Otto Bera > Otto's Quotes

“There has been a recent rash of authors and individuals fudging evidence in an attempt to argue that women have a higher sex drive than men. We find it bizarre that someone would want to misrepresent data merely to assert that women are hornier than men. Do those concerned with this difference equate low sex drives with disempowerment? Are their missions to somehow prove that women are super frisky carried out in an effort to empower women? This would be odd, as the belief that women’s sex drives were higher than men’s sex drives used to be a mainstream opinion in Western society—during the Victorian period, an age in which women were clearly disempowered. At this time, women were seen as dominated by their sexuality as they were supposedly more irrational and sensitive—this was such a mainstream opinion that when Freud suggested a core drive behind female self-identity, he settled on a desire to have a penis, and that somehow seemed reasonable to people. (See Sex and Suffrage in Britain by Susan Kent for more information on this.)

If the data doesn’t suggest that women have a higher sex drive, and if arguing that women have a higher sex drive doesn’t serve an ideological agenda, why are people so dead set on this idea that women are just as keen on sex—if not more—as male counterparts?

In the abovementioned study, female variability in sex drive was found to be much greater than male variability. Hidden by the claim, “men have higher sex drives in general” is the fun reality that, in general, those with the very highest sex drives are women.

To put it simply, some studies show that while the average woman has a much lower sex drive than the average man, a woman with a high sex drive has a much higher sex drive than a man with a high sex drive. Perhaps women who exist in the outlier group on this spectrum become so incensed by the normalization of the idea that women have low sex drives they feel driven to twist the facts to argue that all women have higher sex drives than men. “If I feel this high sex drive,” we imagine them reasoning, “it must mean most women secretly feel this high sex drive as well, but are socialized to hide it—I just need the data to show this to the world so they don’t have to be ashamed anymore.”

We suppose we can understand this sentiment. It would be very hard to live in a world in which few people believe that someone like you exists and people always prefer to assume that everyone is secretly like them rather than think that they are atypical.”
― Malcolm Collins, The Pragmatist's Guide to Sexuality

“I knew something was wrong the minute he didn’t come home,’ says Jo. ‘He always rang. Always.
Jo is adamant he would have found a way to call her and let her know what was happening. ‘He would have found a phone and rung me. He had every intention of coming home.”
― Nicole Morris, Vanished: True Stories from Families of Australian Missing Persons

“People experience anger when their expectations around how they should be treated don’t align with their actual treatment (or when they expect a thing to happen based on some series of actions and it does not happen).”
― Simone Collins, The Pragmatist’s Guide to Crafting Religion: A playbook for sculpting cultures that overcome demographic collapse & facilitate long-term human flourishing

“Jesus’ ministry lasted 1,350 days, spanning five calendar years (AD 29–33), fifty calendar months, and 44.36 months (calculated as being of 30.5 days’ average duration). The gospels have gaps in their narratives in which Jesus disappears from the pages of history. The gaps total 770 days, which is about two years, representing fifty-seven percent of Jesus’ total ministry time. No wonder John wrote “Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book” (John 20:30) and “There are many more things that Jesus did. If all of them were written down, I suppose that not even the world itself would have space for the books that would be written” (John 21:25).”
― James Allen Moseley

“Around two or three times a year, we would notice the wind blowing harder than usual, which meant a giant wave was coming.”
― Steven Decker, Addicted to Time

“I talk to God but the sky is empty.”
― Sylvia Plath

“to show us the way—the easier life is to handle.
'So, to begin, we have to put a sticky note on the bathroom mirror, or tell a friend to call us first thing in the morning, anything to remind ourselves to set up an expectation for Synchronicity first thing each day. Eventually, it becomes a habit.

And once all the mysterious coincidences are happening and our destiny seems to be unfolding, all that is left is to stay in that flow.”
He paused dramatically.

“And to do that,” he went on, “we have to learn to communicate what’s going on with us to others.”
“What?”
“Think about what happens when we lose the Flow,” he explained.
“Doesn’t it occur because we hit some situation where we have to interact with others who aren’t in a flow, and who can’t readily see the meanings we are seeing? The effect is to knock us out of it altogether.”

