The Lion's Den

It's the night before the event of the year people! Tomorrow, at a secret venue in London, the Erotic Oscars are announced, and the country's perverts, pleasure seekers and pace setters gather and celebrate their diversity and their right to free sexual expression (consenting + adult as per...)

The hard work and organisational skills which go into getting this event set up need no explanation, save to say that many of us are eternally grateful for the devotion and discipline shown in managing such an event. 

I've been nominated this year in the category 'Campaigner of the Year' and I'm both honoured and exited. I'm in great company in so many of the categories, an overwhelming array of talent indeed. You can see the finalists listed here 

Personally, this is my path in life, to bring healing and intimacy into the world to the best of my ability. To restore health, passion and pleasure into the lives of those who feel disconnected or at a loss and in this capacity, I am fiercely committed to the right to self determine and express our own sexuality. I always seem to feel the need here to insert the proviso that I'm talking about ADULT CONSENTING sexual freedoms here as so many seem to feel threatened by sexuality and it's very nature. It's like the great big theatre where all of our shadows, demons, fears, insecurities and histories are most certain to come and join us! But fret not, the good news is that when we begin to befriend them, there'a a jewelled path to pleasure awaits us if we're willing to risk exploring. It's significant to me that I still have to add that proviso to rebut the claims of those who conflate sexual freedom with harm, trafficking, oppression etc etc, as if one did not have the intellect to distinguish those states from the right to choose what we do with our bodies and with whom. 

For sex workers, it would seem that we remain the scorned woman, the one who represents the great fall from grace, the absence of the sacred, the harlot, the temptress and the whore. Why is that? A recent letter from the feminist Rahki Kumar to Michelle Obama could not have laid out on the alter this sacrificial lamb any clearer. The letter you can read here. What do YOU think? I'd be interested to hear?

Now, I have real issues with this letter. I've been working for over 30 years in sexual freedom activism and sex work rights campaigning, and I am sick and tired of people equating all that's bad and negative around sex work with poor and disempowered versions of womanhood. What if a woman WANTS to celebrate her independent sexuality, and chooses to sell sex? Not all sex workers are trafficked, drug addicted, pimped victims, and the stats quoted in the letter are unfounded and untrue.

Now then, if a person (man, woman, trans, child) is trafficked into any kind of indentured labour, and  not just sex, but sweat shops or dreadful demeaning jobs, or hang on even corporate immoral bondage!, well then yes, we should offer the support that is needed, as defined by those people experiencing that issue (otherwise it remains patronising and moralistic) to help them change their lives. It is possible to have a sacred soul that includes sexual freedom and the celebration of sexual FUN. So what if my nipples show whilst I'm celebrating, that doesn't invite anyones judgement (women get raped for wearing the wrong clothes - tell the attackers to stop raping!). If I want to wear a sheer bodysuit, let me. 

I agree that there are huge aspects of Beyonce's and many other pop icons (and other role models) imagery and lyrics etc that are problematic, largely as they/we are so manipulated by the media, but let's stop bloody equating this women's emancipation with a purity that for me, is actually quite alarming and certainly does NOT speak to me in any way at all. I have sacred sex, AND I enjoy it, and sometimes I wear outrageously sexy clothes when I'm having it! No...my letter would read VERY differently, Let's stop marrying poor role models with unproven stats about sex work, it's not a pretty liaison and it's erroneous, harmful and does women no favours whatsoever.  

Celebrate your sexuality as you choose, respect others, have fun or get the support you need. Not too much to ask is it?

And in the meantime, good luck to all of the finalists tomorrow! Have a great one. 

Making the world sexier one step at a time!

Good evening gorgeous readers! This week sees us just beginning to step into the first glimmers of spring (in the northern hemisphere at least) and I can feel the life pushing back up through the earth once again in her desire to renew and shake off the shackles of winter. Winter has been a tough one for me; many demons to slay, and as many stories to put to rest which required a willing surrender into the bowels of the underworld for my very own version of Persephone's dark night of the soul.

The thing with demons is this - until we know them and are willing to face them, they control us and we are effectively puppets on the strings of what my lovely friend Charlotte calls the 'pretender voices'. Over and over we return into our very own 'underworlds' driven there through false fears and outworn beliefs, most of which emerge as basic survival mechanisms in early childhood, and like some old Vietnam veteran who has never been told the war is over, we crouch in our self-made caves, all guns pointed out and ready for action. I have just spent a winter facing many of mine, retreating in order to really listen to my own body and soul, my spirit crying out for new ways of being.

In my retreat, I came to recognise something quite exciting and really liberating, that being that the things which have sometimes felt were my cross to bear are also my gifts. In other words my lead was my gold if only I could find the Alchemist's Key, and the key was simple actually - mastery of the ego mind and integration of experience. I'm blessed in my work, and I've come to recognise that 25 years of sexual freedom activism has not been a fruitless pursuit. A peach cannot be picked from a tree before it's ripe or the result will be hard, tasteless and lacking in juice, and just like life, when we move towards things before we are ready, the results will likely be the same. But when we are reedy, do we dare to eat the peach and transform the lessons into the teachings?

