She had no idea when exactly it all started. It was just a little after puberty, past that age when goodness and evil, innocence and knowledge became all of a sudden chaotic, confusing, as if the clear demarcation between the two suddenly became invisible, altogether disappeared. And with the changing bodies, those inexplicable impulses, worldviews all along taken for granted became unrecognizable. Innocence arose from a kind of unknowing not of evil just of the self. She became aware of her desires as what they really are, something animal yet it all seemed so natural. She was a humanist, at least that was the way she would classify herself, she did not see that human had some sacred duty to prove that they transcended animals by their denying of impulses or by repressing certain urges. She had felt all along that human were part animals and it did not pay to punish that part of themselves which made them exactly what they are. Imperfect, yet, that was what we all are, she had always thought.

She had felt frustration when it started first as a burning in between her legs then a sensitivity around her nipples. When it came, she had not felt surprised, nor dirty as women or girls are expected to feel regarding this very taboo issue of sensuality. She had often wondered about the bodies of others, men, women, not in any sexual way but just out of curiousity. What built us all, there had to be very physical and tangible aspects other the spiritual, the intellectual, the part which often classifed as the filthiest, that we all somehow hope to rid of in death. The physical part of being which partook of materials and discarded waste. The faeces, the urine, the blood. The fluids she was taught to feel repulsed at as a child, taught to shy away from. But she realized that as she grew older, more than acceptance, she developed a certain fascination for them all.

And when the sexual awakening happened, a slow process which invovled a lot of coming to terms with the self, with the shame which females are made to feel by society, with their innate desires, of the unspoken, only in little hush and whispers and denials and fear. When she began to feel herself changing and desiring, she had realized that shame was not part of the equation for her, she felt liberated, and honest for the first time. When girls began flirting during puberty, and the eventual curiosities and experimentations in secret happened, all these were closeted and kept so silent as if none of all these actually took place in girls. As if only boys had sexual fantasies which needed satisfying, and the society seemed more ready to accept and even condone.

Tales of big bad wolves waiting to ravish little red riding hoods were spoken often enough, she did not know when she outgrew fairy tales. She loved them still, but only as a blueprint for behaviors she saw that she now had the power and the possibility to reshape and trangress. She was all in all sick of the place little girls, princesses are made to stay in, those little circles the stories so well loved placed them in. Always they had to wait for things to happen to them. Always they had to be saved, or victimized.

Somehow along the way, her prayers as a child had changed from "keep me good and pure" to one in which she prayed that she would not have to die a virgin. She had learnt that she no longer felt that sex was dangerous and that girls needed self-protection. Somehow that dissolved into a myth, a myth built to keep women from feeling guilt-free of their sexual desires. "Why?" she wondered did society provide sexual outlets for men as something quite natural and accepted but pretend that women really did not need any of these. Was outright display of sexual desires a perogative of men only? IF so God was unfair, men had their sexual organ displayed on the exterior and they can display their desires and yet have a free conscience. In fact the more transparent the more they are seen as normal. Repression and denial only breed perverts. Yes boys, you should all talk about it, sweat it off in some healthy games. while women must always have their's hidden from sight, like their sex organ, something mystical, unfathomable.

IT was always the pretend that society had a fear of rape, when in fact the anxiety had always been about virginity. It is not the act which terrifies but the desires of women. They are not supposed to desire, they are supposed to be desired. No, they must not look, they must be looked at. So have society moved a long way, all that talk about gender equality and women's liberation when deep down, women are not socially permitted to talk about their sexual desires, their needs and the very real need for sexual liberation. A courage to confront something society still wants to pretend is not there.

Once upon a time, the movement had been to let girls go to school, let them have equal education rights, let them have the same working opportunities. She wondered what happened to all those movements. All of a sudden, all the material and surface aspects seemed to have been satisfied, there is nothing more women can fight for. They have achieved it all. We even have female presidents now. See how far we've come? But she still suffers from the silence surrounding this central aspect of being human--that sexual ache. The need for discussion, and acknowledgment. And there is nothing she desires more than to stand honest with her sisters with the frank and courageous acknowledgment of the secret which burden them. It is the secret the had partaken when they ate that forbidden fruit and have been punished for ever since, with that mute-ness and inability to talk about its taste and how she had once tempted Adam. Once she told him about her desire and made him share in her scheme. Once she made her desire material. Now she is made to bear the punishment. Of eating that fruit but never ever having the power to discuss its taste and her discovery of it.