I thought about what happened to me with the skeptic. It was certainly true in that case.
“When I’m in the flow,” I said, “I usually try to get away from most people, so they can’t knock me out of it.”
“I know,” Wil said in a mock accusatory tone.

“Are you saying' 'I asked, “that I should have taken the time to talk with that skeptic, even though that’s not what I wanted to do?”

“No, I’m suggesting that you should have been open and truthful with him, maybe asking him to wait a minute while you talked to the people at the table. He was needling you, but you didn’t lose your flow because of him.
You lost it because you didn’t find a way to honestly communicate who you were and what you were doing.”

“I don’t think he was interested in hearing anything from me.”

“You’re missing the point. I’m not telling you to defend yourself or to convince him of anything. You just have to give him the truth of the situation as you see it, with the main purpose being to keep yourself centered in the flow.”
― James Redfield, The Twelfth Insight: The Hour of Decision

“Exasperatingly, we're all pretty much restricted to learning what people are like with the permanent confound of our own presence, which is why those chance glimpses of someone you love just walking down the street can seem so precious.”
― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

“They have a baby grand piano, but no one in the family plays. They have shelves of books they've never read, and the tension between the couples was so thick it nearly choked us.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Out of the Easy

“There is only one way to salvation, and that is to make yourself responsible for all men's sins. As soon as you make yourself responsible in all sincerity for everything and for everyone, you will see at once that this is really so, and that you are in fact to blame for everyone and for all things.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“It's much easier, she realized, to be on the verge of something than to actually be it.”
― Marcus Zusak, The Book Thief

“But if you flip this around, the reason women are smaller and weaker is that men weren’t worth fighting over.
Hold my bag while I victory-lap.”
― Sara Pascoe

“Mom, please don't use 'the happy voice.' It reminds me of the day Tinkles died."
"Who was Tinkles?" Sue asked around a mouthful of pancake.
"My cat. When I was five, Tinkles died choking on a mouse that was a bit ambitious for a kitten to eat."
"It was terribly traumatic for Aurelia because it was the first time she'd experienced loss." 
"What did you do to help her get through it?" 
Rosalind smiled at Mother Guardian. "Well, after a good cry, we performed an autopsy."
Aurelia reached for her mother's hand. "I never thanked you for that.”
― Therisa Peimer, Taming Flame

“What matters is that someone—that you—know me that well. When a person can see into your soul, it's hard. It forces you to be open. Vulnerable. It's much easier being with someone who's just more of a casual friend.”
― Richelle Mead, Frostbite

“Truth is a troublesome motherfucker unless it's handled properly”
― Patrick Rothfuss

“Steve had just met the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Until now his engagement to Christine had never been a concern.”
― Stephen Douglass, Kerri's War

“Engineers don’t go to confession when they screw up; they find a fix.”
― Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow

“Emile was not like you, not attached to houses. For you, houses are like people, are they not, they have a soul, a heart, they live and breathe. Houses remember.”
― Tatiana de Rosnay, The House I Loved

“Catholic.”
― Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

“The summer sun continued to rise in the sky and propel shocks of heat down on the city and the heavy moisture moistened bodies and clothing, and people fanned and wiped at sweating faces trying to survive another bitch of a day as Harry and Marion peacefully passed the day sleeping in each others arms oblivious to the reality surrounding them.”
― Hubert Selby Jr., Requiem for a Dream

“What is morality, she asked.
Judgement to distinguish right and wrong, vision to see the truth, and courage to act upon it, dedication to that which is good, integrity to stand by the good at any price. ”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.”
― Sir Walter Scott

“I like it better here where I can sit just quietly and smell the flowers.”
― Munro Leaf, The Story of Ferdinand

“Sé que mi familia es así pero este silencio me pesa. Tengo la impresión de tener millones de cosas que decir que, en el fondo, no interesan a nadie. Me viene a la memoria lo que decían los supervivientes de los campos de la última guerra al volver a su hogar: las pesadillas no se cuentan. Los demás no imaginan este género de pesadillas. Se instala, entre ellos y nosotras, una especie de statu quo que parece decir: ‘Estás aquí, se acabó, no hablemos más de ello.”
― Betty Mahmoody, For the Love of a Child

“[B]ut pain doesn't listen to reason, it has it's own reason, which is not reasonable.”
― Milan Kundera, Identity