Shame

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 205 of 267 · 20 per page

• From Hot Rods: Gay Erotic Stories (2011)

  “Really?” He squeezed Teddy’s skull for a moment. “How do I know you’re not lying to me?” “I’m not, sir.” “Oh, I think you’re probably not. So, what is it? You saw my bike and you just lost all sense of control?” The tank was entirely clean of cum at that point, but Howard didn’t let him lift his head. The tongue bath continued, and the smell of gasoline filled his head. Would he always link gasoline to that moment? Would he be able to fill up his car without getting a hard-on? Teddy suspected the answer to that question was no, especially since he wanted to beg Howard to never let go of him. “I couldn’t…I couldn’t help myself, sir.” “Is that a fact?” “Yes, sir.” “Because it’s my bike?” “Yes, sir.” The words were barely out of his mouth before he cried out with shock and pain. Howard’s fingers were closed around his balls like a vise, squeezing him through the denim of his shorts. He didn’t try to twist away—but only because he didn’t want to risk tipping the bike. “You like this, too?” “I…” “Don’t lie to me, boy.” “Yes, sir.” “Get down off that bike. It’s not yours.” As soon as Howard released him, Teddy scrambled off the bike. A hard hand on his shoulder forced him to the dirty floor. It put him eye-level with Howard’s cock, and his erection seemed even more massive from that vantage. Every muscle in his body strained forward, and he wanted to close his mouth over the hard line and bite him through the thick denim. “Get down on your hands and knees. Like a dog.” Teddy dropped forward without protest. His cock hung between his legs, poking out through his open fly. He wished he could tuck himself back in his pants. Or take off his shorts completely. “You like the taste of dirt and oil so much? Lick my boots.” “Sir?” “Lick them.” Teddy looked up through his lashes, staring at Howard’s face, looking for any sort of sign. The man’s features were impassive, his eyes small and impossible to read. Teddy lowered his head slowly, giving Howard ample time to tell him to stop, that he was just kidding, that this was ridiculous. But Howard didn’t speak. He didn’t move—not even a twitch. And Teddy had no choice but to lick the tip, wincing at the strong taste of the road—asphalt, and exhaust, and oil, and leather, and heat. “Again. Lick the other one.”

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  29 For you will be ashamed [of the degradation] of the oaks in which you took [idolatrous] pleasure, And you will be ashamed of the gardens [of passion] which you have chosen [for pagan worship]. 30 For you will be like an oak whose leaf withers and dies And like a garden that has no water. 31 The strong man will become tinder, And his work a spark. So both will burn together And there will be none to quench them. Isaiah 2 God’s Universal Reign 1 T HE WORD [from God] which Isaiah son of Amoz saw [in a vision] concerning [the nation of] Judah and [its capital city] Jerusalem. 2 Now it will come to pass that In the last days The mountain of the house of the LORD Will be [firmly] established as the a highest of the mountains, And will be exalted above the hills; And all the nations will stream to it. 3 And many peoples shall come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD , To the house (temple) of the God of Jacob; That He may teach us His ways And that we may walk in His paths.” For the law will go out from Zion And the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. 4 And He will judge between the nations, And will mediate [disputes] for many peoples; And they will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not lift up the sword against nation, And never again will they learn war. [Mic 4:1–3 ] 5 O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the LORD . 6 Most certainly [LORD ] You have abandoned your people, the house of Jacob, Because they are filled with influences from the east, And they are soothsayers [who foretell] like the Philistines; Also they strike bargains with the children of foreigners (pagans). [Deut 18:9–12 ] 7 Their land has also been filled with silver and gold And there is no end to their treasures; Their land has also been filled with horses And there is no end to their chariots. [Deut 17:14–17 ] 8 Their land has also been filled with idols; They worship the work of their hands, That which their own fingers have made. 9 So the common man has been humbled [before idols] And the man of importance has been degraded, Therefore do not forgive them [O LORD ]. 10 Go among the rocks and hide in the dust From the terror of the LORD and from the splendor of His majesty. 11 The proud look of man will be degraded And the arrogance of men will be humbled, And the LORD alone will be exalted in that day. A Day of Reckoning Coming 12 For the LORD of hosts will have a day of reckoning Against all who are proud and arrogant And against all who are lifted up, That they may be degraded.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  12 “This I will do to this place,” says the LORD , “and to its inhabitants; and I will even make this city like Topheth. 13 “The houses of Jerusalem and the houses of the kings of Judah will be defiled like this place, Topheth, all the houses on whose rooftops incense has been burned to all the host of heaven (sun, moon, stars), and where drink offerings have been poured out to other gods.” ’ ” [Acts 7:42 , 43 ] 14 Then Jeremiah came from Topheth, where the LORD had sent him to prophesy; and he stood in the court of the LORD ’s house and said to all the people: 15 “Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, ‘Behold, I am going to bring on this city and on all its towns, all the devastation that I have declared against it, because they have become stiff-necked and refused to hear and obey My words.’ ” Jeremiah 20 Pashhur Persecutes Jeremiah 1 N OW PASHHUR the son of Immer, the priest, who was [also] chief officer in the house of the LORD , heard Jeremiah prophesying these things. 2 Then Pashhur beat Jeremiah the prophet and put him in the stocks that were at the upper Benjamin Gate by the house of the LORD . [Jer 1:19 ; 15:15 ] 3 And the next day Pashhur brought Jeremiah out of the stocks. Then Jeremiah said to him, “The LORD does not call your name Pashhur, but Magor-missabib (terror on every side). 4 “For thus says the LORD , ‘Behold, I will make you a terror to yourself and to all your friends; they will fall by the sword of their enemies while you look on. And I will give all Judah into the hand of the king of Babylon; he will carry them away to Babylon as captives and will slaughter them with the sword. 5 ‘Moreover, I will hand over all the riches of this city, all the result of its labor, all its precious things; even all the treasures of the kings of Judah I will hand over to their enemies, and they will plunder them, and take them away and carry them to Babylon. 6 ‘And you, Pashhur, and all who live in your house will go into captivity; you will go to Babylon, and there you will die and be buried, you and all your friends to whom you have falsely prophesied.’ ” Jeremiah’s Complaint 7 [Jeremiah said,] O LORD , You have persuaded me and I was deceived; You are stronger than I and You have prevailed. I am a laughingstock all day long; Everyone mocks me. 8 For whenever I speak, I must shout out; I shout violence and destruction, Because the word of the LORD has become to me A reprimand and a mockery and has brought me insult all day long.

