Listening to Cardi B, wondering what it means to be sex positive means after sexual abuse…
It’s easy to say – I love sex. Especially if you’re a man. But what if you’re a woman? And what if you’ve been sexually exploited, abused, harassed? What then?
How do you move on from these memories? I don’t think we do. But, I strongly believe that this gives us a superpower… WE KNOW WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO NOT ACCEPT.
Many women don’t have the acceptable context to express this. We have the label of ‘rape’, ‘molestation’, etc. to stand behind. This vocabulary can feel extremely limiting. It doesn’t give power to our experience, it only labels the act. The power that may be ignited by this is what we need to acknowledge for we know what it feels like to experience the lack of consent. We know what it feels like to be truly powerless.
So how do we transition from this powerless, victim label/mentality/position into the sex positive, sexy, etc. woman we want to be? How do we enjoy and celebrate our sexuality?
It’s not an easy road. At least it wasn’t for me…
It takes time, of course, but it also takes awareness. The awareness of which feelings we don’t want to experience again as well as the feeling that we do. Sex can be an intense form of pleasure, safety, fun, intimacy, etc.
However when the power is unbalanced, these feelings are no longer present. The feelings that come up are overwhelming, all encompassing and life changing. Forever. These feelings are forever. It is how we choose to use them and heal from them that will create our lives.
I choose sex. GOOD, consensual sex. This is something completely different than the power balance involved in sexual abuse. This, unfortunately, is not something that every woman gets to experience. The experience of consensual sex is empowering, energizing, exciting. THIS is what we strive for – always. This is what we want, everyone, man or woman, it does not matter. What matters is that we all want this and we deserve this. We were meant for this.
Otherwise, we would not have such a well-developed pleasure center in the brain – as other animals do not. Sex can be simply about procreating, but more often for humans it is about pleasure.
So why do women have a disproportionately large segment of unwanted sexual experiences? We know why… Men are raised and praised to take what they want, and then we wonder why they are conquering us… They are just doing what they’ve been told.
Well, it’s time to show them something different.