It's not all about sex. Entries cover "the body, the soul, and the real," though each entry necessarily includes elements of both.
Women will appreciate Desire if only to see its writers delve where few woman will ever go in writing their urges, their fantasies, their fears. Feminism, after its short-lived "free love" phase, began to adopt a puritanical tone regarding sex — "my body: ask before you touch," for instance, makes verbal consent a necessary condition for moving forward; if the cavemen had operated on the verbal system, it's unlikely any of us would be here. Feminism taught that the personal was political. That the reason women dressed a certain way or behave sexually in certain ways is because of male society's need to control women and their natural urges. The women writing Desire bask in, and give into, those urges freely and openly.
Though you'll find Desire in the "Women's Issues" shelf, one of the worst kept secrets of any "for us, by us" venture is that outsiders are encouraged to — and not prevented from — breaching the city gates.
Men reading Desire will come to see that women are just that: women. Individuals. Imperfect ones, with their own quirks and foibles and desires and secrets. That they love sex, not only because it pleases their man, or produces children, or because it's anniversary night, but because it feels good — sex for sex's sake, if you will.
Rachel Kramer Bussel presents the tale of a sexually liberated woman driven to face her demons by her boyfriend's remark that she is a "really good blowjob giver."
"Was his a compliment or an insult?" Bussel wonders, the remark too neutral to classify either way. "I couldn't bear to ask." This causes Lustlady Bussel to re-evaluate her entire sexual history — specifically, whether she had too much of it.
"I realized," Bussel writes, "that although I may think I'm as sexually liberated as a girl can get, there remain demons lurking in the far reaches of my mind, wanting to label me a slut."
Though she initially tries to blame her boyfriend for the way she feels, in the end she admits that the voices she hears are coming from her own head, and it's her job to quiet them. At some point in life, Bussel learns, you have to be who you are. An adult woman sexually liberated enough to write about sex for a living can't very well blame society, or her parents, or the Catholic Church for the way she feels about sex. "Where Sluts Fear to Tread" reveals a rare woman whose journey towards sexual accountability came to a happy resolution — at least, in the moment.
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