Taking Sexy Back by Alexandra H. Solomon

Author:Alexandra H. Solomon
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: female sexuality;owning your sexuality;feminist guide to sex;sexual self-awareness;sexual pleasure;sex education;empowerment;empower;millennials;monogamy;sexual energy;hookup culture;rape culture;love;marriage;sexual desire;orgasm;friends with benefits;dating;hooking up;hookups;modern love;casual sex;sex life;women;relationship;relationships;sexual desire;sexual trauma;pleasure;sexual healing;sexual consent;foreplay;abstinence;STIs;celebration of sex;pornography;soul;shame;feminist;feminism
Publisher: New Harbinger Publications
Published: 2020-01-07T20:13:23+00:00

Do You Do Pleasure?

My client, Zahra, feels broken when it comes to sex. It’s hard for her to have an orgasm, and she’s feeling discouraged and disconnected from Her Sexy. The more broken she feels, the more she wants to distance herself from her sexuality altogether. Together, we begin to look at the stories she has internalized about who and how she should be in the world.

When Zahra thinks about the women in her family, the words that come to her mind are: “busy, serving, and selfless.” She thinks about her grandma preparing elaborate holiday meals while her grandpa watches television. She thinks about her mom working a full-time job and coming home to care for the house and everyone in it. Zahra also thinks about herself, and the myriad ways that the world has given her the message that she shouldn’t take up too much space, she shouldn’t make others feel uncomfortable, and she should be nice.

Zahra and I talk also about the ways in which she has been suppressing her various “appetites” forever. Zahra is careful about how much she eats, especially in social settings, for fear of being judged as too indulgent…too hungry. She is skilled at suppressing other appetites as well. She suppresses romantic interest, worrying about liking someone more than they like her…of seeming too hungry for love. As a relationship builds, she feels like she needs to suppress her sexual appetite as well for fear of seeming too hungry for sex.

Zahra’s struggle with orgasm makes sense when we look, with radical compassion and total kindness, at these powerful stories she carries: Think of others before yourself and control your desires. Pleasure is, by its very nature, hungry, unruly, and selfish. Seeking pleasure begins with a sense that you are entitled to it. That you are worthy, by nature of your mere existence, of feeling good. Sexual pleasure is about being not doing, receiving not giving, present-moment-focus not accomplishment. No wonder so many women struggle to advocate for their own pleasure. The very nature of pleasure challenges and subverts much of what we are taught it is to be a woman.

As we unpack this, I want us to be careful not to conflate pleasure and orgasm. Unfortunately, we live in a world that perpetuates two particularly unhelpful stories about sexual pleasure: that sexual pleasure equals orgasm and that orgasm equals successful sex. We need to erase both stories ASAP.

Pleasure does not equal orgasm. When we limit ourselves to a singular notion of what counts as pleasure, we miss the chance to create sexual experiences that meander curiously, leaving open possibilities for surprise, wonder, and connection.

Orgasm does not equal successful sex. When we conflate pleasure and orgasm, there is just far too much pressure on ourselves to “perform.” I feel clear that none of us is itching for yet another arena in which to figure out whether we are measuring up! Sex ought to be a space of respite from expectations to achieve.

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