Come as You Are by Emily Nagoski Read Free Book Online

yourself. They plant language and attitudes and knowledge about love and safety and bodies and sex. And they teach you how to tend your garden, because as you transition through adolescence into adulthood, you’ll take on full responsibility for its care.
    And you didn’t choose any of that. You didn’t choose your plot ofland, the seeds that were planted, or the way your garden was tended in the early years of your life.
    As you reach adolescence, you begin to take care of the garden on your own. And you may find that your family and culture have planted some beautiful, healthy things that are thriving in a well-tended garden. And you may notice some things you want to change. Maybe the strategies you were taught for cultivating the garden are inefficient, so you need to find different ways of taking care of it so that it will thrive (that’s in chapter 3). Maybe the seeds that were planted were not the kind of thing that will thrive in your particular garden, so you need to find something that’s a better fit for you (that’s in chapters 4 and 5).
    Some of us get lucky with our land and what gets planted. We have healthy and thriving gardens from the earliest moments of our awareness. And some of us get stuck with some pretty toxic crap in our gardens, and we’re left with the task of uprooting all the junk and replacing it with something healthier, something we choose for ourselves.
    Your physical body—including your genitals—is one part of the basic hardware of your sexuality, the plot of land. Your brain and your environment are the rest of the hardware, and they’re the subject of chapters 2 and 3.
    What It Is , Not What It Means
Olivia used her idea about her hormones, her “masculine” genitals, and her high sexual interest as a shield against the cultural criticisms that said she was . . . well, all kinds of things for which she “ought to be ashamed.” A slut. A nymphomaniac. Trying to “get attention,” “get a man,” or “control people” with her body—none of which were true, but all of which had been flung at her at various times in her life. The world had tried to convince her that her sexuality was toxic, dangerous to both herself and the people around her.
She had fought hard against these messages, in defense of her own sexual wellbeing. The shield of, “It’s my hormones, so it’s natural,” was an important part of that defense.
But as she absorbed the idea of “all the same parts, organized in different ways,” she didn’t need the shield anymore. She realized that the shield was actually blocking her off from other people, while “all the same parts” actively connected her with other people—it meant she wasn’t different or separate. She was the same—unique, but still connected in the continuum of human sexuality.
This is what science can do for us, if we let it. It offers us an opportunity to lower our defenses and experience the ways that we are all connected.
    I know for a fact that Olivia was not born feeling uncomfortable with her genitals or her sexuality, and neither were you. When you were born, you were deeply, gloriously satisfied with each and every part of your body. But decades of sex-negative culture have let in weeds of dissatisfaction. Chapters 3 and 4 explain precisely how this can influence your sexual wellbeing, and chapter 5 describes how to undo that process and get back to living wholly inside your body, to return to that state you were born into, of deep, warm affection for and curiosity about your own body.
    But before we get there, let’s spend a chapter talking about the biggest of all your sex organs and how it, too, is made of all the same parts as everyone else’s but organized in a unique way.
    I refer, of course, to your brain.
    tl;dr
• Everyone’s genitals are made of the same parts, organized in different ways. No two alike.
• Are you experiencing pain? If so, talk to a medical provider. If not, then your genitals are