In our times, as the feminine eros has found its new unbound freedom, many women began to incline towards either consuming or creating erotic literature. Many of you probably have had a chance to encounter it here as well.
As someone who loves to observe the language people use and associations they create, there was something I noticed about this genre of writing. The language used was often full of animalistic, one may argue, vulgar associations — the “sweet and innocent” feminine language of fruit or the beauty of the vagina was combined with more crude expressions of “being well fucked”, “railed” and the similar. Some of it is authentic, but a lot of it appeared performative and with a conscious desire to create an impression of: “I am sweet and innocent but also not afraid to use vulgarities. I am an innocent deer but also a freak.” There is a degree of frigidity and virginity in the language and the general disposition despite its attempts to create a “shock” effect. It is like a child who discovers a vulgar, “forbidden” word and begins using it everywhere. A lot of it also seemed built around ideas and fantasies of sex and not the actual act of sex — which is why it can fail to truly move or incite anyone as it is without flesh and body. It is an expression of perhaps the larger trend within the culture that we often describe as: “Everything is perverted yet nothing is sexy”.
Another observation was the common use of animal-language to describe passion and arousal — “feral”, “savage” and the similar. While of course, when we write, we may use words for effect or art without it reflecting anything deeper than that, it is also worthy to consider if there is a subtle inability to resonate with or understand one’s sexuality and libido without collapsing into an animal.
[Volupta does not seek to pathologise or make you feel bad about something you do or enjoy. Or to police language — words and expressions can be more or less suitable depending of context and writer’s desired delivery so that is not the topic here. It is also important to note that even the “pathological” things that we enjoy and feel pulled towards carry hidden messages and knowledge about ourselves. This is to invite into a compassionate but honest investigation of our automatic tendencies and behaviours. ]
Both of these tendencies seem to point towards a rather simplified and reduced conception of one’s own sexuality. The complexity is not aded by the roles of “sweet innocent virgin” and “crazy freak whore” or anything else, but by being able to hold your sexuality in its vastness. You bring unity to its multiplicity through presence and cultivated relationship with it. When you establish this relationship, your sexuality can include the “innocent virgin” and the “crazy freak whore”, but rather than simply being “and this and that”, it is actually “neither/nor”. This means that it becomes so intricate, so differentiated, so individualised, developed and refined that it cannot “fit” any socially and culturally constructed identity (which “innocent virgin”, “crazy freak whore” or any other all are — the reference point for all of these identities is rarely your authentic libido but rather cultural images that you were fed). Since it is so complex and developed, it can only met and related to on its own — there is no cultural “script” that gives way to it.
This expression of desire can also leave the masculine force alienated rather than awakened. Deep inside he feels nothing and is not touched. He may use a woman to release, to scratch an itch, to validate himself, to get a power trip or any other reason, but the repulsion is why he tries to leave as soon as the “act is done”.
The core message of today’s article is that your sexuality can and should be fully human. Human includes the animal but collapse of the human into animal is a tragedy — it neither preserves the purity of the animal nor the purity of the human.
If we are to include more theological, alchemical and idealistic perspectives — a human includes also the divine, which means that through human, every polarity, every position, finds unity. Only in human is sexuality divine — the angels have no sexuality and animals have it within the bounds of reproduction, without the Intellect, without the “higher chakras”.
You can enjoy being wild and voracious, but your relationship to your sexuality does not have to collapse into animal, into lack of poetry, into lack of subtlety and lack of nuance, lack of ritual, of holding space. You can express your desire, your hunger in a way that still holds you as a human and in a way that still holds space for the Other, rather than eclipsing them with our own mental, not even physical, hunger.
Today’s Volupta advice and techniques shall focus on giving your sexuality a more complex and nuanced expression — one that truly invites and makes nobody feel flat.
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