Me: “I am so in love with the girl from Harlem from the Atlas of Beauty. It doesn’t matter that I’m straight. Seeing someone with that combination of elegance and edge just has me feeling euphoric and inspired.”

Monica: “Can you blog her as an example of something erotic?”

Me: “Uh…can I? It’s not like I’m turned on, it’s just this sort of creative inspiration that encompasses everything—emotions, ideas, and sensations.”

Monica: “Well that’s the point right? It’s not about straight-up physical stuff. Women’s sexuality and eroticism are so diverse!”

We were having a quandary two days after setting up Artifacts of Pleasure as an offshoot of 11&more. We wanted to explore what erotic pleasure meant to women and thought we’d upload some artifacts to encourage other women to follow suite. But our inspiration came in disparate and unexpected forms—everything from the beauty of other women to tailored suits to Star Wars.

A well-tailored suit. Gives shape and sharpness to raw brutality.

When heroes break down. E.g., Luke Skywalker at the end of The Empire Strikes Back when Vader lops off his hand and declares, “I am your father.” Luke is devastated, BROKEN. Beneath all that invincibility, he’s vulnerable. And that’s tantalising.

As the entries came in, the definitions blurred even further. The universe of women’s eroticism ran the gamut—from period romance to homoeroticism…to the texture of mozzarella balls. At one point we wondered if we should more clearly define the kind of artifacts we were looking for—eeeerrrr….something sexy, something perversely sexy, something not too pornographic but also not too safe …eeerrr…hmmmm…

Thankfully, we came to our senses quickly. This blog would have no definitions and therefore no boundaries. We had set out to ask women what WE thought was erotic and we intended to stick to that. For pretty much the entirety of human history, women’s sexuality and bodies have been defined and confined—to sex, to pornography, to commercial imagery etc. We’re objects that can be described, looked at, bought, sold and controlled. But we also have rich inner lives where feelings, thoughts, ideas, sensations, hope and inspiration co-mingle. Where nothing is black or white, nor is anything truly right or wrong. It’s a beautiful space, or a terrifying one, depending on your point of view.

And we’ve been having a fabulous time exploring this space through Artifacts of Pleasure. Here are some emerging themes:

The many shades of Romance

Romance can be as bright as spring sunlight or dark like the windswept Yorkshire moors.

Falling in love. When people can’t help but fall madly and deeply in love with each other. Cuz it’s fucking scary. And it makes sex mean so much. You’re both utterly vulnerable and that’s the point. 

Dark and complex pairings. Sansa Stark/Petyr Baelish from Game of Thrones, Draco/Hermione (imagined) in Harry Potter etc. These pairings are mostly wrong in all the best ways and full of unresolved and dark sexual tension. Full of power dynamics with the apprentice/student outdoing the master.

What is always true is that great romance lives and dies by Unresolved Sexual Tension (U.S.T).

Unresolved Sexual Tension (UST). Unresolved Sexual Tension is anticipation. It is when dreams meet expectation, expectations and desire strives for realities. UST teases us with risk and danger. It is erotic because UST lives primarily in the mind.

Strong women

Maybe it’s narcissism, maybe it’s solidarity…either way, there are few things sexier than being in the presence of other awesome women.

Being a warrior woman. “While women in precolonial Philippines were often designated to the venerable position of the babaylan, it was not an uncommon occurrence for them to pick up arms and become warriors.”
– Perry Gil S. Mallari, The Filipina as Ritualistic and Warrior  

A woman rocking a suit. The nonchalance, confidence and comfort of it all. Gender distinctions melt away and all you’re left with is charisma, clean lines and the sense that she knows exactly who she is and what you are to her (whether you’re anything to her at all).

Pure sensation

Freud and Lacan would have a field day with this. For me personally, it’s simply reassuring to realize that I’m not the only one who gets a frisson from touching certain inanimate objects.

Mini Mozzarella balls at a dinner buffet. When you are bored and you have to listen to the world and the weight on everyone’s shoulders. There is nothing like perforating the ball on the platter, raising it to your lips and keeping it there fore a while before slipping the mozzarella off of its toothpick and secretly playing wild fantasies with it. he way it feels, the way that eating it can become a game…

Transgression

There’s nothing too taboo for eroticism. Instead of repressing that, we hope that some entries in the blog will provoke reflection and acknowledgement of the complexity of human desires.

Transgression and decadence. Both sexual and moral, wrapped up in aesthetics. As depicted in Liliana Cavani’s 1974 film The Night Porter, about a concentration camp survivor who runs into her tormentor after the war and resumes their ambiguous sadomasochistic relationship.

Transformation

Erotic Disney is probably one of the more comforting yet also vaguely unsettling discoveries in this project. Once the Beast artifact had been posted, a group of us confessed that we’d been turned on by everything from The Little Mermaid to The Lion King, anywhere from age 8 and up.

Beast’s transformation in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. I think I must have had my first sexual awakening at 9 years old the moment he opened his eyes and they were bright blue surrounded by blonde hair. Rewound and watched this bit secretly too many times to count.

Being you

There’s a lot of pressure these days to love yourself and feel comfortable in your skin. Usually, it comes with the caveat of you buying this product, taking on that job, being part of this group etc. When you take away those things, you’re left with just being you, in the moment.

Feeling free and unattached, nights with unexpected endings, letting go

These are a handful of the artifacts uploaded to date. To browse the full range of women’s desires, go to Artifacts of Pleasure.

Where to from here?

The roots of this project extend back many years to when a group of girl friends and I were complaining about the lack of porn for women because pornography is a sausage bang fest starring jiggly body parts and zero emotion. We talked about setting up a porn network for women that would produce explicit material with strong stories and deep emotional tensions. And that got us thinking about the boundary between pornography and eroticism, between sex acts and desire.

The porn business never materialized—it wasn’t the forte of a group of thinkers and writers. But the idea remained—this need to articulate a more complex expression of desire. We thought about researching it, talking to experts, doing deep ethnographic study etc. And then we realized that the richness and nuance of desire probably couldn’t be captured by analysis. We’d simply have to express it—not just us, but women in general.

And that’s what led to the idea of the blog. At barely two months old, Artifacts of Pleasure is still in its infancy. Already, it’s been so rewarding for us to see the emergence of an endlessly imaginative and generous emotional and sensorial landscape. We hope that the project strikes a chord with anyone who identifies as a woman and would love to hear from you about your desires!