YONI SPEAK

For Thousands of years, the story of womanhood has been written and distorted by men. They defined what it meant to be feminine. They decided what made a woman “sexy,” “acceptable,” or “pure.” They projected their desires onto us, then wrapped those projections in religion, education, and culture until we began to believe them as our own. But make no mistake: this version of womanhood was never ours. This distortion began long ago, in the story of Genesis and during the rise of the Bronze and Iron Ages. The reverence for the Great Mother, the ancient feminine force of creation, intuition, and life was slowly replaced by a masculine god of war, control, and conquest. The true story of Lilith as the First Woman was replaced by a more subservient Eve, and with that shift came the quiet erasure of the rightful power of the feminine,  specifically her sexual power. From ancient scriptures to schoolbooks, from pulpits to pop culture, we've been conditioned to believe that owning ...

Have you ever seen yourself as the heroine of your own journey? Like Wonder Woman, we all face obstacles that test our strength, resilience, and commitment to becoming whole. Perhaps you’ve never thought of yourself as a heroine, believing that title is reserved for those who do something daring or extraordinary. But the truth is, every day presents an opportunity to step into your power, to rise above the trials before you, and to claim your rightful place as the leading force in your own story. Think of the heroines in the fairytales—women who face daunting tests, slay metaphorical dragons, and summon the courage to overcome the darkness within and around them. Your own journey is no different. Maybe you've battled the inner voices of self-doubt, unworthiness, or fear. Perhaps you've wrestled with the illusions of limitation and separation, struggling to break free from the stories that have bound you. This is not by accident—your soul has designed a path rich with lessons, e...

Recently, I revisited Peggy Ornstein's insightful book, "Girls and Sex," penned in 2016. It was a journey to reconnect with her research and insights into various aspects of girls' experiences and perspectives on sexuality, relationships, and identity. I wanted to see if there had been any shifts since the book's publication and, if so, what they were. Did girls still navigate similar challenges in the realms of sex, dating, and the infamous hook-up culture? As someone deeply entrenched in teaching women's sexuality and serving as a sex educator for years, I found some of the anecdotes from young women disheartening. Their accounts of navigating the patriarchal landscapes of college life, particularly within dorms, sororities, or frat houses, shed light on persistent issues. Questions lingered: Was the outdated excuse of "boys will be boys" still prevalent, especially within fraternities? Did girls still feel pressured to conform, to be sexually ac...

For thousands of years, men have been defining what it means to be a woman. Men have dictated what it means to be a sexy woman and a feminine woman.  Men told women what they wanted women to be and then over time put their ideas into the collective field. Now, this started many thousands of years ago during the first dawning of bronze and into the Iron Age.    It was during those times that the Great Mother Goddess began to lose her power over the people and the Hebrew, and the Christian patriarchs of the day rewrote herstory to suit their new version of amasculine God a god of war, birth, death, and rebirth. The purpose behind all of this was to gain control and power over the people. If you take away the power of creation, our sexual power, and their sovereign right to choose for themselves you control people much more easily. The secret agenda was always to diminish the power of the feminine and to empower men with toxic masculinity.  The power of the feminin...

  What makes a woman her most alluring? Is it her brains, beauty, wit, charm, or sex appeal? What are the elements that create female sexual empowerment? Some might say that for a woman to be sexually empowered she must be experienced. Others might say she must know how to be charming and have great sexual charisma, but true female sexual empowerment includes all of this and more. You may think that with the over usage of the word “sexy” these days, the prostitution of sex, and the rampant use of pornography as the new form of sex education, that female sexual empowerment is a given. But the message that is being blasted into the minds and hearts of teen girls and young adult women is not one of female sexual empowerment but rather one of enslavement. The truth is that what makes a woman truly powerful is learning how to use her natural given gifts and talents. Those things that make her, you, the funniest, smartest, or wittiest and to learn how to cultivate these talents and...

    Where does the power of a woman reside?  Where does your power reside? Innate within every woman is the power that her body and her sex hold.   This power was pure once upon a time.   The power of a woman’s body was sacred and honored.   The power of her sex was celebrated as a divine expression of the Goddess. The power of a woman’s beauty, her wit, intelligence, and creativity was equally as important as any other aspect of her form.   But over time this power was corrupted because it was too powerful and something to be feared.   To gain power over the populace of the time, the Hebrew patriarchs and later the Christian Patriarchs set-up laws and religious dogma to diminish the power of the Goddess and of women. The power of women especially her sexual power needed to be controlled and the only way to effectively do this was to teach the people that women’s curiosity, intelligence, and sexuality were dangerous.   So over time women ...

Hot Girls Wanted: Turned On, created by Netflix is the second series that they have done regarding the porn industry. This new series  explores various aspects of the porn industry and the women that work in it. The episode I am writing about here is regarding the young girls who are recruited. Similar to my last article, Hot Girls Wanted the difference here is that with this particular modeling agency, the girls they recruit are actually protected and taken care of. This in itself is a huge difference from the agency I wrote about in my blog last year.    In this most recent segment the recruiter, Bailey, is a young woman who is not only successful in the sex industry with several streams of income but is also an excellent business woman and mentor to the girls she recruits. She wants these girls to be excited about working in porn and also be well informed about the ins and outs of being in the industry.  She levels with them as to what is wanted an...

It is hard not to be aware of the current atmosphere of misogyny that seems to be on the rise. Or perhaps it has always been here all along but it has never felt so blatant. It is an attitude that seems to be reflected everywhere you look. It is in the papers, MTV, on the news and on the internet.  It has become hard not to notice the normalization of misogyny.  This attitude of hostility toward women is not a new issue.  Unfortunately, women for centuries have been the target of misogynistic behavior.  The primary reason for this repression of women, was that women’s power, and primarily their sexual power, was feared by men. Those who made the laws felt that a woman's sexuality, her body too easily influenced a man's good judgement. Some felt that women's innate power to create life had become too important and so they created new stories and new laws that curbed a woman's influence and power. So the pervading  male dominated culture created  pr...

As some of you may know, most of what I write about has to do with the culture in which we all live in today and how it specifically affects girls and women. Being a woman myself I have   had many life experiences to validate much of what I write about. But as a writer I get the privilege of being able to share my thoughts, feelings and of course the facts of whatever it is that I am interested writing about. So  when I came across an article and video that talked about living in a rape culture, I knew I wanted to write about what this meant to me and what it means for all of us.  So I decided to share with you some of the things I found out about this topic. The first step in changing anything is to raise the awareness of the problem or the situation and then from that place we can discover solutions. So what is a rape culture?   It seems that it is a term that was coined from the days when being a Feminist wasn't a dirty word. It actually defines the current ...