Warning: naughty language ahead. 

“I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naïve or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman.”

~ Anais Nin

When I first read David Esotica’s article, I was annoyed. Then, I really started to get angry. Who the fuck are you to decide what all women feel and where do you get off listing how women should be—in your words—ravished?!

Because let’s be clear here, we aren’t talking lovemaking. We are using a word we connote with violence. We are using a word that means you are taking something that’s mine. We are using a word that I’m okay with using to describe a certain kind of sex, but fuck you if you think you ever get to do it to my mind.

I believe that gender stereotypes and generalizations are fundamentally unnecessary, but sometimes contain kernels of truth. I love the experience of being female. I love the soft, yielding parts of my body and my mind. I love my strength—physical, mental and spiritual. I love the contrast of male and female. We all contain yin and yang, and the interplay of the two between two lovers, regardless of gender, is beautiful—both mentally and physically.

The thing is, I’d be just as bothered by an equally reductive essay written about men. I’ve written before about how it pains me when women, under the guise of feminism, tear men down and condense the idea of masculinity to a tired joke that only continues to divide the sexes.

We are not just flowers, and men are not wild animals.

So to hear a man reduce this idea of what it is to be female this way does more than make me angry. It saddens me.

I could probably give you a hundred reasons why, but I’ll stick with seven, plus one.

1. “A woman’s sex is all mental.”

I don’t know who he’s talking to, but the moment of orgasm might be one of the few times in my life that I am completely without words. There is no cerebral framework for that sensation. It is body and spirit on fire.

2. “For all her thorns and daggers, every woman holds a fragile part. She hides it, for fear of finding herself vulnerable.”

I prize my vulnerability; it is a strength. I don’t know what to make of this idea of “thorns and daggers”? Sure, we all have our guarded moments. The strong among us (humans, not exclusively women) don’t hide our fragility. We know that where we are tender and raw—sexually or spiritually—is where we are our most genuine, our most essential.

3. “Care taken whilst taking what you want.”

{As a funny aside, part of my annoyance here is the use of the word “whilst.” Seriously? Whilst? Hmm.}

My sex isn’t something to be taken from me, it’s something to share. My mind, my body, my heart, my spirit? They aren’t to be taken. I’ll give them. I’ll share them. They are mine, and I don’t think I’d want to be with anyone who felt the need to try and take them.

4. “Painfully. Cruel nails grinding down the sides of her ribs. Gripping onto the bone of her hips. Digging into the soft flesh of her waist.”

Many people enjoy pushing the boundaries of pleasure versus pain. If someone wants to do something “cruelly and painfully” to me, I’ll pass. Thanks anyway.

5. “Every woman.”

I have to say, every time I read “every woman” in this piece, I cringed. Not just for “every woman,” but for every man too. There are seven million plus one things about me and even then I’m still shifting and changing. I can’t imagine reducing the ways to love one man into a list of eight, let alone the entire gender.

6. “Every woman reaches a point when she comes, deeper and harder than she thought possible. Her body and her soul open unleashing a storm.”

Ah, again with the “every woman.” But the part that makes me sad here, and throughout, is the idea that making love is something you would choose to do to someone instead of with them. There is a disconnect here. This is the disconnect that making love should begin to erode. Anais Nin said, “only the united beat of sex and heart together can create ecstasy.” This isn’t something you do to a woman and she “takes it.” This is something you share. This is the ocean between two continents. This is the waves crashing on both of our shores.

7. “This leads us to a beautiful truth about the feminine—every woman is in pain.”

Wrong. This leads us to a beautiful truth about human beings: we are all in pain.

To connect physically, lovingly, whether through the platonic touch of a friend or passionate lovemaking can have a profound affect on our pain. All of us have dark places that need healing. We give it to ourselves; we give it to each other. And I’d agree, our pain is part of the beautiful truth of being human, but stand beside me and hold me through my pain. It isn’t a way into my pants.

8. “Yes, this is how I can hold you, take you and claim you…but you are the one who must invite me.”

There is no invitation I would issue, could issue to be claimed, to have someone “fuck my mind.” Love is standing together, no one above or below, but in concert. I am not here in some tower waiting to be carried away and ravished. When I decide to make love, it is something I will give.

It is a gift we give to each other. It is how we surrender to each other.

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