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Okay, so now you see the problem (thieves #1-11) and you’re motivated to fix it (because...save the world!). But how? First, we work on ourselves to reclaim our desire. We examine our own sex lives. We try to figure out how our personal histories, experiences, and messaging around sex that we received and internalized as young people from our families, communities, friends and the media have affected our ability to access pleasure. We ask ourselves how satisfied we are with our current situation. How full is my cup? Am I experiencing the amount of pleasure I want and is/are my partner(s)? We decide that there is work to do (as there always is) and we get to work. We decide we want to reject the shame, we want to understand how women experience pleasure and we want to work towards a sex life where both (all) partners reliably achieve maximum amount of pleasure available. We want hot, mind-blowing, wild, uninhibited, super pleasurable sex on a regular basis for ourselves and our partners. So we read, research, listen to podcasts. Have conversations with our friends, reach out to therapists, sex coaches, and our parents and siblings. ((((Suggested reading: Come as you are by Emily Nagasaki, Mating in Captivity by Esther Perel, the erotic mind by jack morin, The pleasure gap by Katherine Rowland, bonk the curious coupling of science and sexuality by Mary roach, the compass of pleasure by david linden, Principles of Pleasure, April monica sexual illumination. Kim Ana I the well fucked woman, Juliet Allen, sexologist, authentic sex, secrets of a well fucked woman.))). There is so much to learn here. That sex doesn’t have to be a certain way or even a handful of ways. That you can reach for your partner outside of feeling happy and relaxed, you can have sad, tired, angry, stressed sex. You practice mindfulness and receiving, get to know what turns you on really. And our personal sex life improves. We unleash our desires, release the shame, experience satisfaction and connection, trust, vulnerability, intimacy and love. Our cup starts getting filled. And we keep working. And our sex life is earthshattering! It is passionate, wild, and uninhibited (or whatever sounds great to you)! Our cup is overflowing and we experience the positive ripple effect on other areas in our life. Depression and anxiety release their grip. Life’s stressors are manageable. We have more motivation to exercise and eat better, and we wear clothes that fit, because our bodies are cherished, pleasured, we value and respect our bodies, and we feel beautiful. We are no longer trying to mask, bury or hide a part of ourselves. We don't have to pretend or fake it. We are lit up and we are whole. And we want this for everyone.
Okay, so now we’re in save-the-world mode. But we look around and we’re the only one here. We’re alone and we don’t want to be alone. We want to help people improve their sex lives too. How do we help others dispel the myths and misinformation, heal their shame, in order to reclaim their desire and improve their sex lives and how do we change the scene so that our daughters don’t have to suffer through all the shit and do all that work? Let’s start with our daughters. Let’s dream for a moment about what it would look like if every girl had a healthy start to exploring and discovering her sexual desires. Wouldn’t it be great if each girl knew her desires and owned them confidently and joyfully? And what if the timing was perfect for her and she was able to start and pace her sexual experiences according to what she was ready for and what she wanted without peer pressure or societal, familial or religious constraints? And wouldn’t it be great if she expected her partners to ask her what she wanted and her partners took care to leave space for any answer without judgement or expectation? I have two daughters and this is exactly what I want for them. So let’s do it. The first thing we have to do is arm our girls against shame. We do this by sending the following message. Our message to our girls is this: you are in control. You are at the helm. If you want to engage in a physical exploration of your sexuality with yourself or another person (and this other person wants to do those things too), that is healthy, normal, wonderful, fun and exciting. Whatever you want to do, as long as the other person wants to do it too, is okay to do. However, determining one’s desires isn’t as easy as it sounds, especially for teenagers (but also for everyone). Differentiating one’s own personal independent desires from pressures from peers, friends, girlfriends/boyfriends, media, society, church, and families is super difficult. Therefore, we must focus on defining/highlighting/finding this distinction starting at an early age. We do this by requiring our young children (starting in toddlerhood) to ask themselves what it is that they want and when they answer, we withhold all judgement and expectation. For example, we need to ask our children questions like, “do you want to hug aunt Jenny?” Leaving space for them to stay no. And, “Did you like when I brushed your hair that way?” Leaving space without judgement for them to say no. Or even invitations like, “Would you like to hold my hand/sit on my lap/cuddle/wrestle right now?”