Emily Nagoski Quotes & Sayings

We also know that the brain can handle only a limited amount of information at a time; at its simplest, we can think of stress as information overload, so when there's too much happening, the brain starts to triage, prioritizing, simplifying, and even plain old ignoring some things. — Emily Nagoski

The problem isn't the desire itself, it's the context. You need more sexually relevant stimuli activating the accelerator and fewer things hitting the brake. — Emily Nagoski

Because you've dealt with the stressor," I said, "but not the stress. Your bodies still think you're being chased by the lion. — Emily Nagoski

It's like one day I just decided that it was all bullshit. Who are they to tell me I'm not amazing exactly as I am? — Emily Nagoski

So now you go into the next chamber, where the lights are off, it's quiet and calm, and it smells like home. You love it here, it's like a spa for rats. In this context, when the researcher zaps your top NAc, the same thing happens - approach behaviors. But this is where it gets crazy: When the researcher zaps your bottom NAc . . . approach behaviors! In a safe, relaxing environment, almost the entire NAc activates approach motivation! — Emily Nagoski

The best meta-emotion predictor of wellbeing is a variable known as nonjudge. — Emily Nagoski

Not being assaulted is not a privilege to be earned through the judicious application of personal safety strategies. A woman should be able to walk down the street at 4 in the morning in nothing but her socks, blind drunk, without being assaulted, and I, for one, am not going to do anything to imply that she is in any way responsible for her own assault if she fails to Adequately Protect Herself. Men aren't helpless dick-driven maniacs who can't help raping a vulnerable woman. It disrespects EVERYONE. — Emily Nagoski

This means intentionally adding distance that creates an edgy instability or uncertainty, a slight and enjoyable dissatisfaction. — Emily Nagoski

when sex is conceptualized as a need, it creates an environment that fosters men's sense of sexual entitlement. Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn's book Half the Sky illustrates how the assumption that boys require outlets to "relieve their sexual frustrations" facilitates the sexual enslavement of impoverished girls. If you think of sex as a drive, like hunger or thirst, that has to be fed for survival, if you think that men in particular - with their 75 percent spontaneous desire - need to relieve their pent-up sexual energy, then you can invent justifications for any strategy a man might use to relieve himself. Because if sex is a drive, like hunger, then potential partners are like food. Or like animals to be hunted for food. — Emily Nagoski

a woman's body and her pleasure belong to her and no one else; that it's possible to say no to intercourse without saying no to all the other things that come with it - the love and the affection and the pleasure and the play; and that my own internal experience was a legitimate guide for whether or not I wanted to try something — Emily Nagoski

Treat cultural messages about sex and your body like a salad bar. Take only the things that appeal to you and ignore the rest. We'll all end up with a different collection of stuff on our plates, but that's how it's supposed to work. It goes wrong only when you try to apply what you picked as right for your sexuality to someone else's sexuality. — Emily Nagoski

Sexual violence often doesn't look like what we think of as "violence" - only rarely is there a gun or knife; often there isn't even "aggression" as we typically think of it. There is coercion and the removal of the targeted person's choice about what will happen next. — Emily Nagoski

Medieval anatomists called women's external genitals the "pudendum," a word derived from the Latin pudere, meaning "to make ashamed." Our genitalia were thus named "from the shamefacedness that is in women to have them seen."1 — Emily Nagoski

It's not about weight or size or fat - weight is a measure of gravity and nothing else - it's about living joyfully inside your body, as it is, today. — Emily Nagoski

Emotions are tunnels. You have to go all the way through the darkness to get to the light at the end. — Emily Nagoski

Anyway, our fellow apes eat insects out of each other's fur; maybe bath bombs and body glitter are the modern human equivalent. — Emily Nagoski

Healing hurts. If you break your leg, there is no stage in the healing process when your leg feels better than it does after it has healed. There is pain and itching and loss of strength. From the moment your leg is broken, it continues to feel bad ... until, gradually, it starts to feel less bad. It's appropriate that it hurts. — Emily Nagoski

We know by now that there's no such thing as normal - or rather, that we're all normal. We're all made of the same parts as everyone else, organized in a unique way. No two alike. — Emily Nagoski

And the answer is, of course, "Ugh, patriarchy. — Emily Nagoski

Nonjudging is neutrally noticing your own internal states. — Emily Nagoski

I am done living in a world where women are lied to about their bodies; where women are objects of sexual desire but not subjects of sexual pleasure; where sex is used as a weapon against women; and where women believe their bodies are broken, simply because those bodies are not male. And I am done living in a world where women are trained from birth to treat their bodies as the enemy. — Emily Nagoski

Love Sense: The Revolutionary New Science of Romantic Relationships by Sue Johnson, — Emily Nagoski

Physical activity is the single most efficient strategy for completing the stress response cycle and recalibrating your central nervous system into a calm state. When people say, 'Exercise is good for stress,' that is for realsie real. — Emily Nagoski

But women aren't broken versions of men; they're women. — Emily Nagoski

Allow yourself to feel those old feelings, but now, instead of engaging in the habitual self-defensive patterns, begin practicing new patterns. In the process of changing the patterns, the residual trauma will emerge. Know that you can feel all your Feels and still be safe. Know that you did everything you could in that moment to protect yourself; grant yourself forgiveness for the things you may still blame yourself for, recognizing that the trauma is the fault of the perpetrator alone. And imagine yourself as you are now, safe and whole. — Emily Nagoski

Sex is an attachment behavior, reinforcing the social bond between adults. Sometimes it takes the form of passionate, joyful sex between people who are falling in love with each other. Sometimes it takes the form of desperate, grasping sex between people whose attachment is threatened. — Emily Nagoski

As Perel puts it in her TEDx talk, In desire, we want a bridge to cross. — Emily Nagoski

What you pay attention to matters less than how you pay attention. — Emily Nagoski

About 10 to 20 percent of both men and women report an increase in their sexual interest when they're anxious or depressed. But a guy who wants sex more when he's anxious or depressed probably has less sensitive brakes. In contrast, a woman who wants sex more when she's anxious or depressed is likely to have a more sensitive accelerator. — Emily Nagoski

And even though I'd love you to find meaning in every page, every paragraph of this book, cherry-pick from here, too. We're all different, so what's relevant for you is definitely, absolutely not the same as what's relevant for me or for any of the many hundreds of women I've taught. Take what's relevant. Ignore what isn't; it's there for somebody else who needs it. — Emily Nagoski

Love is having. Desire is wanting. And you can want only what you don't already have. — Emily Nagoski

We're raising women to be sexually dysfunctional, with all the 'no' messages we're giving them about diseases and shame and fear. And then as soon as they're eighteen they're supposed to be sexual rock stars, multiorgasmic and totally uninhibited. It doesn't make any sense. None of the things we do in our society prepares women for that. — Emily Nagoski

What can I say? Science is made of people, and people can be stupid. — Emily Nagoski

Should" is all about what you're "doing wrong. — Emily Nagoski

This is what science can do for us, if we let it. If offers us an opportunity to lower our defenses and experience the ways that we are all connected. — Emily Nagoski

Self-compassion is emphatically not self-esteem. Self-esteem is about self-evaluation, your perceived value as a human being, which is often contingent upon your sense of personal success in comparison with others. Self-compassion, by contrast, is unconditional and nonevaluative. We can have self-compassion when we're doing well and when we're struggling - because life has treated us harshly or because we made a mistake.23 — Emily Nagoski

we all have phalluses and urethras — Emily Nagoski