Unquenched and wild longing

Άδάμας (Unconquerable), by Sophia Wallace, 2013.

Desire, for women, can be complicated. While men are generally allowed to want openly, to covet pleasure openly, women have to be more discreet about our desires. We can be wanted but we are rarely allowed to want because if we want — if we crave — we are greedy, we are wanton, we are fallen, we are whores. If we want, we acknowledge that we yearn to be satisfied. We acknowledge that our satisfaction matters. We demand to be seen and heard.

I am interested in the silence and strictures around women's desire, how we seem to have decided, as a culture, that there is shame in wanting and believing we deserve to want. We seem to have decided that we must earn the right to want and be temperate when we dare to do so. If you must want, don't dare want too much. We can't even have a serious conversation about desire. There is always some pithy parlance framing desire as if to want means you are not just desirous and human, you are needy, desperate. These days, when we talk about want, we talk about thirst, about unquenched and wild longing. When someone is too open about their desires, they are mocked for the audacity of being thirsty, parched. If they aren't mocked, they are condescended to with rhetoric about empowerment. Look at that woman expressing her desires? Look how bold and brave she is.

The sad truth is that women who express their desires unabashedly are brave.

— from "What It Means to Want" [foreword], by Roxane Gay in A Woman's Right to Pleasure.

This book, published in partnership with Lelo (producer of the best vibrator ever) is an amazing collection of art and writings about art and pleasure. Yet, I feel I need to hide the fact that I'm reading it. We have so far to go. I have so far to go. Be brave.