Translator: Willow Bushell Reviewer: Didar Omar
In the time that it takes me to say this sentence,
there have been 1.5 million orgasms in the world,
according to the website globalorgasm.org,
on a rather odinary Sunday afternoon.
But I have bad news to tell you:
these numbers don’t concern us.
Whatsoever.
I don’t know about you, but I want to enjoy myself.
Slight difference: we’re going to remain clothed and seated, please.
Today, I’m going to tell you all about sexual pleasure
and more specifically, its place in our daily lives.
It is this last point that arouses my curiosity
and that I’m going to share with more than 100,000 people
on the Instagram account I created: ‘Merci Beaucul’.
I created this account to engage
and adapt the discussion around sexuality
with pleasure at the heart of these exchanges.
My name is Léa and I am conviced that sex is much more than just sex.
I have experienced it, I still experience it
and the people who participate in my workshops continue to confirm this.
If there is something all these people, myself included, have heard,
it’s that sexuality is taboo, personal and very, very private, most of all.
So, I decided to speak about mine to 1,100 people today.
(Laughter)
Sit tight, I’m going to tell you a story.
(Applause)
Once upon a time my orgasms disappeared.
After several years of solo pleasure,
their intensity started to decline.
It was closer to a sneeze, a good sneeze!
Besides that, when I was with a partner: total absenteeism.
I started to ask myself a few questions.
I had started to realise, quite a bit,
that I was one of these people would never have an orgasm.
My search history looked a bit like this:
[How to have an orgasm?]
[Orgasm, where are you, who are you?]
[The pathway to acceptance.]
(Laughter)
(Léa laughs)
So I went about my adventures with Peter, John or Jack
but shouldered by the valliant Google, I finally understood:
the absence of an orgasm was only the tip of the iceberg.
And so, a whole new world was revealed.
My sexuality can be seen as a reflection of what is happening inside me.
We can go further:
repairing the relation that I had with my sexual pleasure
enabled me to understand this on a global scale.
For example, I was super concentrated on the pleasure of my partner
that I completely forgot about my own.
I spent hours searching for how to give them the best head of their life,
but besides that, asking for the things that really pleased me?
Impossible.
Or, I was ashamed that my pleasure took up so much time.
Therefore, I preferred to completely scap certain practices.
After a relationship, I had this feeling of frustration,
but I accepted that it was just like that.
To sum it up, my sexual pleasure happened completely in the background.
And when I realised that,
I realised that it wasn’t only affecting my sexuality.
I did things to please my friends,
even if it made me feel uncomfortable.
Or, I struggled to spend time alone,
even that made me downright uncomfortable.
I was part of the pessimistic team,
bitching was my greatest passion, it consummed me.
In brief, I struggled to recognise and welcome pleasure into my life.
A little bit like I didn’t deserve it.
Through my sexuality, I was also able to understand my relationship
with my body, my wishes and my self-confidence
in short, the esteem I had for myself -
there wasn’t a lot.
Today, thousands of people
are up-to-date with the history of my orgasms.
In fact, right now,
my sexuality was the origin of a more general development.
Learning to understand my desire and my pleasure,
was easier and more tangible for me, than introspection.
OK, but what has changed concretely?
Let us talk about the state I was in, pre-exploration.
To start with,
it was needless to say that nothing brought me pleasure,
nor did being in my body.
In fact, sometimes I avoided looking in the mirror for weeks,
or sometimes I spent 3 hours in front of it,
scrutinizing every detail that did not suit me.
Balance...
Next of all, my self-confiedence.
In my opinion, it shouldn’t have been given to me at birth.
I realised that
it was based on a multitude of things,
sort of as if I had something to prove to someone.
That small burst of dopamine after a purchase
seemed to be my only source of comfort.
So, it’s true that my pleasure, to me, seemed very short-lived.
My slogan was: “It’ll be better when I get it”,
or its variant: “When I do it, I will be truly happy.”
Being able to appreciate my current situation, in hindsight,
it wasn’t really possible.
Okay.
How did I get here?
And what has changed?
Today, my body, I am thankful for it.
I thank it for being a source of incredible sensations,
which are almost infinite.
