of a decade, become expected. If you
don’t want to do it you’re suddenly not good enough, you’re frigid, you’re
missing out, you’re not exploring your sexuality, you’re not adventurous.”
―
Peggy Orenstein, Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape
“I
didn’t see Danny come in or run towards me. He was just suddenly there, pulling
me up by my arm so hard that I gasped. I felt his grip on my skin long after he
let go. We ran down the steps where Mom met us, coughing. She was followed by a
thick black cloud of smoke. I had never felt smoke that hot in my life. I
tasted ash when I breathed in.
“Go!
Get out!” she choked, waving us towards the front door.
We
ran out into the night in our pajamas.
“Run
to Violet’s!” Mom called behind us.
-
The Stable House”
―
Laura Smith
“Did
I ever tell you that we used to keep our horses where your house is?”
“Yeah,”
I mumbled.
She
continued her story, “My brothers used to get up early every morning and go
across the street, well, there wasn’t a street there yet. It was just a dirt
road, and they used to get up and clean the stables and feed the horses every
morning. I would go over there once they had finished and give the horses a
brush, even though none of those horses were mine. I had always wanted my own
horse, but I never got one. When my father got older, he got rid of the horses
and sold the land, all but this yard here."
She
spread her hand over the yard as she said this.
"I
grew up and got married and had to move away. My husband and I lived in an
apartment above a bread store. And it was so cramped, let me tell you. There
was nowhere to move around and no yard to take care of. It was terrible. I’m
not saying I wanted my husband to die. I’d never have wished that in a million
years. But I was so relieved to come home after two years, and I've lived here
ever since."
I
had stopped raking, turned and looked at her.
"I
know why you don’t want to leave this street," she said, "You’ve been
in that house your whole life, just like me. And no matter where you go it’s
not going to seem like home. But just like me, you’re going to come back. You
have to remind yourself of that. And I did hate being away from home, but it
was the most memorable time in my life, being away. It was an adventure as much
as it was scary. But when I came home, I learned to get out more. I went to
beauty school and got a job at the salon and took trips with friends. I like to
get away from the house so that I can come back and still appreciate it. And
you will too after you come back.”
I
nodded at Violet. What she was saying made sense.
“I’ll
go,” I said, “Tell them I’ll go.”
-
The Stable House”
―
Laura Smith
“Sorry
girls, not every man is running after what you think.”
―
Eyden I., Woman's Book: Only For Men
“There's
a way of listening in the dark that's so intense for girls. You can feel the
insides of your ears.”
―
Elisabeth de Mariaffi, The Devil You Know
“Be
wise in time. What youth sows, old age must reap....Sow to yourself rather in
righteousness: break up your fallow ground, sow not among thorns.”
―
J.C. Ryle, Thoughts for Young Men
“To
join the company of women, to be adults, we go through a period of proudly
boasting of having survived our own mother's indifference, anger, overpowering
love, the burden of her pain, her tendency to drink or teetotal, her warmth or
coldness, praise or criticism, sexual confusions or embarrassing clarity. It
isn't enough that she sweat, labored, bore her daughters howling or under total
anesthesia or both. No. She must be responsible for our psychic weaknesses the
rest of her life. It is alright to feel kinship with your father, to forgive.
We all know that. But your mother is held to a standard so exacting that it has
no principles. She simply must be to blame.”
―
Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum
“i
dream nights and
girls
like tigers,
claws
and teeth on both.”
―
Elisabeth Hewer, Wishing for Birds
“We
want to look desirable. We want others to want to mate with us. No different
than a colorful peacock. When girls dress up for their night out at the club,
they are doing what all animals do when they try to make themselves desirable
for a potential mate. That's the whole point behind the fashion, perfume,
cosmetics, diet, and plastic surgery industries.”
―
Oliver Markus, Why Men And Women Can't Be Friends
“Adults
always teased me about having boyfriends, but there was an age where it was no
longer a joke, the idea that boys might actually want you.”
―
Emma Cline, The Girls
