Lessons from my slut era

During the 3 months, I learned more about the world than I did in the office.

We opened up our marriage in September 2023. I was super shy about dating though because I never dated seriously before Dan.

I was a total dating newbie as of September. So even after I announced the opening of our marriage, I literally sat around for like two weeks just watching dating shows online and just enjoying the fact that I can go out at anytime…without actually going out.

And then I met someone at a random meetup where we had a brief spark, and during that time, I watched my sexuality explode.

So between October and January, I lost count of the men I had sex with.

My experienced polyamorist friends tell me that this is a common thing to experience when we first realize that we can sleep around. We enjoy the freedom in this way at different intensities and lengths, and for me it was very intense for like 3 months.

Until it got to a point where I had a pregnancy scare, I learned more about STIs and STDs, and I saw that I was having sex with people I realized I didn’t like after the fact.

There was no part of me that regretted this period. I have learned more about how the world works than I did during the 5 years of lawyering I did.

And my primary takeaway is this: Women have so much more power than we’ve been told to believe.

The whole “feminist” movement to get women moving up the ladder? That entire propaganda is an illusion to make us believe that we are attaining more power when, in fact, we’re just being trained to be more like men.

We already have so much fucking power.

Regardless of whether we climb the corporate ladder. I am not saying that climbing the ladder is a bad thing. What I am saying is that your power exists regardless of whether you do that or not.

In the patriarchal systems of oppression that the mostly white male colonizers have created, white men have so much power because they created it. They designed corporate systems so that they can have more power. You can see this in the way women are systematically pushed out of their jobs, the way “leadership” is defined primarily by men, and how women’s attire and appearance are measured against men’s standards.

At the workplace, men generally have more power in sustaining their job than women do.

In the bedroom, men are generally powerless in the face of their raging sexuality.

[I want to acknowledge that I am speaking in very general terms without addressing the nuances of abuse and non-heteronormative dynamics that are not often talked about. I do not have much knowledge around those topics and apologize for any exclusionary language here.]

Even when I was at my horniest, I was often nowhere near where my counterparts were. Even when I was turned down, I could easily find sex elsewhere. For free.

Whereas, for men, if they are unable to find sex, they cannot as easily find sex elsewhere. That is why they have to suppress their sexuality or pay for sex or otherwise resort to committing a crime if neither option feels available to them. That is why sex has become so violent for so many of us. That is why the sex work industry is a multi-billion dollar industry.

It is also why the sex work industry is shamed to no end.

It is where women have all the power.

In the corporate world, women can run an entire company satisfactorily all on their own without needing or desiring any kind of support from men.

In the bedroom, heterosexual men find it harder to find satisfaction all on their own without any support from women.

The patriarchy does not want us to know this. It wants us to be so busy with shame around using our bodies in any capacity that it is impossible to recognize our inherent power.

That is why they give us gold stars for climbing up the corporate ladder because we are keeping our power in the confines of our brain.

I call this brain supremacy. (This is not my original idea. I heard it from someone but have forgotten the source. It was a classmate I admired and someone who was very well-versed in Indigenous culture and practices a few years back.)

When we keep our path in suits and slacks, we follow the paradigm that we need to “earn” our place through “professionalism” and using our “smarts” to play the game.

A game that we did not create.

A game that was initiated in the Industrial Revolution (and likely existed before, but primarily boomed during the Revolution) where men could escape a workplace of equal importance - the home - from 9am-5pm and fight their way up the ranks for more perceived and more publicly seeable power.

This is not to say that capitalism is valuable in a lot of ways to the extent that it has supported the livelihood of generations and communities and ongoing advancements. But like anything, the human limitation is such that we often take things too far to the point where we become ignorant of the ways it is oppressive and harmful to the people we want to take advantage of.

The way capitalism took things too far is that, by the time we had created a culture where women could take advantage of the “equal opportunity” to participate in the game, it was already too mired in promoting toxic masculinity that women did not have any space to grow in their own ways.

Examples of toxic masculinity*: competing to work more than other people, measuring professionalism by how much men like what is presented because they are the primary decision makers, inability to practice humility and relating through uncomfortable differences.

