Confessions of a Curious Cunt--Feminism and Fucking

I am wearing red today. I wore white panties and bled all over them. Blood ran down my leg and pooled on the floor, leaving a heel-shaped void where my foot had been. I'm having my period, hallelujah! The cat knows it and stays away from me. My husband knows it, begging as I've been for chocolate and sex. I get so horny just before my period starts, and I love fucking during menses. I'm just so free and open then. My cunt is hot and alive, and I am feeling good.

It seems that no matter how good my body feels, my mind still contends with the seeming disparities of my life. I love my body, weathered by child-bearing though it may be, but I am constantly being met with criticism from those who do not value motherhood, and falsely assume that because I have a child I am somehow less desirable and less sexual. I can't tell you how many people obsess over stretch marks and abhor their bodies until they return to their perfect pre-pregnancy selves. It strikes me as absolutely absurd for anyone to expect to go through the utterly transformative process of creating life, giving birth, and growing from girl to mother without being changed in body and spirit. I will not be criticized for it.

 

Yes, at times I wish my body were as taught and smooth as it once were, and yet, my body is now infinitely wiser and fuller. My hips can carry a child, my breasts can nourish, my cunt can birth and I am beautiful! I move with grace and confidence, knowing every inch of my body in its softness and tender imperfection. I know how to fuck, whereas before I was merely playing at it.

I am not afraid of blood, nor the processes of my body. I embrace the depth of my emotions and observe them as intricately interwoven with the ebb and flow of my cycles. Nine months of pregnancy really force you to learn just how powerfully the mind and body are intertwined. Daily, I practiced Kegels and perineal massage in anticipation of the little one's arrival, and I no longer believe that my cunt is a passive object to be fucked. My cunt can move and gyrate, open and close, and you can damn well be sure that you're not getting in there unless you respect that.

 

Carrying a child, giving birth, and being a mother have taken me down paths new and terrifying, beautiful and strange. Daily I struggle to feed and nourish the life of another, as well as my own. And for god's sakes, this does not make me less of a feminist. Am I to be judged for conceiving and birthing a child outside of my own narrow "plans"? Am I to be criticized for having unprotected sex and being unprepared for the consequences? Perhaps. But none of these things make me less deserving of respect or of a place among women of all walks of life.

Feminism isn't just for the young, the single, or the childless. It isn't just about the freedom to have abortions, to choose careers, and sex. It's about the freedom to choose, regardless of your choice. I am a pro-choice, sexually liberated, polyamorous mother. Why does this seem like a contradiction in terms? Being a mother may have forever changed my body and psyche, but it does not make me any less of a feminist. If anything, it has made more of one!

 

Growing up in a family of women, being told not to touch my cunt (although I knew my sister did it every night), and to this day being shamed for my open sexuality and positive body practices, I am unwilling to accept that being a woman is something to be ashamed of. My sisters roll their eyes when I call them and announce "I started my period!" or bemoan the evils of the pill. Shouldn't we be talking about these things? Sex and bodies are not things to be whispered about behind closed doors and relegated to journals and agonized over in our own heads.

We've got to start talking about sex and relationships and STDs and dare to find powerful ways of loving that transcend stigma and stereotype. And no, stereotypes don't just extend to the marginalized of society, they're everywhere, against men and women alike. Why are we so afraid of diseases like herpes? Why do we make those with sexually transmitted diseases feel as though they are dirty pariahs of society simply because these people have the misfortune of having a little sore "down there." We are so ashamed of sexuality that we'd rather ostracize than embrace those who bear the taint of our fears. And if we are "kind" enough to tolerate those with sexually transmitted diseases, we probably won't fuck them. We might get their disease too, and, god forbid, have to experience what it is like to live with a disease and the discrimination of those whom we would love.

It isn't enough to love your cunt, to celebrate your body and your sexuality, if the world is unwilling to receive you. I once proudly brandished feminist literature such as Eve Ensler's "The Vagina Monologues," and idolized sex goddesses such as Betty Dodson and feminist pioneer Betty Friedan. But even these works, though wise and useful, are no longer relevant in the way they were when they were written.

Or perhaps, more honestly, these feminist perspectives no longer fit me. Perhaps they fit the young girl discovering outrage at patriarchy for the first time, or the woman learning to touch herself without shame. Perhaps the Vagina monologues ring true to survivors of sexual abuse and violence; indeed Ms. Ensler's monologues have garnered great attention and have set in motion V-day activism and fund raising to prevent violence against women. However, it seems to me that feminism should not be so obsessed with its goals that it loses sight of a broader, more truthful perspective.

