she who desires
IWD Siren Songs
Hello and welcome to Another World is Possible! I’m Annette, mother, writer, and self-confessed selkie, living and swimming on the east coast of Ireland, and writing through the chaos to dare imagine a future more beautiful.
PS. This email might be clipped, so you may have to read it in your browser or in the Substack app.
International Women’s Day is not for flowers, it's for fires. The fire of feminist rage. The cleansing fire that precedes new growth. The fire round which we gather in circles.
There is little doubt in my mind that we live in an era of backlash – that the reason patriarchy is doubling down on the repression and violence is precisely because women are rising, gathering and marching.
Two years ago I still felt ambivalent about IWD – not anymore. As violent misogyny and rabid patriarchal violence are on the rise everywhere we look, it is vital that we show up unapologetically. So when the call went out to women writers of Substack to write a siren song for International Women’s Day 2025, I immediately put my hand up. I’m in, I said.
Yet, since I committed to writing this piece, I have wondered what to write about. I mean, where do I start?? Where to start when not a day goes by without news of a woman murdered by her spouse making the headlines; when Gisèle Pélicot is now a household name, but shame still hasn’t changed sides; when the Tate brothers are released from house arrest in Romania following pressure from the Trump administration?
Then I came across this post by feminist giant
, who has been dispensing a daily dose of feminism since the US election in November. (If you haven’t read her book Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls, please do so now: no better reading material for International Women’s Day, or any day of the year for that matter. It will make you angry and it will supersize your feminism.)Under patriarchy, women are “rewarded” with desirability and punished for desire. That is why it’s essential to distinguish between the two. Power lies with she who desires… I desire, therefore I am.”
The ideal, patriarchy-sanctioned woman is an object of desire, catering to the male gaze and desires before her own; her desirability must be maintained at all cost – and the cost is hefty, in time and money. Beware of wanting too much, or else. This is patriarchy’s message to women and girls.
If boys and men are actively encouraged to take what they want, even made to believe that they are entitled to take what they want, girls and women are taught to not want too much. This is because what men want perpetuates the status quo – supposedly, I won’t go into how patriarchy also harms most boys and men – thus upholding capitalist patriarchy, while a woman who says ‘I want’ challenges it.
Beware of wanting too much because your desire is selfish, it’ll make you lazy, lead you astray from the righteous path. You are meant to live on your knees, to repent. “Mon Dieu, je vous l’offre”, my granny used to say as she scrubbed the floors of the local tax office, to earn a pittance that would help pay the rent and feed her four children. She knew to not want too much, to be grateful for what she had.
To succumb to your desire is to fail. Your desire is shameful and sinful. As is pleasure. It’s temptation. It’s the Devil. Do not trust its inner voice, we know what’s good for you.
Like all women, I learned to distrust my desire, to not want too much.
Good girls don’t want. Good girls do only what they’re told to do, because to want something for yourself, something that is not in service (to a man, children, god), is to be selfish.
Besides, we all know what happens to women who want too much. Power lies with she who desires. But, as bell hooks famously wrote, “Sometimes people try to destroy you, precisely because they recognize your power – not because they don't see it, but because they see it and they don't want it to exist.”1
True desire is the language of Life, not of the patriarchy, calling us to follow our authentic voice instead of what we’re told to be. It is both the Source and the path, insistingly inviting us out of the authorised version of ourselves and into true aliveness. As such, desire is radical and dangerous.
How can we even know what we want, when our desires are shaped and colonised and commodified by patriarchal capitalism? For the longest time, I refused to want on patriarchal terms, which is to say, I refused to play the game of desirability, but in doing so, I denied my desire. It’s taken a long time to understand that it’s ok to want – and that it’s ok to take what I want when it is within reach. Unapologetically.
Knowing what I want and taking it makes me free and powerful, and I’m afraid of that power. Of what it’ll make me do. Of what it’ll make me write.
Because this want, this hunger, is heady and scary. It is powerful enough to make me defy, disobey and disrupt, cast off the shackles of convention and respectability and tradition, and step out of the authorised version of myself. And this feels terrifying.
Yet to act on my desire, however mystifying, is to trust in what may be.
