Essay: Ode to My Vagina

World Vagina Appreciation Day

Image: Betty Dodson

My vagina gives, to me, plenty. My vagina has never given birth. My vagina gives me orgasms so intense that I laugh in wonder. My vagina and I are having the best sex of our lives.

And on this World Vagina Appreciation Day, consider this an ode to my vagina.

A couple of decades ago, I read an anthology of essays about sex by women writers. It was mentioned somewhere in the book that it can be hard for “serious” women writers to write about sex because they risk not being taken seriously anymore. That might seem quaint now, to imagine such a hard firewall between the kind of writing women can do, but perhaps not so surprising considering the ways we are socialized to privilege the mind over the body if we want to be taken “seriously.”

As if the risk of writing about sex can forever taint one’s future work, like those wads of cash stolen in a bank heist that explode into blue paint that ruins them. As if sex taints and ruins. As if vaginas and their owners are dirty. As if pleasure must be stolen.

So here I am celebrating my vagina and the pleasure it gives me. I hate the phrase “give me an orgasm.” No one has given me an orgasm. I have had orgasms with other people but they don’t “give me an orgasm.” An orgasm is not a gift. It is a conversation between my vagina and me. Sometimes there are other people we allow into the conversation and other times it is just me and my vagina talking. That ownership is important. That ownership is me refusing the cisgender heternormative power play over my body. That play, and that body, belong to me.

As if the risk of writing about sex can forever taint one’s future work, like those wads of cash stolen in a bank heist that explode into blue paint that ruins them. As if sex taints and ruins. As if vaginas and their owners are dirty. As if pleasure must be stolen.

So here I am, a “serious” writer, tainting my future work. Here I am confessing that for too long my body was indeed an afterthought, fed and watered like one of those hardy plants that require the minimum of care to survive.

Here I am to tell you that menopause changed all of that.

But first I had to accept the challenge. And fuck me (metaphorically for now), were there plenty (of challenges, not orgasms, hence the challenges).

Menopause fucked me sideways. (Again, metaphor. Because for a while there, there was no fucking, literally.)

First it went for my vagina. Then it came for my words. Sex and writing. Oof. It felt particularly cruel for menopause to be so fucking bespoke: to so fashion its challenges to fit exactly what I feared the most. I wasn’t having sex with anyone, including myself. And I couldn’t write. So no risk there of losing my “serious.”

So I decided to lose shame instead, because if I didn’t, I would feel robbed.

Not by the menopause transition, which is “natural” (I rarely use that word because it is often employed by cishet patriarchy in the name of fuckery), but by an upbringing and socialization that instilled in me something that should be considered unnatural and which took me years to shed.

I was socialized into a shame around sex and sexuality, and I was taught--and I obeyed--that I must wait until I get married to “have sex.”

At their core, such teachings are flags planted by patriarchy on our bodies to remind us we do not own them; to control our sexuality and fertility. Soon after puberty begins, especially after menstruation starts, we become walking liabilities that must be contained and controlled, as if our uteruses were grenades ready to explode if left to our own devices.

I am childfree by choice. And now that my fertility has finally vacated the building, who owns my body?

I do. And it is at exactly this point in my life when I am standing in my power, as a 57-year-old woman of colour that patriarchy wants to remind me that it renders me moot. Well, fuck that shit.

I was socialized into a shame around sex and sexuality, and I was taught--and I obeyed--that I must wait until I get married to “have sex.” At their core, such teachings are flags planted by patriarchy on our bodies to remind us we do not own them; to control our sexuality and fertility.

I am sad for my younger self that I obeyed for so long and thus deprived myself of the joy of sex with another person. It is a form of grieving that I am now beginning to honour as grief over the loss of joy and intimacy.

I was enjoying sex with myself from the age of about 11. I knew my way around my genitals and was giving myself orgasms for years before another person joined the conversation. I finally had sex with another person when I was 29.

I often say that I have “made up for lost time,” and that I fucked the guilt from having extra marital sex out of my system. After the laughter clears though, you should know I am making a serious point: I worked hard to own my body, to have sex the way I want to, to figure out who I am attracted to and how I want to be intimate with them.

I want to write to every person raised with any version of “purity culture” and tell them to enjoy their bodies at every stage. Don’t wait, I want to yell at them. Don’t let the patriarchy rob you.

And it is at exactly this point in my life when I am standing in my power, as a 57-year-old woman of colour that patriarchy wants to remind me that it renders me moot. Well, fuck that shit.