. By doing this we teach kids to practice looking inward and listen to their bodies so that they are in tune with their own personal desires. When we leave space for any answer without religious or ethical judgement, cultural expectation or hurt feelings, we teach kids to trust their desires and that whatever they decide is perfectly okay and right for them at that moment. They are allowed to strengthen their independence, personal integrity, and discover who they are and get in touch with what they like. When kids grow up, they will hopefully be able to resist peer pressure and be able to make their own choices for all behaviors, including sexual. (We will focus on only sex related choices in this essay.) Of course, we must equip our kids with all the facts and information of unwanted pregnancies, unsafe situations, health risks etc. I of course encourage all the parents to share all the information about possible consequences of choices or actions, and make a game plan to avoid negative consequences as much as possible. As previously mentioned, I think all girls should get on the pill as soon as they might want to start engaging in any sexual activity. Just as I think boys should wear condoms and pull out to avoid unwanted pregnancies. I think these actions are reasonable and almost nullifies the risk. As kids enter the teenage years this practice of being fully in their own power, being confident with their own independent choices, and being in touch with what they really want and not allowing outside pressures or influences to muddle it, will lead to a healthy start to a sex life. Teens who know through experience that whatever choice they make is okay, will not feel pressured to engage in sexual activity before they are ready and they will not feel shame for engaging in sexual activity when they are ready. Yes! This is what we want for all our children. And, in addition to a perfectly timed eat-when-ripe start, and pace, to sexual experiences, these young adults will be able to communicate their exact desires and be much more likely to experience pleasure in their bodies for a lifetime. Gold! If we equip our daughters with personal power, the ability to know their desires through years of practice, the expectation to be asked about what they want and the expectation to be given the space to answer as they wish they will expect the same treatment from their future lovers. We hope their future lovers ask them “what do you want/like?” And we hope that their future lovers leave space for any answer. Wow. Sign me up. But it’s not easy for us parents to trust our teens in this way. We have ideas about when our sons and daughters are ready. Sexual experiences are so risky and we want to protect our sons and daughters from bad experiences. Can’t we just say ”no, not yet! You have to wait until [fill in the blank….marriage, love, you’re a certain age, whatever it may be].”? Sure, we can say it. But it doesn’t work. They will likely engage in sexual activity and just not tell us about it. There is only one effective method to make our sons and daughters wait to engage in sexual experiences longer than they want to and it’s by using shame. And, as we know from chapter 1, shame is long lasting, and harmful. So let’s not use shame, okay? Let me illustrate with an example. This happened yesterday and it is what motivated me to write this essay today. My friend’s 14 year old daughter received a text from a male peer showing a cartoon drawing of an erect cock ejaculating an apple. My friend was horrified and told her daughter to block this person and she spoke to the boy’s mother. By reacting in this way, my friend sent the message that the content of the text was bad. When that is not true. The bad thing here was the fact that the sender did not know that the recipient would welcome the text. Consent is the problem here. My suggestion to my friend was to suspend any assumptions and first ask her daughter if she liked the text, making space for any answer without judgement. It’s important to make it clear that the bad thing about sending this text is not that the content is dirty, shameful, unethical, immoral, or even against our cultural norms. The reason this text is bad is because it was unsolicited, the sender didn’t know if the recipient was into it or not. By asking the teen if she liked it, this is the distinction you are making. By immediately acting alarmed, blocking the boy on social media, and contacting his parents, the parent either assumed it was unwanted, or worse, did not even allow for the possibility that it was wanted, and therefore labeling the drawing of an erect penis, as bad. The parents message here was erect penises are bad and if you liked it, you like bad things and you better hide that side of you (at least hide it from me). This leads to shame now (if the teenager currently likes penises or drawings of them) or this will cause shame in the future (if she discovers at some point that she likes penises or drawings of them). My friend argued that a teenage girl cannot know if she herself liked it or not because it’s difficult to separate one's own desires at that age from outside influences.That there are too many pressures from society, peers, boys, etc to know oneself and one’s true independent desires. This is so true! This is exactly where we need to put all our energy! We need to teach our young girls to listen to their own wants, needs, desires starting in toddlerhood as described earlier. They need to tune in to what their body and mind are ready for. Independent of any pressure from peers, society or boys. Only by doing this do we stop shaming our girls for their sexuality. Our job as parents of these teens is still to ask the same questions we asked when they were little, “what do you want/like?” and we leave space for either answer. We must remember the truth, that the only time our teen is not making the right decision is when she is not acting according to what she actually wants. It is our one and only job to allow her to live in her power, teach her to trust herself, ask the questions, and make a smart game plan based on the facts, information, and her desires. What about boys? We talked in chapter 1 about the male ancestral baggage of being rewarded for exercising strength over women in sexual contexts. What