Rediscovering the female body and pleasure
The history of the female body has been narrated, almost always, by voices that do not inhabit it. In medical treatises, in pulpits, and on screens, we appear as objects of observation or instruments of desire, rarely as subjects of pleasure. This distance between those who live the body and those who define it has generated centuries of ignorance about our own sexual nature.
They taught us to believe more in diagnosis than in sensation, more in the external gaze than in internal experience. As Ursula Pfeiffer, co-founder of Yuriyana Club, explains, “most of what we learn about female sex and pleasure comes from two historically similar sources: pornography and Western medicine, both constructed under a masculine gaze.” From this double root, our sexuality became an alien narrative: one that names without listening, that classifies without understanding, and that even today we dismantle to reconnect with what always belonged to us: the right to feel, know, and inhabit our body in fullness.
The history that erased us
There was a time when women were guardians of their own bodily knowledge. Midwives and healers knew female anatomy from experience and community. With the consolidation of the medical guild, that knowledge was discredited and persecuted. Pfeiffer recalls that “these women were turned into villains to make way for a health market dominated by men.” The exclusion of women from knowledge was not accidental; it also meant losing control over our bodies and ceding it to an external authority.
Even when in 1754 the German Dorothea Erxleben graduated as the first female doctor in Europe, female presence in medicine took centuries to be accepted. Thus, science, under the guise of neutrality, reinforced the idea that the feminine had to be corrected or domesticated.
From object to subject of desire
The same narrative was repeated in culture. In painting, theater, cinema, or advertising, the female figure was constructed for the desire of others: passive, static, receptive. “Women were represented as a womb that receives the seed rather than as a body that creates,” says Pfeiffer. In this way, the socially accepted woman became disconnected from her desire. Those who dared to inhabit it were labeled “easy” or “libertine.”
This moral division—between the good woman who silences her body and the bad woman who expresses it—continues to operate silently. Even when we tell the stories ourselves, the internalized masculine gaze continues to dictate what is sensual, elegant, or “too much.”
The silenced anatomy
Sex education inherited this bias. In most manuals, the clitoris appears as a marginal point, without context or explanation of its function. In doctor’s offices, many women hesitate to ask about lubrication or fantasies, as if the erotic were not a legitimate part of health. “For many of us, even talking about pleasure feels uncomfortable,” Pfeiffer acknowledges, “because medical and social language taught us to separate health from desire.”
Sexologist Analía Pereyra, a frequent collaborator of Yuriyana Club, agrees: “Many men learn about female sexuality through pornography, not reality.” This fragmented learning feeds the idea that female pleasure is accessory. It is not: it is a fundamental dimension of our emotional and physical health.
Rewriting the body map
Reconnecting with the body means naming it. Pfeiffer proposes doing so naturally: “Let’s describe our anatomy without fear—the clitoris, the vulva, the labia majora—not as a frivolous gesture, but as an act of recognition.” Every woman has her own erotic map, her personal coordinates of pleasure. Understanding them is not a luxury; it is a form of self-knowledge.
“Desire does not sprout in a straight line,” says Pfeiffer. “Sometimes it comes with a caress or a glance; other times it doesn’t appear. And there is no guilt in that. Understanding this irregularity is recognizing that we are not defective, but alive.” Freeing the body from the mandate of performance restores our humanity: we are not erotic machines; we are sensitive organisms traversed by rest, stress, hormones, and history.
Recovering the language of pleasure
Language must also transform. Commercial pornography cannot be the standard that dictates how the gestures, sounds, or times of sexual encounters should look. “It’s not about censoring erotic representations,” Pfeiffer warns, “but about recognizing that they were created for consumption, not to reflect intimacy.”
Naming pleasure without euphemisms, talking about arousal, lubrication, and fantasy naturally, is a way to reclaim our voice. Denying these words is amputating an essential part of bodily life. “Sex is not just a physical act,” Pfeiffer adds, “it is an emotional and energetic experience. And learning to recognize it gives us freedom.”
Education and transmission
Breaking the silence is not provocation: it is responsibility. Talking openly with our daughters and sons about body, desire, and consent is a form of care. As Pfeiffer maintains, “reclaiming our voice also means how we transmit this information to future generations.”
Shared knowledge is a more powerful inheritance than guilt. Teaching to name, ask, and recognize one’s own is opening the way to a full and conscious sexuality.
Towards a free and living sexuality
When the body is lived from knowledge and not from censorship, it ceases to be an alien territory. Sexuality, understood as an expression of life, does not seek external validation. It belongs to us. Looking at ourselves with curiosity, respect, and tenderness is the beginning of a silent revolution: that of women who, after centuries of silence, reclaim their right to feel.
Watch the complementary episode “9 Weeks to Know Your Sensual Self Exploring Female Sexuality” on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/mz6bbnIDxq4
