Sexualization Quotes & Sayings

Princess play feels like proof of our daughters' innocence, protection against the sexualization it may actually be courting. It reassures us that, despite the pressure to be precocious, little girls are still
and ever will be
little girls. And that knowledge restores our faith not only in wonder but, quite possibly, in goodness itself. — Peggy Orenstein

Sexualization is the performance of sexuality, the performance of sexiness. Girls are super good at that now. — Peggy Orenstein

As children become increasingly less connected to adults, they rely more and more on each other; the whole natural order of things change. In the natural order of all mammalian cultures, animals or humans, the young stay under the wings of adults until they themselves reach adulthood. Immature creatures were never meant to bring one another to maturity. They were never meant to look to one another for primary nurturing, modelling, cue giving or mentoring. They are not equipped to give one another a sense of direction or values. As a result of today's shift to this peer orientation, we are seeing the increasing immaturity, alienation, violence and precocious sexualization of North American Youth. The disruption of family life, rapid economic and social changes to human culture and relationships, and the erosion of stable communities are at the core of this shift. — Gabor Mate

Any violation of a woman's body can become sex for men; this is the essential truth of pornography. — Andrea Dworkin

Sexualization is imposed from the outside as opposed to sexuality, an understanding of the body's responses and desires and ability to communicate that, cultivated from within. — Peggy Orenstein

The APA surveyed multiple studies which found links between the sexualization of girls and a wide range of mental health issues, including low self-esteem, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, cutting, even cognitive-dysfunction. Apparently, thinking about being hot makes it hard to think: "Chronic attention to physical appearance leaves fewer cognitive resources available for other mental and physical activities," said the APA report. — Nancy Jo Sales

Survivors are damaged to different degrees by their experiences. This does not depend on what happened physically. A Survivor who has been raped will not necessarily be more damaged than a Survivor who has been touched. The degree of damage depend on the degree of traumatic sexualization, stigmatization, betrayal and powerlessness, the child has experienced. This in turn depends on a number of factors such as:
* who the abuser was;
* how many abusers were involved;
* if the abuser was same-sex or opposite sex;
* what took place;
* what was said;
* how long the abuse went on for;
* How the child felt and how she interpreted what was happening;
* if the child was otherwise happy and supported;
* how other people reacted to the disclosure or discovery of the abuse;
* how old the child was — Carolyn Ainscough

Maybe she's preemptively getting her karmic backlash for that, but there's something icky about all this. Yes, the "hello, boys" chest like two friendly chinchillas, Bigfoot ball stomper Lara Croft was oversexualized, but this is still sexualization from the opposite, somehow even creepier side of the coin. At least that Tyrannosaurus in the first game never tried to feel her up. — Yahtzee Croshaw

I don't see how being handsome can possibly harm a man. It's just another cheap privilege that took zero effort to attain. — Jamie Le Fay

Like Jocelyn, Survivors often think: * That's just the way I am
* I'm not lovable, that's why I keep having disastrous relationships
* I'm not very clever, that's why I didn't do well at school
* I'm a loner
* I'm a weak person
* I'm not very nice
* I was a difficult child
Many survivors find it difficult to accept that being sexually abused as a child can continue to affect them many years later. It may seem too fantastic, or too frightening an idea to believe.
David Finkelhor, an American researcher, has tried to explain how sexual abuse affects a child and leads to long-term problems. He suggests four ways in which childhood sexual abuse causes problems:
1 Traumatic Sexualization
2 Stigmatization
3 Betrayal
4 Powerlessness — Carolyn Ainscough

I didn't want to be someone pretending to be a woman; I wanted to know what it was like to be a sexual woman... I wanted to be alluring, passionate, and mysterious, someone men found irresistible... — Jessica Angelina Birch

Our experiences of all forms of gender prejudice - from daily sexism to distressing harassment to sexual violence - are part of a continuum that impacts all of us, all the time, shaping ourselves, and our ideas about the world. To include stories of assault and rape within a project documenting everyday experiences of gender imbalance is simply to extend its boundaries to the most extreme manifestations of that prejudice. To see how great the damage can become when the minor, "unimportant" issues are allowed to pass without comment. To prove how the steady drip-drip-drip of sexism and sexualization and objectification is connected to the assumption of ownership and control over women's bodies, and how the background noise of harassment and disrespect connects to the assertion of power that is violence and rape. — Laura Bates

It is illegal for women to go topless in most cities, yet you can buy a magazine of a woman without her top on at any 7-11 store. So, you can sell breasts, but you cannot wear breasts, in America. — Violet Rose

Stopped as attribute of a person, sex inequality takes the form of gender; moving as a relation between people, it takes the form of sexuality. Gender emerges as the congealed form of the sexualization of inequaltiy between men and women. — Catharine MacKinnon

If being premenstrual is "innocence," does that make those of us with periods guilty? And this really gets to the heart of the matter: These concerns aren't about lost innocence; they're about lost girlhood. The virginity movement doesn't want women to be adults.

Despite the movement's protestations about how this focus on innocence or preserving virginity is just a way of protecting girls, the truth is, it isn't a way to desexualize them. It simply positions their sexuality as "good" - worth talking about, protecting, and valuing - and women's sexuality, adult sexuality, as bad and wrong. The (perhaps) unintended consequences of this focus is that girl's sexuality is sexualized and fetishized even further. — Jessica Valenti

For many girls, the pressure to be considered "hot" is felt on a nearly continual basis online. The sites with which they most commonly interact encourage them to post images of themselves, and employ the "liking" feature, with which users can judge their appearance and, in effect, rate them. When girls post their pictures on Instagram or Snapchat or Facebook, they know they will be judged for their "hotness," and in a quantifiable way, with numbers of likes. Social media, which gave us selfies, seems to encourage an undue focus on appearance for everyone, but for girls, this focus is combined with a pervasive sexualization of girls in the wider culture, an overarching trend which is already having serious consequences. — Nancy Jo Sales

Let me be clear here: I object - strenuously - to the sexualization of girls but not necessarily to girls having sex. I expect and want my daughter to have a healthy, joyous erotic life before marriage. Long, long, long before marriage. I do, however, want her to understand why she's doing it: not for someone else's enjoyment, not to keep a boyfriend from leaving, not because everyone else is. I want her to do it for herself. I want her to explore and understand her body's responses, her own pleasure, her own desire. I want her to be able to express her needs in relationship, to say no when she needs to, to value reciprocity, and to experience true intimacy. — Peggy Orenstein