Why Women Have Sex

'You Could Be My' (2012) spray paint on appropriated textiles

Upon re-reading Anne Koedt's 'The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm', and Jane Gerhard's revisiting of it, I began to consider the sexual presentation of women in relation to male desire. Koedt claims in her essay that men perpetuate the myth of a vaginal as opposed to clitoral orgasm as it satisfies a model of male desire, with the vagina the best physical stimulant for male penetration. She continues to discuss ideas of 'The Invisible Woman' and 'The Penis as Epitome of Masculinity', and the phallocentric nature of desire and its impact upon social function; 'sexually, a woman was not seen as an individual wanting to share equally in the sexual act, any more than she was seen as a person with independent desires when she did anything else in society'. As the embodied "other", the women can "be" the phallus to the extent that she is the object of male desire, and as such can enter into the symbolic order. Considering these prevalent themes throughout my practice, I complated the notion of creating a series of works in which language suggested an ungendered speaker, and as such an uneasy spectator position. While the work above shows a continuation into my re-contextualisation of female personal adverts, I felt that the pieces below, appropriating anecdotal text from Cindy Meston and David Buss' psychological study 'Why Women Have Sex' explored a far more varied approach to female sexuality, whilst still remaining ambiguous in its authors sex and sexuality.

'The Thing Called Love' (2012) felt on glass

'What Turns Women On' (2012) felt on paper, and block print experimentations below

'The Thrill of Conquest' (2012) appropriated textiles on paper, thread and appropriated beads

Here, we are unsure as to who the speaker is directing their words to, or if in fact this is how we are intended to think of the author, however I felt the feminine visuals, particularly use of traditionally "female" media such as pink fabric and beads, on their own suggested a strong sense of female voice, and perhaps it is through connecting these to other contrasting elements that this blur of layered identities and lack of pictorial representation that I wish to develop to explore female sexuality and sexual identity will become far more grabbing. As presented by Lacan, the sexed individual is constituted by a world of language, and in regards of sexuality 'there is no insistent sexual desire which pre-exists the entry into the structures of language and culture'. I believe that these initial explorations into sexuality and desire open new areas of thought concerning previously considered ideas surrounding Freudian and Lacanian positions upon desire and feelings of absence or lack - as Naomi Wolf remarks 'what little girls learn is not the desire for the other, but the desire to be desired'.