Howl

The Erotic Mother

Celebrating women as fully sexual beings, beyond their relationship roles

We just had a full moon in the sign of Cancer — a maternal, loving, sensual sign. Everything I read about it said it was a time of wrapping ourselves in our own maternal love, releasing pent-up emotion, and learning how to be a good mother to ourselves.

The timing of this moon also coincides with that incredibly randy week before my period. PMS isn’t always kind to my emotions, but in my forties, it’s become an enjoyable time of rampant horniness and that delicious feeling of fullness and tenderness in my body (which is mostly just unsexy water retention — but whatever, it has its advantages).

Basically, at this point in time, I’m feeling a lot of sexy mother energy.

I know in our culture, those two things don’t go together — they’re not supposed to go together. But the older I get, the more I insist that they do go together.

No, not in a pervy way. Let’s just shut that nonsense down right now. Our culture loves to push that propaganda — that sexuality around, related to, or involving motherhood is taboo. But this is just another method of sexual shaming and more evidence of the way our culture tries to sexually control us — women, in particular.

When I was in my twenties, I steeped myself in the words of women who I felt understood sexuality, femaleness, love, and sensuality better than anyone I had ever encountered: Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Sandra Cisneros, Joy Harjo, Alice Walker, and Isabelle Allende. I will never forget reading about Lisette’s orgasmic experience during childbirth in Walker’s Possessing the Secret of Joy. It’s possible to have an orgasm and/or experience rushes of physical pleasure during childbirth? It’s possible that it doesn’t have to be the most excruciating, horrific experience of a woman’s life, as I’d been taught?

Okay, apparently, it’s not a common experience — estimates say only 0.3% of women will have such a pleasurable childbirth.

But honestly, how accurate is that? If we’ve been taught the propaganda that ecstatic physical experiences during childbirth that aren’t of the more adrenaline-fueled type are morally wrong, then how many women would be able to let go enough to have such an experience? We are hammered over the head that sexuality crossing into motherhood is literally perverse — so it is no surprise to me that the number of women able to experience ecstatic birth is so low.

If you want to have an ecstatic, spiritual experience, yourself, whether you’re a woman or not, whether you’re pregnant or not, take a look at this incredible photograph of an “orgasmic birth” (which, just to warn you, might be considered graphic by some). This is one of the most beautiful, empowering photos I’ve ever seen. It literally made me cry.

And yet…

“… the image hasn’t proved very popular; it has been repeatedly censored and removed from public display. Not only are women not supposed to enjoy childbirth, but the image patently represents one of the most unbearable things we can imagine: the sexuality of a mother.”

I am not a mother of a living child, nor have I ever had a full pregnancy or given birth, but I am fascinated with the intersection of motherhood and sexuality. My body has inspired this fascination.

I am sexually ravenous on Days 2 and 3 of my cycle, the days in which I feel most the way I felt when I had my one, very short pregnancy. My body is achingly sensitive, I feel big and round and heavy, I feel as if my insides are on the outside, and I imagine that being penetrated by a partner at this time of the month (sans condom, please) would feel like one of the most raw, undiluted pleasures I could ever experience.

I need a partner to touch my breasts a lot and suck on my nipples in order to have a truly great sexual experience. That’s just an absolute necessity for me.

And of course, I’ve written before that I have very intense sexual fantasies around erotic lactation (I think I’m finally using the correct term for my specific kink).

Add to the list that I’ve always wanted to have sex while heavily pregnant. I’ve also long fantasized about having sex with a heavily pregnant woman — both as a woman, and as a man (if I could shapeshift…I’d really love to experience my masculine sexual energy in a physical way).

I get it. I get the eroticism and raw sexual power of mothers and motherhood. Our culture would have us believe that this is a perversion — incest-adjacent sexual proclivities and interests.

But that perspective only works when we participate in removing a woman’s sexuality from the rest of her and try to compartmentalize and control it. When we see a woman as a complete, whole, sexual being, suddenly recognizing her eroticism and sexual power even when she’s breastfeeding or giving birth becomes about her, her body, and her identity as a sexual being — it’s no longer just an isolated snapshot of one role that she plays, one relationship of many that she has.

It’s frustrating to me that in 2020, we still aren’t making much progress in this area.

Instagram still thinks the female nipple is pornographic (whereas the male nipple — what’s the difference?! — is not). Photos of breastfeeding women are still routinely deleted from social media, despite guidelines that specifically state that photos of breastfeeding are allowable, no doubt because these companies are trying to walk that fine line of respecting the cultural propaganda around the “sanctity” of motherhood while also affirming the even more insidious propaganda that breastfeeding in public (including on social media) is somehow a deviant act that threatens the morality of anyone who witnesses it.

And try an internet search using terms like “sexuality and motherhood” or “motherhood and sex.” You won’t find much, and the majority of what you’ll find is more than three years old, largely focuses on the low sexual energy many women feel post-partum, or unintentionally (and sometimes intentionally) reinforces cultural propaganda with titles like Can Motherhood and Sexuality Coexist?

I know people are still asking that question, and with good reason — but we need to stop putting it in print. We can tackle this subject without using terminology that continues to disempower women and chip away at their sexual wholeness.

How about something like Yes, Virginia, Motherhood and Sexuality Do Coexist, subtitle: Because women are whole, complete, sexual beings just like men. Or you know (not to toot my own horn), something like Mothers Are Sexual Beings — Get Over It.

And how about we just, indeed, get over it, and move on to the more interesting topic of the erotic power of motherhood. The beautiful, voluptuous curves and bulges of a pregnant woman. The dazzling, unleashed sexual magnificence of a lactating breast. The pure, carnal power of a woman giving birth.

And as a woman who is not a mother, I want to emphasize that I don’t think we have to have been pregnant, given birth, or raised children in order to feel the sexual power of motherhood. I believe everyone — all genders, regardless of their parental status — can access maternal potential and feminine energy, both passive and active.

At my age, I doubt I will ever experience my fantasies of erotic lactation or having sex while pregnant, but I can indulge in sex during my period (if the right partner ever comes along), when I feel that energy of motherhood and feminine sensitivity and power so strongly.

It makes me happy to imagine this — my “maternal sexuality” realized. All of our maternal sexuality realized.

Think of it: pregnant women feeling beautiful and sexy and inspired to express their sexuality with their partner(s), women breastfeeding openly in public with rays of cosmic kundalini energy pouring out of their bodies, women wielding their sexuality with precision and determination at every stage of their life…

That is a world I want to have a part in birthing.

This article was written for Howl by Yael Wolfe, a weekly column. © Yael Wolfe 2020

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