Slowly, but determinedly, I am breaking out of the good girl shackles – my need for external validation, my imposter syndrome, my fear of being shot down for speaking up. Freedom is a scary thing. It’s much easier to write inside the lines drawn for me, the invisible lines drawn to contain and control me, and all of us, by white capitalist patriarchy.
I desire, therefore I am.
In other words, my desire is the truest expression of my inner self. What does it say about me?
I want to rewrite the story of what it means to be a woman in the world at this time. I want to reclaim women’s right to exist and move freely and take up space in the world.
I want to be known and seen. I want to matter. I want my words to make a difference in the world. I want to inspire, which is to “give breath”. Inspire people, inspire change, inspire hope. I want to make the revolution irresistible.
A tell-tale sign of true desire is that it always calls me to something that feels good, which is to say, pleasure. Allowing myself to feel good is an act of resistance in a culture that only taught me shame – shame around my body’s wants and desires, and around my body’s natural inclination to seek and experience pleasure.
Pleasure, particularly female pleasure, is subversive. This is because women who know and experience pleasure are in tune with their body and their power – their creative power, which is the expression of Life herself. Pleasure-knowing women are powerful and free, and patriarchy can’t allow that. Hence the witch-hunts and female genital mutilation and other such barbarisms that have no male equivalent. Pleasure-seeking women are shamed and ostracised. Called witches and sluts. Sectioned, lobotomised, incarcerated.
If shame is a tool of control, and it is, then pleasure is liberation.
“The Earth is tired of our blood and our tears”, Seán Pádraig O’Donoghue writes here2. Liberation will come not through courting more pain and suffering, but through the active pursuit of pleasure and joy – because what feels good is ultimately good for the world.
“We can’t repress pleasure and expect liberation”, adrienne maree brown writes. Pleasure is our birthright yet in activism, it is the missing ingredient. By pursuing pleasure and joy is how we give thanks for the gift of life on this planet. To deny ourselves, which is supposed to make us ‘good’ (i.e. obedient, small, compliant), is to deny this gift, to deny Life itself.
I don’t often jump in from the rocks at the cove. In fact, until that October morning, I had only done it once before. But on that day, after floating in the lush rosy reflections of a glorious sunrise, taking flight felt like the right thing to do.
I went first, walking the few steps to the end of the rocks.
One look back at B;
One look to the right where the rising sun hung over the calm sea;
One look down at the water churning below the rocks.
The stone was cold beneath my feet. The breeze prickled my wet skin. My heart was in my mouth.
I jumped – and I was, for a split second, suspended between sky and sea.
Crashing through the surface then coming up for air, I let out a loud whoop, as the sea wrapped me in a silky salty hug.
I'd much rather be free than good.
This poem I wrote a little over a year ago, and which appears in Sensual Soul Shine: the Reclamation of the Feminine.
Succumb
Stop.
Stop and seek the shocking embrace of a skinny dip
and savour the soft caress of sea on skin;
In a world of guilty pleasure,
always guilty,
Succumb to the sweet juicy apple of knowing
and become succulent
and dance.
Surrender to the soul song of the sea
calling you home to yourself.
The opposite of crying is not laughter,
it is to sing.
So sing. Scream if need be.
If to be is to sin,
Sin big
Bigger still,
Your desire true to the stars that spell it. 
This post is my IWD Siren Song. To mark International Women’s Day 2025, I am joining
, , , , and other incredible women to create an irresistible choir of siren songs here on Substack. Perhaps , , , , and others will add their voices to the party, today or in the coming days and weeks?Happy International Women’s Day to each and every one of you, wherever you might find yourself in the world.
Take care of yourselves and of each other through these times.
Much love,
Annette
PS. I will leave you now with Aw na Mná, by the creative powerhouse that is
.
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Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics by bell hooks (2000)
“I want to make justice and liberation the most measurable experiences we can have as a species. For most of us who have suffered oppression or trauma, this means a reclamation. Pleasure is not a frivolous thing, it's a measure of freedom. It's being able to say, yes, I'm alive and I'm here in this moment.“ ~ adrienne maree brown, author of Pleasure Activism, speaking to
, On Being podcast.
so much food for thought here Annette. Your words on desire really hit home x
Thank you, Annette 💜✊🏽❤️