Modern Women: November Writing Prompts & Theme
Are you ready?
Being the month of transition and reflection, I find myself drawn to the ways women have been conditioned to view pleasure: often relegated to the private, even shameful, spaces of sexuality and rarely discussed as a broader form of self-care and joy.
Pleasure is so commonly assumed to be sexual — particularly when it relates to women — yet there are a thousand ways we experience it that society may not even recognize as valid or meaningful.
This often begins with the subtle message that, as women, pleasure is a privilege rather than a right, something to be deferred in service of others.
Why is it that pleasure, in all its forms, remains a whisper rather than a priority in so many women’s lives?
There are words that generate a reaction the moment you think them, and pleasure is one of them. The mind instantly rushes to sensuality, and from there to fantasy or to shame dependent on our mood and the messages we were given as we grew up. But why does even the idea of pleasure create such an immediate response?
Giving ourselves pleasure can come in many forms but the majority of them have all the attachments we have picked up in relation to sex as we grew up. Self-pleasure is still somehow a taboo subject for most…