to do about this now. Our message to teenage boys is this: if you want to have sex, you can do whatever you’d like to do, as long as the girl wants to do it too. We need to teach young men to continually, throughout the entire experience, listen to his partner and show sensitivity, empathy and patience. He needs to listen to her voice, her body, her eyes, her breathing. He needs to show her that he is attentive to what she wants, when and how she wants it or doesn’t want it. He needs to make it obvious, make it known to her, that he will be responsive to her limits, her desires, and that her safety and her enjoyment are his priorities. He should work to communicate to the woman through his actions that she is always in control and create an environment where she maintains her independence. By doing this, she is invited to explore and taste and learn about sex through experience. Her desire will grow in this environment. This is consent. In contrast, if this atmosphere at any point changes to threatening, if she senses that her partner might take liberties, fear will steal her desire and she will decide she does not want to proceed. Women can immediately sense when their independence and control of the situation is at risk and she will want out. This is sometimes when date rape or other abuses occurs. Teenage boys need to be taught to be afraid of going too far, take care to respond to their partners desires, and make it obvious that this is what they are doing throughout the entire experience. And I’ll state the obvious here, just in case someone needs it spelled out. In the long run, this benefits men. If boys can control their urges and help women foster their desire, they will be rewarded in so many ways. They will enjoy a vibrant, dynamic and robust sex life, one that can fill their cup and the cup of their loved one and they will probably get laid as much as they want for the rest of their life. Okay, so now our sons and daughters know their desires and act accordingly. Cool. But what can we do to help grown ass women reclaim their desire? We want to save marriages, by improving sex lives. We want to change the definion of sex to include acts that are pleasurable to women. We want to teach men how to pleasure women. And teach women to discover what they find sexually pleasurable. We want to dispel the myth that women do not have desire. If we do these things we will change the world. Some practical ideas. We need to challenge our friends by having conversations about sex, support erotic cinema and art and books and tv series that expand the definition of sex to include acts that are pleasurable for women, gift books written by sex researchers to family members at Birthdays and holidays, post sex positive, unshameful articles by sex educators on social media, and re-educate married men and women that they can enjoy massive amounts of sexual pleasure and the life-changing benefits that can accompany it. Maybe make a step by step instructional pornographic how to video series? Or develop a new sex ed curriculum in schools? Perhaps we should spread the word about the sexually experienced, sexy, independent, and confident mother Mary? Encourage the widespread use of birth control. Vasectomies for all! Reject religious birth control restrictions and reject the use of shame to control sexuality by the church, the patriarchy, and fight against the fears in our dna from our ancestors.
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 On how Sex can save the world.
So what? Why should we even care that much about definitions of sex and virginity, sex in movies, shortcutted stories? Why is this a problem worth solving? Because sex can save the world. That’s why. If we solve this sex problem, we can solve the world's problems! Let me explain. Imagine a world where everyone woke up each morning with a full cup. They were happy, confident, content, fulfilled. All adults would emerge from their homes every day with energy to go the extra mile at work, they would be generous and helpful with their neighbor, they would care more about the environment, take care of their health, have increased patience for their children, have more confidence and motivation to take risks and be more thoughtful, curious, creative and innovative. Yes, I’m suggesting that a fulfilling sex life can fill one’s cup like this. If all adults had fulfilling sexual experiences at night, in their homes, with their partners, and woke up with full cups, this would change the world. Optimal sex lives will increase empathy, generosity, confidence, and joy. Happy fulfilled people do not start wars, abuse or harm others. When people enjoy a fulfilling sex life they act from a place of abundance instead of scarcity, and good things happen. I’ve witnessed this personally. Women who have improved their sex life saw a massive ripple effect on other aspects of their lives. My friend was in the relationship with a man for 10 years who only thought the sex they had was for him. They had only penetrative sex without manual or oral or other stimulation, it was painful for her, and she never once climaxed in 10 years. She hated it and it showed. She tried to gain as much weight as she could and wore only baggy clothes, and underperformed at work because she wanted to be as unattractive as possible to her husband and everyone around her. She had no motivation, little patience with her children, no confidence, she was anxious and depressed. Her cup was empty. She told her doctor about her lack of interest in sex and she said it was to be expected, she looked around at the media messages and they told her she fit right in. Her husband complained about his wife’s lack of desire to his friends and they told him it was normal. Then her husband cheated on her and left her. And she was