The Day I Learned What Sexual Liberation Meant
By Eboni Lacey
I was working at an event when I had an interesting conversation with a Super Christian. By Super Christian I mean homeschooled, one of ten kids, goes to church every Sunday, Mormon type of chicks. Our conversation literally changed my perspective for forever.
She told me about her conservative style of dating and how before a date was ever to take place, the man would have to ask her father first. As she was 29 and just recently got married, she then started talking about her husband. She admitted that he looked creepy, and he was almost 20 years her senior. She then turned to me and said that she deserved her husband.
“Look at me” she said. Sure she looked a little plain and was a little on the heavy side, but it hasn’t like home girl was hideous. She had a cute smile and she was funny as hell. After she continued telling her story, I realized just how hard it was for her to find a man and that she felt she had to settle. She wanted kids, she wanted sex, she wanted a family and in her mind that all couldn’t exist without a husband. So she had to find someone, literally anyone, interested in marrying her.
Of course, this story of hers’ made me run for the fucking border.
I couldn’t imagine settling for something mediocre, some creepy old guy that you have to lay your head next to at night. If feminism has taught me anything it’s that a woman has to embrace her own independence; her freedom to make decisions for herself at her own pace and stride.
Feminism is a state of being, the ability we have as women have to be who we are, to be free in own hustle, to grind how we want to grind. Feminists don’t conform to society standards, instead we create standards of our own.
Society continues to force this unforeseen desire to depend on a man – that some where down the line at some point you have to pick one man and depend on him solely. In order to have children, to get married, to buy a home even – you need one man.
So apparently, we need a penis in order to enter into some greater, brighter area of life. And because we need said penis, it’s okay for us to be mistreated, cheated on, abused and deemed as inferior.
Men that live in sexual independence, that toot and boot and have no desire to settle down are glorified. Everyone just shrugs their shoulders and says “It’s okay, he’s a man!” But when a woman lives in sexual independence and decides to explore her options and find specifically want she wants both in and out of the bedroom, she’s deemed as a slut.
That's because society wants us to continue being victims. Victims of abuse, victims of infidelity, victims of disrespect. But apparently a victim is more acceptable than a slut.
Society continues to make rules for us that just don’t make any sense. We are supposed to be freaks in bed, but we can’t have too many partners. We are supposed to like threesomes but we can’t tell anybody that we have them. We’re supposed to wear something sexy and show off our body, but if we do it because we want something in return, then that’s a little too sluty.
We can’t continue to let societal standards determine the way we feel about ourselves or especially, the way we feel about one another. If we continue to shame each other for having too much sex, too many partners, abortions, having a divorce, having multiple husbands or liking sex from different genders, we will never receive the respect we deserve as women. How can we expect society to take women’s rights seriously, when we can’t even come together and accept our differences as women? We’ve got to stop the hating, the judging, the slut shaming and the Twitter thugging and start uniting.
The first step of sexual liberation is freedom, a free mind and a free body. It means erasing the mental standards and becoming unapologetically who we are. It’s time we put some female swag on the liberty bell and embrace our female independence. Let freedom ring. Ring bitch ring.