Interview of Esmé Louise James by Haylee Penfold
Sexuality for me has almost always been an act of defiance. A way for me to reclaim a body that once held so much trauma. For so long, my body almost didn’t feel like mine – it felt like a battleground, a place of memory, never one of pleasure. It took me a really long time to gain a sense of desire, one that wasn’t tainted by blurred boundaries and broken trust. So, when I started exploring my sexuality in my early twenties, it wasn’t about escaping the past, but rather learning how to hold power in my body again – on my own terms.
It’s this kind of sexual reclamation and liberation — deeply personal, deeply political — that drew Esmé Louise James to the study of sexuality and history. “It’s a privilege to live in a time where I can speak so openly,” Esmé shares, “there was a time when women were so heavily policed for this.”
Esmé is drawn to the hidden histories: the diaries, letters, and confessions of women who relished in their desires long before it was accepted or celebrated. In fact, she reminds us that prior to the 18th century, women were widely considered the hornier sex — a framing that speaks volumes about how societal narratives around female desire have been reshaped, silenced, and slowly reclaimed.
In today’s world, conversations about sex are more visible and accessible than ever — thanks largely to the reach of social media. Esmé highlights how powerful it is to find connection and community online, especially for those of us who didn’t grow up with open, healthy conversations around sexuality. For women like me, who never had those voices in the form of mothers, grandmothers, or even close friends, finding those reflections in others, even strangers, can feel like both validation and revelation.
Over the last century, sexual liberation has evolved from quiet rebellion to full-blown movement. Women reclaiming pleasure and finding power in it is, as Esmé puts it, an act of feminist resistance in itself. I know this firsthand. For me, learning how to want, how to feel without shame, has been both a reckoning and a reclamation. But that reclamation isn’t always easy. it demands consent, communication, and deep trust. It requires us to ask hard questions: What do I want? What don’t I? Where are my edges? For many of us, the answers don’t come all at once. They unfold slowly, in layers, as we learn to listen to ourselves with compassion – maybe for the first time.
Esmé points to the recent backlash against pop artist Sabrina Carpenter as a stark example of the double standards still at play. For her upcoming release, Man’s Best Friend, Sabrina revealed an album cover featuring her on all fours, a man standing beside her, gripping a handful of her hair. The internet lit up — not with praise, but with condemnation. Headlines claimed she was “setting feminism back,” accusing her of pandering to the male gaze.
As Esmé puts it, we’re still haunted by the same narratives from hundreds of years ago — where women were seen as “lustful, deviant creatures” for daring to own their desire. Perhaps this was exactly what Sabrina wanted to portray, a reflection of how society still polices and punishes women who promote their sexuality. Maybe it was her way of sparking a conversation about where our limits of empowerment and liberation truly lie. Either way, the album became a mirror, forcing us to confront the contradictions in our own beliefs about women’s freedom. It revealed how easily collective support can crumble when a woman’s expression no longer feels “comfortable” or “palatable.” And that tension between the freedom we claim to support and the boundaries we enforce is at the heart of every woman’s journey toward their own liberation.
When I asked Esmé what liberation feels like to her, she said it’s the freedom to express and give yourself permission to feel empowered, to allow ourselves to want and desire. To feel that for yourself can be a journey on its own, but when you find it, Esmé says, it paves the way for others.
I’ve felt my own journey shape shift over the years. Healing from my past taught me that desire and safety can coexist. That pleasure doesn’t have to be earned. Becoming a mother has led me on a path of rediscovering this side of myself again, all while learning to love a body I lost my sense of self in. I’ve learned that liberation isn’t a fixed point; it’s a practice, a process, an unfolding. Some days it looks like reclaiming my body, other days like resting in it. But each time I give myself permission to grow, to want, to change, I make more space—not just for me, but for the women who come after me, and the child I’m raising to believe in their own freedom to love too.
