Research has shown, for example, that American women have one orgasm for every three a man experiences—this is what we call the “orgasm gap.”5 There are several cultural norms that might explain this: it is more socially acceptable for men than it is for women to express their sexual desires; women’s sexuality is considered mysterious and more challenging than men’s; women may be more likely to be concerned about how they look rather than how they feel; men’s pleasure is prioritized in the media and in patriarchal cultures. Whatever the reason, the effect is that in our most intimate of encounters, statistically speaking, men have been shown to receive more fulfillment than women.
My research on HIV and sexuality brought me some additional information, which is supported by recent studies of American women: women in intimate relationships with other women have more orgasms than do heterosexual women.6 I have to wonder at studies like these, if we are fully harnessing our sexual power and pleasure.
My grandmother had a way of describing the clitoris: “Ndi chikarakadzi anopedza nyota yekadzi”—“The feminine goddess that quenches a woman’s inner thirst.” Never a proponent of a practice among my people known as kudhonza matinji—the pulling of the inner labia minora of the vagina, which is said to sexually satisfy men and also make birthing easier, but is in fact a painful distortion of the body—my grandmother belonged to a secret society of women who discouraged this practice because they believed in the power of women’s pleasure.
I never knew who these women were or when they met, but as a nyamukuta (midwife), my grandmother could see that elongated labia hindered rather than helped the birthing process. “I have to keep flipping those chunks of meat down there that look like the ears of an elephant while taking away my time from delivering the baby,” she once told me, an explanation I knew would have my mother in stitches with so much laughter.
I recently shared with an American conference group a statistic that I found interesting: 30 percent of women and 25 percent of men don’t know where the clitoris is located. Right away a man in the group expressed astonishment that more women than men are confused about female anatomy. But this is not so surprising when you really think about it. Women, even in so-called developed countries, are often taught from a very early age that their bodies are a source of danger or shame—even in notoriously inadequate American sexual education classes, for example, or well-meaning rape prevention campaigns, which put the emphasis on teaching girls to say “no” so much that we effectively discourage them from saying “yes” to their own desires.7 Like the pulling of the inner labia minora of the vagina, there are many different ways human cultures distort “the goddess that quenches a woman’s inner thirst,” as my grandmother would say, and disconnect girls and women from their bodies.
At its most extreme, some cultures, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa and the Arab states but also in some Western cultures, completely mutilate female sex organs, from female circumcision to expensive cosmetic surgeries that “improve” the appearance, size, and shape of the clitoris, and the practice is increasingly gaining in popularity. More than five thousand labiaplasties were performed in the United States in 2013, a 44 percent increase from the year before. Even bigger surges in the procedure were reported in the UK and Australia.8 The secret society of women my grandmother belonged to knew better, and yet they were too afraid to openly oppose it. Unfortunately, sex is a taboo subject in my culture, and as children we would hear about it only when my grandmother was not happy about something concerning women and their sexuality.
Cultural norms and practices that deny women’s sexuality by devaluing female orgasm, or at the most extreme mutilating their sexual organs, robs us of our erotic power, our bodily knowing. Harnessing the power of our deepest, most sacred sexualities is an essential part of creating a more harmonious, balanced world.
The sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s was widespread in the US yet the orgasm gap persists, and more than six hundred American women are victims of sexual violence each day.9 The sexual revolution will not be complete as long as some cultures prize profit over emotion, wealth accumulation and hierarchical power over embodied joy. Women must continue to rise. For how can we have the confidence to follow our inner compass and seek the fulfillment of our sacred dreams without also cultivating a sexual revolution from within?
A woman with awakened sexuality has cultivated love and respect for her body and the bodies of all living beings. She celebrates the power of her femininity and her ability to forge sacred connections and generative creativity. She embraces joy and pleasure, expands rather than shrinks into her environment. She has recovered what has been kept from her, the knowledge of her own corporeal self and its powerful potentials. She holds the key to love and community in the sacred shapes of her physical incarnation.
I Am Deliberate
I often find that my favorite moment in books, poems, and the stories women tell me is that point when a woman stops asking for permission and gets in touch with her power in the world—when she realizes the strength of her own shape and feels herself tangibly in her environment; when she lets go of shame and fear and awakens her sensual, physical being. When Cheryl Strayed reflects in her memoir Wild: “Of all the things I’d been skeptical about, I didn’t feel skeptical about this: the wilderness had a clarity that included me.”10 Or when Zora Neale Hurston’s character Janie in Their Eyes Were Watching God learns what love is by watching spring unfold:
She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was a marriage!11
My body sways and sings in admiration and recognition of these moments. I feel a giant “Yes!” ringing in me like a gong. This is the moment when a woman stops asking for permission and starts charting her own course. Why? Because she feels herself connected to something greater than herself, and she also feels that greatness dwelling within her very being.
