ur such a f*cking hoe

I love it.

And I do love it. I love being a hoe. Like love love it.

But I didn’t always.

Well I mean I did, then I didn’t, and I did, then I didn’t… You get the picture.

But I guess I want to talk about the way that I learnt to be a hoe, the way I was (and many young women are) socially conditioned to try to be sexy. Throughout social media, advertisements, magazines, and TV, we are told that being sexy sells. That being sexy is all a woman is worth. Sex education itself basically presumes that sex is only sex when it’s a penis inside a vagina, and that it’s only over once the guy finishes. Just going to take a minute to emphasize that sex educations says that apparently *sex only counts once the guy cums*.

We are never taught about female pleasure, or the fact that it was even possible for us to orgasm. Instead, we are positioned as either a means of reproduction, or a way for men to get off. That is what sex education tells us. Sex is for men, and women having sex should know how bad sex is and that sex will hurt, and you could get pregnant or an STI. That’s it, that’s the narrative. No discussion of foreplay, or non-heterosexual sex, no discussion on emotions or female pleasure.

And then we are thrown pictures of half-naked women plastered throughout our world as if being sexy for us is the new normal. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for female empowerment and nudity, but when it is arranged in a way that presents a woman’s body as the object of consumerism, at the hands of the male gaze, and with the intent to make other women feel less about themselves – then no I can’t get around that.

But even from the age of 14, I knew that if I wanted a guy’s attention, I had to be sexy to get it, I knew that sex sells. By the age of 14 I already knew what porn was and knew how (to some degree) perform it. Because that is what the media tells us at that age. Puberty is when we start shaving our legs, wearing make up for the first time, dressing more risqué, testing our boundaries and our limits. And if you’re anything like me, dressing downright skanky.

Again – I fucking loved it.

It was fabulous, I was wild and sexy and had so much fun toying with boys. But looking back, I’m just not sure if it was all for me, or if I was doing it for some sense of validation. That this world tells us women need to be validated by men in order to have a place at the table, that women alone are unworthy and that it is important to be loved. And so young girls go out into the world trying to be loved, and the way we are taught to do this is through our sexuality, our sex appeal. it is engrained in us from centuries ago, that we need men to survive, we need husbands. Often, we learn it hard during our teenage years, we over-do it and extend it. It’s our first time, moving from the young girl, into what it means to be a woman. Or at least what we think it means to be a woman, to be sexy, to be pretty, to be an attractive little plaything that the boys might want to look at. What these billion dollar industries of beauty, hair removal, fashion and fitness has told us.

So we learn how to be sexy… we learn how to present sexy. I see it even now, walking the streets of the city, young girls barely even 16, in tiktok cute outfits (like damn their style is fierce, 90’s and y2k love to see it) but outfits that I wouldn’t even wear now for fear of a nip-slip or my ass slipping out. Not that I would ever shame them for that, wear what ever the fuck you want.

But it’s hard when you can see that it is a mask, a disguise, an attempt to fit in and be wanted. I would want young girls to know that they can be wanted no matter how they dress, no matter how well they perform the ideal to be sexy. I would want to teach young women how to be sexy for themselves, not for the boys in their class, or the inadvertent male gaze. That they don’t need to sexy up themselves and sell themselves to be valued, that we are valued for being more than just pretty, and that they don’t have to try so hard to be pretty. But I know what it’s like. I did it. Wore way too much make-up, barely-there clothing, and 6-inch heels.

Much to my dad’s horror.

Truth be told, he struggled with it. I was his little baby girl, that he never wanted to grow up, and here I was taking my first steps of growing up and stepping into adulthood, into being my own sexually sovereign being. I learnt very quickly (and very easily) how to perform sexy. I learnt that when I did, I felt good, I felt validated. It did feel natural for me to be sexy, but I amplified it in my teens to work my own way. I explored my sexuality, in maybe not the healthiest of ways. I flirted and teased and put myself out there as easy. I wanted the validation, so I sought it. I didn’t see anything wrong with that. And I was pretty good at it - if I do say so myself. I can remember being in high school, and relishing in being catcalled, feeling so empowered by it. When a lot of other girls were still too shy to talk to boys, I was out there batting my eyelashes and swaying my hips in their direction. It may or may not have gotten me in trouble though, this deep socialization of enhancing my sexuality to be deemed validated as a woman… when I was caught flirting and dirty talking with a boy when I was 16 because I had left my Facebook logged in on my mum’s iPad. (whoops).

This ended in an inevitable ‘chat’ my parents had with me about sex. About putting myself out there as ‘easy’… they said they didn’t want to see me end up being viewed as the ‘town bike’ by the local boys… Yeh wowee. Heavy sexual shaming, am I right?