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  Book smarts won’t necessarily help in those fight-or-flight moments, especially, perhaps, for girls. “I talk to a hundred girls a month who are superassertive, feminist, who can correct their teachers about the symbolism of a novel in class,” she said. “Then they’re at a party and some dude’s hand is on their leg—or between their legs—and they feel like duct tape is over their mouths. They literally can’t say, ‘Can you move your hand?’ Superassertive, but not in that situation, because they’re using a different part of themselves. And then there’s regret and shame. And that’s just because we need to practice.” Once again, the room has fallen silent, the kind of hush that occurs when a teacher has truly touched a nerve. Denison asked for a volunteer, and Jackson, a lanky boy in a Chicago Bulls T-shirt, stood up. “People talk about ‘assertive’ all the time,” Denison said. “And ‘aggressive’ and ‘passive-aggressive.’ Those are ways to think about how we react in the real world, especially when we are uncomfortable.” She pulled out her cell phone. “So, let’s say I borrowed Jackson’s phone and said I’d have it back in a day. But it’s been three days. Also, I’ve cracked the screen. Now I’m going to return it to him, and he’s going to show us what a passive response would be.” She sauntered over and dumped the device in his hand. “Thanks for the phone, Jackson. It’s awesome.” She casually gestured to the imaginary crack, adding, “There’s just, like, that little thing here.” “No problem,” Jackson said. “Really?” Denison took a step toward him. “Can I borrow it again, then?” “No, um . . .” She took another step. “Oh. Well, do you have a car?” “Yeah, it’s over there.” “Can I have the keys?” Jackson pretended to toss them to her, and the scene was over. Denison turned to the class. “So his fallback was ‘I’m uncomfortable, this is unpleasant, I want it to end, and agreeing with her is the fastest way.’ But did you see how when I stepped forward and he backed away I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ve got this. I do not have to be accountable in any way. I can take advantage.’ So the bummer of that response is ‘Am I going to come back?’ Oh, hell yeah. He’s got a Post-it on his forehead with a bull’s-eye now. But if he could get to a place of thinking, ‘How do I feel right now? What do I think? And what do I want to have happen?’ Maybe it would be worth thirty seconds of doing something different so that this obnoxious girl will not come back.” A thin boy in a red-and-white striped shirt raised his hand. “So what exactly is an aggressive fallback?” “Pushing back against someone before they can go after you,” another boy said. “Or saying someone’s an asshole.” “Or, like, yelling back if your parents start yelling at you,” said one of the girls.

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  Over the next hour or so, they discussed their feelings about virginity (“In our group, we didn’t like the connotation of ‘clean’ and ‘pure,’” said one of the girls) and abstinence (comments on that had included “sad,” “a choice,” and “anal”). A boy wearing a basketball jersey sparked a cacophony of responses to the question, “But what is abstinence anyway? Is it doing anything but intercourse or is it no contact at all, or what?” The group presenting on sex and alcohol initially suggested, sanctimoniously, that mixing the two was a bad idea. But when Denison asked who knew someone who had hooked up sober, not a single hand went up. Not one. “I’m hearing more and more that nobody gets sexual with someone unless they’re in an altered state,” she said. “And that can really feed into that regret factor.” “I think in some ways it’s easier, though,” a girl said. “You can be like, ‘Oh, I wasn’t thinking. I was drinking.’” “That’s what I call a setup,” Denison responded. “Especially for girls: if you’re a prude for setting limits and you’re a slut if you decide to have sex, then you’re screwed no matter what. At least if you get drunk, you can say, ‘Well, yeah, I didn’t know what I was doing.’ So it’s a way to not be accountable. And you have to have some empathy around that. It’s pretty seductive to be able to have an out of some kind if you’re going to be shamed or feel regret either way. So what are you supposed to do? We have to look at that more closely. We’ll be talking more about that next time.” In the final moments, as she did every session, Denison answered anonymous questions. Here is a smattering from the classes I observed: What if I pee during intercourse? How do you get STDs from oral sex? Is it true that when girls come, they can squirt fluid halfway across the room? How big is a normal penis? How many calories are in sperm? Does your hymen always break when you lose your virginity? Do you need lube to give a hand job? How can I make anal sex feel better to my partner?

