A Religion of Anti-Sexuality

Deep inside, every woman knows that the resource her power rests on is her sexuality. Yet not only does she fear her sexuality, she fears her power. And why wouldn’t she when the consequences of both are so real for a woman? When if she were to own them she would be at best hated, at worst harmed or demonized? Some will say that sounds dramatic but if you look throughout history it’s invariably the case. 

I have had women, I’ve known women, I’ve been one of these women who have declared definitively that I wanted to understand my sexuality. I wanted to understand my power.  These women have said the same. They wanted to essentially take the journey of sexual liberation the same way the masculine world offers the journey of spiritual liberation. They wanted to know every single aspect of who they were as a sexual human being, as a sexual woman. I have known women who took that journey and wrote about it, spoke about it, shared about it, loved it. And like any journey, hated it and were frustrated inside of it and hurt by it and upset by it. 

These are experiences that you have in any kind of self-realization, in any kind of coming to have self-knowledge but in an arena that is so demonized, so hated, so feared, that it’s virtually impossible for a person, much less a woman, to take full ownership of what is inside of her. The belief system of the culture who not only excuses her from having little facility and little understanding, but has built the entire fabric of our culture on women fearing their own sexuality. And as I said, I’ve known these women who began their sexual journey. It’s so impossible to hold for oneself, to claim for oneself, to choose to know oneself sexually. There is an entire world waiting to say, “Oh, are you? Where is it?” That’s a boy, that’s bad.

I’ve seen videos of women saying women couldn’t make that decision for themselves. They couldn’t make that choice for them. They need protectors for their sexuality. These women are their sister’s keeper, keeping them from what they kept themselves from, from hat women keep each other from. And that is self-knowledge. When we talk about a woman’s sexuality, it is to know that self and knowledge the foundation of power. 

I’ve seen thousands upon thousands of women begin to open their sexuality. I watched the process. I’ve watched these women who have spent lifetimes concealing, denying, and rejecting their sexuality, begin to open it. I’ve seen the voraciousness of their hunger and desire almost as if they let an animal out of the cage. I’ve seen these women begin to explore everything that they possibly can as if they couldn’t stop themselves, as if there were a force inside of them that had its own mind.  Until you begin to work with the attention and connect your attention to this hunger the only solution is the Hunger Games, almost like God prescribed anorexia as the only solution we have for a women’s potential for over eating. 

I watched these women grab everything that they possibly could. I also watched them come alive, write poetry, speak about it, share it, and connect with other women about it. Connect with men about it. I’ve watched these women forget all of the things that they are supposed to do to be strong and self-sufficient, one of which is to deny and reject men.  

What we call strength in the world is women acting. 

I watched them try things and I watched them get hurt. I watched them admit that they want things that they shouldn’t want. And then what is this answer they find to getting hurt? They turn away from the journey and say to themselves, “It happened.” 

If that happens on a spiritual journey, people send you back in because everyone wants you to be on a spiritual journey. But if it happens on a sexual journey, the whole world is waiting saying, “See, I told you so. I told you you would get hurt. You were taken advantage of. You were harmed. Yeah you really can’t hold your volition.” They say, “You got too big for your britches.” It’s almost as if there’s an entire industry built ready to absorb women and reprogram them that any idea that they could be powerful and strong leads to disasters where it is a dangerous idea for a woman to have an answer. 

There’s this idea of conversion therapy for LGBTQ. I think there is a conversion therapy for a woman who determines that she’s sexual. Therapy though, interestingly is usually made up of women. Women have a stake in, money in, other women to reject power as well.

John McWhorter talks about the religion of anti-racism, the notion of an anti-racism that is born not of compassion or logic but a kind of religiosity that is a non-rational part of the brain. It has to remain nonrational and always see the other as an enemy. Always see oneself as incapable. I would suggest that there is a religion of anti-sexuality for women. There is a fervor. We talk about internalized misogyny as being a self-loathing in a woman. We don’t realize hatred of sexuality is hatred of oneself and hatred of the ensuing power that would come from sexuality is internalized misogyny. 

There is an invisible fire and brimstone that exists in a woman. Not to be cliché, but it’s an internalized notion of oneself as Eve, as evil. And it operates so invisibly within us that the moment something happens in our sexuality, and I’ll keep repeating, we will get hurt as you do on any journey that’s part of the process of coming to have your own power. But there is something so deeply rooted in the notion that we as women are even more evil if we engage in sexuality. We’re engaging in the journey, where any opportunity to leave it looks like a relief because to face oneself, to face one’s identity, to own this part our resources, is tremendous. In masculine spirituality we talk about enlightenment seen as a very intense and extreme journey you would take. A lifetime journey, many lifetimes in order to achieve enlightenment. 

A corollary to that is a woman going into her own layers upon layers upon layers of ideas about the fact that she is evil. Her sexuality is what would take her through that thought to her undoing. Until a woman works with this, she has to blame what’s outside of herself for her feeling of powerlessness. The options for women are terrifying. On the one hand she feels powerless and has to blame everyone outside of herself. On the other hand she begins to explore her power. She has to continually face this idea. There’s a word dukkha I’ve heard translated as suffering, meaning difficult to look at. On a women’s journey in her sexuality she has to look at the difficult being that she is. Evil. She’s dangerous. I’ve heard the stories where a woman would show up at a man’s door at two in the morning virtually naked, lay down, and then say on the other side of it that he violated her. Or that she wanted to be cast in a role and then when she didn’t get that job, say that he violated her. If you look at these you see the notion that a woman couldn’t have sexual agency. It is ludicrous. That’s how hypnotized we are by this idea. We say she is pure and innocent with no sexual volition in order to counter at the other extreme that women are evil open seductresses luring others into danger into evil. 

Those two extremes are what women live inside of. She has a choice of as to which one she wants to be. She lives eternally split. The end of the path of sexual liberation is that she’s put back together. She has access to her innocence but it’s with the wisdom and power of her own sexuality. She can own her desire. She can own all that hunger. She no longer has to foist it or project it onto another. She sees it in herself and no longer has to put it on something outside of herself and make it come at her, which is what most women do. Essentially she can own and hold her shadow.