Sublime

Our culture

The element of mutual homosexuality made it seem more perverse, yet safe.

alternative universe in which sex is uncoupled from the ongoing reality of death and dying from AIDS.

think we should be challenging the very meanings we assign our sexual acts. This is the truly radical potential of S/M.”

The book, then, had a particularly generative power, helping to write into collective awareness the community it described.

if we are not safe to indulge in this playful, vulnerable, and necessary activity, pleasure ourselves and the others who fascinate us, how safe can a society be for women?

I never ceased to be amazed by the ways that feminism could be twisted to justify a morality that duplicated every prejudice held by fundamentalist Christians—except for the part about lesbians.

insists on sexual uniformity and does not acknowledge any neutral differences—only crimes, sins, diseases, and mistakes.

“No erotic act has an intrinsic meaning. A particular sexual activity may symbolize one thing in the majority culture, another thing to members of a sexual subculture.”