The Power That Terrifies: Why Sexually Free Women Still Scare the World

by Barbara Wilde

There is a particular kind of woman who, despite centuries of progress, continues to unsettle, provoke, and disturb. She is not violent. She is not dangerous. She is not even particularly loud. And yet, her mere presence is enough to cause discomfort in many: Yes, she is the sexually free woman.

Not free in the superficial, consumerist sense of the term — not the woman who performs sexuality to be desired, who conforms to market-driven standards of seduction. But the woman who is free within:

·       Who desires without shame.

·       Who chooses without fear.

·       Who lives her body as a source, not a battlefield.

Her freedom is not ornamental. It is not for show. It is embodied — rooted in awareness, in lived experience, in hard-won reclamation. And that, precisely, is what frightens.

Barbara Wilde by Lucia Rea Photography

Beyond Morality: A Historical Anxiety

Throughout history, female sexuality has rarely been seen as autonomous. It has been contained within frameworks of morality, religion, family honour, and social control. A woman’s body was something to regulate — either by shrouding it in modesty or by offering it up in sacrifice to duty, reproduction, or male desire.

To deviate from these roles was to become dangerous: the siren, the witch, the seductress, the whore. She who desires for her own pleasure, who owns her erotic power, has always been a figure of transgression.

As Audre Lorde eloquently reminded us, the erotic is not merely sexual — it is a deep, spiritual source of power that, once accessed, “becomes a lens through which we scrutinise all aspects of our existence.” A sexually free woman, therefore, is not just someone who enjoys intimacy. She is someone who has broken a spell: the spell of guilt, silence, and self-denial.

Why Does She Still Scare Us?

Because she cannot be possessed. She does not perform to please. She does not seek permission. And this, in a world still shaped by patriarchal dynamics of control and objectification, is radical.

She reclaims her sensuality not as a currency, but as a compass. She is no longer waiting to be chosen — she chooses. And in doing so, she upends centuries of conditioning that taught women to equate value with desirability, and desirability with submission.

Anaïs Nin and the Inner Landscape of Desire

In her diaries, Anaïs Nin wrote not of sexuality as spectacle, but as inner truth.

“My life was governed by the hunger for intense experiences.”

“I want to feel everything — I want to embrace life completely.”

This is the essence of erotic freedom: not indulgence, but fullness of feeling. A commitment to vitality, not to performance.

For Nin, desire was not something external to be chased — it was an inner landscape to be explored. The sexually free woman doesn’t seek thrill for its own sake; she seeks authenticity. She wants to inhabit her body as a sacred space, not a battlefield of expectations.

The Coaching Insight: The Erotic as a Portal

In coaching, I often encounter women who carry deep ambivalence around their sensuality. They have internalised messages that told them desire is dangerous, pleasure is selfish, and boundaries are rude. They struggle to differentiate between being desired and being truly seen. And many of them — brilliant, compassionate, powerful women — confess to feeling that some part of them is still chained.

What liberates them is not a technique or a theory, but a shift in identity. The moment they begin to see themselves not as objects of value, but as beings of vitality, the energy changes.

From that space, we work not just on healing old wounds, but on learning a new language: the language of embodied choice, of unapologetic presence, of sovereignty.

The Politicisation of Pleasure

Sexual freedom is not just personal. It is political. As Michela Murgia poignantly noted:

“The female body is always political. When a woman chooses what to do with hers, she changes the entire game.”

A woman who knows her own pleasure, who is no longer afraid to say I want, I don’t want, I feel, I know — she doesn’t just free herself. She disturbs the system. Because she no longer plays the role of the grateful recipient. She becomes the author of her own experience.

Toward a New Feminine Sovereignty

So why does the sexually free woman still scare the world?

Because she reminds us of a truth we’ve tried to forget: that a woman in full possession of her body, her desire, and her voice is a force of nature.

She doesn’t need to dominate — she simply no longer submits. She doesn’t need to seduce — she radiates. She doesn’t wait for the gaze of the other to feel alive — she is already home within herself.

Invitation: From Fear to Integration

If reading this awakens something in you — a memory, a longing, a discomfort — it may be because this woman lives inside you too. Perhaps she was silenced. Perhaps she was punished. Perhaps she was never even allowed to speak.

But she is not yet gone. And coaching can be the space where her voice begins to return. Where fear turns into curiosity. Where guilt transforms into discernment. Where the body becomes not an enemy, but an ally.

Because erotic freedom is not about provocation. It is about presence. And presence is where the true revolution begins.

Are you ready to meet the woman you’ve always been, beneath the silence? Let’s talk.www.bwildecoaching.com