Last night I sat in a circle of white, cisgender women and shared what we’ve done post inauguration to take care of ourselves. Many talked about their emotional and intellectual roller coasters, the lows of taking in too much news yet feeling lifted by the support of other like-minded individuals.
I was the only one in the group that mentioned sex. I said I meditate, masturbate and write. I would have like to screamed and danced on the lone table, “I committed to one orgasm a day in 2017. FuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuCCCCCkkkk, the most feminist thing you can do is flirt and pleasure yourself and each other to unleash the erotic.”
So here’s to you Cheetoh Head. May you inspire more unleashing of sex positive Pride!! in MN, in the name of intersectional feminism, individual well-being and community building.
Besides masturbating, I’m imagining the ways I can live here in this state with no limitations. I call my alter ego Villa Villekula. They are all about claiming and knowing complete freedom. From all the things I allow to be limitations in my mind. Race, money, time, queerness, gender, location, lack of sex positivity in my local community and state, fear that I’m too much sexually and emotionally and not enough intellectually.
Erin: So Villa let’s talk… What do you have in your life that allows you to consistently unleash the erotic in Minnesota? I mean you’re even more Scandinavian than I am. How did you find Pride in MN and see beyond the current limitations?
Villa: Well, Erin. So great to be here by the way. I love your blog and radio show and think you’re work is so important for out state, country and world. Certainly it was important to your little city up on the bigLake.
Erin: Thanks so much Villa.
V: I made a significant internal shift Erin. That was important like you said in your intro an awareness of how our mind identifies with limitation is important. The list your gave is similar to mine years ago. I smile at how free I feel. Letting go of the way I held limitation was the greatest gift I’ve ever received. So identifying first off. Just like you did.
Erin: And how did you do that and hold compassionate and intelligent space for being with people who are impacted by these parts of our human life? I am committed to seeing the places that lack justice and freedom in our shared human lives. I want all to thrive. I work for the good of myself and the others I live with. I want all to have lives filled with pleasure and kindness and intelligence and love.
V: Yes, I do to. So I work daily doing the things I love and noticing I hold limitation and imagining the life I love. I want. And voila, I’ve created it. Especially, I don’t resist limitation. That’s been key Erin. There’s a place to hold my appreciation for what I have, my confidence and ability to create the life I want and feel the frustration at the life I am and others are living.
E: Exactly beautifully said Villa. So my frustration lies in the Minnesota I live in and I post inauguration have also felt more Pride about living here than maybe ever before. The depth of wisdom and wildness, goodness and opportunity, support and innovation, ingenuity and strength is profound. I feel it consistently right now.
V: You are doing great work to give it so much focus. You’re art is all about that. As I made it mine.
E: Thank Villa. That means so much. So how do I sit with the lack of intersectional feminism and access to/expressions of queer sex positivity?
V: First, smile smile, no first talk about it. Like you did last night, insert your self into the conversation. You get to talk back as bell hooks wrote and push back as illuminated everyday. In your work and relationships. In your writing and art. It is a time that calls for all people to do this work. In different way, so I believe one of your challenges is to clearly see and compassionately accept all those different ways.
E: And still talk and push back. In my own ways. That is unleashing the erotic.
V: Exactly! Your inspired by listening to Kerri and reading Roxane and bell and work. You are opening up yourself with your writing and proposing amazing community art projects. Your imagining a love, sex partnership home, that has no limitations and your holding your own classed, raced, gendered identities. not as a victim, no but as a brilliant woman aware of the fixed systems and the fluid systems.
Erin: We push ourselves and then our communities push too. I’m envisioning the bigLake. When waves subtlety yet powerfully, there is so much strength with that water, hit shore and then reverberate back out along the long, wide open stretch of shoreline.
Villa: Perfect visual. You’re filling yourself with inspiration and unleashing and imagining your life Free. Feeling the absence of limitation is Freedom. Defining exactly what you want and believe you what you’re here to be and do is Freedom.
E: So I keep talking about who I am as a creative, sexual, pleasure loving person. And I’ll attract others who are the same. With vast relationships with the world. That’s the thing I’m aware of this last two weeks how small the worlds and intelligence of the people around me is.
V: Hmmm… That sounds like it feels very limiting.
E: It does feel that way Villa. And last week I held judgment of these people and this place and that was my own dark roller coaster after feeling the wide open beautifully wild feminist world of the March in St Paul. This week I’ve found a spot of peace and acceptance. Feels so much better.
V: I bet.
E: And this morning, using the Magic Wand, praise the goddess for this tool to resist and destroy the patriarchy, I felt again how radical and delicious my commitment to enjoying at least one orgasm a day is. And imagining being in the loving relationship I dream of. Queer, sexed up four years in, so full of feminist intellect, here in MN, wealth of many flavors, an older established woman who is goddamn so attractive and well. Strong we are both strong as individuals and we are even stronger together. It’s scary Villa imagining such goodness. And so radically bold and beautiful.
V: It is the most feminist radical intersectional peaceful love-filled work we know. and it is the starting place and the finish line. Every day. Emotions and humanity in between. Art and sex in between. Work and adventure in between. Talking and pushing back in between. Accepting, using clear seeing and compassion in between. Building amazing, satisfying, simple, complex, delicious and sometimes confounding relationships with humans in between, acknowledging our closeness with bird and beast, all our wild relatives in between, being political in between, relaxing and deeply enjoying art in between. All is unleashing our erotic.
E: So Sex Positive Pride!!! MN
V: Accept where you live Erin. You know the people and you know the history and you have surrounded yourself with open minded, mostly white people. There is huge freedom there and Huge limitations. Keep imagining. Personally and professionally how you want it to feel different. Keep talking about it. Feel the shift towards more… more intersectionality, more sex positivity. The small shifts. You live them, love them and keep recognizing them.
V: Don’t be afraid to talk about the lack of sex positivity, even/especially the limitations in "sex positivity", and enjoy the fuck out of all, anything that comes your way. There are other folx, new womxn in your lives who crave CRAVE! to be out of the small containers they live in too. That is sex positivity. And Pride!MN.
V: With race and queerness, notice Roxane, bell, Audre, Frida. Notice Clayton Jackson McGhee. Notice diversity and inclusion committee, notice LGBTQAI commission. Notice queer community all around me here and beyond. Notice wives and womxn and I love and their love and their babies!! to be born, being born. There are no limitations in the love, the art and the noticing.
Your creatively self and community. Notice art grants won, notice poets Ross Gay and Danez Smith, notice ARAC and Intermedia. Notice you writing every morning, SiMC!!!! Notice HOTDISH and FAC. This is unleashing the Erotic. Notice you saying you masturbate to take care of yourself, create and hold the light. In a room of fifteen women. You live with. Your community. Notice this interview. Notice romps in the wildest place in your heart. This beating heart. Is the erotic. Existence’s erotic. Always. Noticing how you are flirting with it all. in relationship, long lasting crazee supaLove town relationship with it all. The thing you do with all your being, build relationship and be present in relationship. Enjoy the hell out of the connections and beauty. What is offered. And what more you desire. Keep talking and pushing and loving and imagining the feel of no limitations. Magical combo.
Erin: Thank you Villa.
Villa: I’ve loved having this conversation with you. I’ll come back anytime to be a guest on your show.
Erin: Fantastic! How about tomorrow?
They both belly laugh and lean in for a hug.