Où il y a de la gêne, il n’y a pas de plaisir
Where there is shame, there is no pleasure. 

This is what I know to be true:

1. 
Your body is a good, good body and infinitely worthy of worship.

2. 
Pleasure is your birthright and the doorway to creation itself.

3. 
You, and only you, get to decide what pleasure looks like to you and for you.
You get to decide what turns you on and what turns you off. 
You get to decide what gender identity or presentation or pronouns awaken your desire.
You get to decide the who and how and what and why and where and how often and how long and how loud and with how many people, individually and at once.

4. 
People who have NO say in what gets you off (as long as it is consensual and brings no unwanted harm). 
1. Your parents or family of origin.
2. The government.
3. Your religion, church, or spiritual leaders. 
4. Your friends or community.
5. The internet. 
6. Everyone not explicitly listed in 1-5

People who do get a say
1. You.

You get to like it how you like it. period.

5.
Sex work is real work, important work. work that should be protected, supported, honored, and made safe. 

6.
Those of us who have freedom, privilege, and platform have the opportunity (and even responsibility) to speak way more openly about sex, desire, and kink in order to create a free and open space for everyone to embrace the fullness of their sexuality.

7.
I was 36 years old the first time I fully choose to have sex for the first time.
The first time I said a whole body yes.
The first time I refused to make bargains between my wholeness and my goodness and claimed the pleasure offered to me with every cell of my being.

This day will live in me forever. 

It is the day that everything changed.

8.
Asexuality and demisexuality are completely legitimate and don’t require outside validation.
If you don’t want to masturbate, orgasm, or have sex—or if you only want to do these things with people you love or are in a committed relationship with—you are not broken.

You are honoring the truth of you, which is the sexiest thing of all.

Ditto if you want multiple partners, or casual sex (every now and then or every damn night) or you are holding out for your forever soulmate, or you are perpetually ready to get it on with whoever lights you on some kinda fire.

It’s all valid, love, and nobody’s business but yours.

9.
Compulsory monogamy, heterosexuality, and gender binary are harmful. period.
You don’t have to be non-monogamous, poly, nonbinary, or queer to work on dismantling how this programming limits your pleasure.

In fact, if you aren’t, you probably really want to do exactly this (I promise, it’s hot).

10.
“What is it like to make love to a woman”, 

I asked her this so many years ago, before my body had known what it was to unfold into the infinite softness of all things female.

“It is like the ocean”, she replied.

No other explanation was necessary.

And it was. And it is. Every single time.

11.. 
You don’t need a partner to experience ecstasy.
Learning your body with your own hands makes it a hell of a lot easier (and hotter) to guide another. 

It’s never too late to begin.

12.
Orgasm and deep sensual pleasure need not always come from our limited definition of sex (especially not heteronormative notions that equate sex and intercourse, as if our bodies only had one method of achieving nirvana). 

It is all so much bigger and uncontained than that. 

13.
A pleasure practice (solo, partnered, or group) that focuses only on sex and orgasm is missing the entire worlds.

Bring your pleasure out of the bedroom and into the entirety of your life, and watch everything change. 

14.
Holding the language of consent and boundaries close (and practicing them often) is your key to so much freedom, in bed, and in the whole of life. 

15. 
Slut-shaming hurts everyone. 

Fuck the outdated patriarchal rulebook that says you’re not allowed to own your body and bring yourself to your knees with pleasure.

Whatever it says in the bible about the ways of your loving was never meant for you.

Fuck. that. Entirely.

16. 
You get to feel good
You get to feel good.
You really, really, really get to feel good.

(Like Meg Ryan in ‘When Harry Meets Sally” I’ll-have-what-she’s-having good). 

17. 
Orgasm can be a portal to the all and everything, a doorway to the wild of you, a pathway home. 

18. 
Also. orgasm is not always necessary in order to feel fed, satiated, pleasure drunk, and undone.

Remove the pressure that says you must cum every time (the way you were told you are supposed to if you’re doing it right) and watch everything get super fucking infinite. 

19.
When it comes to pleasure, reciprocity is everything.
This also doesn’t mean each exchange needs to be tit-for-tat, ‘i did you, now you do me’.
It means everyone’s energies and needs are equally fed and valued, every single time. 

20.
If your lover does not devote themselves to the pleasure of your body…
If they are not forever desiring to make your skin and bones sing. if they do not wish to leave you senseless and without words (while also honoring and taking exquisite care of their own pleasure)…

It is perhaps time to find a different lover. 

21.

If you cannot orgasm, or you can only come in a particular way or only sometimes, or it takes a hella long time to get tere, your body is not broken. 

You exist in a culture that is only beginning to wake up to the brilliant continuum of sexuality and sensuality. 

A world that is only beginning to understand the infinite nature of our physiology and response. 

A world that has spent millennia trying to convince you that your pleasure isn’t worth the effort. 

Dear one, your pleasure is so worth the effort. 

22.

If you did not say yes, it is not your fault. 
Period.

The shame is not yours to hold. 
If you did not say yes and your body still responded, it is not your fault.
Period.
Your body did what bodies do. 
The shame is not yours to hold.

If active trauma prevents or limits your sexual response or experience, it is not your fault.
Period.
The shame is not yours to hold. 

It wasn’t mine. It isn’t yours. 
It never was.
It never will be. 

Period.

23. 
“Electric flesh-arrows…traversing the body. A rainbow of color strikes the eyelids. A foam of music falls over the ears. It is the gong of the orgasm.” 
Anais Nin

24. 
To watch her become entirely dismantled and yet so completely whole in the aftermath of pleasure is to be in awe and to know one of the most profound gifts of being here and human and alive. 

25. 
your body is not the enemy.
your sex is not a scandal.
your skin needs no censor.
you are not here for denial.
your pleasure is what the universe demands.
it is the purpose of your creation.
anything less is blasphemy.