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  Christina and Ethan were together for about six months. She never regretted losing her virginity with him, but once they broke up, she wondered, what now? “Am I going to be a person who only sleeps with people if I’m in a serious relationship? Do I want to make a rule that I’ll go on a certain amount of dates with someone before I sleep with him? And if I do sleep with another person, that would bring my number to two. Do I care about that number?” The “number” was a common source of concern among girls. Even those who felt that virginity was a vestige of another time wondered how many sexual partners was too many. (The “number,” like virginity itself, included only intercourse—no one counted boys with whom, say, they’d had oral sex.) Losing their virginity in itself may not have tainted them, but was it possible to go too far? The stigma of the slut, the girl who was overly and overtly sexual, who allowed herself to be used, still held: their character could still be compromised, for themselves as well as others, by their sexual activity. “I guess I would feel icky if my number started to climb into the double digits,” Brooke admitted. She glanced over at Christina, who was counting on her fingers, silently enumerating Brooke’s lovers. “Stop that!” she snapped, laughing, and then grew serious. “I feel that sex is important. I don’t want to have sex with people who don’t mean something to me. And I’m not old enough yet to have had that many partners who do mean something.” Caitlin shook her head and pushed impatiently at her glasses. “I kind of don’t feel that way,” she said. “I feel like I could have sex with someone and it could mean nothing. I remember the first person I had sex with after the guy I’d been with for three years. It was so surprising that it could feel . . . emotionally light, just fun and relaxed and easy. “And what is that, anyway, to ‘mean something’?” she continued. “Does it mean you have to love the person? Could it be about an out-of-body experience? Could it just be that this person was a good person and I appreciated how generous they were? Isn’t that meaningful?” Brooke shrugged, picking at her nail polish. “Maybe it’s my own self-consciousness. For me, saying no is so hard under any circumstances, even to a favor for a friend. So I can see myself accidentally letting things escalate with someone I didn’t want them to escalate with, and that wouldn’t feel good to me. But I guess if I was turned on by someone who I wasn’t into emotionally . . . I can’t really imagine it, but that would be okay.”

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  The walls of the room were hung with mirrors thickly painted with cupids, thickly sullied by flies. A faint blend of odours was wafted from the kitchen which stood in proximity to the toilet. The host rose at once and shook hands with his guests. Every bar had its social customs, it seemed. At the Ideal one must share Monsieur Pujol’s lewd jokes; at Le Narcisse one must gravely shake hands with the Patron . The Patron was tall and exceedingly thin—a clean-shaven man with the mouth of an ascetic. His cheeks were delicately tinted with rouge, his eyelids delicately shaded with kohl; but the eyes themselves were an infantile blue, reproachful and rather surprised in expression. For the good of the house, Dickie ordered champagne; it was warm and sweet and unpleasantly heady. Only Jeanne and Mary and Dickie herself had the courage to sample this curious beverage. Wanda stuck to her brandy and Pat to her beer, while Stephen drank coffee; but Valérie Seymour caused some confusion by gently insisting on a lemon squash—to be made with fresh lemons. Presently the guests began to arrive in couples. Having seated themselves at the tables, they quickly became oblivious to the world, what with the sickly champagne and each other. From a hidden recess there emerged a woman with a basket full of protesting roses. The stout vendeuse wore a wide wedding ring—for was she not a most virtuous person? But her glance was both calculating and shrewd as she pounced upon the more obvious couples; and Stephen watching her progress through the room, felt suddenly ashamed on behalf of the roses. And now at a nod from the host there was music; and now at a bray from the band there was dancing. Dickie and Wanda opened the ball—Dickie stodgy and firm, Wanda rather unsteady. Others followed. Then Mary leant over the table and whispered: ‘Won’t you dance with me, Stephen?’ Stephen hesitated, but only for a moment. Then she got up abruptly and danced with Mary. The handsome young man with the tortured eyebrows was bowing politely before Valérie Seymour. Refused by her, he passed on to Pat, and to Jeanne’s great amusement was promptly accepted. Brockett arrived and sat down at the table. He was in his most prying and cynical humour. He watched Stephen with coldly observant eyes, watched Dickie guiding the swaying Wanda, watched Pat in the arms of the handsome young man, watched the whole bumping, jostling crowd of dancers. The blended odours were becoming more active. Brockett lit a cigarette. ‘Well, Valérie darling? You look like an outraged Elgin marble. Be kind, dear, be kind; you must live and let live, this is life. . . .’ And he waved his soft, white hands. ‘Observe it—it’s very wonderful, darling. This is life, love, defiance, emancipation!’

