salty bake club

We Need Better Guides For Men To Live Their Sensual Power Safely

• sara grace • Season 1 • Episode 23

Share episode

Here is where you get in touch. Work with me, share your experience or requests > this is how to reach me. Love, - Sara

What if sexual energy wasn’t a performance or a problem, but a daily, human current running through how we taste, notice, and move? I open up about tears, third-trimester honesty, and a years-long journey of unlearning shame to name something bigger: our culture leaves men with few healthy guides to hold sensual power with care. Between the puffed-up macho act and the “safe” guy who goes numb, where’s the grounded middle—confident, ethical, and emotionally present?

We trace sensuality beyond the bedroom into ordinary life: sunlight on skin, the bite of ripe fruit, the way presence changes how we meet the world. I share gratitude for feminist pathways that helped many women reclaim agency and embodied confidence, and then ask the hard question—where are the mentors, communities, and stories that help men develop consent literacy, somatic awareness, and respectful desire without shame or bravado? We examine how caricatures of masculinity lead to harm or hollowness, and we sketch a third way built on boundaries, attunement, and accountability.

This conversation is part confession, part invitation. I talk about the fears and hopes of raising a son who can access sensual aliveness without turning it into control, and I ask for your lived examples: Who models healthy male sensuality? What practices build safety and depth at the same time? If you’ve seen this done well—or struggled to—your voice matters. Listen, reflect, and then share your story. If this resonates, follow the show, send this to a friend who’ll have thoughts, and leave a review with the best example of grounded sensual power you’ve witnessed.

SPEAKER_01:

