Sexuality

and 

Daily Life

The women in this workshop brought together a sharing of concrete experiences with theory, always putting both within a socio-political context.

The group discussed and shared how we women live our sexuality. This sharing involved moments of intense emotion which helped the group get closer to each other, feel more solidarity and sisterhood and identification with each other. It was the first time that a group of Latin American women spoke for themselves about their sexuality. It broke the constraints of seminars where counsellors, psychiatrists, psychologists and experts diagnose how and when we should live and express our sexuality. It opened for a moment the floodgates of the repression to which we are submitted in our culture.

Perhaps the richest part of the group was that we dared to talk of what we think, feel, desire. We dared to get to know our bodies, to speak about an aspect of our lives which has been so suppressed and full of taboos.

The proposals for discussion were: sexuality, including rape and lesbianism, motherhood, reproduction including contraception, abortion and sexual violence.

The group divided into two broad forums: one on lesbianism and one on rape, and a practical workshop on health.

The workshop on health was led by the women of "Taller de Salud" from Puerto Rico, and concentrated on self-examination, massage for menstrual cramps, relaxation exercises and vaginal exercises. These latter are for

— getting a new awareness of our bodies — increasing pleasure in sexual intercourse — controlling flabby sphincters — childbirth without tearing — expulsion of objects (Tampax) — lubrification of the vagina.

There were many interventions about sexuality, and we reproduce some of them below:

"My idea of sexuality is the following: from a materialist point of view the most immediate and material relation with the world is to exist and exist within a body. To exist
in the body of a man or a woman are two completely different experiences because of the capacity women have to produce children. The dominant sexual relations which we experience — heterosexual and penetration-ejaculation oriented, for reproduction — are socially and historically determined, and enforced through concrete institutions
with concrete interests."

"It is important to know what our genitals look like and how they are, not only for pleasure but also for being able to look after ourselves when we're ill — both recognising
the illness and daring to examine ourselves."

"All our modesty, fears, not being able to enjoy sexuality, are reinforced by theories. Somewhere inside themselves women have locked up the marks of schizophrenia, madness, psychosis, frigidity, masochism. Faced with what others want her to be, denying her own self for the sake of pleasing others, woman has become fragmented and ill-atease with her body; and this is reinforced by theory. I think we should talk of this too."

"There is a myth about sex which is difficult to destroy because behind one myth lies another. We look for someone  to make love with, to have a sexual relationship with. Sex is something which is seen as different from our everyday lives. We "have sex" whereas in fact it should be totally part of everyday practice.

"There are distinct sensations in this expression of physical contact with a man, or with a woman. Yet life is so absolutely systematized that we have to be accountable to a competent authority for everything we do. This cripples us with respect to expression, sexual contact, eroticism and pleasure."

"I'd like to make some comments about psychoanalysis. We frequently react violently against the charge that we suffer from penis-envy, that we are castrated, masochistic and that sexual maturity means becoming one's husband's mother. All this is scandalous, but don't let's lose sight of something else: what psychoanalysis does is to uncover the mechanisms of how the personality is constructed through conditioning which channels desire, libido and creative energy. What we should look at is the unconscious because it is here that all the structure and machinery of social contradictions are lodged; we must examine how the system has to be internalised
by each sexual individual in order for to her to be able to function.

"It is terribly important that we do not repeat the mistakes of other movements — the materialists who analyse things only from the economic point of view, or psychologists
who analyse only from the subjective point of view. Engels says that a materialist view of history looks at everyday life and divides it into two: subsistence production on the one hand and production of the species on the other. He opens this door for analysis but as a man fails to go further to unveil the structure of human production and the appropriation of women as objects of private property."

"The reference that was made to women's sexuality as deriving pleasure from the clitoris or from the vagina, or both, is also a very fragmented way of seeing the body. It is rather like the "scientific" approach to knowledge - that you have to divide things in order to really understand them. This is not the case. I do not believe there is one clitoral
orgasm and one vaginal orgasm, but that the sexual act of a man or a woman is one whole and that having pleasure is a totality.

"It's a vision which doesn't answer the question of what sexuality really is, except to say that it is a joining of one person's body with another's and a love relation with the
other person."

Forum on Lesbianism

The group was led by sisters from Canada from the "Lesbian Mothers" Group. Many women of the group shared their experiences. It was less a forum in the strict sense of the word, than a discussion, a sharing, a time to learn about women's different experiences, to start telling part of the history of women's sexuality, and to ask questions and give answers without being afraid.

"Some women know from a very young age that they love women. I and many of the women I know, grew up thinking I was heterosexual. I wasn't happy with the people I lived with — first one man, then another. I wasn't happy.

"When I was 22 or 23 I got to know some lesbians. They were not peculiar people, but people like me. I had thought that all lesbians were bad, but I realized that this wasn't true. In spite of my fears, I realised this was a possibility for me. After three years I abandoned men. I knew many leslesbians. The movement is getting stronger every day, more and more women are deciding what life they want, and many of them want to leave their husbands. Today it is easier than it was 10 or 20 years ago. It is more accepted — we have bars, basketball teams, open relationships with friends.

"We are organised in order to confront various problems such as child custody, violence in the street, security at work."

— You said you weren't happy with your man friend, that you didn't have orgasms and sexual satisfaction. What happened?

"I think I wanted to have orgasms but I had to work at it. What happened to me happens to many women. I lacked a feeling of intimacy — I felt degraded by sex with or without orgasm. I felt much more intimate and more able to express myself with women. I think that female homosexuality makes it clear that it's not just a question of choosing a different kind of person to be attracted to, but of being much closer to the people one is with."

"Bisexuality is something we can only assume when we know what we want, where we are going, who we are, how we feel. We cannot speak of bisexuality if we have not assumed lesbianism, healthily, without guilt. There is a beautiful saying: I do not know what label I have, i do not know all the labels society gives. I only know that I love."

"I wanted to open up my relationship with my husband. We talked a lot and we agreed that we would not be jealous if we had relations with other friends. What a disaster! I felt torn. I had two lovers, children and a husband. In addition, I believe that sexuality isn't limited to the genitals or having orgasms, but that it is the best way to express myself. It's sad to know that sexuality is simply the bed, it is not a way of expressing ourselves, we can't talk, and we're always negating our bodies. I met a woman whom I like very much but I couldn't be her lover. It was very difficult to love a woman and my husband. We split up and I wasn't able to love them both at the same time. I tried to love them freely and everything ended badly."

There was some discussion of various problems such as relationships of lesbians with their children, what motivates women to choose lesbianism as a sexual alternative, the power relations in women-women relationships, agression toward boys, and the problems which lesbians have to face in their social and cultural milieu.

The group on women and sexuality discussed (in addition to those subjects mentioned earlier) the problem of women and madness, centering on the experiences of women from the Psychiatric Hospital of Tunja (Colombia). The majority of patients who go to therapists there are women, who go to deal with their daily problems — couple relationships, relationships with children, and with the community - and most of these cases are dealt with by internment in an institution and treatment with psychic drugs.

This kind of therapy for women was questioned and it was seen as an urgent necessity to make a more integrated analysis in this area, putting women's problems into the context of socio- economic conditions.

The whole experience of this group, the sharing and the discussion, is perhaps summed up in what one woman wrote about the conference:

Neither one, nor the other, but all. Neither sexual division, nor asexed sex Not chosen without choosing, nor shameful lovers Nor even casually pushed off.
Sex group without fear: one sex, two sexes, three sexes, thousands of sexes per person so that the fear of my body is the fear of the other sexes.  The right to choose who to love is to live how we want.