 

It really isn't just about cunts or vaginas, as Ms. Ensler, and many other mainstream feminists, would have us think. It isn't solely about the violence perpetrated at the hands and penises of our male counterparts. It is about so much more. Sex and violence, liberation and freedom are only half of the story. We are not just our cunts (though god I love them), and men are more than their cocks (yes, you are).

What about our relationships and our families, our children and our parents? Our selves and our sexuality are intricate and infinitely complex amalgamations of our families, our experiences, our lovers, our feelings, our bodies, and so much more. We cannot be defined solely by our genitalia. Even that definition, mind you, isn't so clear; there are woman and men with genitalia of both sexes, with none, with part, or all sorts of variations upon the theme. Gender too, cannot be defined by the sexual organs, as their are men who emotionally identify as women, and women who identify as men, and there are bisexuals, and trans-gendered, and again, oh so many more wonderful varieties.
 

 

I am sick and tired of the limited viewpoint that divides us into male or female, penis or cunt. Does it really matter whether we have breasts, are married, have children and are disease-free or whether we are flat-chested, single, herpes positive, and a career woman or man? I mean, to be sure, there are certain things we look for in our partners, and perhaps certain ways we'd like our lives to be. But that sure as hell doesn't mean life is going to turn out that way. Good luck to you, but I do hope you won't despair or think yourself a failure if you are met with the unexpected. I sure as hell hope, that even if you find yourself in the midst of things new and strange, and perhaps quite frightening, that you never give up on yourself. I won't love you any less if you choose to have children or not, if you quit your job or get fired, or if you lose everything you ever loved. In fact, it sounds to me like you could use a friend.

I find it funny, how, throughout history, those who took a stand for what they believed in and dared to live unconventional lives, were abused and persecuted. I always felt that such folks living on the fringes of society needed love and friendship more than any others. And yet they are the ones who bear the brunt of the hatred and fear of those who live within the boundaries of the acceptable.

 

Now, more than ever, I feel the solitary strength, and at times, pain, of living a life that shocks, and often angers others. Of those that know I am polyamorous, only one embraced me and asked what it was like. The others got mad, got scared, or abusive. To this day, my family can only relate to me if they ignore broad and blaringly obvious parts of my life, such as my sexuality, and my multiple partners. Even my daughter was difficult for them to swallow, as I became pregnant before I was married (I was having sex before marriage, gasp!). Even more confusing to them is that I value marriage as little more than a societal convention, a helpful device when it comes to children and tax breaks. I'd love my sweetie just as much as I do now, regardless of our marital status. Marriage does not equate with love, and relationships are only as strong as you make them. No marriage can do that for you.

As a mother, I am deeply convicted of the need for a new feminism, a mindset and a way of living that embraces women and girls of all situations, persuasions, and perspectives. This new feminism should not and must not stop there. Feminism will forever be incomplete as long as we ignore our male counterparts. Many feminists would argue that no special attention should be paid to the masculine among us: "Hasn't history itself done just that?" "Look in the history books and all you'll see is men, men, men!" In fact, such advocates have even gone so far as to change history to herstory. C'mon, really? I'm about as woman focused and cunt lovin' as you'll get and even I think that is ridiculous. If we're going to go as far as to change the name of history, let's get rid of the term entirely and come up with something non-gender specific, like ourstory, okay?

 

Yes, there was a time when cunts were getting abused and ignored and silenced and no one was saying anything about it. It was right for women to get pissed and parade their cunts and bare breasts around and screaming in the faces of their oppressors. And, of course, such oppression still does, and always will, exist in a world as full of assholes as it is of activists, do-gooders, and everyday folk. I just think that this raging cunt-tauting feminism doesn't quite fit anymore. At the very least, it certainly doesn't fit me.

There is a progression of emotion in a young woman awakening to the fact that she's lived most of her life under the oppressive thumb of patriarchy. First, she feels anger. Sheer unbridled anger, probably directed at all the men that have ever hurt her and even ones who haven't. She's pissed. Once the anger subsides, she begins to seek knowledge. Why is society male-centric? What happened to matriarchal structures? Where are the female leaders? She seeks answers to her questions, and often finds some pretty disturbing answers. The further she digs within herself, she realizes that her power, and the power of the women around her, has not been lost or destroyed, but buried beneath layers of social practices and psychic repression.
 

