We experience a lack of desire or understanding of our desire, because we literally live in a culture that gives no shits what we want.
There are many common sexual issues, but there is ONE that people seem to struggle with en masse. This issue, which pummels and spirals the people I work with into some of the biggest shame and despair relating to sexuality, is their frustrating experience of desire.
In our modern world, we have desires dangled in front of our faces like fish, as if we, the cats with wide eyes, will savagely swipe them into our mouths with no discernment. We learn to metabolize a litany of compulsory desires, constantly flung at us. Get this face cream, wear these yoga clothes, join this cool kids club, become an influencer, watch this show…and you will be okay, not only okay, you’ll be better than you were, a more worthy human.
These desires go much deeper though: be attracted to this kind of human, want this kind of sex, want to be this kind of sexy, choose this type of relationship.
Our insecurities are deeply manipulated so that we are motivated to do everything possible to comply with cultural standards that are both unrealistic and antiquated. That can mean everything from buying products we don’t need to the hegemonic heterosexual monogamous desire we are fed for our entire lives.
These desire distortions are fabricated to make us want what we don’t, and to think something is wrong with us because of the things we truly DO want. In such a context, it can be challenging to sort through the crap we are sold everyday to get to what feels really important and right for us.
Sexually, this sinks deeper into our soul, crushing us on the inside because we can’t easily peer into other people’s sexual lives and bodies to understand that the things we feel might be common or even totally normal.
The sexual desire issues that people have shared with me for so many years run the gamut:
- Some people have a lack of sexual desire and feel something is wrong with them.
- Some folks once had desire but then it went away, and they feel sad about that.
- For others, they have never felt deep desire at all and they feel like they are missing out on something.
- They have learned that what they desire might not be culturally acceptable and feel torn up on the inside, not knowing how to feel or whether they are a “total freak.”
- Many people are compelled to figure out the conundrum of having different desires from their partner. They may have come to an impasse and are unsure how to move forward in their relationship.
But ultimately, the underlying issue for almost everyone who comes in with a desire complaint or question is that they do not understand their own desire and they are not sure what they need to do to connect with it. They want to know what they want, what there is TO want, and how to ask for it and get it.
Desire Distortions Promoted by Culture
We can examine our society and easily see the pathways to our foggy-headed understanding of our own desires.
We experience a lack of desire or understanding of our desire, because we literally live in a culture that gives no shits what we want. We learn from the get-go, especially if we are socialized as female, that what we want sexually is secondary to what men want, and that what we want doesn’t really matter.
If we have experienced sexual assault, we know the searing pain of having our wants overridden by someone else.
And now, in a culture where we are punished with unwanted pregnancies and told that whether we want a child does not matter, sexual stakes are as high as ever for heterosexual folks.
We are also taught that we should want this ONE model of sex that is not satisfying to the vast majority of people: heterosexual P-in-V intercourse in the context of marriage.
Women who do not enjoy the P-in-the-V can think there is something wrong with them, yet most people with a V don’t orgasm through intercourse and many do not particularly enjoy it. But because it is the brand name sex that is marketed to us our whole lives, we think we should like it and have lots of it to be an acceptable sexual person. There are so many reasons why this brand name sex act is not fulfilling. I’ll save that for another article.
We keep trying to fit ourselves into this sexual model that does not work for us and it’s deeply unsatisfying. But we don’t learn real language about sex and how to talk about desire, so most folks will stay silent and internalize the problem. We think there is something wrong with US, when it’s really the sexual model that is so damaging to our sexual self-esteem and pleasure.
If you realize you are gay, lesbian or queer or that your sexuality is something different than this mainstream heteronormative expectation, then you are really outside of what is both expected and normalized. Because queer and trans people scare the haters by threatening their cis heteronormative status quo, our entire house of desire feels threatening, and then becomes threatened by them as a means of control.
That is exactly what is playing out on our national stage right now. We have an administration that thinks they can arbitrarily make giant claims about gender and sex that ignore every bit of research and science we have and demonize people who fall outside of their two-gender, biological sex lie.
Radical Acts of Desire
We get to own who we are and stand in our power and identities, as a community, as people. We all get to tap into our true sexual and erotic desires.
The more we know who we are as sexual beings, the more we embrace our own eroticism and queerness, the more we poke holes in their flawed theories and downright stupid proclamations. Our very existence confronts their problematic, racist, misogynistic worldview.
For all of us, disrupting this distorted desire story is radical work that will continually destabilize the fascist forces that would try to legislate our very love and sexuality away, as if their empty heterosexist hegemony could ever contain us.
We must not be invisibilized, or contained. We must not closet ourselves out of fear. I am committing, instead, to helping as many people as I possibly can to embrace their desires, heal their sexual wounds and shames, and be in their full erotic power. I know that sacred sexuality is medicine for so much of what ails us in this time. It is critically important energy to nourish and produce in order to counter the hatefulness and vengeance that is taking center stage in this moment.
Our willingness to follow our truest desires is a radical and subversive act. They want to stigmatize queer and trans folks and our sexual lives. But deep down they know we understand something deep about gender and sexuality that they will never see, touch or smell.
Whatever the radical act around desire is for you, do it. Now. Be willing to have the hard conversations about sex with your partner(s) or potential partners that will actually create the sexual dynamics you seek. Live out that fantasy. Touch yourself regularly. Fuck with gender. Disrupt their distorted, limited story of desire. We get to be disruptors of this status quo, because it is running amok, and erotic resistance is necessary.
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If you want to do this in community, you are invited to take a bold step to come learn, come thrive, come experience a completely different way of approaching sexuality and eroticism that will light up every part of your body and your life.