Hey Big Club. I'm showing up with not a lot of life revelations or teachings today, but more questions than answers. Maybe this episode is really gonna reflect my state of mind because I don't know if you can tell if you watch this on YouTube. You may, but I have just cried for the last three hours. Welcome, third trimester. That's what I'm guessing. Yes, I might have been a little hormonal, but I do want to open this episode in giving you a little reminder that you do not have to feel perfect or be perfect or look perfect at all to show up. Even though I absolutely not feel at my best, there is a lot that I have to say. So I'm doing it anyway. And if I can do it, you can do it. Translate that into anything that you have been putting off for a while because you didn't think that you had enough vocabulary to it or all the resources that you would like to have and do it anyway. Because in this club, we're here for the beautiful imperfections of life. So let's practice them together. Now, yes, I have a really interesting thought, and it's nudging me to my core, and I cannot fully grasp it yet. As I said, I'm not gonna provide you much of the answer just yet, but I know that this episode will have a follow-up episode. Is it gonna be the next one? Maybe, maybe not. Let's see how much you guys are gonna be hooked on it and how much you actually help me because I need you here. It feels like I'm at a dead end with this thought. The last thing that I will say to intro this episode my recent three hours, my crying has nothing to do with what I'm gonna tell you. That was just a totally different topic and a lot of hormones, my people, a lot of um belly and pregnancy-related hormones. Now, let me give you a little insight on what I have been exploring as a woman in the past five to ten years. I grew up in this world thinking that I had to hide away my power, my worth, my confidence, and my sexuality. Me as a sexual being did not have any place in this society, or at least that was the very early on feedback that I got from my surroundings when I hit puberty. So I grew up hiding a lot of parts of my identity, hiding a lot of who I truly was. And very consciously mentioned power. We all, regardless of what gender we identify with, have a lot of power, inherent human power that we carry. And a big part of that inherent power is sexual power. Think of it like that. You have layers to your identification, to who you think you are, and that is uh a layer of intelligence, right? How you cope on a mental level, how intelligent you think you are, how eloquent you you talk, how social you are, how there's a there's an emotional layer of your being, and there are many more, but to get to the point, there's also a sexual energy inside you. And I'm not talking about only that energy that comes out when you make love to somebody. I'm talking about an inherent sexual energy that we all carry, whatever agenda we identify with. Now keep that in mind. A lot of us have been trained to hide that part in our society. Sexuality is not something that we typically speak about openly, that we learn to recognize as a part of ourselves. I think there is usually a lot of work required to bring up that part within yourself and to free that sexual energy within yourself, even. And once again, I'm not saying only to have a happy, healthy, exciting sex life. I'm speaking the sensuality in which you meet life. There is a certain sexuality in mundane things that have nothing to do with sex. So please let me know if I'm not being clear on that and if in the follow-up episode we should go deeper into the explanation of that. I hope you understand me though. We are humans entering this life in this body. We only have this body and these senses to experience life. So there's a lot of power and force and a lot of depth, I even want to say, to really fully and delicately sensually experience life. But again, a lot of us have completely forgotten that or haven't even had a chance to meet that part of themselves just yet in that lifetime. It doesn't really matter what part of the world you live in. Most cultures have categorically trained us to veil this part of ourselves because it's dirty, right? It's not something that will bring you towards a good life or towards gold. At least that's what the people of power will say. However, I don't want to spiral deeper into that. I personally have had a really rough and long unveiling of that part of myself so I can fully be myself, right? Because if you keep one part of yourself hidden away or locked in a little chamber, then you're never going to be fully free. You're never going to have access to your full power. And I wanna dive into a specific part of that power a little deeper. Now, as a woman, that journey had a lot to do with looking at shame, sitting with and recognizing my shame, noticing when it was something that has been put on me from the outside, and when it was something that I initiated or I kept feeding within myself as a response to life. And now I will say pregnancy has tipped off that being rooted in my sensual and sexual energy a little bit, but that once again is a whole different topic. But I came to a point in my life where I was one or at ease or a full flow of that sensual, sexual power within myself. And I will repeat myself over and over again. I'm not speaking only about in the bedroom, the power of me as a sensual sexual creature, meeting life, meeting mundane life situations, being aware of the curvature of my hips, and being aware of my many senses that tingle when the first sun rays meet me, or when I have a sible hawk a cow, or when I meet another being, and once again, without having to have anything to do with attraction, chemistry, sexual tension, there can be so much sensuality at play without it having to end in longing for procreation. Now tell me if that's something that you are aware of within yourself or not at all, because my oh my, I was not aware of that part of myself for such for the major part of my life. So in my womanhood, in my female power, I was very confident in walking this earth. And obviously, there is a lot of shit going down out there. There is a lot of slight shaming, accusation, there is a lot of actual danger as a woman if you are open about your sexuality and if you're not locking it away, if you're not hiding it. I want to recognize that danger because that's also part of why it's not easy to unveil that part within ourselves. But I do believe it's necessary if we want to experience ourselves fully as a full human being with this body, with this sexual energy that we all inherently have. I'm incredibly thankful for the generations of feminists that came before me that actually made it possible for me to be at this point and for all of us to be exploring these topics more openly. And since there has been such a strong feminist movement opening the gates for all of what I'm gonna say, I have had role models and I have had guides, whether that be in books or strong voices from the past, from my own lineage, friends, or family. I think it's safe to say that as women, we do have guides, even if there's not a lot of them, even if it's still a very shameful topic, but the conversation is there. And if you're