Confessions of a libra

The autonomous woman | Credit: Here

08.06.25

We haven’t been given the right tools to deal with desire. When society is more concerned with the politics of desire and chastity Olympics – we are at risk of engaging with desire as a costume. Desire can be tamed yes, but have you tried to meet desire without expectations? Have you tried to understand desire? We often behave as though we’re well-acquainted with desire because we’ve never had to earn the feeling. We were already familiar with the feeling of butterflies, of nipples hardening and the mind flashing helplessly with “what if’s” and “could be’s”.

Our global focus on puritanical ideas, our reliance on leaning on them when lacking conviction, has been to the detriment of desire. We have made a society wherein people are more comfortable with empty “I love you’s” to illicit the comfort that leads to copulation. Men have long plotted ways to extract sex from the unwilling, by bypassing the other person’s humanity. This is why incels believe women will fix their problems if they just submit to being subjugated like our ancestors were. When we teach desire as a landfield to navigate until marriage, we are creating shame-based sex. We are creating a culture of posturing, lying and dissatisfaction from the parties involved.

One of my earliest consideration around this topic was, why did we make sex bad when it is natural for both procreation and pleasure? I got sucked into the world of women hiding their desires and learning to channel it in ways that are hidden and acceptable to the patriarchy. This is how I got into erotica. In retrospect, the appeal was about exploration of the taboo. Sex was the one thing everyone was doing everyone was doing and pretending not to. It was all we talking about, it was shoved down our throats in advertising and hinted at in children’s shows.

Yet daring to claim desire was somehow supposed to devalue it. I watched Muslim girls at school take off their hijab and hike up their skirts to go make an appointment with a boy. Modern society would look down on her for doing something so antithetical to her faith. But Muslim men are notorious philanderers and it’s something that’s often laughed at or dismissed as normal. They can get to get their rocks off with any progressive Western girl, until it’s time to marry and they pick the good girl that fits the family image. Patriarchy and religion have dampened women’s desires for as long as they could. This is why I often say these systems were built based off of insecurity. Women’s pleasure wouldn’t be such an issue if men accepted that women’s pleasure doesn’t have to revolve around them. There has been a deliberate effort to besmirch women with sexual agency.

Let’s begin with Lilith vs Eve.  Lilith was Adam’s first wife, made from the same clay as him instead of his rib and she represented unfettered female sexuality. Lilith represents having power without submission, sex without procreation and desire without apology. As such she was quickly shelved and demonised (erased in other ways) in order to prop the virginal image of woman that is Eve.

The patriarchy has gone out of their way to demonise women through demonising witches. While real witches do scare men and always have (and it turns them on too), the witch hunts in Europe weren’t about witches. They were about subjugating women and dictating what freedoms they could have. In the event a woman has inherited land from her late husband, we must displace her before she starts walking around the place like a woman with choice. We must plot to insert a man to destabilise her, and failing that – we must accuse her of witchcraft. The very accusation of witchcraft meant your assets were up for grabs. If a beautiful woman is being fought over in the village, then how about we accuse her of witchcraft since she won’t choose a man to ‘own’ her.

When women are so beautiful men don’t know what to do with them, they are succubi. The fact that a woman could be in such command of her body, of her mind and of the elements so as to wield them to her benefit – that’s sorcery. Yet that is how women are supposed to be when they gain personal agency. Feminine energy is meant to draw in its desires. It’s not meant to beg and seek for approval. That’s what masculine energy is for.

This is why I love men who will openly yearn. That is the currency that allows for the temple doors to open. Instead men wanted women to be humble about their sexual prowess. Men wanted to own the body, and not respect the vessel. Men want to extract the pleasure from the female body instead of patiently nurture its growth. Then men walked around gaslighting women about our bodies being difficult and our orgasms hard to achieve.

Women’s orgasms aren’t the problem. The problem is a culture and society that centres male pleasure, male storytelling and didn’t think about doing research about women (on women) until the 90’s. If our society was more concerned with female pleasure, more women would be having orgasms. This is why companies like Bellesa have taken off, because it’s revolutionary to watch porn with the female gaze in mind.