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  Let him dress the man whom the king delights to honor [in the royal robe] and lead him on horseback through the open square of the city, and proclaim before him, ‘This is what shall be done for the man whom the king desires to honor.’ ” Haman Must Honor Mordecai 10 Then the king said to Haman, “Quickly take the royal robe and the horse, as you have said, and do this for Mordecai the Jew, who is sitting at the king’s gate. Leave out nothing of all that you have said.” 11 So Haman took the royal robe and the horse and dressed Mordecai, and led him on horseback through the open square of the city, proclaiming before him, “This is what shall be done for the man whom the king desires to honor.” 12 Then Mordecai returned to the king’s gate. But Haman hurried to his [own] house, mourning and with his head covered [in sorrow]. 13 Then Haman told Zeresh his wife and all his friends everything that had happened to him. Then his wise counselors and his wife Zeresh said to him, “If Mordecai, before whom you have begun to fall in status, is of Jewish heritage, you will not overcome him, but will certainly fall before him.” 14 While they were still speaking with him, the king’s eunuchs (attendants) arrived and hurriedly brought Haman to the banquet which Esther had prepared. Esther 7 Esther’s Plea 1 S O THE king and Haman came to drink wine with Esther the queen. 2 And the king said to Esther on the second day also as they drank their wine, “What is your petition, Queen Esther? It shall be granted to you. And what is your request? Even to half of the kingdom, it shall be done.” 3 Then Queen Esther replied, “If I have found favor in your sight, O king, and if it pleases the king, let my life be spared as my petition, and my people [be spared] as my request; 4 for we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, killed and wiped out of existence. Now if we had only been sold as slaves, men and women, I would have remained silent, for our hardship would not be sufficient to burden the king [by even mentioning it].” 5 Then King Ahasuerus (Xerxes) asked Queen Esther, “Who is he, and where is he, who dares to do such a thing?” 6 Esther said, “An adversary and an enemy is Haman, this evil man.” Then Haman became terrified before the king and queen. Haman Is Hanged 7 Then in his fury, the king stood up from drinking wine and went into the palace garden [to decide what he should do]; but Haman stayed to plead for his life from Queen Esther, for he saw that harm had been determined against him by the king.

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  Despite those risks, hypersexualization is ubiquitous, so visible as to be nearly invisible: it is the water in which girls swim, the air they breathe. Whatever else they might be—athletes, artists, scientists, musicians, newscasters, politicians—they learn that they must, as a female, first and foremost project sex appeal. Consider a report released by Princeton University in 2011 exploring the drop over the previous decade in public leadership positions held by female students. Among the reasons these über-elite young women gave for avoiding such roles was that being qualified was not enough. They needed to be “smart, driven, involved in many different activities (as are men), and, in addition, they are supposed to be pretty, sexy, thin, nice, and friendly.” Or, as one alumna put it, women had to “do everything, do it well, and look ‘hot’ while doing it.” A 2013 study at Boston College, meanwhile, found that female students were graduating with lower self-esteem than when they entered the school (boys’ self-esteem rose). They, too, in part blamed “the pressure to look or dress a certain way.” A sophomore in a survey at Duke that reached similar conclusions called the phenomenon “effortless perfection,” the “expectation that one would be smart, accomplished, fit, beautiful, and popular, and that all this would happen without visible effort.” No wonder they faltered. “Hot,” as journalist Ariel Levy wrote in her book, Female Chauvinist Pigs, is different from “beautiful” or “attractive.” It is a commercialized, one-dimensional, infinitely replicated, and, frankly, unimaginative vision of sexiness, one that, when applied to women, can be reduced to two words: “fuckable and saleable.” Levy says that “hotness” is specifically women’s work, and nowhere was that more evident than on the 2015 Vanity Fair cover featuring Caitlyn Jenner, née Bruce. To announce her physical transition from male to female, the sixty-five-year-old appeared in a corset (from a store called Trashy Lingerie), breasts overflowing, lips glossed like an ingénue’s. That image was often juxtaposed in the press with a picture of her as Bruce, hair lank with sweat, arms raised in triumph after winning Olympic gold. As a man, he used his body; as a woman, she displayed it. Certainly, it’s no revelation that girls are held to a punishingly narrow, often surgically or digitally enhanced ideal of “sexy,” and then labeled as “sluts” when they pursue it. What has changed is this: whereas earlier generations of media-literate, feminist-identified women saw their objectification as something to protest, today’s often see it as a personal choice, something that can be taken on intentionally as an expression rather than an imposition of sexuality. And why wouldn’t they, if “hot” has been portrayed as compulsory, a prerequisite to a woman’s relevance, strength, and independence?