When I began to notice the impact of perimenopause on my vagina and sex drive, it bothered me more than hot flashes, no longer sleeping through the night, and changes to my digestive system.

It bothered me because I felt I was being robbed again.

At first, I was shell shocked. Because I am determined in my shamelessness, let me tell you: I did not have sex for a year. If you had told enthusiastically-and-determinedly-sex-positive me that I would go a year without having sex, with myself or anyone else, she would have told you to fuck right off with your nonsense.

I was bereft. How was this happening? That conversation between me and my vagina, those orgasms, that pleasure–the silence felt like an abandonment. It was never about “pleasing a man.” Sex, for me, has never been about Mona giving and a Man taking. When I hear postmenopausal cisgender women say that they’re relieved they “don’t have to have sex anymore,” it saddens me deeply. Not that they’re not having sex with another person, but that they felt it was a duty or an obligation that they’re relieved to be rid of.

I fought to have sex on my terms. It has never been a duty or an obligation for me. It has always been about my pleasure. It has always been about my vagina and me.

I was fucking enraged at feeling robbed of it. Something I loved, that brought me so much pleasure, was gone, poof, just like that! How did that happen? Who was that person I did not recognize, who did not even masturbate? Who abducted Mona? And how could I bring her back?

And furthermore, I was ashamed. And that shocked me too. I am shameless!

So I took my rage and shame and pronounced them as loudly as I could. I wrote about not having sex for a year. I wrote about not writing or reading for a year. Fuck being “serious.” Sex and writing are deeply serious for me.

If something scares you, accept the challenge, look into its eyes and let it dare you to jump. I dived, deeply (ah, all these metaphors–can you tell I’ve got my vagina on my brain?) into all things menopause, and experimented until I found a way through.

I fought to have sex on my terms. It has never been a duty or an obligation for me. It has always been about my pleasure. It has always about my vagina and me.

I’ve listed here and here what I used that helped me accept the challenge of menopause, and to enjoy that conversation between me and my vagina again, to enjoy orgasms again, in solo and partnered sex.

Now, here is what I call my Sex and Writing Team:

Prescribed by my OB/GYN: Menopause Hormone Therapy (an estrogen patch that I change twice a week, and an IUD that releases a low-dose progesterone to protect my uterus), and Intrarosa vaginal inserts.

Prescribed by Mona: Cannabis (in all its derivatives–THC, CBD, CBG, CBN) and Foria products. The latter I use so frequently that the company that makes them asked me if I wanted to become a brand ambassador but I declined because I want you to know that when I recommend their Intimacy Metls with CBD and their Awaken Arousal Oil with CBD it is because they are fucking amazing and not becaused I want you to buy them with a special code that gets me a commission. They are not cheap but FUCK ME, WOW.

And sex toys. Many sex toys–the kind that vibrate on your clitoris and vulva, the suction kind, and the kind that you use for penetration that can reach further into my vagina than my fingers can and have helped me delight in the endless wonders and pleasure zones of my vagina, taking me to orgasms so intense that I laugh in wonder.

Talking of all things self pleasure—scroll up to the art illustrating my essay and click on the link to read Betty Dodson! A revolutionary!

For those of us assigned female at birth, we are “rewarded” with desirability and punished for desire. That is why it’s essential to distinguish between the two.

Power lies with she who desires. And it is when we enter menopause, when patriarchy deems us “invisible” and therefore undesirable, that our desire takes centre stage and is no longer “punished” with consequence, such as pregnancy. When we think of desire and desirability within those parameters, we can render moot the “invisibility” that patriarchy threatens us with and claim instead a power that it always tried to deny us.

I desire, therefore I am.

That desire for pleasure, that conversation between my vagina and me, that wonder at the joy of it all! There is power in that disruption of patriarchy’s diktats. Fascism is to control what feminism is to liberation what pleasure is to autonomy.

Ode to my vagina!

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Mona Eltahawy is a feminist author, commentator and disruptor of patriarchy. Her new book, an anthology on menopause called Bloody Hell!: Adventures in Menopause from Around the World, has just been published. Her first book Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution (2015) targeted patriarchy in the Middle East and North Africa and her second The Seven Necessary Sins For Women and Girls (2019) took her disruption worldwide. It is now available in Ireland and the UK. Her commentary has appeared in media around the world and she makes video essays and writes a newsletter as FEMINIST GIANT.

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