@megan
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More than anything, I’m so in tune with seeing the value and benefits of having my cycle and my bleed, my rage is at capitalism and patriarchy creating a work schedule and environment that is SOOOOOO out of sync with nature and natural cycles (effective at exhausting us and throwing our energies entirely out of wack). I will rant to anyone I meet about how we must rebel against these falsely created structures that steal our power. I do everything I can to decenter these systems in daily actions and inner thoughts (awareness of how much my own brain has been manipulated to the propaganda of these systems). I’m intentionally building a life that shakes the status quo and hopefully inspires women and folks who bleed to do the same. Using period blood and sex magick to engage the matriarchy and culture shift towards care, nurturance and creation.
This past month was the second one in a row that my bleed started on the full moon so I know I’m coming into some strong sex magick energy 😝 I have really been attuning to trying my best to empty my schedule for the first 2 days so I can smoke weed, paint, masturbate, eat snacks, take epsom salt baths and journal. I don’t have a lot of pain (grateful and fortunate), sometimes a strong headache preceeds it and I’ll have achy legs and want to stretch and do gentle yoga. I harness all the internal and reflective energy of the blood and the moon to create. I’m in love with my menstruation and I’ve used menstrual cups and discs since my late teens which has been such a normalizing element. I recently painted a pussy portrait using my menstrual blood and loved that process. The colour is so vivid and changes when it dries (I tried to add it here but can’t figure out how to upload it)
Definitely feel a deepening of my pleasure and capacity for edging sessions and orgasms. I have enjoyed more playfulness in my body. I practice Shibari rope bondage and play the Bodhran (a celtic drum), both of these practices are physical meditations that keep me in my body. I do saunas and cold swims as often as I can (monthly at least). I love discovering the strength my body can keep. I’m grateful to be able to keep her entertained and in sustainable, physical form.
In my mid and now later 30s I notice more softness in my curves, my facial hair and body hair amount has changed. I’m feeling more aches and sensitivity to not keeping up exercise. My gut needs some TLC and I’m currently doing a parasite cleanse to try to help my digestion and my energy levels. I’m more settled in my style now and dress for comfort, confidence and creativity. Over all loveing my body as it’s aging and settling more into itself. Working through the transitions of it, I’m mindful to keep a seasonal practice of self-massage with oils, dressing for myself, spa time, adjusting my diet depending on the season. Smoking weed and dancing, moving, hiking, and yoga. Keeping an ongoing dialogue and feedback loop with her.
I dislike the struggle I sometimes feel for having thick and dark hormonal facial hair growth on my chin and neck. It distracts me and is an ongoing challenge because I’m affected by the sensory feel of it and when I remove it, it leaves redness and irritation. Something I’m looking forward to is either working out my thyroid and supporting my hormones so the hair is less or fully accepting my bog-witch ways and growing out my beard! The humour of that reframing helps 😀
My orgasms are powerful, plentiful and diverse. They vary in pace, sensation, fantasy, magick, depth, and intensity. Solo and Partnered, a snack or a meal, romantic and raunchy, creative and playful. I’m incredibly grateful and fortunate to have open and orgasmic parents who are intentionally monogamous and thought my masturbation exploration as a child was natural and normal (just needed to remind me it was something to be done in private in the family home). I was my first lover and chose to use a toy to penetrate myself for the first time rather than leave that up to a potentially clumsy partner. I’m also fortunate to have not experienced assault or harassment that left me with trauma or needing to do a lot of unlearning about being deserving of pleasure,for this I am endlessly grateful and I’ve learned this makes my experience unique to other women and femmes in a way that saddens me deeply. My passion for supporting other women and vulva owners in radically loving themselves, rejecting patriarchal capitalism to own and access their own infinite pleasure, is rooted in this fundamental freedom that I had access to in my childhood and youth. I am endlessly fascinated with the human body, and it’s capacity for unfathomable pleasure journeys. I can’t wait to see and experience my orgasms’ evolution as I age and experience life even more fully.
I have been fortunate for most of my life to love my body. The world reflected to me that there were people similar to me who were attractive, and in seeing that it was easier to accept that about myself. Being in my 30s now I see the softness, the imperfections in my skin a bit more, but I’m cognizant of the little conversation I have in my head to reframe with gratitude and love. I was more challenged in my youth with the presence of darker facial and body hair and struggled with the cultural expectations of hairlessness and being bullied for having a mustache and unibrow as a kid (which caused me shame, pain and wasting money trying to remove it all). Several steps of evolution in my early 20s had me resisting these expectations and I’ve since grown to love my body hair. The last time I did any removal was about 7 years ago and I’m much happier and more accepting now. The journey that I currently face is my relationship with nutrition and finding a holistic diet of nourishing foods that can support my digestion and energy levels so I can feel lighter, brighter, more rested and energized.