(*I don’t like to throw around the word “toxic” because whether something is toxic depends on the person. Something that is toxic for me may not be toxic for another person. The reason I mention it here is that there are nonetheless certain patterns that we cannot ignore if we are to address how it affects the way we recognize our own power.)

So, by leaving out women in the conception of the patriarchal and capitalistic systems of oppression, it was easy to keep us out. It had created standards by which we were to required to perform against our own nature in order to succeed in the game.

One good example is that we experience a lot of hormonal and emotional changes in our cycles. A way we experience time, for many of us, is in cycles. And that is how nature is. It goes in cycles. The rotation of the Earth. The seasons. Everything is in circles.

And when we honor the flows and ups and downs, we are othered and demonized for it.

“She’s too emotional.”
“She’s not cut out for the ‘fast paced’ environment.”
“She’s not a ‘culture fit.’”

All euphemisms to indicate that they are unwilling to relate to and recognize talent in the differences we bring.

So women have been conditioned to believe that we are the ones with something wrong. More so for non-white women who are removed from white male power one more degree. So we believe that we need to either be more like white men, compete against other women, or just stay home and take care of the kids “like we’re supposed to.”

There is no “supposed to.”

Imagine if we all truly recognized the power of women to use their bodies as much as their bodies. Imagine if there was no brain supremacy and honored the woman’s decision to use their bodies as much as they wanted to used their brains.

They would, for example, not have to feel stuck in a relationship where the man had more power for controlling the bank account because she could go anywhere and get paid for her exquisite female body. Because literally, no matter what your body looks like, the woman’s body is so fucking powerful such that there will always be a good crowd at any given moment to throw cash money just for the opportunity to experience it in some way, according to her own terms.

But no. We have all been duped to believe that monogamy and “commitment” and “loyalty” are are default ways we “need” to be so that we can be “good” people.

“Good” is often used as a weapon to keep ourselves trapped in the oppressive systems designed to blind us from recognizing our inherent power.

Not only do we see “good” in the nuclear family, we also see “good” in the beauty industry. We have been taught to believe that the beauty of our body is conditional.

That is why I have body dysmorphia and have always thought that I was ugly because there has always been some standard that I was not meeting to feel like I was beautiful.

There was no education around the fact that I am my own standard.

It took me eons to arrive at the fact that the way I am right now is the standard.

The folds, the wrinkles, the blemishes, and the discolorations are all part of how I radiate in my own grace and beauty in the world. It is inherent, and when we hide from the inherent nature of our beauty, we submit to the outside standards that whip us into the belief that we will never be good enough.

This is not to say that our power is only in our bodies.

To be very clear, our power is in however we decide to use it.

I like to use my power in a lot of ways, and the way I use it is by doing exactly what I want to do.

Whether it’s when I write, when I snap a sexy pic and share it with whomever I please, or when I laugh.

Whatever it is that I decide to do, here’s the message I am declaring: I get to exist however I want without dehumanizing myself the way I have been trained to do.

That’s it.

When there is no shame in any of my decisions, I watch my creativity and courage reach unlimited depths.

I exist and express myself despite every force wanting me to silence me.

So the big lesson from my slutty era?

There is no chance I will be slut shamed.

When I am a slut, I am in my power.

When I am with my kids enjoying a meal, I am in my power.

When I am bawling my eyes out mourning my relationship with my mother, I am in my power.

I am in my power because all of the above is how I decide to experience my own humanity without regard to any rules around how I am “supposed” to be.

There is no force that can extinguish the inherent and limitless power that lies within.

This applies to anyone and everyone. Whether you’re a woman or otherwise. Even if you’ve participated in oppressive systems (which, unfortunately, we all do), how do you want to recognize your own power in a way that nourishes and not destroys?

Power really just means ability. You have the ability to do a lot. What do you want to be able to do right now?

**

The fireside on opening up your marriage is on Friday, April 5 at noon ET.

If you want to be able to open up your marriage without losing everything, you are invited.

This is where we remember just how much power we have in loving deeply, even through the biggest changes.

We have been forced to forget our power to love for too long.

In a world that is so inhospitable to love, vulnerability, and care, it takes courage to love differently.

If you are looking for an extra dose of courage, we find that together in community.

Register here: angela-han.com/open