I spend good small moments with my body,
I admire it, I massage it and I attribute value to it when I want.
And when worries arise,
I remember that, thanks to my body, I can experience intense connections
with myself or with another person.
To do that, I can only be all-loving towards it,
and be grateful for it.
I also learnt to ancre myself in the present moment, what is real.
By concentrating on myself, for example, by conscious touch,
taste or smell during a relationship,
I have been able to easily transfer that to my daily life.
Through my sexuality,
I have developped a curiosity for the beauty which surrounds us.
The smell of a good dish, the softness of a blanket, the crashing of the ocean,
are the sources of pleasure on my doorstep.
It’s also through my sexuality that I have learnt to detach myself from performance
unless I’m seeking results.
To enjoy, to please. How? At what speed? In what position? How much?
(Exhales)
In fact, learning to detach myself from all of that and enjoy such senstations,
has allowed me to learn to appreciate
the experiences and the small pleasures of daily life.
Finally, becoming familiar with the shared orgasm
has boosted my daily self-esteem.
So, yeah, if something as simple as knowing myself and expressing myself
equals more pleasure, equals more orgasms,
I would finally be able to trust myself on other topics.
Whether that be professionally or personally,
I know what works for me, and I can express it.
By learning to tell Jack where my clit was,
I learned to say no to friends, or to send back a dish at the restaurant.
Thanks Jack!
(Laughter)
Another thing happened during this adventure, something unexpected:
my relationships with people have softened - for real.
Have you also questioned someone’s compliment?
“What do they want?” “Why would that say that to me?”
“I know they’re exagerating.”
I’m going to address the women,
you too, have you also felt in competition with another woman
just because she was also a woman?
Men, women, sexual partners or not, they are no longer threatening.
They are no longer unique holders of my validation
or reduced to comparisons.
They are possibilities.
Possibilities of exchanging, sharing and discovering.
Possibilities of learning about myself, the world, about emotions and sisterhood,
even if it was short-lasting.
When something has changed within me,
something has changed in the whole entire world.
When I starting having fun with myself,
I was able to start having fun with others.
Today, I lend other intentions to my sexuality.
Now that I have seen the potential in one strong experience, alone or shared,
I can only wish that for everybody.
For you, I wish this same access to pleasure, to wellbeing
and to the orgasms which disturb your neighbors.
(Laughter)
Sorry!
(Laughter)
To my surprise, open-mindedness, creativity, empathy,
all that, allows me to work on myself, through my sexuality.
Sexuality, it’s like a magnifying glass,
a microscope, which focuses on who we are,
who we would like to be and who we dare not show.
In my eyes, it’s a time of exploration, of expression, which goes beyond orgasms.
It’s a metaphor for your primal need, but it’s also cerebral,
a metaphor for your imagination,
your injuries, your worries, your joy, your vulnerability.
This evolution did not happen overnight.
It happened over plenty of very different stages.
For example, saying the words “vagina”, “penis”, “orgasm”,
in the same way that I would I would ask for a loaf of bread,
that has allowed me to make things feel real in my body, and not taboo.
It’s a lot simple to ask what I want.
This development has also happened by learning to breathe.
Yes, I learned to breathe.
In fact, that has allowed me to not only understand how my body works,
but also to stay present during a relationship.
So, the next time, you think of your shopping list,
breathe, it will be fine.
One of the most complicated things, has been learning to receive.
Ah yes, I know, it’s not easy.
We can give, give, give
but receiving a compliment, a gift or being eaten out, it’s another story.
“I’m going to lose too much time”, “I haven’t shaved”, “He’ll be bored”.
(Laughter)
Not only have I learnt to receive, but more so, now, I appreciate
that my partner is only concentrated on me when I’m present in the moment.
This developement, it happened through other things,
it didn’t just happen during sex.
It also happened during the moment of solo-love, as I like to say.
Masturbation, y’know.
But it’s also in these daily moments that changes happen.
Dance, art, cooking, music,
but also by finding spaces for discussion online
or by having responses to questions.
In fact, all that has contributed to making my curiosity legitimate.
And this curiosity is the key, which we can all develop.
