Sex Education in historically feminist spirituality

Why Does Sex Still Feel So Shameful… Even When You "Know Better"?

You know how this goes.
You’ve read the books. Maybe you’ve done the workshops.
You intellectually believe that pleasure is natural.
That your body isn’t wrong.

And yet… when it comes time to actually receive touch, to fully feel your own desire, to sink into sex without checking out or getting stuck in your head—something’s still tight, hesitant, blocked.

Maybe it feels like your body is holding onto a story you can’t quite put into words, a story older than you, older than your parents, older than modern sex education itself.

This blog is about that story.
And how feminist spirituality—particularly the spirituality of ancient goddess cultures—can help untangle it.

Once Upon a Time, Before Sex Was a Sin

Let’s rewind. Way, way back—before our grandmothers’ grandmothers, before biblical commandments and medieval purity culture.

There was a time when sex was not dirty.
Not taboo.
Not something to hide behind closed doors and blush about afterward.

In many ancient cultures—Sumer, Canaan, Anatolia—sexuality wasn’t separate from spirituality. It was integrated. Sacred. Even taught as part of growing up.

In temple communities, young people didn’t get their “talk” from embarrassed parents or outdated textbooks. Instead, they learned from priestesses—elders who understood sexuality as part of the rhythms of life itself.

These weren’t lessons laced with shame.
They didn’t teach you to delay or repress your desire until marriage or to fear your own body.

They taught that your desire was a bridge to the divine.

The Body as Holy, Sex as Ceremony

Imagine coming of age in a world where your first sexual education came not from awkward peers but from wise women who honored your body as sacred from the start.

The act of sex itself was considered an enactment of life-giving forces—a celebration of creation, not a moral test.

When you learned about sex, you weren’t just learning about anatomy or contraception.
You were learning about your connection to nature, cycles, fertility, pleasure, partnership, and power.

The temples were not just places of worship—they were schools for embodied living.

How We Lost This Wisdom—and Why It Matters

Then came a profound cultural shift.

As patriarchal religions took root, the temples of the goddess were destroyed or converted. The priestesses lost their authority and were recast as prostitutes—demonized instead of revered.

Sex itself was pulled out of the spiritual domain and recast as something suspect, sinful, shameful.
And that’s when the story we still carry today took hold:
That our bodies are dangerous.
That our desires need control.
That pleasure must be earned—or denied.

Even if we don’t believe that story anymore in our heads, many of us still feel its grip in our bodies.

That shame you feel during intimacy?
That tendency to dissociate or disconnect?
That’s not just yours.
It’s inherited.

What Feminist Spirituality Offers Now

But here’s the beautiful thing: feminist spirituality invites us to remember what we once knew.

To imagine an erotic education that teaches:

• Pleasure as sacred, not sinful

• Consent as mutual honoring, not gatekeeping

• Bodies as sites of wisdom, not battlegrounds for control

It offers a path to recover what was lost—not by replicating ancient rituals exactly, but by integrating their spirit into our modern lives.

A Different Kind of Sex Ed Starts Here

So if you find yourself struggling with sex—not because you lack information, but because something deeper feels disconnected—know this:

You’re not broken.
You’re carrying cultural scars.

And you can begin again, with a different framework:
A spirituality that teaches your body is not a problem to be solved but a miracle to be honored.
A spirituality where sex isn’t an obligation or a performance—but a sacred dance between you and life itself.

✨ This is exactly the journey we walk together in my work—and it’s why I created The Goddess Solution, a seminar on reclaiming pleasure and rewriting the story of your sexuality.

You don’t need more guilt.
You need a new myth—a true one.
And you already carry it in your bones.