Deep inside, she finds wild and strange incantations, age-old echoes of women past and women yet to come. She looks at her mother, her school teacher, and the female clerk at the grocery store and scans their faces for a hint of recognition, for the body and face of the Goddess. She sees her everywhere and nowhere, trapped in a realm of darkness, alive and barely breathing.

She reads feminist literature and swaddles her pain in their angry words, wrapping her wounds in aggressive stances and male-hating rhetoric.

Years pass, and she loses sight of the Goddess. She discovers her cunt and the joys it can bring. Yes, she has felt the pain of unwelcome penetration, and yes, she has silenced her voice over the years, but still she takes pleasure in her body. Despite the anger she still carries, she falls in love. She enjoys the delights of the male body intertwined with her own. She wonders what another woman would feel like.

She grows up and has a child, and ponders all these questions yet again, and finds that anger is not the answer. She is left wondering what good would the Goddess be without her consort Dumuzi?* What good is fertility and carnal pleasure without a partner with whom to enjoy it? She slowly, achingly, begins to realize that the anger she feels is echoed in the breasts of her lovers. They too feel the pain of the outcast Goddess.

 

When making love and seeing the vulnerability of a man as he grows aroused and finally reaches orgasm, she sees that he too is in need of redemption. In time, she begins to understand that even the man who raped her suffers under a wound so terrible that he does not know how to touch a woman with love, only hate. His pain does not excuse him, but surely, a man who rapes a woman must be carrying around a great many wounds, and are these wounds not our concern, just as much as are the wounds of the violated woman?

Anger fades to grief as she realizes that the problems facing feminists of all ages, and especially now, are the problems facing men and women and children everywhere. We can no longer speak truth in anger, and division no longer empowers. This woman craves healing for herself and her lovers, knowing that true empowerment can only come in its entirety, neither male nor female, but utterly and profoundly human. I envision just such a moment of healing as a woman reaching orgasm as her lover climaxes within her, both vulnerable and both utterly alive and in communion with one another. Sexuality, though it has been used as a weapon, can, and should be used as an incredible tool for self knowledge and healing. Out of my orgasms and ever growing sexuality rise much of my questions about feminism and my passion to pursue them.

*Dumuzi is the consort of the Sumerian goddess, Inanna.

A Penis Under the Negligee

There is a feminine strength that feels like a womb with a penis in it.

(Descent to the Goddess, page 42)


 

Women are constantly being penetrated--hung upon the peg of the unavoidable physical realities of life, death, blood, sex, pain, and grief. Dildoes, phalluses, crosses, trees, earth and the Erishkigal's peg in the underworld,* all remind us of the primal relationship between emptiness and fullness, life and death, male and female, yin and yang. How am I to view these images and the woman's role in the sexual act--her penetration and her sentence to hang upon her own desire, helpless and dying?

It is her dark truth, as the bearer of life and death, to have her cunt filled with cock, just as her womb is empty and yearning. In fact, it is this fertile emptiness which calls to out to be filled, the fullness of her cunt eventually leading to the fullness of her belly.

 

Her body exemplifies the cycles of longing and satisfaction, her lust and intimacy waxing with the fullness of the moon and turning inward as it darkens in the deep sky. She sheds blood and layers of self, ever renewing herself, body ever ready for the growth of new life. At times, she is full of man and moon and child, at others she is barren and empty, but ever changing, dynamically moving from emptiness to fullness, desire to satiety.

 

She is eternally bound to (nailed and penetrated by) the physical rhythms and mysteries of life. This is her shame, her curse, and her power. Her power can (and has been, ever since the Goddess has been relegated to the underworld) be used against her--her cunt raped and violated, her incredible capacity for pleasure and joy thrown carelessly aside--and yet she survives to bring forth new life from the hot semen of hatred and violence. Even the man that cruelly entered her uninvited was born of a mother, and the child of this pain shall too know the blessing of a womb and a breast. Life surges on, despite the atrocities. There is a darkness to the joy. There is death in the bringing of life.

Their sacred sexuality buried between their legs, women feel an innate and natural (biological, even) longing to be filled. This longing is often projected outward onto a lover, or manifests itself in the need for approval and fulfillment from others, particularly men. Who better to fill the emptiness than a man with a cock? Fill me up, desire me, put your cock inside me, put your cum in my pussy!

