The Double Bind of the Sexual Woman.

I’ve been thinking a lot about female sexuality lately.

About the power of it. About the shame of it.

About the ways it both liberates and isolates you, especially when you actually claim it.

The truth is, I feel sexy in myself. I really do. It’s not performative, well, sometimes it is… but mostly it’s visceral. There’s a part of me that feels most alive when I’m in my sensuality, in my skin, in that unmistakable rhythm of womanhood that’s older than language. I don’t need a man to validate it. But I won’t lie, I still want to be desired.

That longing came up recently in a conversation with a girlfriend, and I admitted something that felt tender to say out loud, “I don’t feel desired by my partner.” I want to be seen. Not just with familiarity or comfort, but with hunger.

I want to be worshiped. Adored. Dammit! I want my man to remember, or realise, that I am wildly, deeply, radiantly attractive. I’m not just the woman who cooks and cleans and holds everything together.

And in response, she made a light-hearted comment. Something like, “Well, maybe you just need to post a few more pics of your ass on Instagram for some extra compliments.”

Oof. Ouch.

Maybe it was a joke. Maybe it was harmless. Maybe I was already raw and read too much into it… But something in it landed sideways. Because underneath the humour, I heard something else.

That my sensual expression is attention-seeking. 

That my desire to be seen makes me shallow.

That I’m manipulating people with my body.

She didn’t say that. But that’s what I made it mean. And what I heard, what my body felt, was this. “You’re asking for it.”

And the thing is? I do post sexy photos. I’ve shared parts of my sensual self online. I’ve danced and moved my body. I’ve done shibari shoots. I’ve been a nude model. Literally can find me naked on google images. I’ve expressed myself in ways that are tender, fierce, cheeky, and yes… erotic. Not for the gaze of men, but because it made me feel ALIVE..

And sometimes… sometimes, I’ve wanted the attention.

Sometimes I’ve used my sexuality for validation. Sometimes I’ve enjoyed the shock value. I’m not going to pretend otherwise… but that’s not the whole truth either.

Story time!

A month ago, I was meant to co-facilitate an event with a woman I no longer trust. In my experience she represented everything in the spiritual community I’m just not about. She wrapped cruelty in spiritual language and it was ick. Long story short…

I pulled out. We cancelled the event. What came after wasn’t just relief, it was grief. Grief for the energy I’d poured into the event. Grief for the rupture between us. Grief for the way women still weaponise “spirituality” to avoid accountability. And anger. I felt so fucking angry. RAAAAAGE

I wanted to move the energy. To shake it out of my body. To reclaim my fire. So, I did what any respectable woman with a platform would do, I posted a reel. Duh, lol. It was a little video I had on my phone, me at the beach, in a g-string, shaking my booty. Nothing pornographic. Just me, playful. In my body. Smiling. Moving with cheekiness and intention. I captioned it something like “Shaking off spiritual bypassing.”

the reel here

And I meant it. That reel was my rebellion. *insert an evil laugh*. Not against her specifically, it really had nothing to do with HER anymore. This was all me now. Rebelling. Trying to feel powerful again. It was me saying, fuck you. But also me saying, I’ll give you something else to bicker about. Oooo so shadowy I know. 

But really, deep down, I like that I can be cheeky and wise. Sexy and serious. I don’t have to amputate parts of myself just to be palatable to you. But still…you wanna know what I did days later?

I deleted it from my main feed.

Not because anyone said anything. But because I started to spiral.

I started to think about the potential clients I’d just met, the respected people I’d been in conversation with. I imagined them going to my profile and that being the first post they saw. I imagined them thinking: “Oh, she’s just another thirsty girl online.”

I imagined them not seeing my depth. My integrity. My brilliance. I imagined being reduced to skin.

That’s when the shame crept in. The shame didn’t come from men. It didn’t even come from trolls. It came from inside me, from that conditioned voice I’ve swallowed too many times. The voice that says, “You can be sexy, but only in private.” “You can be powerful, but don’t make anyone uncomfortable.” “Don’t give them a reason not to take you seriously.”

And that’s what I’m wrestling with.

The part of me that wants to be fully expressed. And the part of me that’s terrified I’ll be misunderstood, or worse, discarded.

Time for another story!

Years ago, I dated a man who desired me. Wanted me. But couldn’t bear the truth of my sexuality. He wanted me, deeply. But he also wanted to contain me. Control me. He hated that I had done nude modelling. Hated that I practiced shibari and sometimes shared those images. Hated that other people had access to my sensuality, even just through a screen! He never said it directly, but the message was clear, my body belonged to him now. My pleasure, my visibility, my erotic energy, it was his territory. 

He once said, “I want my partners to be as modest as I’d want my daughter to be.” He didn’t even have a daughter lol. But there it was, the comparison that still makes my skin crawl. I was to be as invisible, as untouchable, as unsexy as the child he imagined needing to protect.

Because if I was seen, truly seen in my erotic fullness, it would mean other men might “froth over” me.

And that was unacceptable.

