Let us not use pleasure in vain

foto: pexels

I confess that when I read this week an article about the growth of sex shops dedicated to evangelicals in Rio, I was a little excited. Because, superficially, we see that a taboo is being broken. The context of pleasure within a religion that preaches women’s submission to men is very important to be discussed, and if it’s through erotic products’ sale to evangelical women, we are already one step ahead. The question is: what are the reasons? In what ways are we talking about sex to this specific audience?

I’ve been noticing for a while how much sexism is found in erotic products in general, going from astringent gels with names like “Always virgin” to anesthetics with the purpose of “facilitating” anal sex.

If we sell a product that can make the vagina have its muscles tightened and hardened in order to provide something different for the other person’s pleasure, we have already started wrong. First, in this notion of the preciousness of virginity, of this idea of ​​giving oneself to the other, this inaugural sense that we give to first penetration, a common reduction in the character of sex that is very widespread out there. And if the pussy isn’t wet and it’s tight like that, it’s because there isn’t enough stimulation. If you need an anesthetic gel to feel anal pleasure or to be able to have some anal intercourse, it’s because you haven’t had time to discover this pleasure alone or together. And numbing those sensations is not going to make you like (have an orgasm). Everything is aimed at man’s pleasure, just like in real life.

So you see, nothing is perfect, and the fact that it is a sex shop doesn’t mean that it spreads the best values and ways of understanding sex. To begin with.

The first time I had contact with the sexual products’ business among evangelical women was when I lived in Tabajaras, Copacabana, and an evangelical neighbor, very subtly, like a grandmother passing money under the table like drugs, confided that she sells sex shop products, offered it to me and made her advertisements. Although I wasn’t evangelical, I was the target audience: a woman married to a man, in a monogamous relationship.

The evangelical sex shops have this purpose: to preserve marriages. Sex is seen as a moment of intimacy between the two, man and woman, fulfilling their marriage roles of enduring a relationship and building a family.

Nothing is aimed at self-knowledge and self-discovery, much less the own pleasure – everything is designed to be done as a couple, and preferably between husband and wife, under the fearing eyes of God.

Products with sober colors and playful names, nothing too explicit. It’s as if the explicit were shameful, assuming having pleasure and giving pleasure to the other was something to be subtly omitted, although never has stopped having orgasms around.

These products are aimed at men’s pleasure, to soften the flavors of sex, to lubricate the holes for penetration, without one thought about the woman’s pleasure, much less the knowledge of this pleasure. If you don’t sell and don’t talk about masturbation, the woman will only develop her pleasure with other, fulfilling functions that are expected of her as a woman, without even knowing exactly what she likes and how she likes, but just happy to be fulfilling her husband’s fantasies and being able to maintain her marriage with the man of God. And nobody-knows-their-self-nor-learns-to-love-their-self fulfilling the expectations of the other and of society.

In other words, cool, a breakthrough, for the wrong reasons and in the wrong way though.

Let’s move on.