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Being sex and body positive helped these queer women take ownership of their identities and maximise their pleasure

Jun 04 2020
Written by In partnership with LELO

PinkNews has collaborated with LELO to start a conversation around body and sex positivity.

For these queer women, being sex and body positive enables them to feel empowered and love themselves more for who they are.

For Pride for All, PinkNews has collaborated with the sex-positive toy brand LELO to start a conversation around how we can all become more body positive and normalise sex.

We asked bisexual author Flo Perry, lesbian activist Char Bailey and PinkNews’s very own Abi McIntosh to share their experiences and body positivity tips.

Watch the video below to see just how LELO is smashing taboos and reminding us all that sex is nothing to be ashamed of.

Char says that, firstly, women loving themselves and talking openly about sex shouldn’t be taboo.

“We all have bodies and we all have the right to explore them,” she explains.

How to embrace being sex positive.

Shedding expectations around sex and what your body ‘should’ look like is certainly freeing, but how do you do that?

It’s a journey, says Abi. “As a Black, queer woman I really struggled to take ownership of my body in a lot of ways.”

She’s since come to many realisations and is firm that “bodies come in loads of shapes and sizes”.

“Your body is perfect. Every body is different,” she says.

“There are lots of ways to look and there are lots of way to have sex.”

Sex is meant to be fun, so don’t be shy.

It’s all about ridding yourself of that pressure, agrees Flo, author of How to Have Feminist Sex: A Fairly Graphic Guide.

“Sex is meant to be fun,” she points out.

“Feminist sex is all about having the sex that you want to have rather than the sex that you think that you should be having.

“It’s about having sex free of expectations of what sex should be like, and just about maximising female pleasure.”

For Flo, communication is key. “You deserve to have the sex that you’re imagining that you want to have,” she says.

“And you’re only going to get there sooner if you just ask for it and talk about it and don’t be shy.”

What if you feel embarrassed to ask for what you want in the bedroom?

“You shouldn’t let that stop you,” Flo says.

“You should feel those feelings and then think actually the reward is worth it and I’m going to do it anyway.”

For Flo, self-exploration and solo-play are vital in “getting to know exactly what you want, exactly what you like”.

Encouraging women to talk about their bodies and explore their own sexual autonomy openly and unapologetically makes it possible to feel empowered and have lots of fun at the same time.