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Quote by Jenny Erpenbeck

“Quasi avesse tenuto una breve rappresentazione teatrale, l'avvocato si mette una mano sul cuore e si inchina. Poi apre la porta a due battenti e dice: Permettono? a indicare che il colloquio è finito. Richard sa benissimo anche lui che fuori sono in attesa molti rumeni, vietnamiti e africani. Passando con Ithemba davanti al guardaroba e vedendo un cilindro sulla mensola per cappelli, gli viene quasi il dubbio che questo avvocato dalle sembianze di un gufo sia arrivato in volo, dal lontano Ottocento, direttamente nel ventunesimo secolo – in questo secolo nuovo e tuttavia così vecchio, con i suoi interminabili flussi di esseri umani che, dopo essere sopravvissuti alla traversata in un mare vero, rischiano ora di affogare nei fiumi e nei mari di carte.”

Quote by Jenny Erpenbeck

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Author

Jenny Erpenbeck
Jenny Erpenbeck

Jenny Erpenbeck, born on March 12, 1967, is a German writer known for her unique narrative style and profound exploration of history and personal memory. Her works often span different times and spaces, showcasing an in-depth reflection on humanity and a unique perspective on history. more

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“You are far too well informed a man to pretend that you don’t know what little game you are playing. If you have presentiments of death, it is because of certain wishes. You desire to escape sexual impotence - impotence, in short - and you wish for death to save you from all that. It is one of the virility’s favorite ploys.”

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“Also, for the man, there is still one more loophole. If, by the grace of God, she’s humble by nature and and ready to assume guilt, she might just think: ‘I don’t turn him on,’ or ‘He doesn’t love me any longer.’ And there it is, then understanding between the sexes, my friend. You can always blame it on her.”

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“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.”

HumansSelf HelpSexualityCounselingImpotenceSexual HealthExperimentalExperimental PsychologyExualityPhysical Evolution
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“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. 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.”

HumansSelf HelpSexualityCounselingImpotenceSexual HealthExperimentalExperimental PsychologyExualityPhysical Evolution
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