Frigid
Shannon Frost Greenstein
“The sexual frigidity of women is still a phenomenon that is insufficiently understood.”
–Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, 1933
The father of Modern Psychology
simply could not make women orgasm,
and all the cocaine probably didn’t help matters.
He labeled all those ladies
who only wanted to come
as sexually frigid;
which is just another phrase for broken;
which is just another phrase for an inferior, ungrateful receptacle for men.
Freud spouted some bunk about Oedipus and erogenous zones
and told women they were repressed
if they happened to appreciate their own clitoris;
a true woman, he claimed,
needs only a cock in her vagina
to be satisfied as a member of the second sex.
And here is what I have to say about that.
###
When I come, I am the most potent version of myself; at the moment of my climax, I am reborn.
I once came so hard I met God, an electric current gathering in my fingernails and my sacrum and the roots of my hair, the event horizon a harbinger of something Terrible and Auspicious and Larger Than Any Single One of Us Alone, adrenaline and heart palpitations and lactic acid and sweat; and after I came back to myself, I was in such a better mood.
When I come, it’s usually because I’m thinking of something filthy; the sort of depraved kink that inspired an entire Victorian era of modesty and shame.
I once came while examining the wood grain on the underside of a bunk bed after taking hallucinogenic mushrooms in college one night in 2002, pine layered upon pine upon pine, an exquisite multiverse in the medium of wood grain; and I smiled at the beauty of it, and I laughed trying to grasp the enormity, and I gasped as my brain broke at the wonder of it all, pleasure washing over me like a surge over a levee; then I got distracted and examined something else.
When I come, I don’t care who sees; I long to invite everyone to join me for a raucous bacchanal.
I once came while listening to Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the string section swelling, the woodwinds bright as starlight, the brass building like a dark wall of clouds before a storm, and for a moment, I understood why we’ve always marched off to war to the sound of drumbeats; for a moment, the rhythm was primal and the percussion was deep in my chest and I listened to my lizard brain when it told me I was capable of anything.
When I come, I don’t give a shit what is where, or how I should be feeling or precisely the machinations that got me there; I just care that I’m coming.
I once came while driving. It was probably a poor decision.
###
So while I might wear that psychoanalytic red letter
that is sexual frigidity
Dr. Freud can go f*ck himself
if he thinks my sex life is lacking;
because I’m having far better orgasms
than any of the poor women
he ever attempted to get off.
Shannon Frost Greenstein
“The sexual frigidity of women is still a phenomenon that is insufficiently understood.”
–Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, 1933
The father of Modern Psychology
simply could not make women orgasm,
and all the cocaine probably didn’t help matters.
He labeled all those ladies
who only wanted to come
as sexually frigid;
which is just another phrase for broken;
which is just another phrase for an inferior, ungrateful receptacle for men.
Freud spouted some bunk about Oedipus and erogenous zones
and told women they were repressed
if they happened to appreciate their own clitoris;
a true woman, he claimed,
needs only a cock in her vagina
to be satisfied as a member of the second sex.
And here is what I have to say about that.
###
When I come, I am the most potent version of myself; at the moment of my climax, I am reborn.
I once came so hard I met God, an electric current gathering in my fingernails and my sacrum and the roots of my hair, the event horizon a harbinger of something Terrible and Auspicious and Larger Than Any Single One of Us Alone, adrenaline and heart palpitations and lactic acid and sweat; and after I came back to myself, I was in such a better mood.
When I come, it’s usually because I’m thinking of something filthy; the sort of depraved kink that inspired an entire Victorian era of modesty and shame.
I once came while examining the wood grain on the underside of a bunk bed after taking hallucinogenic mushrooms in college one night in 2002, pine layered upon pine upon pine, an exquisite multiverse in the medium of wood grain; and I smiled at the beauty of it, and I laughed trying to grasp the enormity, and I gasped as my brain broke at the wonder of it all, pleasure washing over me like a surge over a levee; then I got distracted and examined something else.
When I come, I don’t care who sees; I long to invite everyone to join me for a raucous bacchanal.
I once came while listening to Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the string section swelling, the woodwinds bright as starlight, the brass building like a dark wall of clouds before a storm, and for a moment, I understood why we’ve always marched off to war to the sound of drumbeats; for a moment, the rhythm was primal and the percussion was deep in my chest and I listened to my lizard brain when it told me I was capable of anything.
When I come, I don’t give a shit what is where, or how I should be feeling or precisely the machinations that got me there; I just care that I’m coming.
I once came while driving. It was probably a poor decision.
###
So while I might wear that psychoanalytic red letter
that is sexual frigidity
Dr. Freud can go f*ck himself
if he thinks my sex life is lacking;
because I’m having far better orgasms
than any of the poor women
he ever attempted to get off.