SAMUEL R. DELANY

Shorter Views - Queer Thoughts and the Politics of the Paraliterary

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In a population that basically feels that Sex Is Bad—or at best a necessary evil—often sex will occur, whether within the bounds of marriage or outside it, only at those moments of extreme need, and then in a paroxysm of guilt, so that the sexual incident itself is likely to be infrequent, desperate, brutal, and brief—and satisfactory, if such a word can even be used for an act which, in their different ways, both "perpetrator" and "victim" probably come to dread—for only the most basal needs of the more aggressive partner.