In my writing classes for women, I teach one week entirely devoted to Eroticism and Sexuality. This is usually one of the most fun, freeing, and enjoyed classes. Women who had previously been quiet and seemed demure, bust out with racy tales of excitement, experimentation, and adventure. They light up and come alive in the telling of these stories that they’ve never told before, laughing with delight in the permission they’ve been given to express this usually suppressed part of their lives.
One of the reasons I feel that it is important to integrate this subject into my class is because it is usually so avoided in daily life, and has such a negative and shameful stigma attached to it. At a reading series I used to attend, week after week the men would write about sex, filling their pieces with sexual themes, and freely flinging about profanity, sometimes to the extreme where it seemed ungrounded, and just there for shock value.
Conversely, the women would barely even touch upon any sexual topics, and if they did, they would quietly tip-toe around them, as if to say that they were not in any part sexual beings, nor did they in any way have sexual desires. Week after week, I grew increasingly more frustrated – I wanted the women to be bolder and more courageous, to take a risk and fess up to what people, especially women, rarely talk about in polite company. I wanted them to explore sexual themes and make it alright for women to talk, think, and write about sex. I wanted them to stop rigorously avoiding it and instead, look at it, examine it, and bring their femininity, vulnerability, emotion, and even raw desire if they wished to bear on this difficult, uncomfortable, and taboo subject. I was frustrated that what was so easy and natural for the men seemed impossible for the women.
During this time, a guy dumped me because I wasn’t “sexual enough” for him. I immediately bought a black lace push-up bra to feel better about myself, but I still felt pretty bad. A few weeks later I discovered the book The Erotica Project by Lillian Ann Slugocki and Erin Cressida Wilson, and I had this feeling of recognition, like I had finally found my mentors. I had been incorporating sexuality into my writing for a few years, but up until then, I didn't see any other women who were doing it in a way that mixed emotion, vulnerability, fear, uncertainty, insecurities, and total honesty. I also felt shy and embarrassed about some of the things I had written.
I wanted permission to put my writing out there, and a place where it would fit in—a sense of community, a tribe. I wanted to know and be reassured that other women were expressing themselves in this way. There, in this book, I found women who were blazing the way and making it alright for me to explore sexuality in my writing. I devoured the book, and I loved the way they wrote about sex—with intelligence and sensitivity; sometimes quiet, demure, and innocent, and at other times raw, animalistic, and out-of-control. It was so liberating and energizing to read their stories, and I found myself, after having felt “not sexual enough,” reconnecting with that part of myself, and that power, my power, through their words.
In our society, there is something really scary about women’s sexuality and desire. It is interesting to note how few places it is acceptable for a woman to be a sexual being—basically, just when she is having sex. In all other situations we have to close these thoughts and feelings down and cut this part of ourselves off. Even in sexual situations, women can feel embarrassed and ashamed. Men, regardless of what kind of physical shape they are in, often feel comfortable and at ease walking around naked, whereas women, even when we are in outstanding shape, will wrap ourselves in a sheet and a blanket and a towel, and then throw on a bathrobe and turn off the lights if we want to get up out of bed to get a glass of water.
I remember being eight-years-old, hearing adults talk about Vanessa Williams’ nude photos during the 1984 Miss America controversy, and seeing on the news how she then resigned from her position. Twenty-three years later, not much has changed in the way people and the media pay attention to nude or provocative photos and create a scandal, as was recently demonstrated in the case of American Idol contestant Antonella Barba’s sexually suggestive photos that were posted online, or in an even more parallel example, when Miss USA contestant Katie Rees was replaced after nude photos of her appeared online. Women who are the subject of racy or erotic pictures—especially when these women are in the public eye for their (clothed) accomplishments and are trying to achieve a dream—have been and still are consistently called out, shamed, ridiculed, insulted, and punished. Why are men conditioned to feel so right about their sexuality, their bodies, and by extension, themselves, while women feel so wrong?
Author and teacher Regena Thomashauer says that, as women, we are essentially conditioned to negate our own existence and give away all of our power early on by the way we are taught to relate to our genitalia. In her book Mama Gena’s School of Womanly Arts she writes:
“During each class, I ask…what ‘theirs’ was called when they were growing up and learning to name their world. Usually, more than half the class says nothing. They say it was just referred to as ‘down there.’ But what is not named does not exist. The language we use to identify our body parts (or not) is part of how we learn to respect, accept, and celebrate ourselves. Of course, I have students whose parents did give them names for their body parts. Some are too embarrassed to share the name. Others find the name hilarious. We have had Mrs. Va-Jay-Jay, Knish, Kootchie, Princess Pee Pee, Stinky, Potty, Box, Sassy, Snorker, Hole, Mary, Puppick, Patootie, Jamido, Ya-Ya, and V-Zsa-Zsa. I would laugh, too, if it wasn’t so sad. We call a penis ‘penis.’ Can you see the roots of a woman’s internal chaos when she has nothing but these poor word choices to name the most beautiful and powerful part of her body?” (Thomashauer, pp. 72-73)
Further to this point, I recently read an article about a production of the play The Vagina Monologues at a theatre in Florida. After receiving a complaint that the play’s title was offensive, it was changed to The Hoohah Monologues. The original title has since been restored, but the message that this incident sends is that “vagina” is a bad word, so bad in fact, that it is not suitable to be out in public.
It all starts with the words available to us—how much power they hold, the deeper meaning that using or not using certain words conveys, and the implicit conditioning for women to be ashamed of and suppress less or un-acceptable parts of ourselves, which can include our sexuality.
I still remember a teaching from a yoga class I took several years ago, when the instructor spoke about the definition of the word “yoga” as union, and how this is the goal—to be one, united, whole person, instead of fragmented bits and pieces that change and adjust to every environment.