It’s been so enlightening to read her journal entries, the challenges she faced, the uncertainty and navigating life solo (but not alone). I found so many commonalities and true soul similarities with her. I relate to the uncomfortable growth of going after a vision and being a staunch advocate for pleasure and women’s sexuality while jumping over the bureaucratic hoops of communities that were scared of this kind of no-bullshit evolution. It’s also empowering to know that she did it, she got the work out there and made a huge impact and ultimately lead a rich, hedonistic life. Power to you BAD 💜
I would want to ask her if there was a fantasy that she hadn’t experienced that she had still wanted to or if there was a kind of pleasure she had wanted to explore so that I could do it for her 💜
Chico Lecture:
She was so organic about her experience and told her stories with such richness. Her posture was so powerful and you could tell how confident she was in the work, despite this being early in the process of building the workshops. Her art and the Split Beaver slide show was something she was deeply and humbly proud of which shone through in her demeanour. I noticed her care and “professionalism” towards her students and audience that was maybe connected to the unfamiliar academic space. She was still stripped down to brass tacks and straightforward in her delivery. I loved it.
Yale Lecture:
She gave absolutely zero fucks about decorum or expectation and spoke about exactly what she wanted to in the way she wanted to. There was more dynamic exchange with her audience, and I LOVED hearing the questions posed. Her responses were so holistic and strong. You wouldn’t be able to say that anything she said, she felt vulnerable about and I think that probably made more of an impact to those students than anything. I was cackling. I miss her.
What stood out to me is how often I felt that she was saying words and doing her creative process the same way I have throughout my life. The familiarity was spooky and spiritual sometimes. I have tons of journals and sketchbooks all overlapping with ideas and a path from star point to star point, building the constellation of my life, and I saw that same process in her work. It was so stripped down and fuelled by her own drive and passion to share her findings with people who almost seemed to be on a different planet from her. I loved the way she threw everything at the wall to see what would stick. She’d go on lots of side quests to experience more and then dedicate time and energy to finalizing her findings and connecting with instrumental business partners to get it done. She inspires me endlessly, and I’m currently fanatically filling sketchbooks and 2 journals of material while I work through this course. It’s relit a fire that was a smouldering ember from my early 20s when I first met her.
Betty was breaking the fourth wall between each of those women and their own thoughts of divine feminine empowerment that is hidden behind fear. I believe every woman wants to be fully seen, fully rageful and feral. Patriarchal society has done an effective job with propaganda to have people effectively policing themselves and their own minds. Betty combined the hard work of unlearning with the inspiration of her mother’s “native” wisdom. When someone would say: “You can’t do that”, Betty would say: “Watch me!” She represented the desire so many women had to be fully free and give no fucks. That energy is palpable and explosive and her audience would have experienced that powerful action and wanted to be a part of it. I think that is powerful enough to AT LEAST get a standing ovation 😉
I have also experienced similar actions and conferences in communities of the left (humanitarian, civil rights, sex and gender education etc). I think there is such a tone of, again, inner policing and managing nuance and “cancel culture” within that I have seen these initiatives fail because so much effort gets put into a workshop or conference (in topics that are already on the margins) with little to no funding, support or recognition and it becomes a thanksless job that then folks become critical of and the good parts get forgotten. I’ve personally burned out from chairing a non-for- profit organization educating and advocating for the role of Intimacy Coordinator in film/TV, and it’s upsetting to see all that work go into these initiatives to have them implode from inner politics. I imagine that’s maybe what happened here.
Marta, YES! I also loved her sexual fantasy sketches, they are so amazing. I also wish we had more of those. It has inspired me to attempt to draw some of my own!
I don’t feel any resistance to the book or her work as she’s presented it. My feelings of resistance or frustration is directed towards the differences I’m reading about between the world she did this work in and the world we live in now. To remark on how much has indeed been accomplished in terms of support for self-love in the mainstream and acknowledgement that we have become a much more open society in a lot of ways. Simultaneously facism censors and vilifies a world of diverse individuals in the death throes of capitalism. The different but similar challenges that this work still faces in being accepted, despite the advances we’ve made in western culture. My current struggle with wanting to make a living, carving my own path, while being overwhelmed with how I will personally do the work, support myself and do right by the community and women who will be supported by Bodysex
I ended up finding “Liberating Masturbation” online and ended up reading it and “Sex for One” simultaneously. I loved reading the seeds of these ideas and her evolutionary growth of experience and description between the former and becoming the latter.
I’m always struck by her approach for how she would enact an idea, simply making posters and making phone calls to the women in her community, that word of mouth was such a strong tool for outreach and for folks to find her and her work. I’ve always loved and been inspired by her art and the seamless way she translates its impact into her somatic work, which became Bodysex. She exemplified multiple areas of pioneering experiences:
- large and in your face erotic art
- nude, somatic consciousness raising
- masturbation in sacred circle
- leading a dozen men’s workshops
- offering her orgasm to science to prove the connection to meditation
- all manner of relationships and self-designed sexual spaces
She was always putting forward original ideas and trusting herself with the importance of her instincts.
I was touched when she spoke about calling her mother Bessie to ask if she was masturbating to Orgasm and how that deepened their relationship infinitely. I’m proud to recall that both my parents, my sister and my paternal grandmother all have vibrators/sex toys at my introduction and my insistence on a healthy self-love practice. One potentially awkward familial chat at a time!
The throughline and process by which she became Betty Dodson was the main element that stood out to me, as I’m going through a similar process and developing further self-awareness and self-trust to put out what I want to see more of in the world. It’s an amazing feeling to be journeying alongside her in honour of the changemaker she was and the impact she’s had on so many people.
