SEXUALITY
The Journey to Embracing Female Sexuality
Being a modern woman is no easy feat.
Being a modern Southeast Asian woman, who also happens to be a professional dating coach and relationship consultant, can sometimes feel like an uphill battle.
I constantly walk a fine line between celebrating my female sexuality and being careful not to upset the status quo too much. There’s a balance I must maintain: I need to be a champion of feminism without jeopardizing my traditional upbringing — the same upbringing that continues to dictate my womanhood.
After all, isn’t a woman’s sexuality only important when it’s for other people’s consumption and if it passes society’s long-established standards?
Becoming Me
I get a lot of bad rap from some of the things I write and say, and in most cases, I understand where all the heat is coming from.
It’s easy for people to clap when I’m talking about things like outdated gender roles, because feminism has become both an advocacy and a trend. It’s a little harder for them to cheer when I try to dissect complicated observations on, say, possible bias against men in modern romance.
I don’t claim to know everything, of course. No one does. But my journey towards understanding the world of dating and reclaiming female sexuality for myself hasn’t been easy.
I wasn’t always as outspoken and assertive. In fact, the taboos surrounding women and sex were just as much of an issue for me as they continue to be for others.
Before I got to where I am now, I had to disabuse myself of several notions that make it difficult for people — men and women both — to accept that women are complex, too:
- Female sexuality is about relations between women and men.
It can be just about women, or one woman, and it’s still valid. Female sexuality can be about female pleasure and identity alone, and it will remain just as important.
- Female sexuality has nothing to do with men.
It can be about men sometimes, and there’s nothing wrong with that, either. Female and male sexuality are not mutually exclusive, and it’s perfectly alright for women to have sexual preferences that include men or that subscribe to traditionally masculine views on sexuality.
- We shouldn’t talk about female sexuality openly.
We should. Treating female sexuality like some kind of secret helps promote misinformation and fear. If there is more open and respectful discourse about it, it will help everyone better comprehend exactly which information are facts, which ones are evolving truths, and which ones are pure misconceptions or lies.
It’s Not All about Sex
There are different types of women all over the world, and each woman has complex views on femininity and sex.
It stands to reason, then, that opinion on female sexuality can vary, and that as a concept, it can mean so many things beyond what kind of man a woman wants to sleep with and how much shame to assign someone who enjoys sex for more than just its biological function.
The irony is obvious, sometimes. So much of popular culture and modern media is framed around marketing female sexuality to the people, yet the moment women take charge of the narrative and express our sexual preferences and desires, it’s suddenly inappropriate or tacky or — even worse — dangerous for public consciousness.
What people fail to get is that the conventional idea of sex is not all there is to women’s relationship with sexuality. It can also be about the exploration of things denied to the female side of the equation until only a few decades ago. It can be about self-discovery and the sheer joy of finding out that women can feel and can choose.
We still have a long way to go to achieve true gender equality when it comes to many aspects in society. Part of that journey is learning to stop humiliating women for celebrating their pleasures or pursuing their desires or even agreeing with men on certain facets of femininity.
But the first step to that ultimate goal has always been to give everyone a seat at the table. And the best source of truth when it comes to female sexuality?
We women, of course.
