Celebrating Women’s Sexuality: Overcoming Shame Through Pleasure

Last Updated on 1 November, 2025 by Cara Sutra

For centuries, women’s sexuality has been silenced, shamed, mocked and dismissed as irrelevant. The Cara Sutra sex blog is my way of being loud and proud about my sexual pleasure, while sharing my experience and advice for the enjoyment of my readers. Today I am specifically focusing on celebrating women’s sexuality, exploring how women of the modern world are fighting shame with pleasure and slowly turning the tide on long-standing myths and stigma. This is part one of my two-part Women’s Sexuality Series examining some of the intricacies of female sexuality.

Click to read part two of this series:
How BDSM Empowers Women to Reclaim Sexual Control and Desire

I will preface this article by acknowledging that we are all much more than our anatomical parts. Gender is a social construct, is not a binary thing, and there are many wonderful types of people in this big wide world. Trans women are women, and trans men are men. When I talk about women, I am not just talking about cis women. I am talking about all women.

Plus, when I talk about women’s sexuality, I am not just talking about sex – anatomy or activity. It’s about identity, agency, connection and prioritisation of self. In a world that still tries to stifle all of that, and make women a commodity, it’s revolutionary to say that as a woman: Yes, I desire. Yes, I orgasm. Yes, I matter.

Smashing through the Stigma, Silence & Shame

I grew up in the 1980s and 90s where anything relating to women’s sexuality wasn’t just deemed unimportant, it was decidedly laughable. At the time, this felt progressive – society was at least talking about women and sex in the same sentence, even if the tone was mocking. A woman who enjoyed sex was “asking for it” and a “slut” – this is before many of us reclaimed that label as a symbol of empowerment.

Abstinence and a patriarchal push for “purity” were seen as virtuous, as if women’s worth depended on keeping our legs and mouths firmly closed.

This culture of shame seeps into our understanding of, and interaction with, the world around us. It affects how we think about sex, relating to ourselves as women, and warps how we experience it. Shame tells us not to touch ourselves, not to fantasise, not to talk about sex and not to enjoy it – not to speak out when something isn’t working for us or isn’t right. That’s dangerous. The truth is that women were never too old, too hairy, too loud, too wanton, too independent. We were never too much. We have a right to the full, shameless enjoyment of sexual pleasure, and it’s time we started living – and fucking – like we believe it.

Reclaiming Our Sexual Pleasure as a Right

Women’s sexual pleasure isn’t a luxury, a treat that we somehow need to earn or deserve. It’s our birth right as autonomous, sexual, adult humans. For some reason, though, women’s enjoyment of sex is still viewed as an indulgence rather than a natural part of life.

Take the orgasm gap, for example. Even recent studies show* that men orgasm more often than women in heterosexual sex. That isn’t because women are harder to please or that they necessarily find it more difficult to orgasm. It’s because our pleasure isn’t prioritised – not in mainstream porn, not in decades-past sex education and all too often, sadly, not in bed either.

Reclaiming women’s sexual pleasure means flipping that script. Tear it up and toss it in the trash, where it belongs. Women have a right to feel good, to be shamelessly open about what we want, who we want to feel it with and how we wish to experience our spectrum of sexuality and desire. Perhaps that’s a slow, sensual massage without any obligation to orgasm. Maybe it’s rough anal rapeplay on the roof of a skyscraper. Whatever we want, as sexually free women, we should be allowed to want without fear of society’s stigma and judgement – and without having to apologise afterwards.

Join the Self-Pleasure Revolution

Time to talk about one of my favourite subjects: masturbation. Oh, you guessed? 😂 Seriously though – wanking is one of the most revolutionary things you can do as a sexually aware and desirous woman. It’s about more than just getting off – even if it doesn’t feel like it when you’re about to tumble into that delicious abyss of orgasmic abandon. Female masturbation is about tuning into your own body, recognising and honouring your body’s sexual needs and desires, figuring out what feels good on your terms and tuning into whatever you need to feel fully satisfied.

No matter what you choose to use during masturbation – your fingers, a high-tech smart vibrator or an anal fisting dildo – solo sex is the tangible realisation of radical self-love and female-sexuality driven empowerment.

You’re learning what turns you on, what your boundaries are and how your personal arousal ebbs and flows. You can explore yourself fully, free from a partner’s expectations, free from society’s judgement and repression and without any performance pressure whatsoever.

So yes, enjoy getting better acquainted with yourself – with your body. Explore your hot spots, your G-spot, your nipples, your clitoris, your inner thighs, your anus. Become intimate with yourself and enjoy the shamelessness of the process as well as the orgasmic highs. Whatever your body type and anatomy, it’s your body and you deserve to enjoy it.

Being Sexy On Your Own Terms

While we’re on the subject of bodies, let’s talk about the society’s ongoing obsession with gatekeeping women’s bodies, perceived attractiveness relating to worth and the effect on women’s sexuality.