I feel safer when I watch porn that was made by women for women. I can tell the women are actually enjoying it. It may surprise men to know, women can tell even when a professional is acting her way through the pleasure. And sometimes without being able to name it, a scene makes my skin crawl and it makes me wonder if I am sensing coercion. Those things make it hard to enjoy things that should be natural and pleasurable because of the rigid lens with which we have engaged.

Women want to be wanted, and men haven’t been taught to speak the language that unlocks those hidden chambers of desire in women. While men think it’s silly for women to be into romance stories, it is there where women are seemingly revered. It’s in the words and ink that I can finally hear a man own up to being undone by me. It’s in literature that men humble themselves before the truth, and allow themselves to be transformed by the women they love.

Society speaks so much of the male gaze that when you read my writing openly about sex, you are clutching your pearls. At the same time you sit there and wonder why you haven’t heard more unapologetic female voices. I think we can facilitate those female voices by leaning away from purity culture. By seeing women as more than just the length of their skirts. By seeing female desire not as complex but as scaffolding. Many men would actually be delighted under the tutelage of a strong, self-assured woman. Many men are waiting for society to give them permission to love a woman such as this unabashedly.

Desire that doesn’t centre men is the height of insult to the patriarchy. This is why we will always centre gay men in favour of lesbians. Because while many twisting and turning to contort themselves to fit the binary where desire is concerned – at least with gay men, men are still centred. The idea that I might be able to seduce a woman, enchant her enough to date me and then choose to marry me without asking for a man’s approval – revolutionary.

Men are so obsessed with the idea of turning lesbians because it centres them again. It’s not healthy or secure to feel that life can only be enjoyed when everyone keeps your name in their mouth. It might be shocking to hear, but we enjoy women for being women. Not for being men lite. Many queers are actively trying to expand their expression from the rigid boundaries they have been provided. A masc woman may present as visually masculine, but this doesn’t have to extend to their values nor does it have to pestalise men.

Repressing desires is illogical to me. I spent my teenage years trying to pray away losing my virginity because purity culture made me self conscious. Yet I found myself craving sex, as I had before I’d ever had my first sexual experience. It’s crazy to be in a shame cycle over natural needs. The thing is, not even the pastor is chaste where sex is concerned. We all try to pretend to be the least affected by sex, while fucking like crazy behind closed doors – then lying about it. For some – especially the religious – that’s a cycle that continues until death. I had to make a decision based on my own value system and I decided I would rather stick to the honesty of being a sexual being than the dishonesty of posturing imagined virginal qualities.

Those religious tendencies can give you terrible boundaries. It’s in women like Lilith that we can take inspiration for what personal agency does. It allows you to curate experiences that are within your standards. I can attest to this fact. The more confident I became, the more I curated pleasurable experiences. I don’t see women’s curation of pleasure as a chore. I see men as needing the guidance.

Women use more grey matter in their pre-frontal cortex which is associated with social conditioning, complex decision-making, executive function (planning, empathy and emotional regulation) as social conditioning. In my world, men should allow women to guide them into better pleasurable experiences. Not to become the dominant ones or to lord it over men. I see it as a divine pathway. Men are great at executing when they have the right leadership. Men are excellent at providing nurturance and protection when they know what they are nurturing and guarding against.

Desire isn’t dangerous. What is dangerous is a world that pretends we don’t experience it. You shouldn’t have to pretend you’re not ovulating because a guy who never took sex ed doesn’t think a woman should be horny. Love and sex do not have to involve a man to have meaning, and that should be liberating. Consider your own personal value system and how connected or disconnected it is from desire. Desire should feel like an old friend, not the embarrassing after-thought. Consider what erotic integrity looks like to you and consider where divinity lies when you get to define it for yourself. May your journeys of reimagining pleasure be blessed and fortified. May your sex be a delicious forethought.

Written under Lilith’s juridiction.

Signed in bone and brilliance.