Pleasure is our birthright
Who taught you not to want?
Not what to wear.
Not how to behave.
Not how to be desirable.
But to want less.
At what point did desire become something to manage rather than something to feel?
For many women, pleasure is not absent; it is edited. Conditioned. Curated into something palatable. We are encouraged to be appealing but not appetent, present yet measured, and receptive rather than active. Somewhere between girlhood and adulthood, wanting becomes risky. So we learn to soften it. To disguise it. To undermine it before anyone else can.
And yet pleasure is not learned. It is innate. It is our first language. Before shame, before script, before suppression, the body knew how to reach toward what felt good. It knew sensation without self-surveillance. It knew curiosity without consequence.
International Women’s Day reminds us that reclaiming our desire is not just personal; it is part of a collective struggle for autonomy, recognition, and equality.
To ask who taught you not to want reframes pleasure not as a personal deficiency but as historically induced silence; internalised, structural, and embodied. The muting of female desire is not accidental; it is cultural. Across generations, women’s pleasure has been suppressed, hidden, moralised, medicalised, or dismissed as scandalous - hysterical even. We inherited the policing of pleasure long before we had the language for it.
Pleasure is not a trivial indulgence or a marginal pursuit. It is a political and existential claim. A foundational condition of human dignity and autonomy that has, for women, been persistently constrained. When a woman is disconnected from her desire, she is more easily shaped by expectation. When she is taught that wanting is excessive or inappropriate, she internalises the governance.
To reclaim pleasure is not to add something new. It is to remove what was imposed. It is to remember that the body was never the problem - the censorship was.
Image still from The X Film by Coco de Mer
Shame is the foundational core of censorship, functioning as internalised social control. It discourages inquiry into one’s own body and desire, conflates pleasure with impropriety or immorality, and encourages women to prioritise appearance over experience. It is the tool by which the suppression of women’s pleasure is maintained; subtle, pervasive, and often invisible, yet deeply effective in shaping how women inhabit their bodies.
Recognising a crucial distinction can help undo this: desire is subjective, self-authored, and embodied, while desirability is external, objectifying, and socially evaluated. This prioritisation of desirability is demonstrated through an extensive pattern: research suggests that in the majority of modern societies, heterosexual women’s pleasure is still subordinated to that of heterosexual men (Hall, 2019; van Lunsen et al., 2013). This is reiterated through substantial cross-cultural evidence that ‘women and girls face greater social restrictions on expressing sexual pleasure than men and boys’ (Katz-Wise & Hyde, 2014). Cultural scripts teach women to value being desirable over experiencing their own pleasure, producing the self-erasure of authentic want and encouraging us to perform to satisfy others rather than inhabit our own desire.
As women, we do not learn to doubt our desire and pleasure in isolation. Everywhere, messages accumulate: the media treats male desire as natural and unavoidable while female desire is framed as reactive, subordinate, and in need of control. Conversations about pleasure are clinical, measured, focused on risk or dysfunction, rather than curiosity, exploration, or joy. Slowly, these lessons settle into the body, shaping a relationship to pleasure that is cautious and deferred - desire waits for permission instead of asserting itself.
Research further reiterates that when women are able to exercise autonomy and assertiveness in their sexual lives, their experiences of pleasure tend to be stronger; by contrast, sexual compliance and inequalities in gendered power dynamics are associated with diminished pleasure.
When pleasure is denied or muted, the body does not stop sensing; it adapts. The cost of suppressing sensuality is profound. Sensation becomes cautious or deferred, reorganising itself into patterns of tension, disassociation, or affective detachment. The body learns obedience over authentic expression, to conform to expectation instead of inhabiting its own fullness. Memory, posture, breath, and touch carry these lessons: subtle traces of suppression embedded in the muscles, the nervous system, and the very rhythm of movement. Intimacy, then, can feel like performance, a negotiation of safety and approval rather than a shared exploration of pleasure and desire. To reawaken pleasure is to retrain these bodily instincts, to listen deeply, to reconnect sensation with consent, curiosity, and choice.
Image still from The X Film by Coco de Mer
The ultimate act of rebellion against a muted body and conditioned desire is to reclaim your sensuality and permit yourself to want. Reframe intimacy as communication, not choreography. When desire comes from an embodied experience rather than expectation, it opens a space to truly connect with yourself, your body, and your partner. Pleasure becomes a guide, not a goal, showing you what you want and how you respond. It is responsive, not reactive; collaborative, not conditional; expressive, not performative. By tuning into your own sensuality, exploring without judgment, and allowing yourself to feel fully, you reclaim agency over your body and your pleasure, thus transforming intimacy into a practice of presence and joyful participation.
International Women’s Day reminds us that pleasure is not optional; it is a fundamental part of women’s rights. Just as movements have fought for the vote, bodily autonomy, and liberation from gendered constraints, so too does reawakening our right to pleasure affirm our sovereignty over our own bodies and desires. It is a moment to challenge censorship and shame, amplify voices that claim their want, and celebrate pleasure as an act of freedom. Pleasure activism continues this lineage: asserting that autonomy, consent, and joy are inseparable, and that the right to feel fully, sensually, and unapologetically is as essential as any other right we defend.
Each of these affirms that bodily autonomy, sexual health, and freedom from harmful practices are fundamental to justice and dignity.
In doing so, we are proudly aligned with a number of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with a few feeling particularly apt for International Women’s Day:
Goal 3: Good Health and Well-Being
Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages
Goal 5: Gender Equality
Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls
Goal 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all, and build effective, accountable, and inclusive institutions at all levels.
Each of these affirms that bodily autonomy, sexual health, and freedom from harmful practices are fundamental to justice and dignity.
Through our ongoing collaboration with The Five Foundation to end Female Genital Mutilation, Coco de Mer stands committed not only to celebrating pleasure, but to protecting the fundamental right to experience it.
At Coco de Mer, we believe that the pursuit of pleasure is an integral part of life’s vitality. Through touch, sensation, and imagination, we celebrate pleasure as a lived, embodied experience that nourishes the mind, body, and spirit. By honouring your curiosity, embracing your desire, and leaning into what feels good, we wholeheartedly encourage you to explore pleasure as an act of self-affirmation and radical joy. This philosophy aligns with our belief that women’s sensuality is a force to be claimed, celebrated, and unapologetically embodied.
Pleasure is a birthright: innate, inalienable, and deserving of recognition. Reasserting your pleasure and your right to feel is an act of agency. Claim it boldly and without apology, because to reclaim your pleasure is to reclaim yourself.
Image still from The X Film by Coco de Mer