Heterosexual Women’s Rights to Pleasure

“Everything in the world is about sex, execpt sex. Sex is about power.” — Oscar Wilde

Silence, hiding, fear, shame — these are the feelings that have been imposed on women in face of their own sexuality for centuries. In the current patriarchal society, women are deprecated as licentious and slutty when they act on their sexual desires with multiple, transient partners. While men who act similarly are never criticized or judged, but instead, idolized and encouraged to continue. With extreme difficulty, there is no room in this current culture to be a woman and be sensual.

The current American society is still deeply influenced by the seventeenth-century Puritanism, which is an outdates set of beliefs. While we are in probably the progressive and advanced time of human civilizations, as of yet.

Most of the feminist endeavors in the country are against pornography and for female homosexuality, while barely any feminist movements exist for heterosexual women, and particularly of race. Sex has never been the same for all of us, but a movement that is primarily white and middle-class, which is built on class and race mythologies equally as damaging and vicious as sexist ones. They act as if they are the most denied group of people, while plenty of women from various cultures are treated with zero value for simply losing their virginity before marriage.

Patriarchal, heterosexual men are free to have all kinds of sexual fantasies, and social permissions to act on them; while women are not completely denied of permissions to act, but judged ruthlessly for it. Women feel the desperate need to maintain a virtuous and noble image of themselves, and limit the number of her sexual partners to the minimum. It is as if sexual fantasies are the “rightful property of men, romance the solid female terrain” [1].

With the affordability and accessibility of commercial sex, it is more important than ever for women to be uncompromising to reclaim their rights to fight, to experiment, to demand knowledge and education about sex. So much of our current conversations surrounding sex pertains to the violence and danger of sexuality, or homosexuality. However, now knowing when or how to speak up during sex when it is uncomfortable is extremely dangerous. There is absolutely need to develop a language of sexual pleasure that recognizes that power in sex can be a source of pleasure. Women are not told enough times that it is necessary to feel desire for ourselves before it was an enticement for a partner.

The powerful impact of religion and family can guilt trip a girl into hating herself and devaluing herself from a singular act of sex. The culture is so highly focused around what danger and violence that sexuality can bring a woman, but it neglected the positivity of it. Women shouldn’t be setback by the boundaries that the society built centuries ago, but rather live about it freely and courageously. A woman should seek to be comfortable in her own skin, and only be limited by the realms of her own desire.

The talk that our society should be having is about a basic human right to enjoyment, pleasure satisfaction and experimentation. The sensation of orgasm itself varies for men and women, and even more different for each individual. The sexual stigmas that come with religion should be released, as both men and women feel shame and guilt in wanting to experiment with sex byond what is normative in their communities. “Every time we have been afraid of our own desires, we have robbed ourselves of the ability to act” [2].It is a necessity for women to demand better contraception, self-defense classes, decent, nonjudmental sex education, and the right to control our bodies and set new boundaries of female experimentation and self knowledge.

Sex is the true currency of our society. Unlike monetary currency, sex is a necessity, and essentially, the very being of humans. It is a connecting bridge between two people, and it holds so much power as it could make or break someone. Maybe because sex carries tremendous weight as it holds so much power, it is one aspect of humanitarian that is juged the hardest. There are still so many unanswered questions involving sex, orgasm, social connections and more. As long as sex is a taboo in a society, it is certainly impossbile ot reach the truth about sex. As debates continue on whether a person should aim to be sophisticated and civilized or animalistic and raw, sex it a significant factor in the formation of our society. “To know who you are, know what your sexuality is” (Foucault). Sex has always been the forum where both the future of our species and our “truth” as human subjects is decided.

References:

Amber Hollibaugh, “Desire For the Future: Radical Hope in Passion and Pleasure”, Feminism and Sexuality, 1996

Zoe Rapoport, Understanding female sexuality: The effets of agency, communality, androgyny, assertiveness and attachment style on sexual functioning in adult women, 2009

Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Vol. 1