If it were so simple, we'd all be happy with little more than a quick fuck. While this can satiate immediate sexual need, there are deeper desires for love and intimacy that are deeply enmeshed in the sexual act, infused as it is with the spiritual and emotional longing of the inner self. Sex alone cannot satisfy the depth of a woman's longing, nor should it. Her desire points her deeper, within herself, where she must play out themes wild and deep, with herself alone.

As Ms. Brinton Perera (of The Way of the Goddess) writes

Erishkigal's stake fills the all receptive emptiness of the feminine with the feminine yang strength. It fills the eternally empty womb mouth and gives a woman her own wholeness, so that the woman is not merely dependent upon man or child, but can be unto herself as a full and separate individual. She can stand by her own No and Yes, her own solid stake. Erishkigal's pole impregnates a woman with this new and holy attitude to life (page 40).

Ah, yes, the phallus of the Goddess. Such reflections make me think of the clitoris, the female source of deepest pleasure, erect and full, reminding us that female pleasure does not inherently depend on penetration, but upon her own arousal. Indeed, we have a penis all our own and do not need a man's for fulfillment. While this may at first seem offensive, let me assure you it is not. What is offensive is forcing another to be responsible for our own pleasure and self knowledge. It is far more pleasurable to want penetrative intercourse in order to give and receive pleasure from a place of fullness and self confidence than it is to fuck from a place of need and ignorance.

 

So it is that we woman can fill ourselves, using fingers and hands to slide inside our cunts and caress the swollen head of the clitoris. We can follow our desire to its ultimate end: crucifixion upon the cross of our own dark selves, and be reborn deeper and fuller, having impregnated ourselves with the deep inner wisdom of the Goddess. And whoever we choose to fuck will be deeper and wiser because of it. We are no longer at the mercy of those who would penetrate us, impregnating us against our will, but have become pregnant with our own new life, and birth children entirely of our own making. Free unto ourselves, we need assurance and approval from no one. A filled cunt is a happy cunt and we are no longer empty.

The feminine phallus is the source of a woman's power and assertiveness, representative of a woman's ability to satisfy herself, the embodiment of the yin-yang duality. Rather than submit to the sadistic paternal animus, we must claim our own equally sadistic, assertive cunt powers.

We must say to ourselves:

MY CUNT IS SATISFIED.

I am in charge of my own sexual pleasure.

I am filled with new life that I have chosen and placed inside myself.

I am pregnant with power and wisdom--don't expect me to be a size two!

I am called by the Goddess.

I am DANGEROUS.

I am the Goddess.

I believe in magic.

I've got balls--watch out!

And...never fear, my penis is not afraid of yours!

There is a penis under the negligee, as the feminine is filled with sexual power from within. The feminine phallus exemplifies the woman who has taken the masculine into herself and embraced her assertive, kick-ass Goddess nature.


Inanna

-----------------------------------------------

*When the Sumerian goddess, Inanna, descends to the underworld to confront her shadow sister, Erishkigal, she is hung on a meat hook and left there to die. This penetration and pegging of her body symbolizes the darker aspects of female sexuality, but here, she is not penetrated by the male phallus, but a darker, feminine one. And it is this penetration and ultimate death that causes the barren Erishkigal (the underworld aspect of Inanna herself) to conceive and give birth.

Here, the woman initiates and completes the sexual cycle of desire, vulnerability, penetration, death (perhaps orgasm), conception and birth/rebirth. Here, the point is that women have the ability to fill themselves independent of the male phallus. Women can meet their own spiritual needs and grow with new life all their own.

Until a woman has made this otherworldly journey, sexual acts of penetration will continue to enthrall and violate her. She will feel a deep and inexplicable need for penetration and an incompleteness upon being filled. She is deeply unsatisfied because she has yet to address her deeper feminine calling to be both her own desire and fulfillment.

I am not saying that such a woman who has learned to please herself will no longer desire intercourse with men. Her sexuality will certainly be changed, for who can enter the underworld and return without gravity and shadow? She will simply no longer be bound to the male phallus as her only salvation, the echo of deeper and darker pleasure. She will be freed to pursue her own pleasure and that of her lover without fear of failure or disappointment. She cannot be dismayed, for she has already known, and will continue to know, great pleasure at her own hands.

Corset Teaser

And for those of you with a corset fetish...okay, who DOESN'T have a corset fetish??  If you don't get out!  Just kidding.

