“In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children.” With these words, women fell into a world that saw them as cursed. They are still falling. Today, we define women by suffering: menstrual cramps, mood swings, excruciating childbirth, painful first-time sex. Femaleness itself has come to look like an illness, so now, women seeking solutions for their ailments are dismissed. And as our pain is sanctioned, our pleasure is deemed tricky, complicated, burdensome, elusive.
This reality is not our destiny. These myths are misreadings not just of ancient texts but of women’s bodies. Our pain is the product of oppression imposed for centuries. That’s the real curse. Yet amid this oppression, our pleasure has survived. Once we recover who we were before the fall, we can revel in the blessings of our bodies. Ecstatic births, positive periods, sublime sex, orgasmic lives - this is who we are behind the cultural curse we’ve been under.
Through inspiring stories from the author and a diverse group of blessed people, Eve’s Blessing charts many paths from pain to pleasure so that you can walk your own. If you’ve drifted away from paradise, this book will guide you back.
Table of Contents
IntroductionPart 1: The Fall
1 Curses Were Meant to Be Broken
2 Women’s Natural Defectiveness and Other Greek Myths
3 Painful Sex, From Adam and Eve to Vanessa Carlton and T.I.
4 Men’s Bodies Are From Mars, Women’s Are From Venus
5 How the Female Orgasm Became Elusive
6 PMS, From “a Raging Animal” to “Blood Coming Out of Her Wherever”
7 The Institutionalization of Sorrowful Childbirth
8 Trauma: An Assault on the Body
9 Sexy But Not Sexual
Part 2: Paradise Gained
10 Womanhood Is Not an Illness
11 Period Pleasure
12 No Pleasure, No Gain
13 In Joy Thou Shalt Bring Forth Children
14 I Will Greatly Multiply Thy Orgasms
15 Living Life Orgasmically
Epilogue: Original Virtue
