Sex and intimacy coach Annette Benedetti writes about pleasure beyond the male gaze
IMAGE BY PIXELSHOT/CANVA
The male gaze doesn’t need a man in the room. It’s the voice in your head that says your pleasure exists to turn someone else on. That it should look sexy, sound right and that you need to finish on cue. That if your body isn’t performing — even for an imaginary audience — it doesn’t count. I didn’t realise I’d internalised that belief until New Year’s 2022, when I committed to experiencing one orgasm every day for an entire year. It started as a challenge. It became a reckoning.
By week three, I’d become the nagging partner in my own sex life. When are you going to do it? It’s time to do it. My inner voice sounded like every man who’d ever rushed me. I was rigid in bed, jaw clenched, rubbing my clit like I was finishing a chore. I timed myself. I rated my orgasms. I wondered if they were “good enough” even though no one else was there. I was my own worst lay.
So I tried something radical: I moved my hips the way I wanted to. I breathed how my body needed to breathe. I made noise, not the performed moans I’d offered partners, but raw sound that came from my gut. I said the filthy things I’d only ever whispered to lovers, out loud, to no one but myself. I stopped performing and started feeling. That’s when my body woke up. I discovered internal orgasms I didn’t know I could have. The G-spot lit up. Then the A-spot. Then blended, full-body waves I’d only ever faked. The orgasms I’d rated 7s at the start of the year were actually 4s. I hadn’t known what I was missing because I’d spent my entire adult life having orgasms for someone else.
Then I went through a breakup. The grief was unbearable. The last thing I wanted was to touch myself. But I was five months in, the longest I’d kept any resolution. So, I went through the motions. What happened next changed everything. Seconds after I came, I started crying. Not sad crying, but something deeper. That orgasm cracked open a door I’d locked a lifetime of pain behind. Abandonment. Shame. Childhood sexual assault I’d survived. It all poured out — tears, snot, sounds I’d never made. And for the first time in my life, I felt overwhelming love for myself, my inner voice saying, “Annette, I’m so sorry that happened to you. You’re amazing.”
Day after day, orgasm after orgasm, I grieved. I healed. I was rebuilding trust with my own body, which was in turn helping me to become my most powerful self. I learned to make love to myself, not perform for an invisible audience. I discovered that pleasure, when it’s truly yours, can move trauma through you in ways talk therapy never could. That’s the power the patriarchy doesn’t want women to know we have.
Pleasure isn’t frivolous. It’s not selfish. It’s not something we perform to soothe a man’s ego. Pleasure is how we come back to ourselves. It’s how we process grief, reclaim our bodies, and heal our relationship with ourselves. Which is why in 2026, I’m guiding other women through this same journey, but without the pressure. 365 Days of Orgasms: Pleasure Is the Resolution isn’t about orgasming every day. It’s about choosing pleasure every day, rebuilding trust with your body and letting orgasms be healing, not performative.
When women stop having orgasms for the male gaze and start having them for themselves, everything changes. Their confidence returns and their boundaries sharpen. Desire becomes information, not obligation. Relationships deepen because we’re no longer abandoning ourselves. This isn’t self-improvement; this is reclamation, and it starts the moment you decide your pleasure belongs to you.
Follow @Annettebenedetti on Instagram for weekly lessons, practice and daily prompts.
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