Dick-stracted

(The Existential Dread of Moaning Too Loud)

The first time I faked an orgasm, it wasn’t because the sex was bad—it was because I didn’t want him to think I was too much. Too loud, too into it, too hungry. (God forbid a woman enjoy sex without apologising mid-moan.) I wasn’t performing for pleasure. I was performing for plausible deniability. If I finish fast enough and quietly enough, maybe he won’t think I’m needy. Or worse—experienced. (The horror.) I wanted to be the chill girl. You know her. She bites her lip once and somehow has the best sex of her life. No guidance needed. Doesn’t make demands. Comes from just vibes. Iconic. Delusional. Not real.

I remember sorting myself out in the bathroom afterwards like I’d just returned from war. Hair stuck to my face. Mascara smudged like a sad raccoon. Staring at my own reflection like, Wait. That was it? That was the Big First Time? The thing movies made look like spiritual rebirth? What I got instead was a man pounding away like he was playing Wii Sports, and then flopping onto the pillow like he’d just solved world hunger (spoiler: he had not even solved how to locate my clit). He sighed so dramatically you'd think he’d donated a kidney. Meanwhile, I was internally Googling “can you die from boredom mid-sex.”

Me after faking it for the fifth time in a row, wondering if I should start a grocery list mid-thrust.

And here’s the sickest part of it all: he genuinely believed that went well. No teasing. No anticipation. Not even a glance to check if I’d survived. Just a quick finish and then back to his regularly scheduled breathing. And I—I!—still said “thank you” like I’d just been gifted a Birkin bag and not dry spaghetti on a wet mattress. That night, I realised something bleak: he never thought I was supposed to finish. It wasn’t even on the moodboard. My orgasm was a vague rumour—like the female Pope. Technically possible, but not something he’d ever seriously looked into.

That was the moment. My first sexual awakening. Not a peak of pleasure, but a red-pilled realisation: women are trained to expect nothing, and men are trained to think that’s perfectly fine.

We Weren’t Invited to the Orgy

For most of history, a woman enjoying sex was treated like an emergency. Full sirens. Men in powdered wigs prescribing fainting couches and leeches. In Victorian times, they genuinely diagnosed women with hysteria just for having a libido—or, God forbid, a mood. (Which, by the way, is still how men treat us when we ask for clitoral stimulation.) They were so afraid of female desire they accidentally invented the vibrator, not as a pleasure tool, but as a medical device to cure us. (Imagine the first man to see a woman moan mid-treatment and realise... oh no. We’ve created a monster.)

To this day, society talks about sex like it’s something women offer others, not something we get. It’s a currency. A reward. A coupon code men redeem in exchange for dinner and three half-hearted compliments. (“You're not like other girls” doesn’t count if you're still picturing us mute and smiling during missionary, babe.) We’re still trapped in the virgin/whore binary: be pure, but sexy. Low body count, but high performance. A star in the sheets, but only if he stars as the director, the scriptwriter, and the judge on Strictly Clitoral Dancing.

And when we dare—dare—to express sexual desire? It’s not liberation. It’s a PR scandal. A sexually confident man gets a round of applause. A sexually confident woman? She’s “too much.” A try-hard. Desperate. Embarrassing. (God forbid we moan slightly off-brand.) This is why women rehearse sex like it’s an audition: because we’ve learned that pleasure is a risk, and asking for more is basically career-ending. The saddest part? Most men don’t even know this is happening. They think a silent woman is a satisfied one—when really, we’re just running the internal monologue of “Is it too late to pretend I fell asleep?”

From Purity Rings to Performance Ratings

We were promised liberation. What we got instead? A new role to audition for. Gone are the days where women were expected to flinch at the sight of a bare ankle. Now we’re expected to ride like a pornstar, moan like a wellness influencer, and maintain the demeanour of a girl who just “goes with the flow” (a.k.a. says yes to anal but never asks for anything herself). The game is no longer "Don’t be a slut." It’s "Be sexy—but palatable, approachable, never annoying, and preferably in lingerie he’s seen on Instagram before." Bonus points if you don’t blink when he says “spit or swallow?” like it’s small talk.

Sex positivity should have been a free pass to explore, express, exist without shame. Instead, it became capitalism’s favourite new brand identity. Now we’re expected to be good at sex—but only in a way men understand. A bit of choking? Cool. Telling him how to do it properly? Too aggressive. Moaning is great—unless it’s the wrong pitch, in which case you’re trying too hard. We’ve swapped chastity belts for Yelp reviews. Every encounter gets graded like a GCSE oral exam (emphasis on oral), and if you don’t hit the "effortless-but-seductive" tone, congratulations—you’ve just been demoted to overbearing.

