247 quotes
Far from poisoning the mind, pornography shows the deepest truth about sexuality, stripped of romantic veneer.
Vamps and Tramps (1994)
Everything great in western culture has come from the quarrel with nature.
Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)
When I meet gay men anywhere in the world, there is a spontaneity and a spirit of fun and mischief that lesbians seem incapable of.
Vamps and Tramps (1994)
Effeminate men have suffered a bad press the world over.
Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)
The more profound a professor’s distaste with the proceedings, the more likely he is to melt away at the end of the talk.
Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992)
Conflict cannot be avoided, but perhaps it can be confined to a mental theater.
Vamps and Tramps (1994)
The elevation of Foucault to guru status by American and British academics is a tale that belongs to the history of cults.
Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992)
Simply follow nature, Rousseau declares. Sade, laughing grimly, agrees.
Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)
When women cut themselves off from men, they sink backward into psychological and spiritual stagnancy.
Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992)
In every premenstrual woman struggling to govern her temper, sky-cult wars again with earth-cult.
Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)
Tranvestism is far more common among men, I noted, because it originates in the primary relation of mother and son.
Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)
It is not male hatred of women but male fear of women that is the great universal.
Vamps and Tramps (1994)
What feminism calls patriarchy is simply civilization, an abstract system designed by men but augmented and now co-owned by women.
Vamps and Tramps (1994)
We remain in the Romantic cycle initiated by Rousseau: liberal idealism canceled by violence, barbarism, disillusionment and cynicism.
Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)
The search for freedom through sex is doomed to failure.
Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)
Oil painting and color, said Michelangelo, are for “women and the lazy.” His sharp-edged Apollonian style is the only way to beat back mother nature.
Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)
Men who shrink from penetration of the female body are paralyzed by justifiable apprehension, since they are returning to our uncanny site of origin.
Vamps and Tramps (1994)
Lacan is a tyrant who must be driven from our shores. Narrowly trained English professors who know nothing of art history or popular culture think they can just wade in with Lacan and trash everything in sight.
Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992)
Everything great in western civilization has come from struggling against our origins.
Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990)
I have been studying it [sexuality] since before it became fashionable.