One of the biggest blocks to women’s sexual pleasure is the way we feel about our bodies. Broadly speaking, men’s bodies are not judged in the same way as women’s are, in the media, in the streets, wherever. When my husband goes out of the house, he’s never worried about people perceiving him as somehow less, or assigning certain moral qualities to him based upon his body size or type. For me, it’s different. Because I’m a woman.

Women are told from a young age that we must look a certain way to be sexy. And that being sexy is the ultimate goal of all women. To be sexy in the male gaze – and even to other women – is to have intrinsic value and worth. If you’re not sexy, then in the eyes of the world, you’re worthless. Less than worthless, because it’s assumed you have ‘let yourself go’, that you have abandoned other people’s opinions of you – and there can certainly be nothing worse in the world, than a woman who doesn’t care what other people think about her. Especially when it comes to what she looks like, and how she carries herself through this world.

We are told, therefore, that we must dedicate our entire lives to the pursuit of other people’s ideals of sexiness. Be slim but curvy, smooth but not plastic, look young but not immature, be cisgender, white, able-bodied. Enjoy sex, but don’t be a slut. Want children but don’t be a mum. Be an independent woman but don’t go on about it, don’t prioritise your work life. Be hot but cover yourself up, for god’s sake. Keep your thoughts on the inside, and your sexy body carefully curated for everyone else’s enjoyment. It is all, all of it, absolute bullshit.

All women can be sexual beings, if that’s what they desire to be. For themselves, not for the consumption of anyone around them, as if women are nothing more than the world’s wallpaper. All bodies can be sexual bodies. Fat bodies, disabled bodies, trans people’s bodies, neurodivergent bodies, atypically ‘sexy’ bodies. Desire isn’t reserved for the airbrushed, the filtered, the surgically enhanced, the made-up and tightly Spanx-contoured. And being desired shouldn’t be a requirement for your own sexual pleasure, either.

Fuck ‘fuckability’. Women don’t need other people’s permission to feel sexy.

The Diverse Reality of Women’s Sexuality

Let’s tackle another myth fit for the trash: that there’s only one acceptable and correct way to be sexual. Sure, mainstream porn can be fun, but porn isn’t a textbook for how women should act during sex. In porn, women often moan on cue, arch their back just so, always love a load of jizz on their face or tits, never say no, never have any needs of their own, never correct their partner to enhance their own pleasure and if they need to orgasm, they do so quickly with no mess, no fuss and no real attendance to their physical or emotional needs.

I mean no disrespect to porn actors here; I have the greatest respect for everyone who works in the porn industry, and I recognise that it is real, and at times no doubt incredibly difficult, work. But it’s a job, not reality.

Many people seemingly cannot distinguish porn sex from all the various shades of real sex – no cameras, no mics, no angles or money shots to fulfil. It isn’t about what it looks like, it’s about how it feels – for everyone involved.

Women’s sexual wants, in the real world, are our own. Unrelated to the male gaze or porn tropes or performing for men’s lusts. Real sexuality is messy, often complicated, and gloriously varied. We might want it rough; we might like it tender and gentle. Perhaps screamingly loud, perhaps muted or silent. Some women want to be worshipped, others want it rough, fast, consensually violent. Other women don’t want sex at all, and that’s perfectly valid too.

Women’s sexuality isn’t a show for other people. It doesn’t have to be pretty, palatable to society’s opinions or PornHub-worthy. It just needs to be our own. Real, genuine, heard, respected.

The Magic of Connecting & Reflecting with Like-Minded Women

Connecting with the sisterhood is an important branch of women’s sexuality and personal empowerment. Something magical and powerful happens when women get together and speak openly about sex. Whether it’s face-to-face in a group, a conversation between two friends, forums or group chats online – when women talk about sex together, it’s progressive and revolutionary.

We turn our backs on centuries of female sexuality oppression, and welcome sexual pleasure and liberation for ourselves. There is the realisation that sex doesn’t mean shame, and we find not just like-minded community but validation. In this way we all build a better world for sex-loving women, a world where we all get to thrive as our best, sexual selves.

Your Sexuality is Worth Celebrating

To every single woman reading this, I want to say: your sexuality is nothing to be ashamed of. Whatever you desire, whatever your body type, whatever your past or present; your sexuality is nothing to hide, silence or be judged by anyone else. Do all you can to celebrate your sexuality in all its humanly chaotic and messy ways. No matter if you’re loud or quiet, kinky or vanilla, partnered or solo, celibate or perpetually horny as hell – you deserve joy, fulfilment and for sexual pleasure to be a priority in your own life.

In the second part of this women’s sexuality series, I delve into how BDSM can be a profoundly empowering and safe space for women to explore their sexual desires, embrace consensual power exchange, and reclaim their feminine strength on their own terms.

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Sources:

* Carly Wolfer et al., Journal of Social and Personal Relationships (2025)

A diary-based study of 127 people over three weeks found that men orgasmed in 90% of heterosexual sexual encounters, compared with only 54% for women. 

Elizabeth McElroy & Samuel Perry, The Journal of Sex Research (August 2024)

This extensive review of 30 years of research shows consistently higher orgasm rates for men (70–85%) than for women (46–58%) in heterosexual partnered sex.