What Turns You On?

What turns you on?

Books about female sexuality all acknowledge the same initial difficulty in talking about their topic: Female sex has been obscured, denied, exploited and demonized for centuries.[1] It is called patriarchy, I guess. But to know this in general is different from thinking about how I, as a heterasexual woman, have had my sexuality obscured, denied, exploited and demonized. And yet another thing, to draw a line and take measures to reclaim those parts, which have been taken from me.

We all have stories. We all have stories beyond the #Metoo paradigm. Stories – for example – about being shamed for being horny. Being called a slut, was not the worst part of that. When I first explored having intimate encounters with a few different guys – instead of accommodating the one, who chose me – I was called a „Kieslaster“ by members of my friends group, meaning a truck full of wet gravel, that is in front of you in the road, leaking massively and fucking up the street for those driving behind. It took me a while to understand the deeply hateful meaning of that. Meanwhile I learned, that to be turned on could easily get me into much deeper trouble, as it might be used in an ongoing trial proving that I was ready and willing to engage in whatever was in stock for me in the rough lands of hetero sex, consensual or rather not. To confuse me more, the older generation gave me the idea, that a world without females being turned on was absolutely possible and actually normal. In that world heterosexual love was all about the grace with which women allowed men to follow their needs. It was about women’s forgiveness for being torn into a world of sex, that wasn’t theirs. In short: To be turned on, was a problem. Mostly. Unless there was this one guy who committed to not holding it against me.  

Great activist art always works with some kind of wish energy, a drive that is triggered by wishing for something, as opposed to having a problem with something. I‘m pretty good at wishing for something and then trying to make it real. But though I’m working with this approach now for two decades, I never asked myself this simple question: is being turned on potentially a part of this? Would it be ok for me, to use being turned on as a drive for action? It seemed that beyond this line there will be dragons.

But then recently – those white old men, who claimed that female artists just don’t have the guts, remember those? Forgot their names already. Anyway, they made me feel something in my guts. Fuck you, it said – let’s try and see, what happens if I use my guts for a change. How about #youtoo? No, it actually doesn’t turn me on to violate other people’s personal limits.[2] But it made me think: These white old men – they were not shy to create environments, businesses, experiences and things due to what turns them on. Surely not. Look around you. But women are. I was. So, how about we give it a try and do some research on what turns us on. Some research on how to follow our turn on?

Let‘s keep it simple: Let’s find a number of guys, who potentially could be involved in turning us on, and ask them if they are up for a creative process. Let us train them – with female wisdom, with hands and hearts and artistic expertise, and then throw them in the deep waters of what turns us on, with a safety belt on. Then let’s hope they learn to swim.[3]

Does this idea turn you on? Does it turn me on? [4] And is that now good or bad?

Sibylle, Hamburg, 30.9.2019

— 

The sound and the lights of water.

Warm wind on my skin.

A motor between my legs (motorbike, washing machine, horse, train). 

Veins visible under the skin.

Crossing a line together.

Having steady pressure applied to my clit through my trousers.

Holding a secret one-on-one-connection within a bigger group.

The pheromones in the breath of my lover.

Eye-contact.

Taking a risk together.

The seduction scene from Dirty Dancing, where baby‘s finally got to have it.

Feeling warm shoulders with my fingers.

Being told a truth that matters. The connection, that comes with that.

Playing with responsive dicks, patient dicks, all sizes.

Sharing a weakness.

Being kissed passionately in semipublic.

Having a fight all the way through to the other end. [5]

Your turn?

[1] For example Closer. Notes from the Orgasmic Frontier of Female Sexuality by Sarah Barmack.

[2] Siehe dazu auch Svenja Flaßpöhlers Ruf nach der potenten Frau.

[3] That’s the basic idea of the Heteraclub Project. 

[4] Actually, we don’t know, if their is or should be a matrix or a even just fragments of a language of things which turn us on. When one of those was described, it was modfied by heterosexual desires of what heterasexual desire should be. There might not be a real escape to that anyway. Heterosexual and heterasexual desires love each other, fuck each other, fuck each other over, repeat. So much is for granted. If you are not sure about that, compare these two perspectives on what turns us on:

https://www.quora.com/What-turns-you-on-sexually-as-a-woman-or-girl

https://www.lovedignity.com/18-easy-tricks-that-will-make-her-horny-on-demand/

[5] What turns me on is not what gets me off. That’s for another day.