And that’s what pisses me off the most: we’re all pretending this isn’t happening. Women pretending we’re chill. Men pretending they don’t expect chill. The truth? We are under constant surveillance—by men, by each other, by ourselves. It’s not sexual freedom, it’s a performance review. And the worst part? Even when you perform perfectly, you’re still disposable. He’ll call you “intimidating” on the group chat while reposting some podcast clip where two men who look like toe stubs debate whether 8 is a “respectable” body count. We’re not free—we’re just wearing slightly nicer underwear while being judged for breathing too loudly.

Pop Culture Said Slay—But Meant Sit Down

If you believed pop culture’s version of sex, you’d think it was filmed through a rose-tinted soft-focus lens, edited by angels, and scored by Lana Del Rey whispering in a lavender haze. No one gets leg cramps. No one breaks a nail trying to undo a belt. No one farts by accident when changing positions (which—yes—has happened to every woman alive, don’t lie). Instead, sex is always candlelit, ethereal, silent but perfect. That is, until a woman enjoys it too much. Then suddenly she’s unhinged, addicted, "obsessed with male validation" even though she just asked to come. Apparently, female pleasure is only allowed if it’s well-lit and men get to direct.

Take Fifty Shades of Grey… a franchise sold to women like it was feminist erotica, when in reality it reads like a billionaire fanfic where consent is implied by mood lighting. Christian Grey isn’t hot, he’s a trauma dump with a helicopter and some handcuffs. But because it came with silk sheets and Jamie Dornan’s jawline, we were told this was empowerment. Real BDSM? Actually involves communication, aftercare, safe words and not signing an NDA before being emotionally manipulated into liking jazz. But that version wouldn’t have sold tickets. We only get to explore female desire if it’s aesthetically curated and still somehow all about him.

Even when a woman does own her sexuality—like Cassie in Euphoria—she’s immediately punished for it. She’s too emotional, too desperate, too embarrassing. Meanwhile, Nate “I-Yell-At-Women-In-Parking-Lots” Jacobs gets a full character arc and some moody slow-mo shots. This is the recurring theme: if a woman expresses desire, she’s messy. If a man expresses rage? He’s complex. We’ll let male characters choke people out and still call them "troubled but misunderstood." A woman shows some cleavage and wants intimacy? Straight to the trauma bin. (See also: Megan Fox’s entire public career.)

Pop culture doesn’t want sexually empowered women. It wants sexy women who know their place. It tells us to be free, but fines us the second we act like it. Real sexual liberation isn’t what we’ve been sold—it’s not lingerie ads or whispery monologues about craving him. It’s awkward, clumsy, maybe a little loud. It’s asking for what you want and laughing when your thighs cramp. Until we stop pretending sex needs a colour palette and a soundtrack, pop culture will keep repackaging repression as empowerment—and calling it a vibe.

The Porn Problem

There was a time (a deeply cursed era) when I Googled “how to moan properly.” And yes, there was a WikiHow tutorial. With illustrations. Like my vagina was IKEA furniture and I’d missed a step. I have a degree. A nervous system. A (generally) functional brain. And yet, there I was, trying to follow moaning instructions like it was a GCSE drama exam. That’s how cooked our expectations of sex have become. Porn didn’t just lie to us—it rewired us completely. Women don’t just have sex anymore; we stage-manage it. We self-direct. We run sound check mid-thrust. Because if we’re not arching our backs like a possessed Pilates instructor while breathing like we’ve just emerged from a swamp, is it even real?

The pressure isn’t just to enjoy it: it’s to look like you’re enjoying it. Porn taught men that women’s pleasure is silent-but-screaming, enthusiastic-but-effortless, and never requires an actual human body. No one pauses to fix a leg cramp. No one says “wait, ow, wrong angle.” No one ever, ever, says “hmm, maybe not that.” Instead, women are expected to deliver Oscar-worthy performances while trying not to fart mid-missionary. And if we don’t sound like a browser history fantasy, we start to think we’re the broken ones. Not because the sex is bad—but because we didn’t moan with enough rhythmic flair. That’s the real porn problem: women aren’t having sex. We’re auditioning for it.

The Male Gaze Lives in My Head, Rent-Free

Sometimes I catch myself mid-shag wondering “Is this sexy or am I just flailing like a panicked flamingo?” I’m mentally editing my moans like it’s an audio mix, adjusting my angles like I’m prepping for a Vogue cover shoot, and trying to look like I’m into it—even when I am into it. (Is this what method acting feels like?) Somewhere deep in my psyche, there’s a fake panel of imaginary men holding up little laminated scorecards like, “Solid 7.5, could’ve arched more.” And the maddest part of it all? It doesn’t stop when the room is empty. I’ve muted myself during solo sex like I was afraid to hear myself be “too much”… alone. (Too much for WHO, babe? The ghost of Andrew Tate??)

