Sex Wars Quotes

“The Sex Wars are over, I've been told, and it always makes me want to ask who won. But my sense of humor may be a little obscure to women who have never felt threatened by the way most lesbians use and mean the words "pervert" and "queer." I use the word queer to mean more than lesbian. Since I first used it in 1980 I have always meant it to imply that I am not only a lesbian but a transgressive lesbian -- femme, masochistic, as sexually aggressive as the women I seek out, and as pornographic in my imagination and sexual activities as the heterosexual hegemony has ever believed.”
― Dorothy Allison, Skin: Talking About Sex, Class & Literature. SIGNED.

“As a viewer, I was left torn, wanting the women to have it all, to not seem to be excluded if they dared to transgress the traditional female gender role, but finding myself presented with heroines who never did, who seemingly had to choose between heroic accomplishment and romance, and who made it more complicated to see these options as possible for other than the male-identified. This representational “either/or” is one more symptom of the so-called war between the sexes that continues to confound feminists about the roles romantic relationships play in our lives and even the idea of romance itself: how are we to be dedicated to empowering ourselves and others but also to find a real romantic connection if that interests us? (4)”
― Allison P. Palumbo