Now With Strength: Feminist Fitness

Feminist, Sexy, and Strong.

I'm launching this blog with some good news! I am now a Mossa Certified "Group Power" instructor! This may seem like an odd start to a blog by Feminist Slut, but actually, it's perfect. Although I've done sex education my entire adult life, the fitness education is much, much newer. In fact, I didn't really start working out with regularity until the Fall of 2022. I mean, I had started "working out" many times in my life, but nothing really stuck. Life would get busy, and I would, again, deprioritize my body.

I don't think there was any clear single reason my fitness experienced changed so radically in 2022; rather, multiple forces seemed to converge as just the right time and place. After being institutionalized for a psychiatric breakdown in August, I had just been diagnosed as bipolar. While the diagnosis was not particularly surprising, it cut hard after decades of being misdiagnosed and mistreated as depressed, anxious, obsessive compulsive, etc. In addition, perimenopause had hit my mind and body like it was wildfire. In fact, perimenopause is probably also the reason I finally got diagnosed as bipolar. It made bipolar "bloom" more visibly if you will.

So when I walked into that "Group Power" class at my local Y, it truly was an act of desperation. Bipolar gets worse with age. 30% of bipolar people die by suicide. And I was eyeing 50 years old, and just starting the medication/treatment journey. I didn't want to die, but was finally wide awake to the fact that I was running toward that statistic line if I did nothing.

That first class sucked, like really, really sucked. I was completely shocked and horrified how little I could do. While Group Power is a strength training class, the moves are intended to be functional. So, one of the core exercises as laying all the way down on your stepper and then rolling up to standing. I could not do that. Another one, aptly named the "mobility squat," involved opening your hips and squatting all the way down as if you were using the bathroom over a pit. I could not do that. In fact, I could not move in many of the ways the class was choreographed.

I actually think my utter disgust and horror about where I was physically got me to that second and third class, which were not much better. But, they were slightly better. I could do a little more, and I couldn't deny that. I also liked the music...lifting weights and moving to the rhythm felt amazing. That first bicep track was set to "Enter Sandman" by Metallica--I'm not even a huge fan, but I felt that sound energize my muscles, and it was both empowering and soothing. And, even though I didn't really talk to them, I had started to grow curious about the others that showed up in class. I was fascinated with the sheer diversity of age, body size/shape, race, and gender in the class.

By the third week, my confidence had grown because I knew the routine in class, and I was already seeing what gym folk call "gains." One morning I just sat up in bed. Like, without hands, or grunts, or swaying to the side to get the momentum. I just...sat up! I still couldn't roll up to standing (that was much longer coming), but I fucking sat up in bed!

This increased core strength and general ability to move a little more freely also translated--within that first month--to better sex. I could get in and hold positions more easily, and the core toning had started to make my orgasms feel deeper and stronger. Now this really fascinated me. I had lost no weight, like at all. I looked no different naked. But I fucked different. This, my slutty feminist friends, engaged my sex-philosopher mind. How could I already be feeling different inside, with no visible changes? I thought I had to look a certain way, be a certain weight, in order to feel the difference.....and it wasn't true!?

That third week went into the second month, and my body awareness got even deeper. As I reflected, I realized just how strongly I had favored my mind over my body all my life. I'm a nerd. I find thinking physically pleasurable. With no natural sport talent, I was assigned early as "the brain." And, I'm a disability-informed sex educator; For decades, I had emphasized that the mind is the biggest sex organ, almost as if the body is unnecessary to pleasure. I had so strongly lived in my mind that I had assigned my body as the necessary, but annoying appendage. I had to feed it to keep my mind going, but I barely even slowed down for that. Seriously, to this day I prefer smoothies and nutrition that I can drink through a straw while walking or driving. Chewing is simply too slow and inefficient, especially when I'm in a bipolar jag.

But by my 40s, my body wasn't staying silent any longer. In fact, it was raging.

Group Power channeled that rage, but also grew a new energy in my body. As I got more and more connected to my body, my sexual confidence and sexual pleasure continued to grow in spades. Eventually the weight started to fall off my body as well, but that had become irrelevant. By then, I had already realized that I didn't have to start with a certain body to feel immense sexual pleasure; I could feel it in the body I had, if I moved it. That felt radical-- much different than my previous approach to sexuality. I'm pretty sex motivated and love a good research project, so I was finally hooked. What could my body do? How is my body related to sex and pleasure?

Fast forward to March 2025 and I am now certified to teach the class that started this whole journey! I have learned so much about how body movement and fitness relate to sex/sexuality, and this has radically reframed how I think about and teach about sex/sexuality. I still think our culture puts too much emphasis on the body. I still think the pressure to look a certain way or move a certain way, as a prerequisite to a sex life, is bullshit. But now I see the body as also a source of sexual strength. Not a future body you'll get with health and fitness; rather, the body you have now. I understand better, now, that I have to engage it, move it (in any way), challenge it, and let it talk with my mind to tap that sexual pleasure....but I don't have to change it.