This is beautiful. J http://www.vaginaverite.com/index.html
Also, Shere Hite’s essay “The Uncelebrated Beauty of Male Sexuality” is quite awesome.
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“Philosopher Marilyn Frye (1992) notes that ‘the word “virgin” did not originally mean a woman whose vagina was untouched by any penis, but a free woman, one not betrothed, not married, not bound to, not possessed by any man It meant a female who is sexually and hence socially her own person’ (p. 133)—virtually an impossibility under patriarchy. Frye argues that radical feminist lesbians have created ways of living out this kind of virginity. Is this also possible for heterosexual women? As Frye puts it: ‘Can you fuck without losing your virginity?’ p. 136). She concludes that this is unlikely, but concedes it may be possible if women are willing to be wild and undomesticated—sexually, socially, and politically.”
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“Sexuality, too, has been defined in binary terms. According to Jonathan Katz (1995), a historian of sexuality, the concept of heterosexuality developed in parallel with the concept of homosexuality, and both date from the end of the nineteenth century. The word heterosexuality was first used in the 1890s, and obscure medical term applied to non-procreative sex—that is, sex for pleasure. At the time, this was considered a deviant idea, showing ‘abnormal or perverted appetite toward the opposite sex’ (p. 86). Webster’s dictionary did not include the word heterosexuality until 194, and it gradually came into common usage in the United States as a ‘stable sign or normal sex’ (p. 40).
Lesbians and gay men have long challenged the legitimacy and ‘normalcy’ of heterosexuality […]. Bisexual people have argued for greater fluidity I sexual desire and behaviors, what Kathleen Bennett (1992) calls ‘a both/and option for an either/or world’ […]. Lisa Orlando (1991) notes that stereotypes about bisexuality have grown out of the fact that bisexuals are poised between what ‘appear as two mutually exclusive sexual cultures’ and fro a common assumption ‘that homosexual and heterosexual desires exclude each other.’ Eridani (1992) argues that many women are probably bisexual and do not fit into a gay/straight categorization. She suggest that sexual orientation, meaning a ‘deeply rooted sense ... that serious relationships are possibly only with persons of the opposite or the same sex’ (p. 174) is itself a masculinist perspective. […] The late June Jordan writes ‘bisexuality invalidates either/or formulation,’ and urges bisexuality and sexual freedom as part of a wider struggle for freedom and justice. Riki Anne Wilchins (1997) notes the limited notion of the erotic entailed in hetero-homo dualism: ‘an entire Geography of the Absent—body parts that aren’t named, acts one mustn’t do, genders one can’t perform—because they are outside the binary box’ (p. 167).”
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“Medical anthropologist Carole Vance (1984) sums up the contradictions of sexuality for women:
Sexuality is simultaneously a domain of restriction, repression, and danger as well as a domain of exploration, pleasure, and agency. To focus only on pleasure and gratification ignores the patriarchal structure in which women act, yet to speak only of sexual violence and oppression ignores women’s experience with sexual agency and choice and unwittingly increases the sexual terror and despair in which women live. (p. 1)
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“Lisa Orlando (1991) comments: ‘I don’t think anyone knows what desire is, where it comes from, or why it takes the general and specific form it does.’ She hypothesizes that it involves ‘some kind of interaction between a more or less shapeless biological ‘drive’ and a combination of individual experiences and larger social forces.’ She notes that the very notion of sexual identity is specific to our culture and time in history.”