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  Most of the young women I met had shaved or waxed their pubic hair, all of it, since they were about fourteen. When I asked them why, the girls would initially say it wasn’t something they’d ever questioned: they already shaved their legs and armpits, and they’d seen older girls who were bare, so it seemed the thing to do. They said hairlessness made them feel “cleaner” (mistakenly, as it turns out. Though it diminishes the risk of pubic lice, clear cutting creates a festive-sounding “happy culture” for most other STDs: without the shield of protective hair, for instance, the labia can become carpeted with genital warts). As with self-objectification, girls considered depilation a personal choice, something done “for oneself,” for comfort, hygiene, practicality. Invariably, though, they would bring up another motivation: avoiding humiliation. Consider the trajectory of comments by Alexis, a sixteen-year-old at a public high school in Northern California. “I didn’t really think about it,” she began. “One friend had an older sister who was doing it, so she started, and then we all did it. It was like a chain reaction. “But then, I also heard these guys in class one day talking about a girl. Her shorts were low cut and when she’d raised her arms, her shirt had lifted up, and they were like, ‘I could see pubic hair! Man, it was so gross!’” Girls are already self-conscious about their (typically unnamed) pubic region; it doesn’t take much to stoke that insecurity. Ruby, in Chicago, was one of the girls who said shaving made her feel “clean,” especially during her period. But she, too, added, “I remember these boys telling stories about this girl who ‘got around.’ And guys would go down there to finger her, or whatever, and there would be hair, and they were appalled. So I just . . . I mean, guys act like they would be disgusted by it.” Herbenick said that in her college town, chalkboard displays outside local salons offered sales on “back-to-school waxes” in the fall; April brought similar specials on spring break Brazilians. “That’s a pretty public reminder that you better look a certain way,” she said. A few years ago, she had a female student confide that she’d started shaving after a boy announced—during one of Herbenick’s class discussions—that he’d never seen pubic hair on a woman in real life, and if he came across it on a hookup partner, he’d walk out the door.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  Behold, he is in the vineyard of Naboth, where he has gone to take possession of it. 19 “You shall speak to him, saying, ‘Thus says the LORD : “Have you murdered and also taken possession [of the victim’s property]?” ’ And you shall speak to him, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord: “In the place where dogs licked up the blood of Naboth, dogs will lick up your blood as well.” ’ ” 20 Ahab said to Elijah, “Have you found me, O my enemy?” And he answered, “I have found you, because you have sold yourself to do evil in the sight of the LORD . 21 “Behold [says the LORD ], I am bringing evil (catastrophe) on you, and will utterly sweep you away, and will cut off from Ahab every male, both bond and free in Israel; 22 and I will make your house (descendants) like that of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and like the house of Baasha the son of Ahijah, for provoking Me to anger and making Israel sin. 23 “The LORD also spoke in regard to Jezebel, saying, ‘The dogs will eat [the body of] Jezebel in the district of Jezreel.’ 24 “The dogs will eat anyone belonging to Ahab who dies in the city, and the birds of the air will eat anyone who dies in the field.” [1 Kin 14:11 ; 16:4 ] 25 There certainly was no one like Ahab who sold himself to do evil in the sight of the LORD , because Jezebel his wife incited him. 26 He acted very repulsively in following idols, in accordance with everything the Amorites had done, whom the LORD expelled [from the land] before the sons of Israel. 27 Now when Ahab heard these words [of Elijah], he tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and fasted, and he lay in sackcloth and went about dejectedly (mourning). 28 Then the word of the LORD came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying, 29 “Do you see how Ahab has humbled himself before Me? Because he has humbled himself before Me, I will not bring the evil (catastrophe) in his lifetime, but in his son’s days I will bring evil upon his house.” 1 Kings 22 Ahab’s Third Campaign against Aram 1 A RAM (SYRIA) and Israel continued without war for three years. 2 In the third year Jehoshaphat king of Judah came down to the a king of Israel.

• From Vox (1992)

  “Why don’t you give them to Jill?” she asked. “Oh, a million reasons. But that’s not quite the end. I hung up from making the order and instantly I got hard again, naturally, and I thought for a second, and I hit the redial button, and a different woman answered, with a much lower and smarter voice, with some name like Vulva, and I said, ‘Vulva, I have what may sound like an unorthodox question, and you don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to. But what I’m curious about is, well, of the men who order from your catalog, do you think some of them are in a subtle or maybe not-so-subtle way obscene phone callers?’ She laughed and she said, ‘That’s a good question.’ And then there was a long pause, a very long pause. I said, ‘Hello?’ And right there I knew I’d blown it—I knew the tone of my hello, that slight reediness in my voice that betrayed sexual tension, blew away the potential rapport I might have had with Vulva. See, I’d sounded quite confident when I actually asked her the question.” “What did she say?” “She just said, in a more official voice, but still a friendly voice, ‘I don’t think I’m going to answer your question.’ And I said, ‘Fine, I understand, okay, sure.’ And she said ‘Bye.’ Not ‘Good-bye,’ you notice—still the slight vestige of amused intimacy there. If she’d said ‘Good-bye’ I would have felt absolutely crushed.” “What did you do then?” “I sat up and ordered a pizza and read the paper. So you see, I’m not an obscene phone caller, really. I can’t smother an orgasm.” “Ho ho. I can,” she said. “Can you? Well, I mean I can physically do it.” “ I know what you mean.” There was a pause. “I hear ice cubes,” he said. “Diet Coke.” “Ah. Tell me more things. Tell me about the room you’re in. Tell me the chain of events that led up to your calling this number.”