free. No sex was better than painful sex so her life improved right away. And then she entered into a new sexual relationship with a man who knew how to please a woman. Her mind was blown. She had never imagined it could be like this. She started experiencing pleasure for the first time… and she changed. She became more motivated at work. She got super fit. She was more patient with her children, more generous with her neighbors and she cared more about the environment and others. Her cup was so full she was able to pour into others. She discovered an interest in art and music. The world was not such a scary, lonely, painful place as before, she felt safe and was able to be vulnerable, authentic and take risks for the first time in her life. Her relationships with her friends got deeper and people noticed that she was glowing. She was experiencing intense pleasure, trust, intimacy and connection on a regular basis. These are things all humans need. Plus, it’s totally free and offers the greatest amount of happiness and the least amount of time! And there's more! Rutgers University sex researchers berry komisaruk and Beverly Willey in science of orgasm say that people who have regular orgasms have less stress, lower rates of heart disease, breast cancer, prostate cancer and endometriosis. And they live longer according to researcher g. Davey smith. In other words, sex can save the world. RECLAIMING WOMEN'S DESIRE, ENTRY 13 thief #11 woman are (more) affected by negative messages2/19/2024 Women are (more) affected by society’s negative messages
I think women are as sexual (or more sexual) than men. “All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which in women is insatiable.” Malleus Maleficarum, 1487. And multiple organisms. Need I say more? But I will. Sex researchers, Masters and Johnson, state that women's sexual capacity “infinitely surpasses that of man” and hypothesized that left without any “regulation” women would have voracious sexual appetites. This regulation is the negative cultural messages that have attacked women's sexuality for ions. Masters and Johnson found that women have a “significantly greater susceptibility to negatively based psychosocial influences” and this creates “a natural state of psycho sexual social balance between the sexes that has been culturally established to neutralize womens biophysical superiority.” Negative cultural messages that suppress women’s desire have actually succeeded in separating women’s bodies from their minds. Studies that measure the relationship between the mind and body during arousal, called arousal concordance, such as those of sexologist Meredith Chivers, have found that heterosexual women are physically aroused (as measured by vaginal blood flow and lubrication) by a wider variety of sexual stimuli than men but when asked, they stated that they were not aroused. The genitals of heterosexual women reacted to erotic scenes of men, women, couples and even apes, to a lesser extent and their brains did not even know it. Heterosexual men, on the other hand, were physically aroused only by women coupled or alone and their subjective reports of being aroused or not aroused mirrored their genital reactions. Culture has demanded that women ignore physical desires (as well as aches and pains). By ignoring our own needs we can better care for others in bed and otherwise (women do not know how to receive sexually. We are trained to give pleasure to others.) and we are better able to be controlled. The result is that we are now conditioned to be out of touch with our bodies and not able to tap into our desires. Even though women’s sexuality suffers more by arousal non concordance, we are all living too much from “the neck up”. Introspection is the awareness of what is taking place in your body, what it’s feeling. And it’s a lost art. We work when we’re exhausted, don’t eat when we’re hungry, eat when we’re full, endure unwanted touch, pass our days scrunched in front of a screen that doesn’t engage the physical self at all. We have little opportunity to practice and create competency in actually knowing what we feel in our body. All of this turns off the thousands of nerves throughout our bodies so we become insensate. We don’t know what is a yes for us or a no or a maybe. We don’t know what each of those feels like. Good news: sensation and pleasure can be learned. When I was 14 years old my doctor, a general family practitioner, sat me down and said the following: “When you’re ready to have sex it’s going to be great! However, listen carefully. Women need specific touches in specific places specific ways to feel pleasure. And men do not know how to please a woman, so you’re going to have to teach him, tell him and show him. If it feels good, keep doing it. If it doesn’t feel good, speak up." I think this made a huge difference in my life and I only recently realized how unique this was. My husband describes our early sex life as a constant tutorial of what I wanted. He said I was very vocal about what felt good and what didn’t. I don’t really remember this but that's probably because I didn’t think twice about it— I thought it was normal. And it should be. I credit this early explicit dialogue for setting the stage for our exceptional sex life. In Katherine Rowland’s book The Pleasure Gap, she states that “Low desire is a result of how, owing to the greater culture, we hold ourselves back, condemn our fantasies,foreclose on what we really want, and sell ourselves short on the idea that sex and love must look a certain way. Women push ourselves toward physical encounters that we either do not want or for which we have not allowed desire to adequately develop. Sexual healing and erotic growth have little to do with tricks or techniques or even how we choose to configure our connections, and