quilt square final

The erotic feminist was my inspiration for this piece. The type of feminism that emphasizes female sexuality and its expression as a means of opposing the exploitation of women and escaping male domination. I wanted to depict women in a way that was not docile, or soft, but as a complex character. Every possible form of media expresses an expected unattainable dichotomy: to be soft, clean, and able to withstand all types of abuse. Although we may be soft, delicate, and docile, I am more moved by myself in the ways that I am not. Femme rage is not one to be underestimated. Womxn can be gritty, horny, aggressive, dirty, stinky, hairy, and pissed the fuck off. “For men and women, fucking is freedom; and for men and women, fucking is the same, especially if the woman chooses both the man and the act.” Having autonomy of your sexuality and expression, is freedom. Released from bound hierarchies and expectations.  

Susan Ekberg Striritz’s piece ‘Cultural Cliteracy,’ gives us a beautiful analysis of Lorde’s definitions of eroticism. To unbind eroticism from its androcentric definition is to see it in its true self. In my piece, in almost complete juxtaposition from my last, the aggression, sexual, blood, is to express the duality in myself. Almost as a response to the first delicate flower quilt. 

I felt that my first piece didn’t accurately reflect the tumultuous relationship I have with my own sexuality. Relearning eroticism, pleasure, separating from patriarchy and pain — is a messy, dirty, and complex journey. I wanted my piece to feel vulgar, with aggressive language. Complemented with a preserved flower, tied with string as blood. We bleed, but we can also make others bleed. We can be labeled cunts, but we like it more in our own tongue. As a devout atheist, I used a few religious charms to note on arguably the first, world-known, deprecation of a woman, the Virgin Mary. To be a perpetual-married-virgin and a mother. Mary suffers this impossible dichotomy, to be a vibrant leader, but to have her sisters silenced in her own cult. To be a “virgin” but pregnant — a woman who either had sex and was robbed of her sexuality, or was raped and robbed of her autonomy. The fairytale of a woman who was a virgin before, during, and after her pregnancy. A story we are told. After the birth of Jesus, her hymen was miraculously restored. Absolute erasure of female sexuality and body, the Virgin Mary and its cult are the purest forms of exploiting the feminine into a tool of the patriarchy.

The bottom line: we are dirty, we fuck, we enjoy it, we are messy, we can be evil, mean, unpleasant and cruel. Media and society is retroactively enforcing digestible sexism where to be erotic, diminishes all femininity. Fuck that.