But look at me now 🤪.

It’s so interesting to me as well, that the sexualization of women is so common, so prevalent and accepted - like inherently so when you start to think about it. And yet women who claim their sexuality for themselves are so shamed for it. Especially when young, and all those hormones running through them, and they don’t really know how to direct that energy healthily. But that is where education is needed, so women start to learn to sexualize themselves only for themselves. Not to please boys. Not to seek their validation. And to teach boys not to expect young girls to be inherently sexual, and if they are, to respect them for it, not to shame or shun them, and to instead view them not as an inanimate object available for them to fuck, but as a fellow sexual human being. With their own wants and needs and desires, just like we all have. Not someone to perform sex on, but instead with. A woman’s sexuality not inherently owned by men, sought, or created for men, but something to be enthusiastically and consensually shared. We are all sexual beings.

Post the chat with my fam, my behaviour didn’t change though, I just got better at hiding it (heh).

Even when friends in high school might have shamed me for it, or different family members tried to condemn me for it, I continued to embrace my sexuality. I continued to explore when I was in single life. I went even deeper when I was in relationships and had a partner to connect with and discover with. What really knocked me back a step, was when I had a real rough break up, lost a lot of friends, and had a best friend tell me that a lot of the heart ache I was facing was because I was too much.

Too loud, too confident, too cocky.

Too sexy.

Too much of a woman. And so I learnt to shut that side down, I turned soft and sweet. I acknowledge here and now that it was what I needed at the time. I was so far into my masculine, my angry feminist, my get shit done no fucks given type attitude. I knew what I wanted, and I got it, however I needed to. And that part of me changed. I learnt to be quiet, to flow with the gentle whispers of my heart, and to not be quite so angry at the world, all of the time. I unlearnt how to be sexy a bit through that process though. I wasn’t interested in hooking up anymore, I was busy piecing back together the pieces of me that I had lost. In the last 4 years, I have been single for all of them, and celibate for 6 months of them, and for most of them I have rarely slept around. For a hot minute there I very much forgot how to be sexy, how to be my hoe self. I had taught myself to be debonair, and demure, but I forgot how to fucking flirt. I started studying sexology and part of me realised how corrupt and implicitly deceptive this sexulisation of women is, so I became conservative in myself, I policed and monitored myself and my appearance to the world. I didn't want to contribute o the sexualisation of women. So these last 4 years single I learnt how to remove the mask of just being only sexy from myself, because I am so much more than just a hoe.

But I am still very much a hoe.

And so over the last 6 months or so I have consciously brought back my bad bitch hoe self. I’ve embraced her and welcomed her. I stopped policing myself, and instead let myself become sexual again, purely for myself. I refused to participate in any part of the male gaze, that simultaneously sexualises women, while also renders them denying and suppressing their own sexuality. Instead I have embraced my sexual being again. My hoe. I have let myself dress slutty. I have stopped fearing the shame in the eyes of strangers that I see when they catch my ass out, or boobs bouncing, or heaven forbid my underarm hair. I took off the shackles of shame from around my arms that kept me playing small. I embraced the flirt. I reconnected and relearnt who my sexy self is.

Now I am consciously single and sacredly slutty.

I still don’t sleep around lots, but that’s only because I’m goddamn picky. Because the heaven that is between my thighs, and the depths that I can travel to within sex are reserved only for the far and few between. For those who can see me for the hoe that I am, that can degrade me and respect me simultaneously. Partners that I can be disgustingly and outrageously eager with, a slobbering drooling horny mess, that I can be a downright hoe for, yet who look at me with nothing but admiration and respect (and lust always at the edges of their eyes).

That is the type of loving I demand as the hoe that I am, and I expect and deserve nothing less.

Because that is what it means to be a hoe, to understand your own wants and desires and to stand for nothing less then the pure degrading that you crave. I will be the single sexologist, and put the sexy back into sexology. I will embrace all it means to me to be sexy. I will embrace my own style of single, not the single phases of my younger days of using boys to bounce back from heartbreak, going out clubbing, walking about leaking sexuality in the air in attempts for acceptance, but instead now purely for myself. With who I want it, how I want it, and when I want it. I will be sexy for myself, first and foremost. The single, sexy sexologist, not preaching about partnership and deep connection (maybe one day), but instead embodying what it means to be single and sexy and free for no one but yourself, a sexologist that is just a little bit of a hoe. Cause if I can’t do it, how could I expect other women to be comfortable with their own sexy, with their own bad bitch hoe that lives inside their mind (and in their coochie). Those are the types of women that I want to see more of in this world. After all, the holy hoe is not one to be trifled with when she knows her worth and knows what she wants.