Real Life Erotic Autonomy
By Amy-Marie Babcock
I think of myself as a person full of vitality, enthusiasm, even ebullience. But at the age of 43, I wasn’t going out dancing any more. I wasn’t playing competitive sports. I wasn’t having hot sex. I wasn’t having conversations with girlfriends that invoked belly-laughs.
I was spending my energy being an emotional sanctuary as a mom and a partner, doing some professional work on the side, and sorting through the personal aftermath of Harvey Weinstein and #metoo. I hadn’t realized my life contained #metoo scenarios — difficult sexual experiences waiting to be addressed — because they weren’t physically violent, and they involved persons I cared about deeply. And yet, each of those experiences left its own kind of constriction in my life. As I sank deeper into my body, I got closer to the root of the pain, a sense of shame I harbored for not knowing how to show up for myself, as myself, with sexual agency in my own life. As I revisited the situations, I discovered that the healing I wanted involved my own psycho-sexual development. How could I become a woman who could show up for herself in a sexual context? I later learned there is a phrase for this: erotic autonomy.
About that same time, I saw a Facebook post about Pamela Madsen’s book Shameless: How I Ditched the Diet, Got Naked, Found True Pleasure… and Somehow Got Home In Time to Cook Dinner. Madsen talked about a school called Body Electric, whose workshops and retreats created spaces for participants to experience themselves as sacred and sexual beings.
I was chagrined, as a woman married for 10 years and with plenty of formal education, to realize how little I understood about myself sexually, how little experience I actually had with giving and receiving pleasure. I found Body Electric, and I signed up for a weekend retreat at Easton Mountain in the Hudson Valley.
That weekend experience, and my follow-up participation with Body Electric, changed the trajectory of my life by giving me a container to absorb and engage in sex positivity — innocent, playful, consensual, sensual experiences. I hadn’t realized how much of the previous “sex education” I’d received had been marked by shame and guilt, and how much more had simply been left out.
After the retreat, I began to see how much I’d muzzled my erotic energy, my life force, because I didn’t believe I could wield it wisely. How afraid I’d been of being judged for showing up as an embodied person (as if anything else is possible!) in my work life, my spiritual life, my community life.
And frankly, I noticed that I carried an old belief that my erotic vibrancy belonged to, well… my husband. I hadn’t ever had an understanding of the nourishing, enlivening, inspiring role of eroticism, and that this energy belongs to me. Belongs to each of us. To use in ways that bring deep pleasure. Pleasure gives me a sense that my own life is worth inhabiting, and it shows me it’s possible to give more with a fuller bucket.
Growing in erotic autonomy in the past year has impacted my as much outside the bedroom as inside. There are several examples I’d like to share.
First, I acknowledged I was living with stress incontinence (involuntarily peeing when sneezing or coughing, for example) just as my mother had. As attention and care for my body and well-being increased, I decided to find a way to address it, even though I didn’t know how. And sure enough, I found out there are physical therapists who work with pelvic floor health. It turned out that there was a practice down the street from me that accepted my insurance. It was nothing short of a miracle really. In fact, I’ve just completed the treatment.
Second, I found a Somatic Sex Educator who works with me online to continue unpacking past conditioning and build a foundation of new pleasure practices, including breathing, body awareness, and writing erotica.
Third, I began using the practice of writing erotica to address some dissatisfying experiences in the past. What would happen if I could go back in time with my newly emerging erotic autonomy? What does a sexual experience look like when I show up with a felt sense of what I want and what I like? Writing erotica gives me a chance to employ my curiosity and imagination, and it leaves me with a deeper sense of respect and compassion for myself and the others involved. It is allowing me to rewrite my past.
Finally, I’m learning to weave threads outside the borders of patriarchy and supremacy. These systems have asked us to accept norms and identities that are damaging or confining for many people. Attending to my own pleasure, in its myriad facets, has begun to reacquaint me with my own essential sense of self. It reminds me that in a world full of exploitative systems, I can embody agency, practice freedom by finding ways to nurture and honor myself. It gives me a sense of being fully human, equal to all others, in addition to being an expression of the divine, with power and creativity to impact the world in ways that matter to me. Finding my pleasure is bringing forward my unique voice, and developing erotic autonomy gives me permission to use it.
