Why can't we tell them what we want, what we really really want?
...a meditation + ritual for the new moon in Pisces
Until I was almost twenty-one years old, I wrote all my journals to God.
Dear God, I started every entry with — and then I would launch into an account of whatever boy I was into or dating and how much I loved him and how guilty I felt about my interest in sex or having sex and always promising God that I was trying to be a better person: less selfish, less judgmental, more dedicated to him and his teachings.
Rather than turning towards my own self, my own wants and needs, I was always turning towards men: first God, and then all the boys that I turned into gods.
When men would ask me what I wanted in bed, I wouldn’t know. There was a period where I’d even tell them that I wanted them to do whatever they wanted to do with my body — and this was before I was kinky, before I knew how to talk about limits and safe words.
I have grown a lot since these years thankfully, but sometimes I do still struggle not only to recognize my own wants and needs — but also to be able to express them.
I know that I am not alone in this struggle, which is why I wanted this month to be about learning our body’s language. While I think sex negativity certainly plays a part in our difficulty with sharing our yeses, nos, and maybes, I want to offer a wider lens just to honor the context for why this can be so difficult for many of us.
Our sex lives don’t exist in a vacuum: the power dynamics that affect us in work and in our day to day life also affect the way we experience sex.
I’m thinking about how the other week, one of my female friends put a screenshot of a tweet written by Danielle Kurtzleben (@titonka) in our group chat with another female friend that said “Dear people who aren’t constantly concerned about being in the way: How do you live life? What does this feel like?”
I’m thinking about how as a child, after a big holiday meal, all the men in my family would sit in the living room watching football while all the women cleaned up the dishes and food. I’m thinking about all the female friends and family I’ve had in my life who still, in 2024, have an ongoing struggle with trying to get their partners to at least take out the trash and recycling while they all do the cooking, cleaning, and childcare — on top of also have a 40 hour a week job.
I’m thinking about how, in a recent Instagram post by a sexual wellness company that I follow that produces products almost exclusively designed for people with vaginas, they made a post that asked what you would try if you were with the right partner. This question was clearly for their target audience, which is definitely not cis men, but one of the first comments was from someone who appeared to be a man who said something along the lines of feet stuff and JOI (jerk off instruction) ASMR. Another man said he would want to explore pegging and a MFM threesome. In contrast, the people who appeared to identify as women almost all said something along the lines of what I used to tell my partners: I’m up for anything.
I’m thinking about all the people who have been socialized as women, myself included, who reread over emails, trying to figure out whether we’ve used too many exclamation points.
I’m thinking about how women are always trying to make themselves smaller: we obsess over losing weight, sit with our legs tightly shut, and apologize more than men.
I’m thinking about the woman I was talking to who complimented my soft voice and told me that she always has to try to speak less loudly.
I’m thinking about the woman who died after a restaurant in Disney World didn’t take her allergens seriously.
I’m thinking about how rare it is for the women in my life to walk alone at night, how when we go on first dates, we share our locations with our friends and make sure we’re in a public place and know where our keys are, just in case.
I’m also thinking about our sex lives: how big the orgasm gap is and how 80% of women have reported faking their orgasms.
I’m thinking about how, in her essay “Thank You For Taking Care of Yourself” from her book Girlhood, author Melissa Febos reflects on why girls and women often say yes to touch and sex that they do not want. One of the conclusions that Febos comes to ” is “that both men and women prioritize the comfort and well-being of men over women’s safety, comfort, even the truth of their bodily experience.”
I’m thinking about how in
’s recent sysnthesis of memoirs that explore divorce, she concludes by saying, “What do all of these individual narratives tell us? It’s not just that inequity powerfully persists within heterosexual marriage. More disturbingly, that inequity is often what holds heterosexual marriage together. In many of these books, you see the scale tip toward equity and the marriage falls apart.”I’m thinking about Natalie Holloway and all the other women who have died when they resisted a man’s sexual advances.
Why can’t we just tell these men to go fuck themselves and take our their own damn trash and give themselves an orgasm and use all the exclamation points that we do or do not desire to use and be okay with taking up as much space as we need? With the partners we love and trust, why is it still so challenging to share that we want them to go down on us?
I think all of us who have been socialized as women recognize the answer to these questions: the pushback we often receive for expressing our wants, needs, and boundaries often ranges from indifference to deadly. After a lifetime of trying to express our desires and needs and being met with these forms of neglect and violence, we learn that our needs don’t matter.
That we don’t matter.
If it’s tough just to think about how many exclamation points we should put in an email, of course it’s gonna be tough to acknowledge and to share what we do and don’t want in our sex lives.
I don’t have an easy answer on how to fix this. The patriarchy certainly isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
But even if we can’t dramatically shift the systems of oppression shaping all this overnight, there are things we can do to support ourselves along the way.
One of the many images in Rebeca’s poem “Concepts of Desire” that I found so profound was of the image of her comforting her younger self. She says, “Desire like I finally did it/ I learned to listen to the little girl/I live with inside my brain.” She gives her younger self juice, goes on to put a sweater on her younger self, and even says, “I’ve finally learned how to stop interrupting her train of thought.”
The power we might have, in this moment, is to support our own selves in knowing that our needs are important. To know that we’re worthy and deserving of having our yeses, nos, and maybes not only heard and respected by the men with whom we interact, but also held with equal weight to those men’s own safety, comfort, and well-being.
This new moon that takes place on March 10th is in Pisces. It’s a super moon, which means that it’s closer in proximity to the earth (although since it’s a new moon we won’t be able to see it). Being in Pisces, this a dreamy, imaginative, but also very emotional moon.
Jeanna Kedlec of astrology for writers brings up the idea that at new moons, we are planting seeds for the future – but we don’t always know when these seeds will yield results. She says, “So much of magic isn’t active doing doing doing. Planting planting planting. Ritual ritual ritual. Yes, we make intentions. Sure, we make plans. But then we execute. And then we live. So much magic happens in the maintenance. In the cultivation and keeping and care. In ensuring right relationship and right conditions in everyday life.”
If we plant the seed that our yeses, nos, and maybes (in our sex lives and beyond) are important, I wonder how it could grow over time.
Journal Prompts + Meditation
Journal Prompt (feel free to make an audio recording, draw, paint, or just talk out loud to yourself about this if writing doesn’t work for you):