Julianne Daly - Bare: Irish Womens Sexual Fantasies

Shawna Scott Sex Siopa

As the American owner of a progressive Ireland-based online sex shop, one question I get asked more than almost any other is, So how does Ireland compare to America in terms of sexuality and sexual liberation? When I hear this, I sometimes wonder if the questioner is looking for a confirmation bias, someone from the outside to say, Yes. Im afraid its true. Irish people suffer from a terminal case of repression, and Americans are over there in a circle giving each other erotic massages while sipping tantric lattes.

However I dont really know if I can answer that question with the complexity it deserves. When I told my boyfriends father that I was contributing to a book about Irish womens sexuality, he kindly reminded me, Youre totally unqualified to write this piece. You didnt grow up here, and you certainly didnt live through a time when the Church had complete control of the country.

I kind of agree with him. There is no way I could speak on behalf of all Irish women and say definitively that they are one way or another. To do so would be foolish and ignorant. While oppression from the British and the Church has most certainly shaped the cultural landscape of the country, the women I encounter in my work do not fit into any typical box or demographic. The women that I speak to come who come to Sex Siopa come here for a wide variety of different reasons. In the past week alone, Ive received emails and phone calls from women all over the country. One was a university student, a first-time buyer, who had no idea where to begin or what kind of toy would suit her. Another was a woman who suffers from vaginismus and was referred to me by her physiotherapist. One woman wanted to know what the best vibrator was for someone post menopause. I had another customer who gave her submissive boyfriend a shopping list, because she was far too much of a goddess to be dealing with online shopping. Shes kind of my hero now.

With such a broad spectrum in just a seven-day period, I would argue that there is greater diversity in female sexuality here in Ireland than there are differences between Irish and American female sexuality, but, sadly, weve gotten a raw deal from our national media, who have a terrible habit of depicting women either as lovely girls or scantily-clad photocall models hanging out in St Stephens Green, and nothing in between.

Despite this, in many ways, the Irish are a lot more liberal and progressive than we give ourselves credit for. Take, for example, our average age of first marriage, compared to America. According to a report from the Central Statistics Office in 2013, the average age for women in Ireland to get married is 32.6. However when you look at the US census, you get a radically different picture. In my home state of Washington, its twenty-six. In the Mormon-dominant state of Utah, its twenty-three!

I grew up in a conservative pocket of an otherwise decidedly liberal state. And, while urban Seattle lies just forty minutes north of my parents home in the town of Puyallup, it seemed almost impossible to escape the small-town culture. The girls I grew up with and even I sometimes had very narrow plans for our lives. Wed go to college, meet the man of our dreams there, and get married after graduation. When I was in my final year in school, I argued with my twenty-one-year-old boyfriend, because he was still living with his parents and not going to college. This was unheard of in our town at the time. How could he possibly be marriage material if he doesnt have his own place? I thought to myself at eighteen.

Its pretty clear from looking at the census data that one of the reasons why the age of first marriage in some areas is so low is pressure from religious institutions to stay chaste until marriage. I have friends from school who have openly told me that the reason they got married so young was because they couldnt wait any longer to have sex. Purity rings and virginity pledges were commonplace in my school. If you ever wondered where the right-wing Catholic think tanks here in Ireland get their playbook from, look no further than the megachurches and the millennial youth groups of America.

Another surprising fact is that Irish people may have more sexual partners in their lifetimes than Americans do. In 2011, the Centers for Disease Control released a survey that showed that American men slept with an average of seven partners in their lifetimes and women only four (though it must be said I am not entirely swayed by their data, as they only counted opposite-sex partners for the survey). In contrast, in 2013, the Herald and TodayFM conducted a survey that found that Irish people in their thirties have had an average of eight sexual partners. Another survey, quoted by the Irish Independent in 2010, put the number at eleven.

But the more the Internet connects the world, the more I see our two cultures melt together: Tinder and OKCupid are the preferred dating apps of choice in both countries; thanks to Netflix, much of our film and television is the same; people watching porn are generally all going to the same websites. Over the past ten years, we have begun to perceive the world through the same filters as our American counter-parts. While the idea of the tech industry homogenising the international community scares the bejaysus out of me, I can also see the good it has done. Blogs, forums, Twitter, and social media are being used for sexual education and to start sexual movements across the globe. When reproductive rights stories come out in the States, we hear about it here. Equally, our marriage referendum has been talked about all over the world.

Cultures merging and becoming homogenous between countries is sometimes seen as a bad thing, and I can understand why nobody wants everywhere to be the same, with the same shops, brands and looks everywhere. But as the differences between countries decline and barriers to communication are removed, something wonderful also happens. Our community, and the people with which we identify, becomes defined by who we are and who we know, and not necessarily by where we are. If you are a straight person in a heteronormative culture, thats not a big deal. But if you are not if you are LGBTQ, asexual, kinky, non-monogamous or anything else the feeling of connection that a global culture can give you, and the sense of belonging to a community of like-minded individuals is invaluable. Smaller niche groups can share experiences and knowledge globally and learn from one another and, as this process continues, I think well see that there is a much greater difference between individual womens sexual interests in any given country than there are differences between, for example, Irish and American female sexuality.

Female sexuality is much broader than many people realise, and we have the science to back this up. There is a great book called What Women Want, by Dr Jesse Bering. The wide variety of female desires covered in the scientific research he highlights is truly amazing, and you should all go read it after you finish this book. The parallels between the fantasies described by Irish women in Bare and some of what science is telling us about female desire and its range is quite fascinating. A lot of those studies were done in the US, so again this shows us that were similar in the vastness of our range of sexual interests.

I am so delighted to see a book like Bare being published in Ireland. It is rare to see a depiction of Irish women as three-dimensional, fully formed sexual beings, with unique thoughts, fantasies and desires, and even rarer to hear those stories told from the perspectives of the women themselves. My hope is that this book will not only serve as erotic entertainment, but encourage more women across all age groups to explore their sexuality and start conversations with their partners about what theyre into.