sexual liberation

Christmas Day 1966: After we exchanged gifts, I noticed Grant was staring off into empty space, a sign he was about to sink into one of his morbid depressions. To alter his mood, I asked if he'd like to make love before dinner. Instead of responding to my offer of sex, he began talking about how my gifts presented a problem. I'd given him my first pussy self portrait beautifully framed along with an old fashioned Victorian photo album with pictures he'd taken of us having sex with a Polaroid camera. He said the album would have to be hidden and he'd never be comfortable hanging my genital portrait. After all, he had to think of his maid's feelings as well as friends who visited.

The search for sexual pleasure in a puritanical society is a highly charged political act. Back In 1966, which I consider to be the beginning of my personal sexual revolution, I was 36 and had been divorced for a year. After about six months of enjoying orgasmic partnersex with Grant, my primary partner, we both agreed to explore an open relationship. Going beyond my romantic fixation of being sexual with one-man-at-time into this new kind of democratic sex changed my life dramatically.

There is little doubt that feminism lost ground with the last two generations of young women. I believe one reason for this has been mainstream feminists focus on rape, incest, and violence against women and girls. It's time to rescue sex from violence. We need to acknowledge sexuality as the life force that allows us to procreate and fuels our creative impulses through repeated experiences with pleasure.