“Even with social media, it’s really become so much about who’s got what, and whose kid is doing this, and whose partner has a better career, and a nicer house—all of that! That’s what I found in almost every place.”— Lisa Taddeo, hazlitt.net
“Many people don’t like being touched if they are angry, but women seem to have more trouble than men with arousal if they are upset.”— Naomi Wolf, amazon.com
“The difference in our bodies’ responses may make male-female connection especially tricky in such moments: this one simple difference in female reaction to different ways of being spoken to is one enormously significant reason that so many sexual approaches from men to women in long-term relationshi…”— Naomi Wolf, amazon.com
“The woman literally often can’t take an intimate touch if her lover has recently been verbally disrespectful, or has failed verbally to soothe 'the Goddess in her' at some point beforehand, priming the release of oxytocin and vasopressin in her body and preparing the parasympathetic nervous system t…”— Naomi Wolf, amazon.com
“Just as being valued and relaxed can heighten female sexual response, “bad stress” can dramatically interfere with all of women’s sexual processes.”— Naomi Wolf, amazon.com
“To enter the transcendental state that takes the female brain into “high” orgasm, you absolutely need to feel safe; safe from “bad stress,” in the sense of knowing you are entering a trance state in the presence of someone who will protect you if necessary at the very least, and not endanger you or…”— Naomi Wolf, amazon.com
“One could say that she actually becomes, biochemically, a wild woman or a maenad. She becomes so disinhibited and impervious to pain that it is as if she is in a state of altered consciousness. Women in “high” orgasm go more deeply into this trance state than at any other time. Judgment is suspended…”— Naomi Wolf, amazon.com
“The full melting response or “high orgasm” in women—which I would define (though our language around female sexual response is so inadequate) as that kind of orgasm that most intensely induces the most complete possible trance state and that most involves all the body systems, so that afterward the…”— Naomi Wolf, amazon.com
“The autonomic nervous system also responds to a woman’s sense of safety or danger. It sends the signals to the brain and then to the body that one is safe, so one can relax, eat, and digest; or relax and sleep; or relax and make love.”— Naomi Wolf, amazon.com
“Gradually, I reexperienced the sense of deep emotional union, of postcoital creative euphoria, of joy with one’s self and with one’s lover, of confidence and volubility and the sense that all was well in some existential way, that I thought I had lost forever.”— Naomi Wolf, amazon.com
“That’s what explained vaginal versus clitoral orgasms? Neural wiring? Not culture, not upbringing, not patriarchy, not feminism, not Freud?”— Naomi Wolf, amazon.com
“This biological, evolutionary connection for women of possible ecstasy to emotional security has implications that cannot be overstressed. Relaxing allows for female arousal.”— Naomi Wolf, amazon.com
“Many of the signals that either stoke or diminish female desire have to do with the female brain’s question: Is it safe for her?”— Naomi Wolf, amazon.com
“The female body reacts in the same way to “bad stress” whether the context is the birthing room or the university or the workplace. If the female brain senses that an environment is not safe, its stress response inhibits all the same organs and systems, regardless of setting.”— Naomi Wolf, amazon.com
“Female sexual pleasure, rightly understood, is not just about sexuality, or just about pleasure. It serves, also, as a medium of female self-knowledge and hopefulness; female creativity and courage; female focus and initiative; female bliss and transcendence; and as medium of a sensibility that feel…”— Naomi Wolf, amazon.com
“Could it be then that women's famous slowness of arousal to men's, complex fantasy life, the lack of pleasure many experience in intercourse, is related to this cultural negation of sexual imagery that affirms the female point of view, the culture prohibition against seeing men's bodies as instrumen…”— Naomi Wolf, amazon.com