I've fantasized about having a corset for YEARS, and now it has finally happened!  After two hours of trying on corsets, many of which were lovely and sexy I found THE ONE.  Most women say that about their wedding dresses but for me that's what the experience of finding the perfect corset was like.

What do you think? ;)

 

 

Hugs, Kisses, and spanks,

Goddess Inanna

Marked by the Goddess. Enter, Erishkigal.

This morning, while reading Queen of the Great Below: An Anthology in Honor of Erishkigal published by Bibliotheca Alexandrina, I was moved deeply--as I often am when encountering the Goddess.  I began reading two anthologies in the last few weeks--this one on Erishkigal, and another centered around Inanna's journey to confront her death and the dark face of her sister, Erishkigal, in the underworld.  I've been obsessed with this myth since I first encountered it in Sylvia Brinton Perera's Jungian account (Descent to the Goddess: A Way of Initiation for Women) of the female journey to the underworld to encounter the divine feminine that has been buried alive in our culture.

This was in the summer of 2007.  I had just graduated from college and felt a deep ache--a craving--to encounter the feminine.  I'd had four years of wrestling with the tenets of Western philosophy (at St. John's College in Santa Fe, NM) and the male psyche--but where was the feminine?  Guided by my feminist boyfriend at the time, I started with Cunt: A Declaration of Independence  by Inga Muscio, and a foreward by Betty Dodson, who is, of course, one of my heroines and an empowered sexual warrior goddess.  I felt a deep pull to embark on the descent to Erishkigal myself, but was, of course, scared of out my mind.  I toyed with the idea of creating a ritual on the many acres of Napa vineyard where I was staying--setting up symbolic "gates" where I would remove an article of clothing and a treasured part of myself, to enter the depths naked and vulnerable.  It was, and remains, a great idea, but I still have not gathered the courage to enact this powerful, and not-to-be-taken lightly ritual.  I am praying to the Goddess even now to guide me to the time, place, and guides for this soul ceremony.

Erishkigal

That summer I filled several journals with the outpourings of my heart.  All the hate and rage and victimization that I had experienced as a woman on this earth poured out like hot blood.  It was a blessed relief.  After that miraculous summer--my first concrete encounter with the Divine Feminine--I went to work in the fall, and began my work in that place we call life.  Over the last six years, I have experienced many things--and been marked by some deep wounds.  Or perhaps, deep wounds that I have carried for a long time were finally uncovered.  Either way, I lost track of the calling of the Goddess, though I was always trying to find her, and I believe she was ever-present in the workings of my life and soul.  For as I have realized today, with great joy, that the empty space--the hole in my heart--is not a curse, but a gift!  It is the throne room of the Goddess!  Without my yearning, my emptiness, and the deep holes of pain and suffering--there would be no room for the Goddess in my life.  SHE carves me out so that she might enter my body and work her will on this earth through me.

I know this sounds strange and woo-woo, and I understand.  It is quite a surprise to me as well.  I've always known I was spiritual, and even when I walked (okay, ran!) away from the Christian church I felt a spiritual calling.  I've felt called to serve the Divine Feminine for some time.  I just didn't know what form of the Goddess I would serve.

I was meditating on this very thing last night.  I even (absurdly) went to some stupid website that purported to (by means of a simply quiz), tell you what your personal pantheon looked like.  I completed about two questions before I realized that I did not need a website quiz to tell me the truth that I already possessed inside myself.  So instead, I've been praying and meditating on the subject.  I felt that the truth was already present in my life and in the stories and myths that have spoken deeply to my soul over the years.  Even as a child, I have identified with the darkness, with sorrow and fear, and the places that most people run away from.  As a student--an anthropologist, a feminist, a lover, and a friend--I am drawn to those strange places where things surprise us--where things aren't what we expect them to be.  Those are the  places where we surprise ourselves.  I dwell in the liminal spaces.  This is where--outside the limits boundaries and definitions--we define ourselves and discover who we really are.  Even in fear and suffering and brokenness--if we can stay in our suffering--we find that we are much greater and much stronger than we ever knew.  And that is where we encounter the divine within ourselves.  So...while in many ways (as this blog indicates), I am working to manifest the being of the Goddess Inanna--bright, powerful, sexual, and life-giving--she is not the Goddess I serve. It is Erishkigal that has marked my soul.

