Good Pussy, Bad Attitude

How Pleasure Activism Can Rewire Our World to Consent

I know the title is shocking, but the words “good pussy, bad attitude” popped into my head before falling asleep, and I woke up still thinking about how I identify with it. A “good pussy” and “bad” attitude correlate in my mind because the more I’ve explored what true consent is (and what actually makes my muse merry), the stinkier my attitude has become—because we do not live in a consensual world. We live in a world centered on male pleasure, and we’re supposed to keep it running with fake smiles on our faces so as not to ruin their real ones.

I was so excited to participate in a conventional life. I wanted it *too* badly. I wanted one person, presumably a man, to wait for and journey thru life with while I somehow got to make films and plays and books. I never really thought about wealth more than making things that made people laugh and think and think while they laugh—and hopefully fill spaces and hearts with some kind of wonder at being alive.

I never thought my life would revolve around applying for food stamps and scraping to make rent well into my thirties. I never thought I’d be gay, not even a little bit. My best friend from high school called me the straightest girl she had ever met. The cognitive dissonance was fierce. I blocked so much. It hurt my brain masking and blocking for so long, ignoring the way my pussy actually reacted to things. Listening to when she felt safe or got excited so I could know what “alive” felt like and when danger threatened that robust joy within me.

I never met a man I felt safe with who liked me, who I liked back, except for one who I met at a mega church cult in Seattle. We got engaged for nine months while he was deployed… yeah, the only “good” guy I’ve been with was pretty absent most of the relationship and still managed to gaslight me into thinking I was the crazy one for doubting the church that would come crashing down in scandal just a month after I left (and that Christianity Today eventually dissected through a podcast in honor of the thousands of lives effected).

I feel I need to make a caveat because people who know me will say my first boyfriend was a good guy, and that’s true. He was a pastor’s kid and gentleman who couldn’t fully accept my queer friends (though he was kind to them) and who ended up telling me he loved me till the day before getting with his now wife (then girlfriend) and never speaking to me again. Not even when I reached out to check in about his family after an earthquake that had happened near them. Access denied. And I’ll use this experience as an example of what being in church feels like—it feels like only being recognized in community as long as you are of some value to the members and community and not because of your humanity and existence. I’m sure he stonewalled me out of respect to his then girlfriend (now wife), but the point I’m trying to make is that life is layered but certain communities will strive to make it very black and white, leaving every spectrum of color out for convenience’s sake. Making you dismissible.

I sometimes struggle sharing my story because I can’t frame it in a toxically positive way, even if I’ve healed from it—I don’t know why people expect healing to transform into a blank canvas of rainbows and sunshine instead of a more defined landscape with contrast and shadows.

I’m happy I’ve been turned inside out. It’s made me a better artist but mostly, it has made me really feel life with a full mind and strong heart and deeper insight into humanity that I find crushingly complex. It has made me more unlikable, but also more one with the collective “world” that Christianity aims to keep us far from embracing. I was stuck for so long from having a point of view because I was so scared of who I’d disappoint.

But the truth is, authority has deeply disappointed me. I don’t think authority often has our best interests in mind, but I guess that makes the true mentors sparkle like bright stars in a dark sky overhead (sprinkle sprinkle). There, I was positive!

I look at my life up to just a few years ago as being guided by a very top-down approach versus bottom-up. I was muffling any inner knowing to what seemed to be “right” on paper. My attitude is one of disappointment but not without hope. I used to feel so hopeless after experiencing several sequential betrayals of what should have been safe on paper.

For instance, it should have been safe to go to the school gynecologist and be listened to about my own body and personal limitations during an examination… I should have been able to tell my fiancé I had doubts without being disregarded; and again when I shared those doubts with other women in the church, I should not have been told my only option was to obey my “husband” when we were only engaged AND the pastor was using church money to put his books on the New York Bestsellers List. I should have been able to work at a non-profit that actually wanted to help people instead of give rich people tax write offs while we shuttled students around the city as photo opportunities. We were a glorified babysitting center that sat in after school programs with low funded supplies while the CEO used the company card to take donors out to lunch…

I walked away from these systemic communities disillusioned and ran into even more untrustworthy situations. My limited thinking was “if ‘good’ things are bad and some of these ‘bad’ things are good to me, then everything is maybe gray.” But everything is color, and I needed to know my truest hues instead of blindly surrendering to whatever was happening to me. And let go even of trying to be blameless.

I take accountability for betraying my inner voice out of the desire to be obedient and more trusting of others than I was of my body. But my pussy, she knew. We have telepathic sonar vibration type of communication. But listening takes stillness, and the answers don’t necessarily lead to worldly success. They can, however, lead to peace.

Some would consider what I’m saying as wild: to trust our bodies, and specifically our mysterious punanies. But we live in a world where men justify thinking with their “heads” all the time. Their dickheads, that is. Not doing anything that flatlines their hard on for life… being really in touch with guttural desire and often what suits their ease. I’m not saying I act on everything my pussy wants. She craves things that aren’t in her best interest either, but I am saying that confronting those desires and giving them creative outlets will keep us powerful and vibrant.

Instead of acting on the unhelpful wishlist (you know, like being attracted to toxic partners or hot selfish people), we alchemize the yearning by listening and channeling into creativity and transformation, but most importantly, we listen to it when it says “no.” I feared my no’s were wrong and that someone else must have a better idea of what I should be and do, and that their satisfaction was a sign I was onto the right idea. I wanted to be lovely and correct and safe by reflecting their world back to them despite my questions.

I wanted to be loved, but I think people could tell I wasn’t being honest, even if I wasn’t aware I was lying to myself. I was as authentic as my religious mind would allow me to be. I ignored any flicker of my knowing Down Below if it didn’t match up with a contrived idea of acceptability. I had to confirm decisions with others constantly, and still struggle with this proclivity. I’ve wanted to be good for so long. I’ve wanted it to get me somewhere good.

My pussy has been a good girl, and yet it’s still been assaulted, disrespected and undervalued by men, by doctors, by science, by society, and by me. If I listened to her, I’d slow down more, rest more, let myself be wooed more.

A consensual world runs slowly, it cannot be pushed to do something it doesn’t feel peace in its body mass doing. The capitalist in the back of my mind says “well then we’ll all just be lazy” but that would be antithetical to thriving, so I disagree.

I think we were designed to praise and be praised, and that inclination has been redirected into serving and worshipping a system that doesn’t reciprocate its care for us. Capitalism is a system that hears “no” and decides to push to the third ask and persuade the yes. It operates on conversions, and the church has been a reflection of this methodology. Now, tech is becoming the iOS updated front for this age old value system.

I remember growing up in church and having emerging social media co-opt religious terminology like “followers” feel like a threat to the insider lingo exclusive to those of the faith—but they are both facades that uphold the same system that seeks to mine our attention, energy and money through devotion. The church used to be a place for society and art to mingle tax free, and since it is no longer popular, we’ve been given a free interface to be tracked. The church used to track our sins and secrets, but how the algorithm does. And in return, we feel good.

I gave 10% of my income as a person struggling to make ends meet for a decade… now I give more than 10% of my time to media in hopes of becoming praiseworthy and connected. Both structures have pathways to ascension that feel outside of the participant’s control. That’s why the shift needs to be internal, because pussy peace is attainable. And so is pussy power. We were given tools to measure true excitement somatically.

If this world was led by pussy desires, I really think we’d prioritize collective safety over supremacy, knowledge over instant results, healing over punishment, creativity over competition, seasons that cycle instead of evergreen expansion, and overall nourishment over standardized perfection. But maybe that’s just my good pussy and bad attitude talking.