Let's Talk About Sex

Reclaiming Erotic Language After Sexual Trauma

I live in a body that has had people’s sexual desires, curiosities + fantasies projected on it since I was about five years old. My being has hosted the projections of curious little boys, grown ass men, relatives + perfectly “straight” friends. Other people’s desires for me existed prior to understanding that I was a self, that my body was mine, that I could say no, yes or anything in between.

I won’t regale you with my private horrors (at this time). But I will say, this column is part passion project, part exorcism. There will be darkness, fair warning.

My thought today is how deformed a sexual being can become when it is unable to understand and define itself with language that feels true. Instead it becomes attuned to the proclivities of it’s environment.

This is why the way we speak about sex matters. Language is code. Words transmit ideas about what is normal, desirable, shameful, masculine, feminine, loving, dirty, owed. Repeat those meanings long enough and they become beliefs; stack enough beliefs together and you’ve built yourself a mental matrix. Now you’re living inside a reality you didn’t consciously design, following rules you never consciously agreed to.

Nothing sings this song louder than the countless religious women I have seen justify their own assault in the name of wifely “duty”. Think about that word. Duty. Does that sound like it’s about pleasure? Or does that sound like it’s about sacrifice?