That’s what the male gaze does—it doesn’t need to be present to police you. You carry it in your brain like a corrupted USB file, glitching every time you just want to feel something without staging it for male approval. You’re supposed to be effortless but also flawless, natural but also edited within an inch of your life. Confidence is hot, until it starts challenging male comfort—then suddenly you’re “aggressive,” “intense,” or God forbid, “too into it.” We’ve internalised their approval so hard we start shrinking for no one. Not even them. Just... the idea of them. And that’s the scariest part—we don’t just perform for men anymore. We perform because we’ve been taught we’re not even safe in our own pleasure unless it’s palatable.

The Queer Loophole (But Not Really)

I used to think queer women had escaped the curse. No men? No problem, right? (Wrong. So wrong it hurts.) Turns out, even in the most sapphic, soft-lit corners of the world, the ghost of patriarchy is still perched on your shoulder whispering, “Tone it down, babe.” A friend once told me she initiated sex with her girlfriend and got hit with, “You’re being a little intense.” She laughed it off, but you could feel it—the gut-punch of realising you’re still playing by the same old rulebook, just with better hair and mutual interest in sapphic literature. Because what’s worse than a man telling you you’re too much? A woman confirming you believed it first.

This isn’t a straight-people problem. It’s a womanhood problem. Even in queer relationships, we’re taught to be palatable. Initiate—but gently. Be sexy—but not greedy. You can want sex, but only if it’s spiritual, cosmic, and wrapped in an oat-milk-scented candle. We’ve internalised the idea that desire is only okay if it’s passive, aesthetic, and adorable. So no, there is no queer loophole. Because the patriarchy doesn’t need to be in the room—it’s already in your head, editing your orgasm in post-production.

Are You Hypersexual or Just Alive?

At some point, therapy became the HR department for female sexuality. You say you enjoy sex? Suddenly it’s, “Hmm... could be hypersexuality.” Say you’re not having sex? “Ah, classic repression.” Say nothing and you’re still met with a clipboard and a deep sigh about unresolved childhood wounds. (Sir, I just said I like being choked—why am I being spiritually audited?) Men can spout off about casual sex and get a high-five. But the moment a woman shows up with a libido and zero shame? It’s like we’ve summoned Satan with a strap-on and a scented candle.

Because let’s be honest here—half of us are one horny comment away from being labelled "in crisis," while men get praised for breathing near a condom. Kinks? Trauma. Confidence? Narcissism. Not into sex this week? Repression. Into it a lot this week? Addiction. There’s never a moment where a woman is just allowed to say, “I like sex,” and not be given a spiritual alignment quiz. Maybe the problem isn’t our desire. Maybe the problem is that society still thinks a woman enjoying sex without a permission slip must be either broken or possessed. (Spoiler: it’s neither. She’s just alive.)

The Viral Trap

If you ever want to see sexual shame dressed up in glitter and virality, look no further than TikTok’s “ick” trend—a slow descent into madness where people pretend running for a bus is more repulsive than a man who refers to women as “females.” What started as “lol he holds his knife weird” quickly spiraled into a culture of judging people for simply being human. And naturally, sex got dragged into it like a rogue thong in a communal laundry. Now we’ve got people getting the ick because someone was “too into it.” (Sorry—are orgasms embarrassing now? Should I apologise mid-thrust for enjoying myself?). The new red flag? Enthusiasm. Passion. Actually being present during sex. Because God forbid you want something out loud.

It’s emotional self-harm masquerading as critique. People are terrified of their own desire, so they project it onto others like it’s a group project in shame. Women are now walking a tightrope between “effortless goddess” and “calm down, you’re doing too much.” God forbid we have a stray moan that wasn’t pre-approved by the TikTok girlies. Authenticity is cringefied. Vulnerability? Mocked. Being into it is a punchline. It’s safer to be icy and detached than admit you actually want something—because wanting is now seen as desperate. (Which is rich, considering most of the people mocking vulnerability couldn’t spell clitoris if it hit them in the face.)

Let It Be Loud

Let it be loud. Let it be unhinged. Let it creak, cry, wobble, and fall over dramatically like a drunk bridesmaid in heels. Make noise. Make demands. Moan like you’re trying to summon something. Because this world will do everything to convince you that your desire is too loud, too needy, too real—but maybe that’s just because they’re terrified of what it would mean if women stopped being afraid of wanting things. So rip the script. Burn the "cool girl" routine. And if anyone ever shames you for being too much in bed? Smile sweetly and ask them, “Was it the pleasure or the power that scared you?”