Feminism and the History of Women's Sexuality: From Shame to Power

When we talk about feminism, a social and political movement fighting for gender equality, especially in areas like bodily autonomy, economic power, and sexual freedom. Also known as women’s liberation, it didn’t just ask for the right to vote—it challenged who gets to define pleasure, pain, and power in women’s lives. For centuries, women’s sexuality was controlled by religion, medicine, and law. Masturbation was called a disease. Orgasms were dismissed as unnecessary. Consent? Not even a concept. Feminism didn’t just protest these ideas—it dug into archives, exposed lies, and rewrote the story.

One of the biggest battles was over female sexuality, the natural desires, experiences, and expressions of women, long pathologized or ignored by male-dominated systems. Victorian doctors claimed women didn’t feel pleasure—until they invented steam-powered vibrators to treat "hysteria." Feminists like Anne Koedt proved that the clitoris, not the vagina, was the key to orgasm, smashing the myth that real women had vaginal orgasms. This wasn’t just anatomy—it was rebellion. Then came the fight against gender roles, socially enforced expectations that assign behaviors, responsibilities, and identities based on sex, often trapping women in domestic silence. The idea that women belonged at home while men ran the world? Feminists showed how that system made women invisible in history, in law, and in their own bodies. Even today, bisexual erasure, lesbian invisibility, and the silence around coercive sex are all rooted in the same old power structures feminism has been dismantling.

What you’ll find here isn’t theory—it’s evidence. From medieval dowries that treated women like property, to police raids on gay bars that sparked revolutions, to the hidden history of sex toys disguised as medical devices. These are the real stories behind the headlines. You’ll see how feminism didn’t just change laws—it changed how we understand desire, shame, and survival. This isn’t about politics. It’s about who gets to say yes—and who gets to say no.