• From Vox (1992)

  18 flipping through the catalog, and I made a last valiant attempt to stroke myself off, because the idea of her look ing carefully at those pictures of women in those tiny weightless panties, with the darkness of pubic hair visible right there through the material, at the very same time I was looking at those same cuppable curves of pubic hair on my end, should have been enough to make me shoot instantly, but I don't know, she sounded so well- meaning, and I knew that there was a very good chance that she would not like to know that I was there trying to ... I mean, she didn't want to work at a job where men called her and ordered a few items of merchandise just so they could . . . right? That wasn't what she'd had in mind at all in taking the job, or possibly wasn't, at least, so even when she said, finally, 'Well, the nadja pants ride a little lower on the hip,' which is a statement that any normal jacker-offer should be able to come to easily, because what does it imply? It implies her own hip, it implies that the nadja panties have ridden her own hip. But even then I could not achieve and maintain. So I said, 'Oh well, no, thanks, I'll see how the tights go over and then order the minimes later.' And a week afterward, I was the owner of a pair of tights. I still have them, unopened. Give me your address and I'll be glad to for ward them to you." "Why don't you give them to Jill?" she asked. "Oh, a million reasons. But that's not quite the end. I hung up from making the order and instantly I got hard

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  Ideally, queer teens wouldn’t need to resort to trolling gay chat rooms for information or acceptance. At the same time, the Internet has provided an unprecedented pathway to normalizing and embracing sexual identity. Lizzy offered a glimmer of how that might begin, as did the young woman who’d found online support for her asexuality. But it was nineteen-year-old Amber, at a college hundreds of miles from Lizzy’s, who best illustrated the potential (and a little of the weirdness) of our hyperconnected world. After introducing ourselves in the chilly hotel lobby, we headed up to my room; Amber settled into a wingback chair under a circle of lamplight and began to tell me how, even while keeping up the appearance of the straight, popular girl her parents expected her to be, she was secretly working through something else online, something she didn’t always understand, building a second identity that, in the end, proved the most real of all. Playing the Straight Girl The first time Amber misrepresented herself online, she was just nine years old, doing exactly the sort of thing parents fear: chatting with strangers on a gaming site. “People would try to start these sexual conversations with me,” she said. “I don’t even know if I really knew what sex was. I was just a naïve kid.” Eventually her parents wondered why she was spending so much time on the computer and checked her history. When they discovered what she’d been doing they instantly forbade her, indefinitely, from going online. Amber didn’t mind the punishment so much as her parents’ horrified reaction. “I felt like I’d been doing something really, really bad,” she recalled. “I was a wreck. I didn’t touch a keyboard again for a year.” When she did, though, she got into Second Life and The Sims, virtual worlds in which users, represented by onscreen avatars, can once again interact with one another. Whether on the Internet or a PlayStation, Amber always chose to be male. “I didn’t think anything of it,” she explained. “It was just what I liked. I would make my boy avatar, then go on these websites and talk to girls, tell them they were pretty or whatever a fifth-grader would say. I never really questioned it. I honestly didn’t even know what the word gay meant. Nobody talked about it: not my parents, not my school. Which is weird because it’s not like I grew up in the middle of nowhere: we lived near a big university. I went to a high school of three thousand students. But no one said anything. So I never questioned my sexuality.”

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  Abstinence vows do have some impact, particularly among younger teens: according to sociologists Peter Bearman of Columbia University and Hannah Brückner of Yale, fifteen- and sixteen-year-old pledgers delay intercourse about eighteen months beyond their peers (though that’s decidedly not “until marriage”) and have fewer sexual partners. But the effect vanishes if more than 30 percent of those in a given community want in. Pledging has to feel special, like membership in an exclusive club. Hence, I suppose, the lure of abstinence swag: the rings, T-shirts, notebooks, wristbands, gimme caps, and other gewgaws that declare, “Don’t Drink and Park,” or “Keep Calm and Stay Pure,” or simply, “True Love Waits.” So maybe it does, but not indefinitely and not for everything. Male pledgers are four times more likely to have anal sex than other young people, and pledgers of both sexes are six times more likely to engage in oral sex. What’s more, by age eighteen, their resolve begins to crack; by their twenties, over 80 percent of pledgers either deny or have forgotten that they ever pledged at all. The only lesson that sticks is that they remain less likely to use contraception and drastically less likely to protect against disease. Having heard Pam Stenzel warn repeatedly that condoms are useless against infections and that taking birth control pills will leave a girl “sterile or dead,” I guess I’m not surprised. Still, it’s interesting that young adults retain the unsafe-sex messages of abstinence education even as they jettison the rest. The upshot is that pledgers have the same rates of STDs and pregnancy as the general population, even though they begin intercourse later and report fewer sexual partners overall. Nor is marriage fully protective: female pledgers married younger than other women, but even those who had never previously had intercourse (about 12 percent) tested positive for STDs at the same rates as married nonpledgers. Folks such as Wilson and Stenzel like to say that waiting for your one true partner will make sex not only holier but hotter. The chemicals your brain releases during sex, they explain, will bond you to that one person, training you, Pavlov-style, to feel aroused and sensual whenever you are together. It’s a romantic notion, but, again, it does not appear to be true. A 2014 study of young evangelical Christian men offered a more objective glimpse into the post-abstinent marriage bed. It turned out the men couldn’t shake the idea that sex was “beastly” after the prohibition against it was lifted. They were surprised to find themselves still beset by temptation: pornography, masturbation, other women. What’s more, back when they were single, they had the support of other abstinent men. Once wed, they found that talking to friends about sexual problems was considered a betrayal of one’s wife, and they had no idea how to communicate with their spouses directly.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  In her mating season who can restrain her? No males seeking her need to weary themselves; In her month they will find her [looking for them]. 25 “[Cease your mad running after idols to] Keep your feet from becoming bare And your throat from becoming dry; But you said, ‘It is hopeless! For I have loved strangers and foreign gods, And I will walk after them.’ 26 “As the thief is shamed when he is caught, So the house of Israel is shamed— They, their kings, their leaders, Their priests, and their prophets— 27 Who say to a tree, ‘You are my father,’ And to a stone, ‘You gave me birth.’ For they have turned their backs to Me, And not their faces; But in the time of their trouble they will say, ‘Arise [O LORD ] and save us.’ 28 “But where are your gods Which you made for yourself? Let them get up, if they can save you In the time of your trouble! For [as many as] the number of your cities Are your gods, O Judah. [Why do not your many man-made idols run to help you?] 29 “Why do you complain and contend with Me? You have all rebelled (transgressed) against Me,” says the LORD . 30 “In vain I have punished your people [with the consequences of their disobedience]; They received no insight from correction [and refused to change]. Your [own] sword has devoured your prophets Like a destroying lion. 31 “O generation [that you are], consider and regard carefully the word of the LORD . Have I been a wilderness to Israel [like a land without food], A land of thick and deep darkness [like a path without light]? Why do My people say, ‘We [have broken loose and we] are free to roam [at will]; We will no longer come to You’? 32 “Can a virgin forget [to wear] her ornaments, Or a bride her attire [that identifies her as a married woman]? Yet My people have forgotten Me Days without number. 33 “How well you prepare your path To seek and obtain [adulterous] love! Even the most wicked of women Have learned [indecent] ways from you. 34 “Also on your skirts is found The lifeblood of the innocent poor; You did not find them breaking in [a house]. But in spite of all these things [your disobedience, your love of idolatry, your lack of compassion]— 35 Yet you keep saying, ‘I am innocent; Surely His anger has turned away from me.’ Behold (listen very carefully), I will bring you to judgment and will plead my case against you Because you say, ‘I have not sinned.’ 36 “Why do you go around and wander so much Changing your way? Also, you will be shamed by Egypt As you were shamed by Assyria.

