Sexual Taboos Quotes

Eroticism differs from animal sexuality in that human sexuality is limited by taboos and the domain of eroticism is that of the transgression of these taboos. Desire in eroticism is the desire that triumphs over the taboo. It presupposes man in conflict with himself.

Here am I: at one stroke incestuous, adulteress, sodomite, and all that in a girl who only lost her maidenhead today! What progress, my friends with what rapidity I advance along the thorny road of vice!

Sex has become one of the most discussed subjects of modern times. The Victorians pretended it did not exist; the moderns pretend nothing else exists.

people talk about 'sex' as though it hopped about by itself, like a frog!

I don't think of those things [from farting, to male on male affection, to crossdressing] as being taboo, I suppose, so it didn't strike me as, "Oh, I'm breaking boundaries and stuff..."

In my day, people didn't do nude scenes. I mean they didn't exist.

I tell you, I'm really not what you'd call into your basic kink, even though we do live in Hollywood, which is a little bit like living in a box of granola.

In matters of sexuality we are at present, every one of us, ill or well, nothing but hypocrites.

My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror.

Sexually progressive cultures gave us literature, philosophy, civilization and the rest, while sexually restrictive cultures gave us the Dark Ages and the Holocaust.

We all have our individual romantic or idealistic ideas. To get information that masturbation is our basic form of sex is hard, because who wants to admit they're masturbating?

Everyone's sex life is funny except your own. Every person's is, and yours never is. The lengths people go to — and the extremes and the conditions and the mental exercises and guilt and shame and happiness that everybody goes through — and what they'll do for sex is never-ending and mind-boggling and very interesting to me. And I don't think a lot of times people choose any of it.

I still believe that sex is dirty. It's just that now I wouldn't have it any other way.

It’s the strangest thing about this church - it is obsessed with sex, absolutely obsessed. Now they will say we, with our permissive society and rude jokes, are obsessed. No, we have a healthy attitude. We like it, it’s fun, it’s jolly; because it’s a primary impulse it can be dangerous and dark and difficult. It’s a bit like food in that respect, only even more exciting. The only people who are obsessed with food are anorexics and the morbidly obese, and that in erotic terms is the Catholic church in a nutshell.

We're still a sexophobic society, afraid of the wrong things for the wrong reasons.

Virginity is the poetry, not the reality, of life.

It has to be admitted that we English have sex on the brain, which is a very unsatisfactory place to have it.

There are so many aspects of human sexuality that we're afraid to talk about, because people still don't understand it. It's not just black and white, you know?

That is the idea that good Christians don't talk about sex, at least not out loud, and certainly not in the church. I want to say that both of those ideas are fallacious.

Americans are fascinated by our sexuality and frightened by it. And during the Reagan and Bush era you got an entire decade of anti-sex government. Sex is not the enemy. It is the beginning of civilization, family and tribe. Sex can be twisted and exploited, but in its most essential form, it's the best part of who we are. And it frightens us.

How strange it is that Socrates, after having made the children common, should hinder lovers from carnal intercourse only, but should permit love and familiarities between father and son or between brother and brother, than which nothing can be more unseemly, since even without them love of this sort is improper. How strange, too, to forbid intercourse for no other reason than the violence of the pleasure, as though the relationship of father and son or of brothers with one another made no difference.

"Natural" is a very dangerous word to use about sexuality ... Our society's notions of normality are completely fake and meta-trendy, since they rely on the changing standards of superstition, religion, Christianity and gender bias to define themselves. Americans, in particular, exhibit very childish reactions to sexual practices that are new to them, much like little kids who are offered a vegetable they haven't seen before: "That's disgusting!" "But darling, you haven't even tried it!" "I don't care, I hate it, I hate it!

If sex is such a natural phenomenon, how come there are so many books on how to do it?

Islam, Christianity and Judaism all define themselves through disgust of women's bodies.

There's always something new with sex. We lived in a world without Viagra, now we live in a world with Viagra. We lived in a world without blowjobs and anilingus in the Oval Office, and then it happens and you get to write about it. We live in a world where now the government is screwing with contraception and holding back vaccines that could save 4,000 women's lives a year, and you get to write about that. It's not as much fun as anilingus in the Oval Office, but what are you going to do? If you pay attention, there's always something new, and it's always really invigorating.