Decolonize This Pussy

Content warning: This article discusses instances of violence and sexual assault.

Decolonize This Pussy: Dismantling The Pillars of Colonialism in Our Romantic & Sexual Relationships 

I’m not sure if the use of the word “pussy” as an insult has fallen out of practice, but I don’t hear it as much as I used to. They used it to insult vaginas and people they assumed had vaginas. They used it to humiliate people they assumed did not have vaginas who did not present hypermasculine enough. Essentially, the term “pussy” has come to be associated with vaginas which are now associated with femininity; and femininity has come to be associated with weakness, cowardice, lack of intelligence. Of course, this logic is completely erroneous, but it grew to be a widespread phenomenon across the world by the time I was a young teenager.

A decade & a half later, I don’t know if people are still using it in that sense because I haven’t heard it in a while. That may be a sign that people are becoming less ignorant, but it also may be because as an adult, I have the power of choice.

As a teenager, I had little choice of who I had to share space with, at home and in public. Now, I do. I choose to surround myself with people who value femininity and masculinity in equal measure. The people I associate with understand that life is a spectrum, not a binary. We agree that life is filtered through our human perception and that the grand truth is transcendent of our corporeal forms.

My spiritual belief that I am more than the body I live in, is the foundation for my non-binary, pansexual identity and it serves as a portal through which I find liberation. I do my best to keep out anyone who does not support that freedom, which means anyone who buys into the colonial idea that “feminine” (or receptive, internalized) energy is harmful, that only “masculine” (or active, externalized) is of value, and that neutral (balanced) energy simply does not even exist. I do my best to have boundaries that protect me from people who attribute these characteristics to people’s sex organs, especially those who attempt to police how people of certain (usually assumed) sexes should express said characteristics. I do my best to not participate in misogyny and transphobia not solely because it’s violent and oppressive, but also because it’s reductive and crude.

These ideologies are mechanisms of colonialism— a false matrix that has been upheld by pillars of white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, industrialism, and aspiritualism. One of the most ancient truths of this debasing paradigm that it has made the most violent and virulent attempts to hide is that the so-called “pussy” is a place of power that exists within every body. Regardless of sexual organs.

It’s our second chakra — or energy center — and it’s called the Sacral Chakra or the Svadisthana, which is Sanskrit for “where your being is established”. It exists in our ethereal body — that is, our energetic body — which exists without the confines of human biology. The Svadisthana is the seat of our ability to co-create our experience alongside the Universe, essentially serving as the vessel through which our hopes, dreams, and visions are birthed through. This act of reproduction that all life forms are always engaged in requires the “feminine” act of receiving, the mutable act of processing, and the “masculine” act of expressing. These energies work with one another to balance each other out. Creation is holistically non-binary.

If the process of creation is internal, that product of it is expressed through our actions & inactions. You may have heard it said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” This quote by the philosopher Will Durant perfectly sums up an idea inspired by Aristotle but that is deeply intrinsic to our “being”. Feminine energy exists in every part of the process whether in large part or nominally. It is absolutely vital to living a satisfying life of fulfillment to express all of ourselves, grounded in our Truth, as often as we possibly can. It is essential to having a healthy spiritual reproductive system that we honor all aspects of ourselves.

When the Svadisthana chakra is blocked by fear, we feel completely out of touch & out of our power. This sense of uselessness can lead to dissociation & depression. We are unable to trust ourselves or our decisions because our actions are out of alignment with our beliefs, usually taking us further & further away from our happiness. This fear of self results in fear of intimacy which creates a lack of ability to connect with the world around us. This often develops a sense of isolation & deep, existential loneliness.

When it is balanced, we exist in a joyous union with our environment, emboldened by our creative power! We are passionate, invigorated by the idea of new life! We know that we live in a world of limitless potential & infinite possibility and that we have some say in what that looks & feels like. No person, place, thing, ideological system can keep us from living our best life. This is the precise reason why the patriarchy has sought to oppress, imprison, and exploit the “pussy”— or divine femininity — for millennia.

The idea of femininity even being divine is completely erased from the framework of dominating hegemonies the world over. Femmes show up as the devolution of all things good, incapable of embodying moral or ethical fiber. The reality of the Divine Feminine is omnipresent yet it has been physically, ideologically, and spiritually villainized in cultures all around the world.

Though the virtual enslavement of biological females & femme identifying people along with the persecution of people who do not identify on the binary was already a burgeoning reality in some pre-colonial societies, colonization expedited this subjugation of femininity which has wrought complete destruction upon our societal, cultural, and genetic makeup.

The term “occult” has taken on a frightful connotation of demonic sacrifices & unspeakable acts against AFAB people & children, but it literally refers to that which is hidden. Within the realm of the esoteric, spirituality & magick are seen as innately feminine because they are practices that are grounded in the intangible realms. Because we are spiritual beings consciously existing in the physical, our true power resides in the unseen planes of existence. It stands to reason, then, that those people that have spent thousands of years attempting to conquer & enslave the world would not want us to be able to tap into that wild, preternatural, all-powerful source.

