“An erection is a thought and the orgasm an act of the imagination. The male has to will his sexual authority before the woman who is a shadow of his mother and of all women. Failure and humiliation constantly wait in the wings. No woman has to prove herself a woman in the grim way a man has to prove himself a man. He must perform, or the show does not go on. Social convention is irrelevant. A flop is a flop.”

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 20

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Camille Paglia326

American writer 1947

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