Give your body freedom to let loose, be true, embracing all its softness, curves, and pulsating energy. Let your body express its desires, hopes, and dreams to and through you—let your feet, legs, hips, stomach, hands, arms, and neck do the talking. Feel in the sacred body of the wild forest—the crisp clean air, the strong sturdy trunks and branches, the soft wispy unkempt undergrowth—the contours of your own sacred body; taste the syrupy sweet nectar of the world just as the bees and the birds do. These fleshy pleasures include you. Go on this nonlinear, daring journey toward your sacred purpose with all parts of you—body, mind, and soul.
It is so hard to do, I know. There are many forces discouraging us from loving and trusting our bodies, many voices drowning out the sound of our bodies’ expression. This is why my body and soul thrill at every moment when authors like Cheryl Strayed or Zora Neale Hurston refuse that shame and voice the freedom to love one’s self—because in spite of how difficult it is to do, we have the opportunity to do it anyway, in every moment of every day. “You only have to let the soft animal of your body / love what it loves,” writes poet Mary Oliver.12 I am here to tell you that you are enough. I am here to tell you that you are, in fact, abundant. You will come to know and believe this if only you are brave enough to awaken your sensual body.
Harness Your Sacred Sensual Power
Seynabou’s story brings awareness of the deep wounds that so often accompany the development of women’s sexual selves. For some women the wounding comes from child marriage, for others it comes from sexual abuse, others grow up being told to cross their legs and cover up as adult men gawk at them, and on and on. We are indeed in crisis in this area. I am also moved by Seynabou’s story, however, because in it she provides a potent example of a woman who harnessed her sensuality despite her culture and society. Inspired by Seynabou’s guidance, we must meditate on, find solutions for, and celebrate our deepest sexual desires.
Seynabou’s story is not j
ust about the day her cousin found out about orgasm and the generational silence around such pleasure that the aunts displayed; it is also a story about a woman getting in touch with her erotic power, claiming and voicing it as her inherent right. We all have that same right to embrace and radiate our feminine sensuality as whole women, and by doing so, there is a ripple effect of healing connection with others.
My beloved poet warrior Audre Lorde wrote that the erotic is a source of great power and information, a source that lives in a sacred, feminine dimension. She defines the erotic as “a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings.”13 We can know it by the feeling of internal satisfaction that it brings. Once we know this feeling, we will most certainly measure every other thing against it, “for having the fullness of this depth of feeling and recognizing its power, in honor and self-respect we can require no less of ourselves.”14 It is like finding the source of life. We are liberated, happier, and can work on our dreams with confidence and gusto. How can we care for something outside of us when the erotic within us is silenced?
Lorde insists that the erotic is “the personification of love in all its aspects”;15 it is creativity and harmony embodied, it is “creative energy empowered.”16 Tapping in to this resource is revolutionary because we live in societies that rob us of our erotic potential by privileging profit and individual gain over emotion. The erotic is another kind of power altogether, not one that exploits, but one that empowers and loves. Perhaps we experience the erotic during sex, but we are just as likely to experience it through reading, through singing, through dance—or whatever else explodes your inner self with a sense of fullness and bliss.
I remember feeling this connection to my body and my joy when I was small and spent my days working in the fields. The other herders, all boys, would often make terrible fun of me when they caught me talking to lizards, cow dung beetles, and chameleons as if these creatures could hear me, and they hated that I was faster and stronger than they were as we climbed trees or raced through the fields. But to me, playing out in the trees, grasses, and clay soil with these creatures, and the combination of using my imagination and my body, was an experience of the erotic, creative energy empowered.
I loved to watch big black ants, known as mashingishingi, form a long winding line to build their mounds. Sometimes I would get distracted trying to rescue drowning ants and fishing worms from water puddles. I followed along as big black ants led me to their final destination, a feeling of amazement at how they stored water to build their beautiful home running up and down my spine. I followed the slimy trail of snails until I found their home, too, cheering them on for walking such long distances. I knew better than to touch them or distract them in their journey, because my mother said they were in a hurry to feed their young ones. During the rainy season, I dug the red clay soil from the dead anthill, shaping it into all kinds of animals, including dogs, zebras, and elephants.
I loved climbing wild fruit trees, too, and was proud of my speed and agility, which helped me to reach the highest hanging fruit. I remember one day, a neighbor’s son, called Kunesu, complained that my tree climbing was unladylike. He decided to show the other cattle herders where I belong—in the kitchen—by challenging me to a climbing contest. I agree, and beat him to the fruit! While others laugh, Kunesu seethes with anger. I knew that this was not the end, that there would be a fight. When this happens, I cannot win because Kunesu is physically stronger than I am. My brother and his friends warn me to stay away from him because they, too, fear him.
