On Your Knees Video will premiere on Youtube on Tuesday, February 16, 2016. You will be able to watch it here!
Or on Lisa’s Youtube Channel
I remember lying on the beach with my twenty one year daughter at the time. She’s a big rap fan and we were listening to one song after another about guys telling girls how they want them to go down on them.
I said to my daughter, “It’s all about blow jobs! What about the pussy?”
And my daughter was like, “Ew Mom no!”
Her reaction confused and inspired me to write a song about “going down” from the ladies perspective.
When I first shared my rap song with girlfriends, everyone was like, “You gotta make a video!” and “I wanna be in it!”
“Two days before rehearsal, all but three of my dancers bailed on me.”
Six months later, when I had rounded up funding and a tech crew, we were scheduled to meet for our first rehearsal. Two days before rehearsal, all but three of my dancers bailed on me. Each one had her own good reason. One’s boyfriend strongly objected. Another one’s business manager warned that the project didn’t match her branding and she’d be risking professional suicide. Another woman gave me a speech about how her sexuality was sacred and how she didn’t feel like she would be honoring it if she participated in the project. (Note: She was the first to say “Fuck yeah!” when I put out the casting call). Yet another older dancer (because I wanted to have women of different ages and body types in the video) was afraid of looking foolish. Naively, I didn’t know there was a cut off age for women expressing their sexuality.
The overwhelming change of heart was discouraging to say the least. I felt a big wobble, as an artist, but more importantly as a teacher of women’s sexuality. Was I way off base with this particular project? Was I dishonoring women rather than empowering them?
Originally, I came up with the lyrics as a satirical, feminine response to the male dominated rap scene. Similar to Amy Shumer’s Milk Milk Lemonade, I wanted the dancers to both mimic and mock dancers in mainstream rap videos. On a more serious side, though, my dirty words are not just meant to shock, but to inspire more women to claim their own sexual desire and its full expression, rather than just settle for being objects of male desire.
“Some women like it when their man talks dirty to them, but confess to feeling shy or unable to talk dirty back.”
The resistance I’ve experienced in making this video has led me to question the deeper significance of talking dirty. And why slinging the slang seems to be more acceptable for men than women. In my sex work with hetero couples, for example, the dirty talker is almost always the man. Some women like it when their man talks dirty to them, but confess to feeling shy or unable to talk dirty back. Men, on the other hand, love it when women talk dirty. Which makes me wonder why we hold back. What are our subconscious beliefs around talking dirty? What makes some parts of our sexuality sacred and other parts not?
In my sexuality workshops with women, I have an exercise where I give women dirty phrases to say to one another. At first, women protest. “I can’t say this!” they laugh. “This just isn’t me.”
I encourage them to act as if – to find the aspect of the Goddess who isn’t afraid to talk dirty, who is unabashed in her sexual expression. I encourage them to play with their tone of voice, facial expressions and body language until they can say not only say the words, but feel and embody them.
The exercise ends when the witnessing woman fully believes the speaking woman, which is when both of them feel turned on in their bodies.
This is not just adrenaline – this is life times of suppressed sexual energy being released, which can cause everything from infertility to disease to low libido. Women feel a sense of liberation after participating. They not only feel more sexually empowered, they feel more aliveness in their bodies.
On Your Knees is my sassy girl way of not just giving it back to the guys, but inspiring all women to embrace and express our desire at its primal roots.
“…when a woman can claim her dirty talking Desiress, she ups her ability to magnetize success and abundance, as well as sexual pleasure.”
Knowing that desire, on the deepest level, is our power to magnetize and direct creational energy – that our desire is interconnected, from its sexual base to the highest reaches of the soul – I’d even go so far as to say that when a woman can claim her dirty talking Desiress, she ups her ability to magnetize success and abundance, as well as sexual pleasure.
A year after its conception, I rounded up another team of brave women and a stellar tech crew and finally produced On Your Knees for V day 2016!
My dream is to be in the middle of a dance floor, surrounded by my sisters rapping the lyrics back and forth to each other and our brothers, claiming our desire and taking a stand for our own pleasure.
Lastly, in my mission to deobjectify the feminine, I’ve been accused of objectifying the masculine. Yeah? So? We think your asses are just as hot as ours.
