#1 :: the consensual culture i'm longing for

cw: mention of sexual trauma

I don’t remember a time where I wasn’t sexualized, having been born and simply existing with female anatomy and wandering eyes. 

There were the abangs, “older brothers”, at the 24-hour local mamaks who would wink at me while I sipped my milo ais, too young to be wondering why it made me feel both desire and disgust.  

There was the time my mom and aunt commented on my fleshy butt while I was in the changing room at the tender age of 10, not quite knowing why it mattered yet feeling proud. 

Then there was my cousin and his “adult games”, a too-many occurrence ridden with shame and coercion, all before I was old enough to need glasses or menstruate. 

Much of these experiences and my own curiosities as a little nonbinary and queer kid were wired with shame;

there was so much silence and repression that came from multiple forces: eastern patriarchy in my Chinese lineage, religious dogma in the islamic country I was raised in, and the cisheteronormative coercive culture that pervades our colonized so-called civilization. 

In high school, my mother moved us to a rural town in Selangor called Sepang. 

It wasn’t safe to show skin without being cat-called and wolf-whistled, pulled aside and told otherwise, sent home to change, and stabbing looks from makciks and pakciks who clicked their tongues and shook their heads. 

It was taboo to make skin contact, so we held hands under school desks with sweaty palms and secrecy, making out in the art room while wondering what it would feel like to explore beneath the cotton of our school uniforms. 

In college, I had penetrative sex for the first time with someone I loved deeply, though I wish we had the wisdom and know-how to have a conversation about consent and desire before the deed was done. 

My curious-almost-naive nature, and the unmet need to feel desired led to sexual assault where I fled the scene while my consciousness fled my body for safety. 

That happened a few months before I made the migration from my island peninsular homeland to the land of manifest destiny. 

When I arrived on the stolen land of California, it was as though a two-decade vintage champagne bottle popped off and drenched the walls and carpet of my sexual body, uncontained and messy. 

The unleashing of my repressed sexuality in a college environment, plus the unresolved trauma of being raped led to many more coercive experiences of cishet sex, all while I quietly ignored the whispers of my heart’s true longing, a lifetime of shame hardening around it. 

As I listen to my heart now, almost another decade later, the whispers have grown into deep cries of longing and unmet desire.

I long for the intimacy of closeness, the tenderness of being held and loved as I strip my clothing and bare my soul-essence, the reciprocity of regard, care and desire. 

I longed for it then, and I long for it still. Though, my longings have more to say now: 

I long for a collective embodied capacity to hold the essence of our sexuality with safety, care and dignity.

What if we understood that our sexuality was a form of power that could be enjoyed for pleasure, practiced as a form of caring for the other, celebrated as necessary to our human evolution, and normalized as an interweaving life force that keeps us connected?

Sex-positivity and consent culture has become a necessary response to the coercive and purity culture that we no longer have tolerance for, and, what if we could now move towards sex-normative and consensual culture?

As in, what if we knew how to feel-sense within our own body a truthful experience of interdependence, inter-sovereignty and integrity as we explored the edges of our sexual desires, rather than the less nuanced “yes means yes, no means no, it has to be enthusiastic” verbal models of consent?

What if we could soften into the nuances of desire and sex that emerged from the subtle energetic blueprint of our essence, rather than as traumatic response to the shaming and coercive culture we live in?

What if we acted from the regard for another’s humanity and wholeness and our shared need for relational intimacy, rather than the implied pressure to have sex as an act rebellion or a desperate bid for connection and secure attachment? 

I long for consensual culture where coercion and manipulation is unnecessary because there is no shame in our desires. 

Imagine if we all felt safe and shameless to be honest about our needs, limits and desires;

that there was no need to explain how much we need to thrive, how little we can sometimes give, and how strange or absurd our longings could be. 

What if shame didn’t create blocks of ice around our hearts, protected by the thorns of narcissism and fear that inhibit the organic expression of our love and eroticism? 

What if instead of feeling disempowered and therefore needing to take power or have power over, that we were rooted in our sense of worth and sovereignty, with access to an intelligent, organic form of power that is erotic in nature?

What if we simply knew how to relate heart-to-heart, soul-to-soul, body-to-body? Unafraid, vulnerable, naked and raw? 

Wishful thinking perhaps. Most certainly a long way to co-create in the grand scheme of the human timeline. But I’m devoted to this longing. 

And this is why I’m writing this newsletter, and created erotic power for revolutionary mystics and leaders. I’m here to be in the conversation, to live in the questions, to explore the nuances and to be together in our longings.

What I know to be true is that at the center of consensual culture is our need to feel belonging. 

When we feel belonging, we feel safe: 

We know we have access to social security. We know we can be ourselves and be loved, even desired. We know that we each have a part to play and that it contributes to the wellbeing of all. We know that shared resources make us stronger and that there’s always enough to go around. We know that we don’t have to burn out, to prove our worth, to perform or appease in order for us to be met in our longings. We know we don’t have to do it all, know it all. We can be vulnerable, and be safe.

Belonging is our birthright and our blueprint.

And we’ve forgotten how to belong. 

Over the last decade, there has been a few tried and true practices that have created the space for me to feel an authentic sense of safety in relational somatics, the emergence of my erotic qi and flow, and the capacity to be sovereign in my sexuality– all of which helps me feel a sense of belonging no matter when I am:

I needed to tell my story where it would land on loving ears and witnessed with softness and grace. No fixing, no judgment, no meaning-making, simply unconditional love and acceptance. 

I had to practice being with the sometimes-overwhelming feelings of repressed shame and grief. This allowed the space for more pleasure, more clarity, more truth to emerge. 

I built a growing relationship with my resources who help me grow my capacity to be with said overwhelming feelings. I come back to these resources daily. 

And I learned how to belong to myself. To be so deeply intimate and in love with my true essence when it emerged that I could require no less of myself (and of those I’m relating to-it’s certainly a practice). 

That, plus the unshakeable capacity to know my needs, limits and desires without shame. I love mirroring this with others.

Today, self-identifying as sexually liberated, I’ll walk into a room and feel the glares of projection around how I carry and express myself. 

“How dare they be so unapologetic with their essence?”
“How dare they be so liberated and queer with their embodiment?” 

I want it for you too, dear friend. I want it for us all. 

And I want us to experience it from rooted self-worth, embodied sovereignty and centered integrity. 

I long for the expression of our sexuality to be revered, to be respected, to be celebrated, and most importantly, to be loved as an aspect of our wholeness.

And I long for cultural change towards embodied truth-telling, consensual love-and-care-making, and belonging inside our shared erotic power. 

I don’t want to wait around anymore.

I’m ready– are you?

What do you long for?