One day, Kunesu insisted that I fetch a stray cow. Refusing, I walk away, muttering insults as I go. In punishment for my insolence, he scoops soil into two small rounded mounds, draws a straight line in the soil between the mounds, and tells me that each represents a breast, one of his mother’s and one of my mother’s. This kind of talk excites every adolescent cattle herder because it is taboo. In my culture, a mother’s breast is not something with which you play around! Mothers are well respected and their reproductive parts are generally not discussed.
Kunesu dares me to “destroy” his mother’s breast. By this time, we are surrounded by herders who are itching for us to fight. Kunesu and I face off like two bulls and I stare him down. He crosses the line and stomps on my mother’s so-called breast with his foot. Oh, I am angry—my blood is boiling and I want revenge. Punching him in the face, I scream, “How dare you have no respect for my mother’s breast!” In the background, I hear cheering. The crowd is getting rowdy and many probably expect boys related to my mother to come to my rescue. No one does because Kunesu is a very strong boy and no one is willing to cross him.
Those watching laughingly call him a coward for taking a punch from a girl. Kunesu slowly wipes off the part of his face that I’ve hit as though he is cleaning off my filth. As he looks me up and down, it is clear that he plans to show me where I belong. Silence fills the humid air except for the soft rustling of savanna grass and the singing birds. With one quick movement, Kunesu punches my nose so hard that blood splatters everywhere. Bleeding but determined, I hold my ground. Biting my lower lip to hold back tears, I see from the corner of my eye the cattle herders scatter. The noise has attracted Kunesu’s father, who grabs his son by the ear and drags him home, yelling at him for letting a girl challenge him and then beating her up.
There will always be bullies like Kunesu who want to denigrate our power, to mock our mother’s breasts, or to stomp the feminine body. There will always be harmful forces who would rather keep us out of the trees, tucked away controlled and disembodied, far from the fruit for which we long. And so you have to be willing to fight for it, as my younger self did without knowing it; you have to make a practice of honoring the erotic within you, and embracing your tender, feminine parts.
This younger me found a source of the erotic in the strength of my arms and legs as I climbed fruit trees, in the miraculous movements of insects and animals, and in forming creatures out of clay with my hands. I found it instinctively and without questioning. I found it without shame. There is something instinctive in you, too, which longs to slough off embarrassment and control in pursuit of touching and tasting the wild fruit hanging from the highest branch.
We can only tap into the fullness of our beings and our strength if we liberate our sensual, erotic power. Otherwise, we remain incomplete, stuck in our heads, pursuing our sacred dreams only from the “neck up.” From the moment I experienced my own sexuality with my current husband, Mark, without shame, I began to experience true joy and an inner peace. I was a fulfilled woman, a goddess on a mission. Connection to my sexuality and my sensuality meant I was in a relationship with myself. I valued and practiced self-love and care. Embarrassment and fear had no more power over me. Instead, I was using my energy in pursuit of my sacred dreams, able to give back to others from a place of wholeness.
In October of 2015, I was invited to speak at the Emerging Women Conference where I shared a speaking platform with Esther Perel. Esther is a native of Belgium and a practicing psychotherapist who spent most of her time consulting with Fortune 500 companies. Her 2013 TED talk, “The Secret to Desire in a Long-Term Relationship,” attracted more than a million views in the first month after its release. Esther’s topic at the conference was “The Fluidity of Sexual Desire,” which left the audience in awe.17 She described how women can easily lose connections to their arousal, to their sense of excitement, to their playfulness, and yet, this loss is also connected to their aliveness.
Esther’s talk brought some truth home when she talked about how our passion and connection to our work and for things in life can have deeper meaning when we are connected to an inner source of excitement—awakened to our own desires, our own erotic vitality. These self-connections make us feel alive and from that place of aliveness with the erotic self, then it’s much easier for us to connect to our work, our relationships, and our dreams.
Sacred sisters, claim your sensuality,
the erotic power of your body uniting with your spiritual and emotional self—it heals you. Accept the exploration of your own long-denied erotic needs; find that fullness not only in your body but in your work, your relationships, and your spirit. That is the opportunity that talking about this often-taboo subject of sexuality offers us.
You are more than an object for someone else’s pleasure—you can be your own source of pleasure and joy. You contain deep wells of feeling within you. Share your stories of erotic fullness with others, for the time has come for us to help one another tap into our authentic true selves so that we all shine as the uniquely impactful global sisters we are meant to be. Love yourself before you love your work, your dreams, or someone else. Celebrate your body’s and your soul’s desires: you deserve your pleasure and your joy, for you are creative energy embodied.
SACRED RITUAL TO VALIDATE YOUR BODY’S KNOWING
Express your deeper knowing to everything that is true to your soul with movement and awareness in your body. As my grandmother would say, “When the truth hits you at the center of your knowing, every fiber of your being responds in agreement. A deep joy rises and an uncontrollable, deep ululation erupts, surprising even you, and you know in your bones that Nyadenga, the Great Spirit, has heard your truth.” Your body will speak when you are in tune with your inner knowing.
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