Inanna and Erishkigal. "Sister Light, Sister Dark" Two halves of the same soul.

Just as Inanna was called to be transformed by the face of her dark twin, Erishkigal, so am I.  I think it is no coincidence that I too, am a twin, and growing up, my sister and I were jokingly (though I did not find it funny), called "Sister Light (her), and Sister Dark (me)."  She has fair skin, light hair, and blue eyes, and was often jovial and playful, and I...well...I was dark.  Different. Weird. Contemplative. Melancholy.  Much of my adult journey has been about learning to play, and laugh, and love in these spaces traditionally considered dark.  I tend to focus on the difficult and see the negative--so it has been a spiritual practice for me to embrace joy, beauty, and happiness.  Which is why I manifest in the world as Inanna--as joy incarnate, sexual pleasure, and feminine beauty.  But my inner calling is to the dark Goddess of the underworld--the Divine Bitch, and Mistress of All Unwanted and Unloved Things.  Her work is my work in the World.  I feel called to advocacy--to write, speak, and act to give voice to the voiceless--for sex workers, to trans folk, to anyone and everyone who is buried under the burden of shame, hate, and victimization.  And it is Erishkigal who lives in these spaces.  Blessed be the Goddess. 

Inanna

In the last few weeks, as I have meditated on my call, and prayed and written about moving forward in my work as a sexual warrior, writer, and student--a goddess and priestess in my own right (informally at this point), I have been overwhelmed by fear and anxiety.  Good fear, though--not the kind you get when your intuition picks up on an energy vampire, or a person who would mean you harm--but the divine and holy fear of walking on a path more powerful than you can imagine.  The fear that comes from doing things that terrify you that must be done anyway--like daring to speak your truth, or correct someone when they use racist or sexist language, or the fear that comes from saying no--please don't touch me--over and over again.  This is good fear.

Today, when the Goddess entered me, sitting in my car shaking and sweating from the power of Her presence--I felt fear again.  I was dizzy with fear of the darkness, fear of losing control, fear of being hurt and hurting others unintentionally on my path.  Fear of knowing that I am called to the Divine Feminine but not knowing what that looks like yet.  But as I went into the gym for my workout she stayed with me, speaking to me, urging me onward past the points of pain and struggle.  She pushes me--but not for her own pleasure--but for my betterment.  As I drove home, I began to laugh and cry tears of joy.  I realized that all these years, through all the pain of feeling lost and hurt and raped--she was there.  It was her hand all the time, molding me and carving me into her own vessel.  And today she entered me.  Blessed be the Goddess.

As I felt her upon me this morning, here is what I wrote:

As I unfold myself--
Bringing what is inward
Outward--
I shudder,
Groan and heave.
I have no protection.
I am but flesh
Encased in timid flesh,
Easily carved
and bled for the Goddess
Like some slut of a sacrifice
Upon her gory altar.
I step out
on the path of my Destiny
Aware
That it is not of my making,
But Hers.
Fear and Desire claim me.
My inmost being quivers.
I am nothing but
Broken flesh
to be molded in Her image.
The call is deep and unshakeable.
I know I will be crushed in Her wake
Scattered, and Made anew.
What was once a steady,
tormenting trickle of the Divine
Is now a torrential River
Flowing from Above.
I drown.
She cannot be stopped or silenced.
Oh how desperately I crave control.
I craft excuses.
I delay her working.
Goddess Help Me.
Use me as an instrument in this realm.
Embolden me to dance
in Darkness as well as Light.
Help me to distinguish your voice
and your will from those selfish voices of
Pride
Lust
Shame
Hate
Bitterness
Fear
Anger
and
Insecurity
That populate my inner chambers.
Instead, take them from me
Gate by gate
And fill me with your breath instead.
Blessed be your name.

Inanna

What I Want for Myself

This was written a while ago, and just rediscovered.  I should add that I am now married to the man I was dating when this was written, and I have a boyfriend (albiet long distance) that I care about very much.  I still have many of the same fears--of my primary relationship getting boring, of getting caught up in lust and NRE, and being abandoned.  But I am working on acknowledging these fears and then letting them be, rather than letting them consume me.  Some days they totally and completely still do.  Other days, I feel free and am able to bathe in the complete and utter awesomeness that is loving and being loved by two very different and wonderful people.  Oh yeah, and it's lots of hard work too! ;) More to come on that!

