Quotessence
Home / Authors / Sheila Jeffreys
Sheila Jeffreys

Sheila Jeffreys Quotes

Political Scientist

Filter quotes by topic

AllFeminismRadical FeminismMisogynySexismWomen S LiberationWomen S RightsMale SexualityMalesMenFeministSex1960sDominanceFemininityMale DominanceMasculinityPornographyClassGenderHas Beens

Famous Sheila Jeffreys Quotes

“Male and female sexuality are very different, we are told, [...] None the less women are instructed to try to develop male sexual responses in order to be the 'ideal lover'. [...] So clearly sexual behaviour is not natural or inevitable. It can be learned where this serves the interests of male-dominant heterosexuality, and is only disconcertingly recalcitrant where such learning might serve women's interests.”

1960sFemale SexualitySexual RevolutionMale Sexuality
Book:Anticlimax: a feminist perspective on the sexual revolution
Create image

“Despite women's experience or knowledge of sexual violence, despite whatever is going on in their marriages and how their husbands behave, women are expected to engage with enthusiasm in sex. [Women] have to make a separation between the sex in which they 'let go' and become enthusiastic and the rape they experienced last night or the pornographic advert they saw on the underground this morning. What is required is either a mind/body split or an eroticising of the oppression itself.”

Male SexualityMarital Rape
Book:Anticlimax: a feminist perspective on the sexual revolution
Create image

“A woman who has experienced rape or sexual harassment in childhood or adulthood, who knows about the rape and murder of women from the media, who has seen the sexual values of men portrayed in their pornography and on billboards, has a difficult choice in the area of sex with men. She can choose to treat her man as being quite different from other men and as being in no way implicated in men's sexual violence. This is not easy and requires an awkward split in her mind. She is still unlikely to escape having her sexual and emotional responses affected by her experience and knowledge.”

Male SexualitySex Violence
Book:Anticlimax: a feminist perspective on the sexual revolution
Create image

“Starting with rape, feminists dragged into the public arena plentiful evidence that sex was not an unproblematic joy for women. The result of uncovering the huge but hidden amount of abuse that women and girl children suffered in the form of sexual harassment, sexual abuse in childhood and marital rape, was that the sexual-liberation agenda had to be submitted to critical scrutiny.”

Male Sexuality
Book:Anticlimax: a feminist perspective on the sexual revolution
Create image

“When women and girls experienced throughout life such systematic sexual aggression from men it was realistic and reasonable for women to be resistant to and suspicious of male sexuality. The focus moved away from women as the problem to a critique of male sexual behaviour and an analysis of the ways in which men's sexual violence sustained their power.”

Male Sexuality
Book:Anticlimax: a feminist perspective on the sexual revolution
Create image

“When feminist analysis moved on from stranger rape to the much more likely possibility in a woman's life of rape by a man close to her, the male establishment and heterosexual system suffered a more serious challenge. The issues of incest and marital rape strike blows at the fundamental institution of male supremacy itself, the heterosexual family. The serious contradiction faced by heterosexual women became much more pronounced as the prevalence of child sexual abuse and relationship rape was revealed. How could the trust and innocence required to get women to love and marry men, and produce children with them, be sustained in the context of this knowledge?”

RapeMale Sexuality
Book:Anticlimax: a feminist perspective on the sexual revolution
Create image

“...a consequence which the pornbrokers may not have intended. Women were able to look at pornography and for the first time had at their disposal a panoramic view of what constituted male sexuality. [...] pornography became more and more concerned with sadomasochism and much more brutal in its portrayal of women. [...] We decided we needed to study pornography, to see exactly what was in it and understand what it told us about men's attitude to women, about male sexuality and about the construction of heterosexuality.”

PornographyMale Sexuality
Book:Anticlimax: a feminist perspective on the sexual revolution
Create image