[āFor many women, life ā and sex ā are a complex tussle between the need to harden, fortify, and push away on the one hand, and the need to receive, dissolve, and allow on the other. Women especially know the vulnerability which reigns over their lives ā they are made to know this, painfully, forcefully, too often, whether in the form of actual violation and invasion, or in the constant reminders of it.
It is immensely appealing to fantasize oneself to be inviolable, utterly autonomous, and in possession of firm boundaries ā and therefore able to ward off invasion. When you feel vulnerable, itās tempting to brace yourself against vulnerability ā the fantasy of hardening yourself so that nothing can hurt you. The collateral, however, is that nothing can reach you, either. How to protect oneself without denying vulnerability, with all its fruitfulness? āHowā, asks Lorde, āto feel love, how to neither discount fear nor be overwhelmed by it, how to enjoy feeling deeply?ā
When it comes to sex, there is pleasure to be had in vulnerability. It can be what makes sex joyful ā the giddy rewards of stepping haltingly into the water, the gasp on contact, the relief in the finding of ecstasy. We need to be vulnerable ā to take risks, to be open to the unknown ā if we are to experience joy and transformation. Thatās the bind: pleasure involves risk, and that can never be foreclosed or avoided. It is not by hardening ourselves against vulnerability that we ā any of us ā will find sexual fulfillment. It is in acknowledging, and opening ourselves to, our universal vulnerability.
Receptivity may also be a crucial part of pleasure. It is an exquisitely ambiguous trait; itās welcoming, itās open, and inviting ā and, by that token, itās also a risk. Letting things in, being porous ā being susceptible to the otherās needs and desires ā is what makes one tender to the feelings of others, and what puts one at their mercy.
When I invite someone in ā when I want them to enter ā I can never be sure that they will enter in the way that I want them to. Nor do I always know in advance how I want them to enter. Thatās why the invitation to sex is daunting, and why it can be so moving. To be met in oneās desire, and to be surprised in oneās desire, is an exercise in mutual trust and negotiation of fear. When it works, it can feel miraculous; a magical collision, safe and risky in just the right degrees, comfortable and challenging in just the right proportions. Itās rare, the strange alchemy of bodies and minds that can effect this melding of familiarity and unfamiliarity, of ease and surprise. Because itās rare, it should be treasured.ā]
katherine angel, from tomorrow the sex will be good again: women and desire in the age of consent, 2021
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