Female sexual liberation is only available in the free market

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We women have come a long way since we stopped blaming our desires on Eve biting the apple in the Garden of Eden. Sexual liberation has meant we can buy condoms, the Pill, men even realised that female orgasm isn’t a mental illness (yes, really).

We can buy sex toys on the high street thanks to Ann Summers and Selfridges, more clandestine pleasures can be delivered to your door from discreet online outlets. When The Sun said Britain should stop being so prudish, and published empowered page 3 girls it marked the end of sex being seen as taboo. To put it bluntly, sex sells.

Sex sells is all too often seen as being a one-way street. People exploited. But that isn’t the case. Women have come to realise and get what they want thanks to the makers and doers in our free market economy.

The industrial revolution gave us condoms. Rubber makers, importers, vulcanizers all working for profit meant women could have sex for fun, just like men. Far comfier than coral—used by women as contraceptive in Ancient Greece.

The Industrial Revolution, and the flowering of the free-market, also led to the creation of penicillin and the Pill. One pill led to the millions saved from syphilis. While the other Pill gave women control over their own bodies.

For centuries women have been sexually repressed and held back. By religion of course. The Catholic Church as it banned condoms, Islamic states see women treated as second class citizens, in Britain we used to burn and drown “witches”. Across the world, in every war it is women that lose. Rape and sexual assault are common across battlefields.

I think it’s fear that men have of women. Best put by William Golding in his words as he admitted: ‘I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men, they are far superior and always have been’.

Let’s call that what it is: bare faced sexism.

It’s normally governments or religions that are behind the squashing of women’s rights. I grew up in the Middle East. Behind closed doors women wanted to be free, but every bit of their lives was controlled and governed by prehistoric laws and customs not fit for the modern world.  

For hundreds of years there have been brave souls willing to write and describe female pleasure, even as far back as 1559 Realdo Columbo knew the clitoris was the “seat of a woman’s delight”. But all too often it’s taken a back seat to men’s desires.

When Killing Kittens launched our parties helping people embrace their sexuality in 2005 it was a heady time. Sex in the City was very much in, Ann Summers hit the high street, sex toys like Lelo were appearing on shelves in Selfridges and making it back to women’s bedrooms. A ‘female sexual revolution’ was being talked about in the papers.

The free press, a key ingredient of a free-market economy, has been essential in spreading ideas that have liberated women—it has acted as a vehicle for new ideas to spread. We saw this too in 2018 as the #MeToo movement gathered steam on Twitter. This wouldn’t happened and women wouldn’t be getting justice in places that ban these platforms and crackdown on free speech—the likes of China, Iran and North Korea.

While the press can talk about sex, and a good thing too, I fear women still think of their own sex lives as too taboo and hush-hush. Having a one-night stand are called ‘sluts’, but men who sleep around are ‘legends’. I hated this imbalance. I created Killing Kittens for this reason. Women should be in control, they should not be judged and they should be free to explore their sexuality safely.

I couldn’t have done this in the Middle East. I couldn’t have done it in any country that tells you what business you can conduct, who you can hire and what you can sell.

The good news is that more women are taking back control of their sex lives, and the free market is giving them that freedom. If we let our country fall back to the patriarchy, run by tired old men then we will live in a country that’s much more controlling and much less free. We must not let ourselves be put back by those that want to control our relationships, what we can say online, who want to say where we should work and how we should live.

The fire of freedom in our bellies has been lit, and we mustn’t let it burn out.

Emma spoke on this topic at the free-market think-tank, the Adam Smith Institute this month.

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