This is also true when young girls and boys are exposed to female-affirming messages. Artemis is about womankind and sisterhood. Medusa is the protectress of life on Earth, and Aphrodite addresses the sacred urge to merge. She is about reclaiming a much bigger experience of the erotic than is allowed by the patriarchy. Her knowledge originates in the ancient Tantric practices of sexuality, as a means not merely to orgasm, but to wisdom and ecstasy.
Fertility awareness is an essential part of reclaiming the sacred erotic and self-knowing.
Through attunement to our own bodies we needn't give our power to birth control pills, devices or surgery. Fertility awareness also includes men's attunement to women's bodies. In heterosexual coupling, which energetically is a manifestation of the will of life to create itself, the awareness of women's cycles can add a highly erotic charge to lovemaking while preventing superfluous peopling of the planet. The sanitized, medical version is also a distortion, making sexuality one-dimensional. The only language that comes close is poetry.