lusting for freedom

“I never felt any great loss of innocence, only great rushes of the kind of power that comes with self-knowledge and shared intimacy.”

I really like this quote because of my culture. In my culture, sex is a private thing that nobody talks with friends or talks in public. At least up to my parents’ generation, they will never feel comfortable to hear others talking about sex. Especially for females, sex is a shame and embarrassing. It is always a kind of humiliation for them when people talking them on the topic of sex. It is a stereotype that females should not be pleasant from sex. Their role in sex is to pleasure men and to be pregnant which are not true.

“Sex can look like love if you don't know what love looks like. It gives you someone to hold on to when you can't feel yourself. It is heat on your body when the coldness is inside of you. It is trying out trusting and being trusted.”

Having sex is always a good way to reduce the loneliness. Everyone feels empty inside sometime but sex is just a temporary way to reduce this feeling. It does no good on helping people get better. They feel much more lonely when they are back to their lives.

“Not at all in control of each affair, but very much in control of the mask I put on for each man, I tried on a dozen personas, played out a dozen roles, decided not to be a dozen people.”

Everyone wants to be different. Living in different life, and being a different person. However, playing different roles in sex with different people is not a proper way to achieve the difference. It sounds like a game to me, a dangerous game. Not all girls can have the strong self-control as the writer does. People get hurt in this game, both females and males.

After reading the essay “ Lusting for Freedom ”, by Rebecca Walker, I find that it has many similarities with the novel Fledgling. Both of them talk about finding oneself through sex. It is a common sense that people feel lonely, weak and lost through life. They need to find someone there to be with, to keep them away from loneliness. It is also true for vampires. However, it is not health to fill up self by having sex with somebody and then walk away. To feel in this way may be due to my culture. As people known, China used to be a feudal society. In the past, couples may not ever meet each other until the day they married. All the decisions are made by parents. This type of marriage makes virginity problem serious. Groom's mother will put a white silk on their bed at the first night of marriage so that virgin bride can blood on it. For women who lose their virginity, people used to call them slant no matter how they lose it. From this action, you can see how important virginity is for the unmarried women. Even though we, Chinese, are much open than before, I am still not uncomfortable with the ideas of either group sex, or under age sex. This not mean I disrespect them or try to judge them, it is just hard for me to image. I may understand their motives but I can never do these things. In our culture, both females and males are supposed to be loyal with their partners since the day they get married. It is a kind of shame to have affairs because the society is not allow this kind of action. Even though everyone knows how hard it is to be loyal with only one person in the long-time life, we still judge people's affair as a shame. There is less forgiveness and understanding for affairs in my culture.