When desire is silenced
Female desire does not disappear: it is silenced. It is dampened by prejudices, inherited narratives, and unwritten rules that associate passion with the masculine and containment with the feminine. Throughout history, from religious sermons to medical treatises, the woman’s body was described as passive, receptive, destined for reproduction rather than pleasure. In that narrative, desiring was synonymous with deviating. If we expressed it, we were indecent; if we didn’t feel it, we were incomplete. Between both labels, the right to our own sexuality was taken away.
Our co-founder Ursula Pfeiffer reminds us that biology does not support this hierarchy. Female arousal is neither linear nor submissive to impulse; it is cyclical, emotional, and profoundly contextual. The body needs tenderness, security, imagination. Recognizing this is not fragility, but bodily intelligence. Desire is not measured by frequency, but by authenticity. When we stop seeing it as a duty or validation, sexuality recovers its essence: a form of freedom and presence.
The origin of the myth
The underlying question is simple yet incisive: why do we continue to believe that men “have more desire”? Ursula points out that the answer is not in biology, but in culture.
For centuries, the male body was taken as the universal model. In 19th-century physiology manuals, the female sexual response was described as “diffuse and irregular,” while the male one appeared as a logical sequence: desire, excitement, climax, orgasm. A hierarchy was born from this comparison. Female complexity was seen as a defect, and male linearity as the norm.
Today we know that women’s desire is not erratic, but rhythmic. It doesn’t lack intensity: it responds to other codes. Our sexuality is nourished by imagination, context, and emotional connection. The diversity that was interpreted as weakness was, in reality, a broader form of sensitivity.
From biological to cultural
Throughout our Entre Amigas gatherings, various experts have agreed on this point. Sexologist Arola Poch often says that “it’s not that there’s a lack of desire, there’s a lack of conditions for the body and mind to awaken it.” Educational psychologist Analía Pereyra adds that reducing sex to penetration is to ignore the way female pleasure is constructed.
Ursula takes up these ideas to question one of the most persistent expressions: the “foreplay.” “Calling stimulation foreplay,” she explains, “is placing it as something secondary, when in reality it is an integral part of the encounter.” The idea that the important part happens later reproduces the same hierarchy that excluded us from the center of the erotic experience.
The ‘normal’: an invention that limits us
What we understand as “normal” in matters of sexuality is not a universal truth, but a historical consensus. “Normal changes with time and with the place we live,” Ursula reflects. “What was natural a century ago may seem scandalous today, and what we consider acceptable today may be unthinkable in another context.”
This variability reveals that what we believe is innate—desire, morality, modesty—does not arise from the body, but from the environment. We have confused social norms with biological truths. What we learned as nature was, in reality, repeated culture.
Between nature and learning
“Are we like this by nature or because we were taught to be this way?” Ursula asks. The old dichotomy between nature and nurture reappears in the realm of desire as a mirror of our history.
Women have a cyclical body, but also a social narrative that taught us to contain it. Since childhood, we were told that control was a virtue, while in men, initiative was celebrated as a sign of strength. This difference is internalized, generation after generation, until it seems biological.
The result is a double standard: male desire is presumed; female desire is monitored. If we express it, we are “too much.” If we don’t, “something is wrong.” Thus, desire becomes an impossible equation.
The cost of generalizing
Generalizing simplifies reality, but also distorts it. “Generalizations,” Ursula warns, “are comfortable, but they erase what makes us unique.” In the realm of desire, this erasure is especially painful.
The formula still persists: men seek sex, women seek love. But everyday life refutes it. There are women who prioritize their careers and autonomy, and men who choose parenting or domestic life as their axis of fulfillment. Psychologist Martha Martínez maintains that men act based on objectives and women based on connection; Ursula qualifies this: “It may be true for some, but it’s not a rule. Confusing cultural trends with natural laws is perpetuating inequalities.”
The problem is not in recognizing differences, but in using them as borders.
Culture as the mold of desire
Desire does not only inhabit the body; it is also written in culture. What we consider attractive or inadequate is mediated by the stories we were told. “We are the reflection of our narratives,” says Ursula. “The ones we saw at home, at school, in movies, on social media. All of that defines what we think we should feel.”
If we grew up hearing that the desiring woman was dangerous or that pleasure had to be justified by love, it’s not surprising that many women still feel guilty when experiencing desire or initiative. Breaking that conditioning is not easy, but it is possible.
Unlearning the fear of pleasure is, perhaps, the deepest form of emancipation.
Recovering the voice and experience
Talking about desire is not a theoretical gesture: it is an act of existence. Ursula insists that “we need spaces where the female experience is heard without guilt.” Sharing what has been lived not only heals; it also expands the language with which we think about sexuality.
Every story told by a woman broadens the collective map of desire. “That’s why we created this community,” Ursula affirms, “to think and feel out loud. To stop explaining ourselves from the outside and start narrating from within.”
In a world where eroticism is confused with consumption, the simple act of talking honestly about pleasure becomes an act of resistance.
Redefining desire, redefining the human
Breaking the myths about female desire does not mean replacing one truth with another, but accepting the plurality of experiences. Desire has no hierarchies: it is neither more authentic when constant, nor less valid when it retreats.
The challenge is to listen to it without fear. By doing so, we rediscover that desire does not belong to a gender, but to the human condition. It does not divide us into those who desire and those who please; it unites us as beings capable of feeling and choosing.
As Ursula concludes: “Female sexuality does not need to defend itself, only to express itself. Desire is neither an anomaly nor an obligation: it is part of life, and it deserves to be lived with freedom.”
Watch the complementary episode “Breaking Myths: Reflections on Female Desire” on our YouTube channel:
https://youtu.be/6XVXgwYkZg8