almost everything to do with liberating the imagination, with sensing an internal flicker of I want that-whether that was painting with body fluids, being dominated, or just having missionary style sex that lasts longer than three to seven minutes- and feeling empowered to act accordingly.” To wrap up this chapter I want to leave us with one woman’s description of what it’s like to realize that her desire has been stolen, and start to reclaim it. For her, she had to focus on what it is to feel desire. In this culture, for all the reasons previously stated and more, in partnered relationships, women are often the lower drive partner and they do not get to steep in the sensations of desire. It is like being force fed your entire life and then suddenly being allowed to work up an appetite. She felt hunger for the first time and that feeling of hunger is amazing. Women who have experienced this transformation realize the centrality of sexuality in their lives. “Sexuality has made all of my life so much richer, physically, emotionally. It is the cornerstone to me feeling alive and joyful in the world. And I would love to have that part of me turned on until I die.” Underutilization of birth control due to religious restrictions or lack of access
“Contraceptives are the greatest life-saving, property-ending, women-empowering innovation ever created.” (Melinda Gates) Birth control is wonderful, amazing and underutilized. I’m a huge fan, HUGE fan! Sex is not for procreation only. Sex is also for connection, intimacy, and pleasure. In order to fully experience what sex can offer, men and women need freedom to use contraceptives. Women benefit in so many ways from the use of contraceptives. Women can reclaim their desire for pleasure, and enjoy sex, free of the ecomomic, social, and heath dangers of an unwanted pregnancy. All girls who are interested in being sexually active and not getting pregnant should be on the pill. Boys who are not ready to be fathers should wear condoms and pull out. Men who don’t want (any more) children should get vasectomies. I love vasectomies!! Seriously, #vasectomiesforall! We must work to provide education and access to contraceptives to all populations around the world. And we must question authorities like the Catholic Church when they prohibit its use. It’s crazy to me that the Catholic Church recognizes the beauty, joy, and value of sex within marriage but in the same breath, they say that married Catholic couples are expected to mix sperm and an egg together and trust that God, in all his wisdom and power, will correctly determine when to create a life. The Catholic Church demands that we continue to make ourselves vulnerable to unwanted consequences because God will save us/He knows best/Trust in Him. This type of thinking is irresponsible at best, and dangerous and destructive at worst. When contraception use is denied to a couple, their ability to connect sexually, freely and without consequence, is also denied to them. Unless they want unlimited children, a catholic married couple’s sex life deteriorates under these stressful circumstances, leaving frustration, disatisfaction, and confusion in its wake. Abuse and assault
Abuse and assault steal women’s sexual desire. Violence against women is common and widespread: one woman in every 3 has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime. Woman are vastly more often the victims than men: 91% of victims of rape and sexual assault are female, 9% are male. And men are almost always the perpetrators: Nearly 99% of rape and sexual assault perpetrators are male. (Us dept of justice) Pop culture will tell us this is because men have a higher sexual desire than women. First, I don’t believe that statement is actually true at all, and second, it is certainly not the cause of sexual violence. Abuse and assault have nothing to do with sexual desire and everything to do with the biology of procreation of the species and evolution. Let me explain. Just as modern women are plagued by outdated messages in our dna from our ancestors, men must also fight against messages in their bodies from the past. In human history, modern civilization is relatively recent. It was not that long ago that humans lived in caves and life was brutal and barbaric. Since men can impregnate many women at a time and women cannot be impregnated by many men at a time, evolution rewarded strong men who impregnated as many women as possible. These are the genes that make up the men we are dealing with today. Their ancestors were strong and had lots of sex with lots of different women. And unfortunately, evolution was not too concerned with whether or not the women wanted it. I believe this lingering message in men's dna explains why men abuse women at a far greater rate than women abuse men. Let me be clear. Does this message excuse it? Absolutely not. But in order to fight against something, it is helpful to examine its roots, right? Men must recognize these dominant, violent, powerful and dangerous messages from their bodies, thank their ancestors for the work they did for our species, but then recognize that these characteristics and actions do not have a place in modern civilized society and do the work to retrain their bodies and minds for themselves and future generations. We talk about how to help men do this. More epigenetics.
Another fear that is no doubt passed on to future generations is the fact that sex could have very dangerous consequences for women back in the day. If a woman got pregnant, birthing the child was dangerous and death was a real possibility due to lack of medical knowledge and availability. Or if a woman was pregnant and didn’t have a man to care for her, she and her child might be shunned, starve and die. Even in the absence of pregnancy, the fact that a young woman has lost her virginity was sometimes enough to shun her from society. The Witch Wound
