Being a starfish in the bedroom is an act of feminism

Hear me out. 

Laura Roscioli is a Melbourne-based sex writer and host of the podcast The Sex That Changed My Life. Her monthly column on Fashion Journal is here to make sex (and the conversations around it) more accessible and open-minded. She believes the best learning comes from lived experience, and she’s here to share hers – and other people’s – with you. 

“She’s such a starfish” was a phrase I heard often in high school and early adulthood. It always referred to a woman and it was always a negative. In fact, I only ever heard it come out of a man’s mouth. In short, it means a lazy lover: someone who just lies there, like a ‘starfish’, throughout the act.

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I never thought much of it at the time. I wasn’t worried about being called a starfish because I was always very active during sex. But now I wonder whether my desire to attend to my lovers’ needs so diligently came, at least in part, from this idea that doing ‘nothing’ in bed – especially as a woman – was somehow bad. I’m almost certain it did.

So the other night, in a hotel room with my boyfriend, I did something radical. I did nothing at all.

Let me explain. He really wanted to have sex. I could feel his desire emanating off him like body heat on a hot summer’s day, but I was still recovering from the flu and didn’t have the energy to jump him. And then I realised, somewhat suddenly: maybe I didn’t have to.

“I’d be into having sex,” I told him. “But only if I can lie here and do absolutely nothing.”

“I’m so fine with that,” he replied, completely unfazed.

Even still, there was something about the idea that made me tentative and a little nervous. Just lying there, not performing, not attending to his needs. Part of me worried he wouldn’t find me sexy if I wasn’t riding him, jumping into a new position every five minutes or giving an enthusiastic blowjob.

But truthfully, my body was too tired to care. So instead, I encouraged myself to lie still and let myself be attended to.

Once the initial strangeness wore off, starfish sex with my boyfriend became extremely relaxing. I found that the motion of missionary sex is almost like being rocked to sleep if you totally soften into it. So I decided to lean into that feeling. I got really visual with it.

I imagined myself suspended from the ceiling in a huge, womb-like hammock, being fucked. I let my body hang, the way they instruct you to in a yoga warm-up or cool-down. I felt the bed beneath me and let my entire weight sink into it.

As I lay there in total bliss, suspended in my imagination, safe, held and sexually satisfied, it occurred to me how often we think of sex as hard work. In that moment, I discovered it could also be restful. It could give energy rather than take it away.

In a way, I knew this already. I’ve had sexual experiences that have brought me back to life, lifted a dark cloud on a sad day or put a bit of pep in my step. But I’d always gone into those experiences with the energy to have sex in the first place.

Until this moment, I think I’d thought of sex as something you go after: something you do when you already feel sexy, energetic and horny. The idea that sex itself might make you feel those things was foreign to me. So was the idea that ‘good sex’ didn’t necessarily need to be active sex.

And I’ll be honest, the idea of being a starfish with someone who isn’t my boyfriend still feels mortifying to me. I’m not sure I’d be able to do it. But why is that? Why can’t we just do nothing during sex sometimes? What is so bad about that?

I guess this shame is hardly surprising. Mainstream depictions of sex, whether in porn, film or TV, tend to sell us the same version: passionate, steamy, extremely active, somewhat violent. Getting pushed onto the bed. Pulling hair. Grabbing at clothes. Even in slower, ‘love-making’ depictions, women are moaning, grabbing sheets, biting their lips. Sex is almost always portrayed as something you throw yourself into.

For me, there’s also the idea of being empowered during sex as a woman. As someone whose first sexual experience was nonconsensual, I understand this deeply. For most of my twenties, I approached sex with vigour and control because I think I wanted my power back. Being dominant in the bedroom made me feel strong. It helped me feel that I could reclaim what had been taken from me.

But it’s been over a decade since that experience, and I’ve healed the part of me that felt her agency had been taken away. Sex, like it so often does, acts as a mirror for whatever you’re going through. And right now, I feel comfortable, safe and relaxed. So much so, that I guess it felt like the right time to try being a starfish.

I think there’s another layer to this, too: female emotional labour. In heterosexual relationships, women are so often expected to anticipate, manage and attend to other people’s needs — at work, in relationships and within families. Lately, there’s been a very public pushback against that expectation. Perhaps, subconsciously, some of that is making its way into my sex life too.

My last relationship felt extremely imbalanced in this regard. I left it and felt exhausted for months afterwards, as though my emotional energy had been completely drained. That experience, combined with the cultural conversation happening now, makes doing ‘nothing’ as a woman feel incredibly horny.

If I was going to be a starfish, I decided, I was going to do it with pride.

I stopped scrutinising how my body looked, what noises I was making or whether I was in a ‘flattering’ position. I even stopped caring about my boyfriend’s pleasure for a moment. If he wanted validation or enthusiasm, he wasn’t going to get it. This was about rest, not emotional labour. This was about me.

And I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that I had the biggest orgasm from penetrative sex I’ve ever had. I went somewhere I’d never been before, my mind almost hallucinatory. I’ve heard orgasm described as this suspension between ecstasy and reality, but I’d always assumed it was a mad exaggeration. Turns out, it exists.

Who would’ve thought? Relaxing your body and mind completely, stripping away all the expectations placed on you by society and past lovers, and simply letting yourself receive… might lead to total bliss!

But of course this happened. I’d taken all the pressure off myself and off sex itself. I let myself feel exactly how I felt, and I let sex — and my partner — meet me there. I communicated what I wanted, and then I lay there and received it. I gave my body what it wanted; it rewarded me for it.

I think listening to our bodies and following their instincts during sex is one of the most radical things we can do. In a world that has so consistently taught women that other people’s desire and pleasure are ours to manage, perhaps the challenge is to take that pressure off and let the kind of pleasure we desire come to us.

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