I remember so clearly this one time he looked at me and said, “You’re the most sexual woman I’ve ever met.” But he didn’t say it with awe. He said it like it was a curse. Like I was dirty. Dangerous. Too much. Like my erotic charge made me evil.

I wrote a post about it on IG (obviously)…

read it here

And then, the clincher… he said, on a different occasion. “No one’s going to take you seriously if you keep showing yourself like this.”

That one landed deep. Because part of me believed him.

Even now, when I feel the impulse to share something sensual or provocative, I can still hear his voice in the background. Not because I agree with him, but because he voiced something that lives in the collective subconscious, that a woman can either be respected or expressed.

But not both.

There’s a book I keep returning to when these questions rise up in me again, Existential Kink by Carolyn Elliott. It challenges everything we’ve been taught about desire, shame, and power.

find it here

In it, she writes about the hidden pleasure we sometimes get from the parts of life we claim to hate. From being misunderstood. From being too much. From being punished. From being seen only as sexy. And she invites us to ask the most uncomfortable question of all…

What part of me actually enjoys this?

It’s confronting, I won’t lie. But when I look at that booty reel, the one I made in rebellion, in grief, in cheeky defiance, I admit it. A part of me liked the edge of it. Maybe even loved it. A part of me enjoyed the thrill of dancing on the boundary of what’s “acceptable.” A part of me wanted to be too much.

Because I’ve spent a lifetime being told to tone it down.

And sometimes, the deepest healing is not in being tamed, but in letting myself be fully felt, even in the shadow. Even when it’s messy. Even when it’s wild. Even when it scares people… including me.

It reminds me of a scene in the movie, Silver Linings Playbook. Jennifer Lawrence’s character, Tiffany, says in a moment of self reflection, “there will always be a part of me that is sloppy and dirty, but I like that! Just like all the other parts of myself!”

watch it here 1 minute and 15 seconds in

But ok, here’s the part that’s hardest to say, and maybe the most important… It’s not men who make me feel the most shame about my sexuality.

It’s women.

It’s women who look at me sideways when I walk into the room confident. It’s women who say things like, “She just wants attention.” It’s women who question my integrity when I post something sensual, not because of the content, but because of the discomfort it stirs in them.

And it makes sense.

We’ve been taught that there’s only so much beauty, so much sensual power, so much attention to go around, and if she has it, that means I don’t. This isn’t about cruelty. It’s about conditioning. It’s about centuries of being told that our power lies in being chosen, not in being whole. That if another woman is radiant, desirable, magnetic… it must mean I’m less.

And so we dim each other. Or worse, we cut each other down.

That judgment, that subtle venom behind a woman’s words, it isn’t about us. It’s their own longing. Their own ache. Their own disconnection from their erotic self.

But it still hurts.

Because what I want, what I think so many women want, is to be safe in our expression. Not just safe from men, but safe from each other…

And sometimes I think the reason I carry so much shame isn’t just personal, it’s ancestral. It’s cultural. It’s historical amnesia. 

Because there was a time when the female body wasn’t something to hide or apologise for. There was a time, many times, many places, when the curves, the breasts, the hips, the vulva, the erotic power of a woman’s form were honoured as holy.

We see it in ancient art, in the Venus figurines carved over 30,000 years ago, all breasts and belly and womb. We see it in temple carvings from India, where women’s sensuality is offered as prayer. We see it in shunga prints from Japan, in the erotic poetry of Sappho, in the fertility statues of Mesopotamia. Even in early Christian Europe, long before the body was made sinful, there were Sheela na gigs carved into churches. Fierce women flashing their vulvas in raw, unapologetic power. Erotic art isn’t new. The fascination with the female form isn’t new.

It’s only in recent history, through colonisation, through patriarchal religions, through centuries of moral control, that we’ve been taught to fear it. To hide it. To shame it. To see it as dangerous or indecent. But even now, it breaks through. In our music. In our dance. In fashion, poetry, photography. In the quiet thrill of taking a self-portrait that no one else sees.

We’re remembering something… 

That to express ourselves erotically, to honour our bodies as art, as prayer, as power, is not vulgar.

It’s fucking divine.

So maybe, I’m not just rebelling against modern shame. I’m participating in a lineage of women who have always known that the body is sacred. That desire is creative. That the erotic is not just about sex, it’s about life force.

And still… 

STILL, lol, you bet, I contradict myself!

Because part of me does post for attention. Part of me does want to be wanted. To stir something in others. To rebel. To provoke. To get a hit of power. To feel that I exist in the eyes of the world.

That part of me is not wrong.

That part is not unspiritual.

That part is not separate from my sacredness.

It is sacred, because it’s real.

As Carolyn Elliott writes in Existential Kink,

“Everything in your experience, especially the things that cause you suffering, are things you subconsciously want — or they wouldn’t be in your life.”

“When you can find the place that secretly enjoys the thing you hate, you unlock power.”

And Jung reminds us,

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

My sexuality isn’t all love and light. It’s love and shadow. Power and ache. Art and manipulation. Pleasure and contradiction… Baby, It’s all of it.

And I’m done pretending I have to choose.

I’m here to be whole.

BOOM.