I came across these two quotes on sex from different centuries - two different cultural and era-related opinions that are in sharp contrast to each other. The funniest thing is that Twain compares sex to farts and Paglia assumes that women are not so in tune with the metaphysics of sex - what do you think?
“Of all the various kinds of sexual intercourse, this has the least to recommend it. As an amusement, it is too fleeting; as an occupation, it is too wearing; as a public exhibition, there is no money in it. It is unsuited to the drawing room, and in the most cultured society it has long been banished from the social board. It has at last, in our day of progress and improvement, been degraded to brotherhood with flatulence. Among the best bred, these two arts are now indulged only in private— though by consent of the whole company, when only males are present, it is still permissible, in good society, to remove the embargo on the fundamental sigh.” Mark Twain 1879
“Sex is metaphysical for men, as it is not for women. Women have no problem to solve through sex. Physically and psychologically, they are serenely self-contained. They may choose to achieve, but they do not need it. They are not thrust into the beyond by their own fractious bodies. But men are out of balance; they must quest, pursue, court, or seize…. How often one spots a male pigeon making desperate, self-inflating sallies toward the female, as again and again she turns her back on him and nonchalantly marches away. But by concentration and insistence he may carry the day. Nature has blessed him with an obliviousness to his own absurdity.” Camille Anna Paglia 1990
