Sara Pascoe > Quotes

“Normal' is a concept formed by averages but it changes with education and tolerance.”
― Sara Pascoe, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body

“So you’re unique and unusual, well done, now pop off and eat your banana.”
― Sara Pascoe, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body

“Any time you see the word ‘detox’ someone is trying to sell you absolute waste-of-time crap. Your”
― Sara Pascoe, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body

“What strikes me now is why did they send the boys away? Why don’t boys get educated about menstruation? Is it because the teachers think girls will be embarrassed? I feel like the secrecy of it, the action of segregating us, sends the message that we should be ashamed. That our periods are something to hide from the opposite sex.”
― Sara Pascoe, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body

“These ‘historical’ texts made us angry because they didn’t feel like a reflection of some other time, but of our own.”
― Sara Pascoe, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body

“What I find most troubling is the recent expectation for sudden weight loss after pregnancy. It’s perverse that the finest compliment given to a woman who has just made a person is that she looks like she hasn’t.”
― Sara Pascoe, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body

“women’s bodies respond to all kinds of sexual stimuli not always because they want to have sex, but because sex might ensue anyway. That lubrication is not an ‘I’m turned on’ signal so much as an ‘I don’t want to be damaged’ response. And we evolved it because we had to.”
― Sara Pascoe, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body

“Our culture has trained us all to interpret males as active and females as passive, but in almost every species I have read about it is the female that initiates sex. They do this with pheromones and scents and behaviours and they get males excited and then yes, sometimes she’ll have him follow her around for hours or kick and bite him, but that’s to ensure that he is fit for purpose.”
― Sara Pascoe, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body

“It’s perverse that the finest compliment given to a woman who has just made a person is that she looks like she hasn’t.”
― Sara Pascoe, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body

“women who’ve had breast enlargements are two to three times more likely to commit suicide than women who haven’t.”
― Sara Pascoe, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body

“a meta-study of developing and developed world nations found that the presence of a maternal grandmother was more beneficial for the survival and health of children than any other relative except a mother – that, statistically, kids are better off with a grandma around than a father.”
― Sara Pascoe, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body

“I am sorry for men because our culture tells them to introduce themselves to women who in the vast, vast majority don’t want to meet them.”
― Sara Pascoe, Sex Power Money

“the reason women are smaller and weaker is that men weren’t worth fighting over.”
― Sara Pascoe, Sex Power Money

“But maybe all of us understanding more about why bad things happen can help us stop them?”
― Sara Pascoe, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body

“But I can remember how grown-up I felt then, and earlier, since about nine. Because we age one way, in one direction, every age we are is the most grown-up we’ve ever been.”
― Sara Pascoe, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body

“Why are boys’ feelings a girl’s responsibility? This is treating the male response as unavoidable: the problem is schoolgirls’ hemlines.”
― Sara Pascoe, Sex Power Money

“Do you think it is better to be punched in the face by someone you like?”
― Sara Pascoe, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body

“Things like drinking and smoking make it worse – I had always known this but not understood why; your liver balances the hormones in your blood (or tries to) and when it’s working on stored alcohol (which it has to if you drink more than one unit per hour) then the hormones can become more unbalanced. Interesting, huh? And annoying, because downing wine and hoping it will make everything better is one of my favourite nonsensical behaviours.”
― Sara Pascoe, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body

“I am a modern lady, a cutting-edge, very recent woman. And yet the only menstrual blood I have ever seen is my own. Is that weird? I can see sex on all the movies and TV programmes, I can watch murders being enacted and people pretending to shit themselves in the street, yet no periods.”
― Sara Pascoe, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body

“Top of my head – Lot’s daughters all trying to get off with him, and two entire cities wanking and bumming so much they had to be destroyed”
― Sara Pascoe, Sex Power Money

“In hunter–gatherer societies, pre-religion and getting sacked from work, the reason we evolved to conceal our sex was that other people might want to join in. And if they are stronger than you, you might not be able to stop them.”
― Sara Pascoe, Sex Power Money

“They asked participants what colour top they had on and when their last period was, and then got slapped for asking personal questions calculated how likely participants were to be ovulating. They found 40 per cent of the ‘likely fertile’ group were wearing red or pink versus only 7 per cent of the rest, which is CRAZY but needs to be replicated with more people before I’ll be completely convinced.”
― Sara Pascoe, Sex Power Money

“but for me, my very definition of sex is a meeting of equals. When it is not that, it is something else.”
― Sara Pascoe, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body

“By masturbating every few days a man keeps his sperm fresh and energetic, vital for sperm competition. New studies also suggest that masturbating reduces the chances of getting prostate cancer and lowers stress, so it’s an all-round great way to spend your time.”
― Sara Pascoe, Sex Power Money

“This is why it’s a mystery … why have a big penis? If it doesn’t aid conception, what the hell IS it doing?”
― Sara Pascoe, Sex Power Money

“75 per cent of men agreed to sex. Just like that. Come on a date? Erm … Come round my house? I’ll think about it. Wanna have sex? COUNT ME IN. Can you guess how many of the female students agreed to the sex question? Zero. Big fat none.”
― Sara Pascoe, Sex Power Money

“Being more compact means the body can stay warm using fewer calories. It’s why people who have evolved in harsher climates like the Arctic are shorter and squatter, while people on the equator are lither and leggier.”
― Sara Pascoe, Sex Power Money

“The most important lesson of adulthood might be that just because you feel something, that doesn’t mean someone intended you to feel it. That applies to both the women in LinkedIn photos and the men making comments.”
― Sara Pascoe, Sex Power Money

“Just like a male’s large size being a strength in polygynous species, the ability to bond with sexual partners and their offspring is a strength in ours. And the more our ancestors bonded, the better they did. The more they loved each other, the harder they worked to provide and keep everyone alive and stop baby falling in the river and things like that.”
― Sara Pascoe, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body

“Birds are monogamous because their young require the input of two parents. This isn’t romance, it’s evolutionary necessity.”
― Sara Pascoe, Sex Power Money