What we know about witches is this. They were medicine workers, midwives, nurses, pharmacists, counselors and healers. They were able to be financially independent from men and therefore did not have to get married to survive. They enjoyed their independence and sexuality with whom they pleased. They formed tight social bonds to work and learn together with other witches, passing on experience from friend to friend and mother to daughter. All of this was too powerful and too dangerous and difficult to control so they had to be killed. Witch hunts were well organized smear campaigns, initiated, funded and executed by the church and state because the witches represented a religious, political and sexual threat to church and state. (Hammer) The “ crimes” of which they were charged were 1. Accused of “sexual crimes against men, in other words ‘female sexuality’. 2. Accused of being organized and 3. Accused of having magical powers to affect health either harm or heal. That’s right, even witches who were healing people, were burned because powerful women who were independent were too dangerous “when a woman thinks alone, she thinks evil.” (The melleous. Witches, Midwives, and Nurses. A History of Women Healers by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deridre English) The witch hunts of the 14th-17th centuries were horrific for all women who lived through it. There were thousands upon thousands of executions, live public burnings at the stake meant to incite fear. Women were being systematically killed for being brave, different, independent, and sexual. Women were also tortured to confess, reveal more witches and rewarded for turning against other women. Basic survival instincts taught women to lay low, don’t take any risks of showing your power, independence, talents, bravery, or sexuality and don’t trust other women. Fall in line, succumb to expectations of society even if they aren’t right for you, or die. Why does this matter today? All this fear of being burned at the stake still lives in our bodies today. Studies have shown that fear can travel quickly through generations in our dna. We inherit the fears and lessons from our ancestors biologically, it’s called epigenetics. No doubt the witch wound is affecting modern women's ability to assert her full power and this fear of standing out, taking risks, going against society’s pressures is robbing us of our access to our desire today. Virginity and the language surrounding it
Virginity is something that is lost, like afterward, the woman is less than she was before. The woman gives it away as if it is not something she does for herself but instead a gift she gives for someone else’s enjoyment or use. And it’s a One Time Thing, that after you’ve lost it or given it away, it is something you can’t undo, it’s gone, you’re changed and you can’t get it back. The fear of forever being changed is real. Associating the word purity with virginity and unpure with sexually experienced, is masterfully robbing woman of their desire. Who wants to be unpure? And just like the word sex itself , virgin status relies on penis penetrating vagina sex. Despite these messed up messages, young women’s desire fights for survival and they participate exclusively in oral or anal sex while desperately trying to hold on to something called their “virginity“. We need to squash this obsession with virginity altogether. It’s meaningless and powerful and robbing women of their desire. Shame.
Media, the church, our families, the patriarchy, the historical treatment of women, and the historical dangers and consequences of sex for women have successfully and masterfully introduced so much shame into female sexuality that it has robed us of desire. I’ve mentioned shame a couple times already because I think it’s a big reason we don’t talk about sex. When the message is women don’t want sex they feel shame and when they do want sex they feel shame. All the teachings about wait until marriage, masterbation is bad, emphasis on purity and virginity are filling us with shame that does not go away. The church is the largest culprit here. I just discovered that the church actually changed the definition of the word virgin! A long time ago, the word virgin was used to describe sexy goddesses and meant an independent woman, wholly in her own power, owning herself. It did not mean sexually inexperienced, often quite the opposite. And doesn’t this definition fit Mary so much better?! She is a brave, confident woman who does not shy away from giving birth to the lord savior and her pregnancy suggests that she was sexually experienced. If this type of Christian woman had been our example, how would Christian women's ideals be different? Wouldn’t it have been great if we were encouraged by the church to be sexy, confident women, fully embracing our own power, not shying away from hard things? Instead this was too dangerous and the church changed the meaning of the word to better control women. Mary was instantly transformed to an inexperienced, pure, unpleasured woman, and therefore she was waiting, reliant, dependent, following, controlled by men. Effectively, all Christian women were robbed of their sexuality. The church took our power and our independence, and instead weaponized sex and demonized desire and errantly upheld purity and inexperience as the example to aspire to! How cruel! This reminds me of the historical burning/drowning and other violent treatment of the witches. But before we can talk about the “witch wound”, there is more to unpack about “virginity”. RECLAIMING WOMEN'S DESIRE, ENTRY 6 thief #4: The manipulation of the message of the #metoo movement2/19/2024 Manipulating the message of the #metoo movement.