What can we do with our essential naturalness when it comes to sex? Sex is the grand theatre in which all of our deepest fears and insecurities are acted out, the body being the vessel for the drama. My life work has been crafted in assimilating lessons in sexuality or so it would seem. I truly believe that this is what I came here for, what I was contracted to bring to this planet - sexual healing, and boy do we need it! The more I work in this area, the more I see how many of us are crippled with fear, doubt and deep unmet longings for intimacy and connection. Bombarded by images of romance, love and sex, we race around like the proverbial headless chicken in pursuit of non-existent states of sexual and emotional fulfilment, all too often approaching prospective partners with a begging bowl of sorts, asking 'fill me up please' in silent and unacknowledged co-dependence.

Tantra provides a platform from which to dive deep into delicious and ecstatic states of union, starting exactly where we need to, with the self. My pledge to my clients, my self, my partnerships and my relationships on every level is to make the world sexier one step at a time. Not the 'sexy' of lacy knickers and huge valentines day displays of love of the kind that is sold to us, but the 'sexy' of the breath, the mind and the spirit in union, the sexy of the planet being healed through our consciousness, the sexy that can play with bondage but not be held captive to it, the sexy that can look as good in camouflage boxers as an Agent Provocateur basque, the sexy that just is rather than tries to be. I'll be coming back to this subject. It's a big one! Tell me then dear readers....what is sexy to you?

Sex Workers Speakeasy

Hello and welcome back! Today's post sees me launching my appeal to go to the Desiree Alliance Conference in Las Vegas Nevada, July 2013.

I wish to raise funds to get there to deliver a paper entitled 'Sex Workers Speakeasy', which will focus on how we, as current and former sex workers can represent ourselves in the media, arts and via powerful modern platforms such as social networking sites and crowd funding websites such as the Indiegogo one. Crowd funding offers us the opportunity to really put our money where our hearts, values and passions lie. We can donate to any project, person or cause that we endorse, thus ensuring that our worlds really DO reflect our personal values insofar as we can directly contribute to making things happen that we believe are important to better our world. I hope that you feel desiring of contributing to my personal Indiegogo campaign, which is linked to a longer term film project giving voices to the real experiences of those involved in the sex industry or sexuality work in general. Thanks and stay safe and stay sexy!

Sexual Freedom & breaking the bonds

What does "sexual freedom" mean to you? It's been coming to my attention for years now that we are so bound by our ideas of ourselves and our ego-centric senses of identity that most of us don't even know we're captive any more. We have sex for so many reasons; duty, obligation, guilt, fun, love, money, stuff, approval, pressure, connection, release...and yet all too often we often don't even truly SEE our lovers any more, yes ladies and gentlemen, we are both prisoner and jailer at the same time!

Sexual energy is creative energy and properly channeled and acknowledged can be a most blissful and healing thing to fully experience, so what stops us? Media ideas of beauty can be intimidating, social notions of romance can create disillusionment, familiarity; does it really breed contempt or is it a platform from which to truly get to know our lovers and their pleasures? The more I dive into my Tantric journey, the more I realise how vast the range of both experience and pleasure is, how different our bodies are and how varied their/our needs. I used to be afraid of the term 'sacred sexuality' fearing it would lead to a kind of disowning of my more carnal side, my archetypal (or actual!) 'whore' or playful 'slut', however given the right teacher/teachings, just as with any other spiritual discipline, light, dark AND shadow can be fully embraced and played with. Enough of the guilt of being a sexually active, liberated woman in pursuit of hot sex! Enough of the judgment and labels...time to re-claim our power, and that goes for men too. Not power over but power of self expression in healthy, respectful, playful and celebratory ways; truth-telling!

Many cultures have historically known this, and here in the west, where I'm from, we have the gift of exploring many aspects of our sexuality with a great deal of freedom too, however there are things we need to bypass first - the erotic police invest in the suppression of sexual energy knowing its potency is great and its potential for liberating us phenomenal. Yet who 'polices' our sexual expression in truth? Mostly we do a very good job of this ourselves. Our 'phnaar phnaar' attitudes and 'Carry On Up The Khyber' mentality keep us protected, safe from the fear that we may not in fact be "getting it right". Once upon a time there were temples of sexual healing and the women who worked in them were considered Priestesses and highly revered, and yet now, so few work with sexual energy in this healing way, and yet there is change coming.

Sacred Intimacy is a phrase becoming more frequently heard as women and men long for something different, desiring of healing our sexual wounds and our erotic nature, which can be so many different things. I recently met a woman who works within the UK National Health Service and was so deeply saddened to hear how many women she comes across with great trauma and shame locked into their bodies and souls. Women afraid to look at themselves, who will not even touch themselves and who have disowned themselves from the waist down. Women who believe their genitals to be ugly rather than a thing of great beauty, and I'm sure there are as many men suffering the same disconnection. There are as many different types of vajra (cock) and yoni (pussy) as there are hair types, eye shapes, noses, bodies yet we persist in subscribing over and over to the myth of 'sameness' and aspire to some kind of non-existent sense of perfection. Breaking out of that is POWER-FULL and liberating. Allowing ourselves to truly love our bodies as they are, and to learn to name our pleasures is just as potent. BREAK THE BONDS and find the true expression of your sexual self...I promise you, you cannot fail to enjoy the ride, even if a little bumpy at times....