0
Share on bsky
{*Editor’s Note: Please note that this article contains some explicit language and very honest viewpoints; while we feel the topic is an aspect of the mindful life, mature audiences suggested.}
In November, I posted a photo and poem about pussy gazing.
A woman placing a mirror between her legs and meeting her own body with curiosity and reverence.
The poem began: “They said you were dirty, and maybe you are / covered in the mess of being alive.”
It moved through shame, into devotion. It ended with falling in love with what I’d been taught to fear and reclaiming what I’d been trained to give away.
In the accompanying photo, I wore a sweatshirt. Only my legs showing. Nothing sexually suggestive or explicit. Just the suggestion of a woman looking at her own body for herself.
It went viral and the comment section erupted.
“Show me.”
“I can lick you all day long.”
“Good girl.”
Some men sexualized it instantly, as if my self-intimacy was an invitation meant for them.
Others went straight to shame and disgust:
“Hey prostitute, what are you searching for with the mirror?”
“Scrub the mess.”
“This is proof that so many need to work on their self-esteem… You are losing something you can never get back, your self-respect.”
“Girls are so dumb. No one cares! Put some clothes on and grow up!”
And then came the threats disguised as warnings:
“By the time you’re 45 no one will care.”
“Female narcissism is why so many young men are ‘going their own way.'”
Men slid into my DM’s
“Suck me”
“I’m waiting for you slut”
I wasn’t performing, but they needed it to be a performance to make sense of it.
These men felt entitled to sexualize me, to police me, to judge, advise and correct.
They could not fathom a world where a woman would share a moment of self-intimacy for herself. Not for their approval, their validation, or participation, but for her own knowing, her own pleasure.
And reading the avalanche of comments—the rage, the disgust, the mockery—I knew:
This culture isn’t afraid of pussy gazing because it’s sexual. It’s afraid because it isn’t.
When I look at my own body without shame, without apology, without performing for anyone, I break the oldest rule of patriarchy—the rule that says my body belongs to everyone but me.
Pussy gazing is not exhibitionism. It is reclamation. Me returning my gaze back to myself.
Claiming: this body is mine. My pleasure is mine. My sight is mine.
And that is what terrifies them most: self-ownership.
Because once I feel and see myself clearly, I become difficult to control. I stop swallowing my words and going along. I stop shrinking myself. I stop abandoning my own needs and desires to make them comfortable.
I stop centering the male gaze. And when a woman stops centering the male gaze, an entire system begins to tremble.
The backlash to my post wasn’t about modesty or morality. It wasn’t even about sexuality. It is a desperate attempt to control a woman who knows herself and doesn’t need their permission to exist.
Sexuality is never the real danger. Self-ownership is.
And once a woman remembers she belongs to herself she becomes uncontrollable.
I recognize these tactics. As a survivor of sexual abuse and sex trafficking, I’ve seen this playbook before. My abusers used the same tools these commenters did: convince her she’s worthless without male validation, sexualize her when she asserts autonomy, shame her for existing outside their control, threaten her future if she doesn’t comply.
Sex trafficking isn’t some fridge thing. It’s just the loudest version of what happens everywhere.
We don’t fear sexual women. This culture knows exactly what to do with sexual women: shame them, consume them, market them, use them.
What the colonial capitalistic patriarchy fears most are women who refuse to play the role.
Women who embody their erotic power. Women who choose themselves. Women who are sexual without sexualizing themselves.
And once a woman comes home to her own body and sexual empowerment, no system built on her silence can survive us coming back to ourselves.
~
Pussy Gazing
They said you were dirty, and maybe you are
covered in the mess of being alive,
muddy with desire,
stained with longing,
holding rage like honey in your folds.
Soft with vulnerability that doesn’t apologize,
pulsing with power they tried to bury,
deep with mysteries I’m only beginning to taste.
They taught me to look away,
to keep my eyes on what’s acceptable,
to fear the mystery, the wildness, the opening.
But I am done with their gaze.
I do not look through their lens of shame,
not through the gaze of their desire.
I look with my own eyes,
my own hunger,
my own devotion.
You, who holds everything:
the gentle and the violent,
the soft and the wild,
the pleasure and the wound.
You are not dirty.
You are the garden.
The soil where life begins,
the mud where seeds break open,
the earth that feeds and transforms.
I am falling deeply in love
with your unpredictability,
your mess,
your freedom,
with every part of you they told me to hide.
The more I gaze,
the stronger the love becomes.
And I know: This Is Power.
Falling in love with what they told me to fear
beating like a pulse between my legs.
~
author: Arie Szabo
Image: Author's Own
Editor: Molly Murphy
Read 0 comments and reply