I think we are afraid of each other when it comes to sex, because we read so much about sex, we talk so openly about sex, we see movies and we read books; but when we are face to face with someone else, we forget our individual patterns; that we are unique. So we try to repeat other people's patterns, according to what we seen and what we heard. So most of us are very frustrated, because we don't accept our individuality as far as sex is concerned.
In your thirties, you're much more comfortable with sex. First of all, sex is something you've done more. You know you can have sex just to have sex; you can have sex with friends; you can have sex with people you love; you can have sex with people you don't like, but the sex is good. And you can joke about sex much more.
Sex is hard to write about because you lose the universal and succumb to the particular. We all have our different favorites. Good sex is impossible to write about. Lawrence and Updike have given it their all, and the result is still uneasy and unsure. It may be that good sex is something fiction just can't do - like dreams. Most of the sex in my novels is absolutely disastrous. Sex can be funny, but not very sexy.
When a clandestine couple kisses, it is much more likely that sex will immediately follow. This is because there is much more risk. Once you have kissed secretly, it is very difficult not to have sex. It would be impolite not to have sex. You have to show that you are serious about each other.
Sex is more openly spoken about than 40, 50 years ago, and I think probably in comparison to a lot of bands - certainly other contemporary pop girl bands - we're certainly not as suggestive. We talk about sex in the way that we would to our friends. As a girl group, I think it was important not to avoid those sort of things either, because it's about confronting people's idea of what women should be talking about and how they should talk about it. There's no point in shying away from subjects like that, because they exist.
I had to lie so much about sex, first when I was 15, because I wasn't supposed to be having it. And then when I got older, I lied to everybody I was having sex with, so I could have sex with other people.
People are talking about sex. They're talking about sex with their husbands. They're talking about sex with their girlfriends. They're talking about sex with their partners. And because of all of this communication, women are having much more intimate relationships, which is fantastic.
I admire some of the people on the screen today, but most of them look like everybody else. In our day we had individuality. Pictures were more sophisticated. All this nudity is too excessive and it is getting very boring. It will be a shame if it upsets people so much that it brings on the need for censorship. I hate censorship. In the cinema there's no mystery. No privacy. And no sex, either. Most of the sex I've seen on the screen looks like an expression of hostility towards sex.
Forget about sex. Just play first. Dance, sing, read to each other, breathe together - communicate. Don't count on sex to be the door to intimacy. It's the other way around: first develop intimacy skills. Then make love to enjoy them.
If you had a daily printout from the brain of an average twenty-four-year-old male, it would probably go like this: sex, need coffee, sex, traffic, sex, sex, what an asshole, sex, ham sandwich, sex, sex, etc
I think sex work gets over-mystified and overcomplicated because it's about sexuality, and women's sexuality in general. What strikes me when I look at sex worker organizations and sex worker movements, in the US especially, is that they're so in alignment with other longstanding progressive causes. If anything, sex workers have been at the forefront of some of these causes. There have always been sex workers at the forefront of social movements.
I'm not talking so much about sex - after you've seen sex in a picture, what else can happen - but violence is very bad. People think these are things you are allowed to do. I think they should be forbidden.
There have been only two taboos in the world: sex and death. It is very strange why sex and death have been the two taboos not to be talked about, to be avoided. They are deeply connected. Sex represents life because all life arises out of sex, and death represents the end. And both have been taboo - don't talk about sex and don't talk about death.
I'd really like to see smart sex writing, writing that can take sex apart and try to put it back together, that doesn't just put a box around "sex writing" and give it glaring neon lights but assumes that sex is part of everything else in our lives.
An important aspect of the ebbing of sex was that other things became interesting. Sex obliterates the individuality of young women more often than it does that of young men, because so much more of a woman than a man is used by sex.
You literally can shoot someone in the face on television and a 7-year-old can watch it. But you can't show the slight of a man's hip, because dear God, someone might think of sex. And while we all hope our kids grow up to have sex, we do not hope they grow up to shoot someone in the face.
You need to talk about sex with a sense of humor, especially because sex is a sensitive area for a lot of people. The other thing is that you may not want to tell the world everything you do in bed.