The #metoo movement was hijacked by the patriarchy to convince society that women hate all things sex related. The media shortened women's stories of assault and abuse so that their meaning actually changed. The changed meaning is subtle and difficult to notice but the impact was devastating. It happened like this. The woman in the interview clip says, “He grabbed my pussy when I didn't want him to!” And the interviewer gasps and says, "That’s terrible! He grabbed your pussy! I can’t believe it! How dare he! It's wrong to grab someone's pussy." The message becomes about the act, not about the woman's consent, or power or voice. The message becomes that women don't want men to touch them, in fact, to touch a woman is wrong and only bad people do it. This is so harmful because it robs women of their desire. Similarly, I just watched the Bikram yoga documentary on Netflix and a woman told a story that was meant to illustrate the guilt of a man named Bikram as a predator. The woman explains that one night when she was giving a man, Bikram, a massage, he asked her to massage his dick. She said no, I don’t want to do that. He said okay, no problem, don’t worry I won’t ask again. And that was it. This story is told as if she was an assault victim. So the message is that women never want to touch a dick and to be invited to touch a dick is assault. Women who love massaging dick and are so happy to be invited to do it are shamed. Men are told never to ask a woman to massage his dick, or be prepared to go to jail. Our desire is being taken away from us. Consent and only consent is the deciding factor in separating a experience of pleasure from assault. This point must be emphasized and made clear but instead it is being left out of the story. And the effect is scary damaging and robbing women of their desire. RECLAIMING WOMEN'S DESIRE, ENTRY 5 thief #3: the false narrative that marriage kills your sex life2/19/2024 Society tells us that marriage kills your sex life
Society has another message for us; that sex within marriages isn’t as good as it was before marriage. Movies reinforce the idea that married couples do not have sex or at least they do not have the kind of hot sex worth watching. Have you ever noticed that movies show a ton of hot sex between people who are not yet married and then as soon as they are married there are no more sex scenes? It’s as if married sex is seen as gross and uninteresting. When, in my experience, the exact opposite is true. The longer I am with someone, the better the sex gets. Years of building trust, intimacy, passion and vulnerability, and hundreds of moments of shared pain and joys can translate to abandoning all inhibitions and diving into pure pleasure in the bedroom. It takes a lifetime to get to know a body and a mind, what drives it crazy with desire, to touch where and how and when and how fast and how hard is an art and a skill you’ll want to spend decades exploring. Married sex is super hot and it’s confusing that no one wants to talk about it. My friends used to talk a lot about sex before we all got married and then, after marriage, suddenly no one wants to talk about it. Believe me, I’ve tried. One friend told me that it felt like a violation of her husband’s trust to talk about their sex life with her friends, that this topic was too private and too intimate to share. This friend in particular is really struggling to find any pleasure in the bedroom, has no interest in being intimate with her husband and their relationship is suffering. I fear that this claim to respect one’s privacy is in actuality, fear of being fully known. It’s shame. I think we need to push ourselves to be vulnerable, and authentic, with our friends, if they are worthy of it of course. Make sure you have good trustworthy friends who have your best interest in mind at all times. But then we must talk! Married sex is super important to talk about for lots of reasons. No one is saying an amazing sex life in a long term, monogamous relationship is easy! As mentioned earlier, we are always changing. What pleasured her last time might not be what she wants this time. We need to share tips, fears, struggles, and support. This is when good sex really matters; when keeping a family together depends on it. Great sex is more important and can be hotter than ever when you’re married but we cannot expect everyone to do it on their own. And the unwillingness to talk about it is perpetuating the problem, and causing misunderstanding, misconception, shame, dissatisfaction, infidelity, failed relationships and broken homes. By sending the message that married couples don’t have hot sex lives, the effect is similar to the last issue, it stops the couple from seeking a solution and improving their situation because they think it’s normal. Here is an example to illustrate the point. I told my friend about my passion for helping people improve their sex lives and she reassured me that her sex life was great. I was so happy for her! She’s 40 years old and married with three young kids. I wanted to know more. Like, what did she think contributed to their great sex life when so many other couples in her position are struggling? After further discussion, it was soon revealed that she and her husband had sex twice a year. And she wished it was more often, a lot more often. And he wished it was more often, a lot more often. Even though both partners wanted it to change in the same way, they couldn’t make this change. Even with this obstacle looming, she still described her sex life as great because she thought that she was doing better than other married couples. That having great sex twice a year was pretty good, comparatively. And maybe she’s right. But it can be better. RECLAIMING WOMEN'S DESIRE, ENTRY 4 thief #2: the false narrative that women don't like sex2/19/2024 Society tells us that women don’t like sex.
It’s obviously not true that women don’t like sex, but the effect of this message makes it true. Let me explain. What really happens is this: in your teens and 20s hormones were raging so much for both sexes that women responded enthusiastically to penis penetrating vagina sex. Mens experience was “she likes this. She wants this.” It was working for everyone. So everyone kept doing it. And understandably, after years of only experiencing penis penetrating vagina non pleasurable sex, women don’t like it any more. Hormones are not totally overwhelming their bodies and they become more discerning about what they like. Women’s needs change their whole lives, we are always developing and maturing. This is not the problem. The problem is that couples give up because of the cultural lie they are told, that women don’t like sex. Women in their 30s or 40s start being less enthusiastic and their partners “knew it was coming”. I want to teach men and women not to give up just because what you did in your 20s is no longer working. Men have been conditioned to expect a lack of sexual desire in their wives so when it happens, they think it’s normal and there is nothing to do about it. They are not concerned or motivated or hopeful to improve the situation. The messaging to husbands today, that it’s normal if your wife isn't interested, stops any solution before it starts. They wait for it to happen to them and when it finally does, they find support at the office/locker room/happy hour and enjoy commiserating with their buddies who are in the same boat. My male friend posted a meme on Facebook recently that horrified me and illustrates this point. The meme read, “If you have a dad you really should be thanking him for bringing you into this world because your mom probably wasn’t in the mood.” He even captioned it with “#persistance”. It had 50 likes and 2 shares and comments from my female friends like, “omg so true and so funny!”