Thread by @monaeltahawy

I watched Good Luck To You, Leo Grande three times and wrote about desire. #GoodLucktoYouLeoGrande

https://twitter.com/monaeltahawy/status/1539279844911026180

In @LeoGrandeFilm, Nancy Stokes (Emma Thompson) snatches desire from the jaws of ageism.

I snatched desire from the jaws of shame.

feministgiant.com/p/the-fuck-it-… #GoodLucktoYouLeoGrande

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60-something Nancy has never had an orgasm. She is recently widowed after a passionless 3-decade marriage during which she faked orgasms with her husband, the only man she had had sex with. #GoodLucktoYouLeoGrande

She hires the eponymous Leo Grande, a much younger male sex worker played by Daryl McCormack, to help her go through a list of the kind of sex she never had with her husband–a “fuck-it list,” as he calls it. feministgiant.com/p/the-fuck-it-…

When I left my ex-husband, who was only the second man I had had sex with, I started keeping a “fucked them” list. I would write in the back of a notebook the first letter of the name of every man I had sex with after my divorce. #GoodLucktoYouLeoGrande

I was not keeping score of the proverbial “notches on my belt,” but tracking instead my progress in unclasping patriarchy’s hold of sexual shame on me. I was fucking the guilt out of my system.

feministgiant.com/p/the-fuck-it-… #GoodLucktoYouLeoGrande

I recognize Nancy's determination finally to own desire.

Had I followed the rules–or more honestly, had I continued following the rules, because I did obey, for a long time–I would have been Nancy. Who among us is raised to desire?feministgiant.com/p/essay-my-des… #GoodLucktoYouLeoGrande

I know what it’s like to feel you were robbed of something vital—desire and pleasure—and to reckon with what feels like a second theft so to speak as peri/menopause rearranges your sex drive.
feministgiant.com/p/moisturize-y… #GoodLucktoYouLeoGrande

It matters little that this woman of my generation--Nancy--was born in England & not Egypt because patriarchy carries its straitjacket on female desire around the world with the ease of a traveler holding a NEXUS security clearance. feministgiant.com/p/the-fuck-it-… #GoodLucktoYouLeoGrande

“Bitch” and “cunt” are not the worst things you could call a woman. Selfish is. Knowing what you want and taking it is filed under “selfish” in patriarchy’s dictionary. #GoodLucktoYouLeoGrande

And by the time we meet Nancy, she is a woman determined, finally, to be selfish.

I cried as my selfishness met hers, as I recognized the heady terror of being done, finally, with obeying.

Read the rest of my essay here feministgiant.com/p/the-fuck-it-…

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