The link between daily life and sexuality has become much clearer to me:
my sexuality is not an aspect separate from my personality,
but another one of its manifestations.
It has been a true tool for personal development.
This sexuality, it’s invested and aware.
In fact, the idea was to overcome living automatically -
I see, I hear, I eat -
and to favor living manually - I watch, I listen, I taste -
all in order to create conscious connections to my senses and feelings.
Connecting yourself to your feelings is something that you can do all the time.
Even here, now.
But you know what, let’s find out together.
During the next few seconds that follow,
try to really feel the weight of your body against your chair.
If you want, you can close your eyes.
It’s not at all compulsory, but that can help you to concentrate.
Try to feel the texture of the chair,
the texture of your clothes
against you skin.
Concentrate on the sensations in your lower back,
in your shoulders,
in your neck.
Observe how your tongue is positioned in your mouth,
the cold air which enters your nostrils
and the hot air coming out of them.
You can reopen your eyes.
Congratulations, you have just worked on your sexuality.
And you’re not alone.
I made a survey on Instagram, more than 7,000 people responded.
94% said that by getting involved in their sexuality,
they have seen growth.
But more than 6,000 have also seen a positive impact on their wellbeing.
You’re going to tell me: “Yes, but sexuality, its innate.
We don’t need anything, we’re not going to work on it to grow.”
I would say yes, but eating, it’s innate,
and yet, we make recipes of a complexity which is far from essential,
but which colour our daily lives.
Sometimes, you order Deliveroo,
sometimes, you make yourself eat for three hours.
Both will bring you pleasure, but won’t have the same benefits.
It’s quite similar.
Understanding that I could “prepare myself a meal”
to explore something other than the response to desire,
has opened the door to plenty of possibilities.
Of course, I’m still going to eat frozen and junk food,
but the thing is, nobody told me I could do that.
Nobody told me that my sexual pleasure was as important and valuble
as someone else’s.
We know that today one in four high school girls don’t know that
the clitoris is the counterpart of the penis and the organ of pleasure.
In my opnion, it’s no better amongst the older generation.
(Laughter)
In 2021, we talk about clitoral or vaginal orgasms -
and - spoiler alert - both come from the clitoris,
and that according to an IFOP study in 2019,
52% of women asked still have difficulties reaching it.
The majority!
When we still think that ejaculation is the only orgasm,
I tell myself that we still have things to learn.
I aspire to trigger this wish to learn,
and stimulate curiosity, the thirst to discover
oneself and another.
That together we question the norms which are imposed on us
and that we reclaim our pleasure.
I would like to affirm that looking into your sexuality,
will definitely lead you to your happy ending
“She lived happily every after and had plenty of orgasms”,
but that would be like selling you a dream.
Sexuality, it’s like everything else,
it comes in cycles, with highs and lows.
Sometimes, I want and sometimes I don’t, and that’s okay.
If I dared, I would give this phrase of inspiration:
“It’s not the destination that counts, but the journey.”
(Laughter)
And today might be the starting point.
We’re not going to hide it,
but all that I’ve said today can be seen as daring and brave,
but it’s easier to say and to live when we are
a skinny, white, cisgender, heterosexual woman.
Even with all of our privilege,
it’s ultimately not a search that is innate or easy to initiate.
It’s by delving into my sexuality
that I’ve seen others who are far from being accepted,
or are even openly discriminated against subtly.
Some people experience violent acts
for something innate and natural, such as
their sexual orientation, their gender, their identity.
Beceause speaking about sexuality, is speaking about something deeply human
and not mentioning these realities, won’t prevent these experiences,
because, no, not everyone has a safe environment
adapted to explore and express their sexuality.
Celebrating our expression is, in my eyes, of the utmost importance.
Leaving behind our bodies
which naturally have tools that we tend to take for granted -
our senses, our breathing, our muscles -
could be a simple way of connecting with ourselves
and enjoying sexual pleasure on a daily basis.
The expression “Know yourself” also has another meaning.
Sexuality can be genesis,
the ephiphany which sets into motion your self-fulfillment,
for yourself, and with someone else if you want.
The good news is that this enrichment is at your fingertips
or your fingers.
Thank you.
(Applause)