. There is a lot to unpack here; the public disrespect for his wife, blatant support of rape culture, and “if you have a dad” wha? But even more damaging than these is the unmasked messaging to men and women that women do not have desire, do not deserve to have desire, if a woman has desire she should be ashamed of it, and a couples unsatisfactory sex life is all the fault of the woman and there is nothing anyone can or should do about it. This man is seeking and receiving unwavering support from his community on all of these points, even the women, which shows how deeply engrained this message is and how successfully it has been received. The most bazaar thing about this type of public statement is that what he’s really saying is that he's bad in bed. Most of the time, woman's "low libido" might just be good judgement. If the sexual experiences available to her with him are not pleasure-filled, then no wonder she's not interested. The camaraderie men experience around not getting laid enough by their wives is so crazy to me because they are all bragging about the same thing: that they don't know how to please their partners. And it’s robbing women of their desire. And somehow is her fault. Both partners can work together to solve this problem. The man is not pleasing his wife in bed, but women often don’t know the possible pleasure field available to her or if she does, she does not communicate it to her partner. First, women need to figure out what they need to experience mind blowing pleasure and men need to be taught how to pleasure women. We need to educate these men on how to please their wives and when they do, they will uncover a ravenous wild creature full of sexual, creative and intimate desires and your life will be rich with connection and fulfillment. This is a win-win here folks. Trade the locker room camaraderie for revolution in the bedroom. Put the effort in, it’ll be worth it I promise. By definition.
In popular culture sex is understood as short for sexual intercourse which is understood as coitus which is defined by vaginal penetration by the penis. The church, our parents, sex education teaches us that sex means penis in the vagina. This definition of sex is reinforced over and over again through showing only male oriented sex in movies and porn. The problem is that most women do not reliably experience pleasure during this act alone. Most women need stimulation of the clitorus or additional acts of “forplay” to experience pleasure. In this way, by the very definition of sex, female pleasure is excluded/denied/dismissed. Women are not pleasured by sex therefore women do not like or want sex. Therefore, desire for sex is taken away from women. In contrast, the definition of the word sex is the act that pleases the man. Penetration of the vagina by the penis is very pleasurable for men and leads to his orgasm. On the systematic and systemic ways women have been robbed of their desire.
Let‘s start by laying out the problem. I’m 40 years old, married, with two kids. And In the last 5-10 years we have been through some tough stuff; a massive home addition project, death of a parent by Covid, death of friends, addict parents, parent in legal trouble, parents living with us, abusive coworkers, toxic work environment, messed up national politics, widespread misinformation, insurrection, the murder of George Floyd and the burning of my city, and a global pandemic. Through it all, I relied heavily on a solid sex life. My husband and I had a lot of sad sex, angry sex, tired sex, and stressed out sex. We turned toward each other in bed to support each other through these tough times. In the worst of times, I remember being so thankful to be able to give and receive support in this way. It got me through it. But I look around and I see that others do not share this method of filling each other's cup. A lot of my friends are also partnered and midlife. And instead of strengthening and varying their sex life, the ugly statistics are coming to life in my personal circle. Divorce is starting to happen on the regular. Infidelity is sneaking in. There is an overall dissatisfaction with one’s sex life at this stage. The story is that often the wife doesn’t want sex as often as the husband and resentment builds on both sides. This is a big problem. When I see a problem, I want to solve it. (I love solving problems so much, I’ve been a high school math teacher for 18 years.) I have a message for both men and women in this chapter about why so many couples are in this position. I hope to explain what has gone wrong and by exposing it, and then working to reverse it, we can help women (and consequently, men) enjoy sex so much more. Following is a list of some of the ways women have been robbed of their desire. My hope is that understanding how our desire has been stolen from us can help us reclaim it and improve our sex lives now and in future generations. Intro.
I’m passionate about good sex. It is my life’s mission (purpose) to help adults improve their sex lives. I want to spend my days dispelling cultural messages that exist to control women and rob them of their desires and pleasures. Women love sex. But there are many things preventing men and women from achieving satisfying sex lives. I look around and see couples suffering, men suffering, women suffering, under these false understandings. They have, lying next to them in bed, an untapped source of great joy and fulfillment, the solution to so many of their problems. It’s free, it’s a win for you and it’s a win for a loved one and there is no cost and all you need is the knowledge to reach out and take it and it’ll change your life. I think every person can achieve pleasure-filled sex deep into old age and if this is something you’re interested in, then this is for you. I should also mention that the perspective of this essay reflects my lived experience as a heterosexual, cisgenered female (but I don’t believe these ideas are limited to this group). |
AuthorSarah Beron, sex and relationship coach, mother, and wife. ArchivesCategories |
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