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  Women’s feelings about their genitals have been directly linked to their enjoyment of sex. College women in one study who were uncomfortable with their genitalia were not only less sexually satisfied and had fewer orgasms than others but were more likely to engage in risky behavior. (Boys were the opposite: those who felt positively about their penises were more likely to engage in risky sexual behavior.) Another study, of more than four hundred undergraduates, found that early engagement in fellatio led to feelings of inferiority and low self-worth among girls; by contrast, cunnilingus at the same young age was associated with greater self-awareness, sexual openness, and assertiveness. Young women who feel confident masturbating during sex, meanwhile, more than double their odds of orgasm in either hookups or relationships. So how young girls feel about “down there” matters. It matters a lot. The Psychological Clitoridectomy Sex is probably not the first thing that jumps to mind when you think about Indiana. But it happens that the state university in Bloomington is home to the Kinsey Institute, a center of research on sexual health founded by biologist Alfred Kinsey. I flew there one icy winter afternoon to meet Debby Herbenick, an associate professor at IU’s School of Public Health. Herbenick, who is also a sex columnist and the author of books such as Sex Made Easy, was the very picture of the modern sexpert: in her late thirties, with long, dark hair and cocker spaniel eyes, and dressed in a chic houndstooth minidress with over-the-knee boots. Her own research is in an area called genital self-image: how people feel about their private parts. Over the past few years, she said, young women’s genital self-image has been under siege, with more pressure on them than ever to see their vulvas as unacceptable in their natural state: “They need to shave them, decorate them, or otherwise groom before sex,” she said. “There’s this real sense of shame as a girl if you don’t have your genitals prepared, a real sense that there is a possibility someone will judge them.”

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  8 “Nevertheless they will become his slaves, so that they may know [the difference between] My service and the service of the kingdoms of the countries.” Plunder Impoverishes Judah 9 So Shishak king of Egypt went up against Jerusalem; he took the treasures of the house of the LORD and the treasures of the king’s house (palace). He took everything. He even took the shields of gold which Solomon had made. 10 In their place King Rehoboam made shields of bronze and entrusted them to the care of the officers of the guard who guarded the door of the king’s house. 11 And whenever the king entered the house of the LORD , the guards came and carried the shields and then brought them back into the guards’ room. 12 When Rehoboam humbled himself, the wrath of the LORD turned away from him, so as not to destroy him completely; and also conditions were good in Judah. 13 So King Rehoboam established himself in Jerusalem and reigned. Rehoboam was forty-one years old when he began to reign, and he reigned seventeen years in Jerusalem, the city in which the LORD had chosen from all the tribes of Israel to put His Name. And his mother was Naamah the Ammonitess. 14 He did evil because he did not set his heart to seek and worship and honor the LORD . 15 Now the acts of Rehoboam, from the first to the last, are they not written in the records of Shemaiah the prophet and of Iddo the seer, according to genealogical enrollment? There were wars between Rehoboam [of Judah] and Jeroboam [of Israel] continually. 16 And Rehoboam slept with his fathers [in death] and was buried in the City of David; and Abijah his son became king in his place. 2 Chronicles 13 Abijah Succeeds Rehoboam 1 I N THE eighteenth year of King Jeroboam, Abijah became king over Judah. 2 He reigned three years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Micaiah the daughter of Uriel of Gibeah. A nd there was war between Abijah and Jeroboam [of Israel]. 3 Abijah began the battle with an army of brave soldiers, 400,000 chosen men. Jeroboam drew up in battle formation against him with 800,000 chosen men, valiant men. Civil War 4 Then Abijah stood on Mount Zemaraim, which is in the hill country of Ephraim, and said, “Listen to me, Jeroboam and all Israel: 5 “Do you not know that the LORD God of Israel, gave rule over Israel forever to David and to his sons by a covenant of a salt [a permanent pact, extending to each generation of Israel]?