looking for it, you will find those people and those guides that help you walk this path. But where is the space and the conscious guides for men to guide them to a place of living, their sexuality, their sensuality, and that power in a safe and conscious way? Now, this, my loves, is the turning point of this episode and the predicament of my thoughts, and I'm really wrestling with that thought because if I look at men out there, like I think we can agree on the fact that there is a lot of abuse of that power that I'm speaking about, this sensuality, this confidence in your sexual energy. I don't have to go a long way in telling you that this misuse of power is causing a lot of harm in our society, both for men and women and for people of the entire spectrum of genders. Where are the guides and the voices? Where are the conversations for men to educate them and to guide them in experiencing and living this power openly, freely, consciously, in a safe way? Because in reality, what I'm seeing out there is either overload of what I even want to call some artificial sexual tension, this macho play that so many men see as manly, that so many women also see as manly. Yeah, and if you're one of these women, don't get me wrong, like the definition of what is a man and what makes a man manly is something very personal. So, once again, I keep a big and wide gaze and appreciation for all sorts of views. And please let me know if you disagree on anything of that. I would actually love that because I, as I said, I'm I'm still wrestling with that thought. So there's this archetype of man out there who's overly portraying that sexual power and energy. And then there's a polar opposite type of men out there who actually lock away this part of themselves in order to be a safe place for women, and that's usually like God, I hate labels, but I'm gonna use it here. The good guys, right? If you identify as a female, now think of the men in your life, think of the matcha type of guys, the guys who come out as overly confident of what I just called this artificial confidence or this artificial use of that sexual power. And then there are these guys that feel really, really safe. I will argue that these type of guys feel that safe because they have locked away this sexual power, the tension, the energy, the sensuality that makes us females feel so unsafe. Because we're mostly confronted with the misuse of that power. But that doesn't mean that the power itself is bad. That doesn't mean that this sexual energy of a male is bad at all. No, it's something beautiful. Oh my god, why are there so many heterosexual people? Because we are acting on that male-female dynamic. And also please let me know if I'm absolutely uncorrectly using these terms here, and if I'm being not inclusive enough of the LGBTQ community, and if there's actually something that I'm not seeing because I'm so fixed on that gaze that I'm having, on that problem or that thought that I'm having. I will repeat myself, I'm at a dead end with this topic because wow, has it hit me that I myself was able to find guides and ways of unveiling and allowing this power within myself as a woman? But I'm not seeing that in many men out there. I'm seeing this power either being interpreted as something completely wrong and misusing that artificial confidence of sexual tension and energy, or having it all locked away so that we all can feel safe. So, where is the space for men to feel and live their natural sexual, sensual identity out there in this world that is so messed up because of the imbalance that we created, because of patriarchy, because we don't talk about this. And I think it's even more true for men that there is not a lot of education when they grow up on what's a good man. There's not a lot of good men out there portraying that. Oh my god, like don't get me wrong, I'm thinking of my father and my grandfather, and they are great men, obviously. I love them to their core, and I think they are good men, but they absolutely 100% fall short in modeling that dynamic of being a powerful sensual creature. I feel I just really feel like a lot of people have locked this part away. Of course, because of the misuse of power, it is so much more safe and so much more culturally acknowledged. That you can only be the father, or only be the teacher, or only be the whatever, you get the labels. And of course, I also will say that that sexual power and that tension and that energy doesn't have space in any field of life. Thinking of a child parent dynamic, there's obviously not the same space for that as in uh in a lover's dynamic or with friends, or just when you go out on the street and meet a stranger. But I will say, thinking that this little boy who's still in my womb, I I really want him to unconsciously witness the world and man out there being able to safely and freely live the sensual part of themselves. I want this little boy to have access to this part of himself when he grows up. As I said, it is not about procreation, sex, the tension between lovers. It is the sensual life force. It's when you bite into a pear and the fruity water is dripping with your mouth, and and oh my god, like how you're how the smell of fresh cut grass can cripple into your cells, and you know, that aliveness. That aliveness certainly has to do with your with you as a sensual and at parts even sexual being. Oh my god. I need you big club. I need you to have a conversation with me because this is important to me. Obviously, this is important to me for personal reasons, but also I mean, we live in a world that is so numb to this issue, and it cannot be that half the population either has to lock away that part of themselves in order to be a safe space for the other half of the population, or just relive these weird and really awful ideals of what we have portrayed for man to be manly. Ugh. So here's my call to action. I need you to tell me about your experience with the people that are not on the polar opposite of that spectrum that I just explained. You need to tell me if you have somebody in your life who's actually somewhere in the middle field of that. Um maybe you write into me as a female who had a crucial experience that you want to share that will also enlighten me a little bit. Or maybe, and I hope, I deeply, wholeheartedly hope that you write into me as a male explaining that struggle from the other side. I'm longing to know more, and I'm baffled that I've never thought about it before. How can we create more space for men to free all the parts of themselves? Where do we find guides for them so that they don't feel alone in this conversation? Oh, I have no idea if this episode was a lot of blabbering or if it actually makes sense. I'm having a little bit of a heavy heart. I appreciate each and every of your answers and response so so much. Oh, thank you for tuning in, Bay Club. I love you so much for spending some time with me and giving my word vomiting some space and some of your thoughts. Also, thank you for taking me as I am, sitting here in my PJs in my my super cozy thing, not bringing you any cake today. I hope you text me. Can't wait to read from you until next week. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I love you.