The shame associated with proximity to this deeply primal part of ourselves that is present in such human gifts as sensitivity, empathy, compassion, heartfelt emotion is so deeply encoded into our globalized culture that it seems like it has always been this way which makes it so easy to believe that it will always remain as such. Records of civilization, however, tell us that this is a relatively new phenomenon.

It is gut-wrenchingly difficult for so many of us to imagine a life that is not defined by the restrictions imposed upon us by these pernicious hierarchies & structures of oppression. It activates within us a trauma response that is wired so deep that many of us don’t bother to question that emotional response, especially because the history of such abuse is not commonly held or pursued knowledge.

This is especially true of people who hold positions of privilege, because it’s easier to ignore those feelings that something is wrong when that something brings us comforts not afforded to others. Fear of losing such comforts instead of gaining it for those going without can be a very powerful barrier to action. The cultural allowances of our designated roles in society often serve as invisible lines in the sand for how far our aspirations can go; we often toe that line in order to not rock the boat because though our minds may not consciously remember the consequences, our bodies do.

It takes a rebellious spirit to breach those boundaries because doing so has traditionally resulted in such punishments as humiliation, alienation, torture, and oftentimes death— the witch hunts in both Europe & the United States being prime examples of this, so much so that any dogged pursuit of any individuals held in contempt to the system is often colloquially referred to as a “witch hunt”.

The practice of traditional indigenous spirituality was painted as barbaric, demonic, and evil by the so-called Christian settlers of the Americas. They savagely drove these practices into the shadows, forcing Christianity on the enslaved peoples with acts of brutality such as beating, burning, mutilating, and sexually assaulting people caught participating in their ancestral practices. For this reason, oppressed people draped a thin veneer of colonizer Christianity over their traditions in order to continue practicing in secret. This act of survival allowed many traditional practices to still exist in some form today through such vehicles as Santeria and Hoodoo.

Colonizer Christianity— a holistically aspiritual & hypocritical version of Christianity that exists completely in violation of the teachings of Jesus Christ of Nazareth— was a vehicle for spiritual disempowerment all over the world. It introduced binary opposition specifically along the lines of gender where it often did not exist before, completely marginalizing the third (or in-between) gender that existed in so many cultures globally. Instead of promoting unity with one another & the environment, it created competition which laid the groundwork for capitalism to come in, especially in places where Protestantism was the dominant practice. In this way, oppressors were able to paint the picture that the oppressed people were suffering because of their own evil behavior & “the sins of the father”– that is the heathenism of their ancestors. They had to pay for their debaucherous ways and they did this through backbreaking labor and other forms of cruelty inflicted upon them. If God didn’t want it to be so, then it wouldn’t be happening.

We know that people did not wholesale buy into this thinking and that there were slave rebellions that ultimately ended in global abolition of slavery and decolonization, but the wreckage remains. Having been spiritually despoiled, there still exists so much shame around claiming our power & agency for creativity & creation via restoration of our unique heritages.

Due to our level of consciousness, humans are able to impact the material realm in ways that no other species on Earth can. Forgetting or misunderstanding this power is incredibly dangerous and is a direct cause of the destruction of this planet and its ecological environment. The monolithic polarization of colonialism has created a gulf between us and the living being that is planet Earth as well as the rest of her inhabitants, between us and the Universe itself. This is how we are able to destroy the natural world with seeming impunity, poisoning the world’s waterways, desecrating it’s forests, massacring the bees as if we don’t absolutely need these things to survive.

This inherent narcissism in our cultural thinking is indicative of an extremely warped axis of energy and a complete collective lack of Alignment. While it starts in the root, it is carried out in the sacral. This is by no means the sole component of the astral pussy or the feminine Divine, but it is integral to creating holistically fulfilling relationships with the people, places, & things that make up our own personal matrix as well as that of the Collective.

None of us are able to strike our own healthy, personal balance without first reconciling our own femininity. This is not possible when we are still imprisoned in the alienating abyss created by colonialism that seeks to isolate us in order to control our thoughts, behaviors and actions. It may awaken a fear that is bone deep, but it is of absolute necessity.

Only by actually facing our Shadow & doing this sacred Work are we able to understand that the thing we really fear is ourselves, our truths, and our power. From that place, we are able to see how we are out of Alignment with our Inner Truth. We are then able to bridge those gaping chasms that ache for connection, compassion, and unconditional love and reintegrate all of the fragmented, disparate parts of ourselves. In this space, we are given the opportunity to reclaim our agency & autonomy, therein creating a more trusting relationship between our primal Self, our present self, and our Higher Self. By healing our relationship with ourselves and our astral pussy, we are able to create healthy relationships with the world around us in which we stand firmly & proudly in our Truth, casting off the sacrilegious death shroud of colonialism in exchange for our freedom. Then– and only then– are we able to be truly empowered.

In order to truly pursue spiritual liberation, cultural revolution, social advancement, and transcendence of our collective past trauma, we must begin decolonizing our interactions with the feminine. Claim the power in your spiritual pussy, your sacred sexuality, and your divine femininity!

Author: Vie Darling

Header image: Even Song by Agnes Pelton, 1930