• From Unbought and Unbossed: Transgressive Black Women, Sexuality, and Representation (2014)

  Because she experiences in her early life a rigid avoidance of the topic of female sexuality and has no access to candid, noneuphemistic information on men and female sexuality, Meridian has no familial/communal space in which to engage in dialogues on sex, let alone disclose within these contexts her experiences with male sexual misconduct. Her predicament is neither an isolated circumstance, nor one that should be understood as occurring solely within a literary (con)text. Rather, Meridian's encounters have far greater sociocultural and communal implications, as black feminist scholar Paula Giddings's "The Last Taboo" illumines. Historicizing black sexual politics within a U.S. context, Giddings posits that, given the historically precarious relationship between black people and their perceived sexual pathology within American society, certain "sociosexual conditions," as well as an absence of sex and gender discourses, pervade society and the black community and, in turn, plague black women especially." Not addressing these sociosexual predicaments has "left the community, especially its women, bereft of the help and protection so needed"; and, solutions to these conditions "have not been passed on through families or social institutions .1116 Much can be extrapolated from Giddings's assertions, which are remarkably applicable to Meridian. Such ideologies and sociosexual conditions apply to the eponymous character, who, in the face of such circumstances, and unprotected by the classical black female script or familial/communal resolutions, deliberately takes it upon herself to mediate her condition. She confronts these larger concerns and silences regarding black sexual politics, as well as the lack of familial intervention, especially on the part of her mother. Mrs. Hill is the embodiment of tradition, as it relates to community and womanhood, which, as socially constructed, entails women's expected sexual innocence and purity. The expectation is that women neither possess sexual knowledge nor exercise sexual desire or agency, all of which are considered outside the realm of femininity and womanhood and are situated within the male/masculine domain. Representative of this traditional position regarding womanhood and sexuality, Mrs. Hill, not unlike Sula's mother, Hannah, never transmits to her daughter fundamental knowledge-whether instructive, cautionary, or empowering-regarding sex or sexuality. While she does not fulfill her expected "mothering" role marked by nurturing and the intergenerational transmission of knowledge from mother to child, she does so in adherence to rigid dictates regarding female sexuality within the community of which she is a product and for which she also serves as a metonym. In this regard, she is a reflection of the community, which embraces tradition, specifically those governing female sexuality and other strictures that have detrimental consequences for women that, ultimately, go unmediated and unresolved.

• From Unbought and Unbossed: Transgressive Black Women, Sexuality, and Representation (2014)

  Marginalized in the black rights struggle, some black women looked to the burgeoning women's liberation movement as a way of challenging patriarchy and addressing issues pertaining to them as black women. Yet, the women's movement and related sexual revolution neglected to speak to the nexus of racialized gendered sexual liberation, thereby alienating black women because of racial and class demarcations but even more so because of the varying ways in which white and black women-and blacks generally-have been characterized sexually. The "Sex and Psychology" section of the October 1971 issue of Ebony magazine featured an article entitled "Blacks and the Sexual Revolution" that ruminated on the nexus of American sexual liberation and black sexual politics. Because of the historical stigmatization of black sexuality, as well as black people's active participation in the forefront of varied sociopolitical movements, much of "mainstream" America linked the sexual revolution with a "moral degeneracy" that they also associated with blackness, leading them to question if blacks were responsible for it: "Predictably, some whites have gone so far as to associate the sexual revolution with the black drive for freedom and liberation. [...] Are they [blacks] unknowingly leading the socalled sexual revolution in America, too?"39 As black sexuality was entrenched in the white literary, cultural, and social imagination as the quintessence of licentiousness, deviance, and hypersexuality, a significant portion of white America attributed the revolution to blacks, as evidenced by nationwide surveys conducted in 1967 wherein half of the respondents expressed the opinion that blacks had "looser morals" than white Americans 40 What these sensibilities and statistics reveal is the overarching extent to which "blackness" was viewed in sociosexual ways-or, what Sharon Holland considers "the erotic life of racism." The ways that "racist practice does limit human desire by attempting to circumscribe its possible attachments"; for "there is no `raceless' course of desire" but, rather, "the practiced nature of quotidian racism" and, more specifically, how these very "practices shape what we know of as 'desire."" As such, the statistics governing blackness and sociosexual dynamics illuminate not only the precise ways race, racism, and desire collide, but also illustrate, concomitantly, that what was constitutive of liberation, sexual and otherwise, varied across racial (and by extension, I would add, gender and class) lines and was not identical or homogeneous among blacks and their counterparts.