11/27/11

I want TO HAVE THE COURAGE TO SPEAK MY MIND. I want to feel honored for my thoughts and feelings.  I want to be respected at work and in society.  I want to know that my sexuality is not dirty and meant to be used against me.  I want to be strong.  I want to have the courage to stand up for myself and trust my intuitions.  I want to say “No” even when it is hard.  I want to find a way to be myself in this world, as a woman, a writer, a mother, and a sexual being. I want to be free of sexual and emotional abuse.  I want to be a healthy role model for my daughter.  I want her to know that her body is beautiful and that sexual pleasure is not dirty.  I want her to know about safe sex and have the courage to say “No” to men if she doesn’t want to sleep with them.  I want to support other women in their struggles to freedom and womanhood. 

Fuck equality.  Men and women are not equal—what does that even mean?  Men and women are different, and have much to learn from one another.  I want to learn to love and respect other women and not simply be jealous of them, which just perpetuates the cycle of female hatred and oppression.  I want to believe in myself, and trust that I will be okay, no matter who does or does not love me.  I want to stand on my own two feet, trust myself, and follow through on the things that I want and believe.  I want to make choices that are empowering in my job, personal life, and sexuality.  I want to choose my relationships, and when to have children. 

I want to live a life where I feel that I am doing more than just going through the motions.  I want to make healthy choices and take care of myself and my body, even though it seems so much easier to take care of others.  I want to live a life that engages me deeply, both in and out of work.  I want to do something that I care about.  I want to make changes in my life, and in the world.  Grandiose, I know.  But what is the point of being alive if we just exist and then die?  Shouldn’t we do something while we’re here?  I really don’t know the answer to that one.  Sometimes I think that I push myself too hard to be something in the future, and I miss what is right in front of me.  Sometimes it is better to just simply and fully be in the present, rather than trying to be something profound in the future. 

I want to learn to let go of the belief that something is wrong with me and that bad things are my fault.  I want to see myself as strong and beautiful, even though I am not perfect.  I want to educate myself and my daughter about ways to be active in the community and connect with other women.  I feel safe with women. 

I do not feel safe with men because it all feels about sex.  Either they want you, or they don’t, and the first can lead to rape and abuse, and the second to abandonment.  And I am afraid to be without a man.  I used to like being single.  It was lonely, but I could do what I liked all the time.  And there was the allure of new relationships.  I love (d?) NRE.  I was addicted to the attention and the hormone rush.  I suppose it is because I never felt beautiful unless someone else told me I was. 

So there’s the exciting beginning of the relationship, and then the guy is either a clingy freak because he is loser (but on the upside, he wants to keep you because you’re the best he’s ever had), or he is actually a really decent guy, and then you just begin the process of becoming bored and losing interest in one another.  Then you just have the same kind of sex, fantasize about other people, and so it goes.  It’s more friendship at that point.  I don’t know—is that super cynical of me?  I think that people need each other, especially when trying to raise children, but romantically and sexually, things die out pretty quickly.  And that scares me.  I feel like that destroys the fabric of traditional relationships

I used to be so jealous, because I knew that my boyfriends were looking at other girls, and thinking about them when they fucked me.  It felt like it was because I wasn’t good enough.  Now I know that biologically, everyone does this at some point or another, and it wasn’t personal.  It just still hurt.  And I would get bored too.  The sex would get routine, and I’d have to fantasize to be able to have an orgasm.  So in a way, that’s what brought me to polyamory.  The idea that you could be into multiple people—well, we all know it’s true (I think fantasies and affairs illustrate this)—was nothing new. 

I was just tired of it being this dirty, unspoken secret, where you felt dirty for wanting someone, or worse, had an affair.  So I wanted to confront it in the open, and see if there was a way to share, to learn about myself.  I also thought it was stupid to just abandon people you care about because the sex is no longer hot.  What if you could have different relationships with other people, and what if these relationships fulfilled different needs and made the other relationships easier?  Now my boyfriend can just be himself, and doesn’t have to bear the responsibility of meeting all my needs.

At this point, we don’t actually have other partners, so I am learning to simply embrace this mentality, regardless of real partner actuality.  I am learning to let go, and let things be as they are.  If we have sex, great, if not, okay.  I just need to learn to love myself without the approval of others, and then it won’t matter what others think, or whether or not I am successful.  It might be harder to make ends meet, and I might have to make other choices that are difficult, but maybe then I won’t feel as though my life is at the mercy of others—particularly men.