This is an edited extract from SLUTDOM: Reclaiming Shame-Free Sexuality by Dr Hilary Caldwell (out now through UQP, RRP $34.99).

Sex should be good for everyone. SLUTDOM argues for a world without sexual shame where you can get what you need – and deserve. Delving into topics such as pleasure, pain and empowerment, SLUTDOM is controversial, celebratory and courageous.

Content warning: This excerpt discusses fatphobia, sexual harassment and assault.

Fat-shaming involves criticising and harassing overweight people about their weight, eating habits or sexuality to make them feel ashamed of themselves. It is another patriarchal weapon used to literally try to shape people, to try to shape women into ‘appropriate’ objects of men’s desire.

I listened to a great podcast, Wonderfully Done, from sex-positive, body-neutral activist Victoria Kershaw. I later asked her how slut-shaming and fat-shaming has affected her. She says feelings of shame about her body used to interrupt her every day in every way. Her negative self-talk took a lot of time and energy.

She says, ‘Your brain is your epicentre of decision making, and if you are playing the “I’m fat, ugly and bad” tape, that is what your life is going to be.’

Victoria realised that although other people’s negative comments and other messages she received were the cause of her self-talk, she was the one who maintained it. She tried to make herself smaller to take up less space in the world. It had a huge impact on her sexually.

Victoria discovered that being outwardly super-cute, joyful, bubbly and hyper-sexy was a way to make herself feel great and garnish positive attention. She also noticed that sex was something that other people were ashamed to talk about.

Sex seemed pretty benign as a shameful act when being big was such a crime, and as she talked more openly to peers about sex, her interest in it and its relationship to fatness grew.

On nights out, drunk men would push their erections into her body in crowded spaces. She dressed sexy but it was almost like she was apologetic, trying to make up for being fat.

Groups of men would target her friends, practically sexually assaulting them as was normal in the subculture, but ignore her as a person. When she did go home with someone for sex, she felt she had to hold the fatphobia of others. She had to make them feel okay about being with her. She had to give great sex. ‘These were unpleasant times,’ she says.

Some of her partners might have genuinely been interested in bigger bodies but weren’t ready to own that. Deep inside, Victoria felt unattractive; she still wasn’t having sex naked, and her internalised fatphobia prevented her from being truly fabulous.

Sorting all this out led Victoria to think about sex a lot, she realised she was queer and she managed to work the subject of sex into several different university assignments. For her major, her project started out exploring sex but then just morphed into ‘women’s feelings of obligation for sex on a night out drinking’.

Does this sound familiar to any teachers or students reading this?

I remember that I managed to sway some college assignments to be about sex and even did one on sex work. University is the perfect place for learning about the world and where we exist within it.

Victoria says the stereotypes of fat women were that they were desperate, would fuck anyone and do anything. She realised she did have some elements of being grateful for different types of attention.

Victoria was internet dating long before Tinder became a thing. She included meet-ups for sexual encounters as an interest in her dating app and put up some provocative photos. Within days, she was swamped with over one thousand messages!

The men who wanted sex from these dating apps spoke in a business way. Ordering her to do this and that, as if she was a blow-up doll for them to penetrate. They had no interest in her pleasure, and she wasn’t in a position to ask for things that interested her.

Men treated her badly for being fat and also for refusing to shave her vulva. They came, lasted a short time, fell asleep and she lay there, wet, unfulfilled and staring at the ceiling.

These experiences did not help her feel good about herself.

All this talking and thinking about sex helped Victoria look at herself in the mirror. Here she practised thinking and talking to herself in positive ways. She practised taking sexy photos and wearing sexy underwear.

At first, all the photos featured her sexy tits, but soon she progressed to other great curves like bits of skin around her waist.

Victoria describes this conscious process of changing her thinking as really hard work and something she had to do to own the exhibitionist inside her.

Online spaces were a place where Victoria could adopt a different persona. She was still herself but without the shaming bullshit she was trying to escape in her real world.

‘Dating apps are tricky places to be if you’re a straight woman,’ she says. ‘People’s behaviour gets magnified.’

In online spaces, Victoria knows she is a commodity in short supply. And she expects men to care about her sexual pleasure and be open to playing the way she likes. She likes to fuck on the first date so she knows if there is any chemistry worth investing her emotion in.

Now, after she has good sex, her eyes sparkle with sexy confidence.

Victoria says there is plenty of hope for bigger women, giving TikTok as an example that has been fun, with lots of fat women posting proudly and other women loving them while defending them from men who seek to shame.

No longer does she feel she needs to shrink herself; to feel guilt for taking up space.

The disconnection she felt from her body is gone. Sex helped her feel, and later yoga helped her connect to the whole. She no longer looks down when walking past men. And she loves living loudly as herself.

Body-shaming has many widely discussed negative effects on people’s socialising and eating habits. The negative sexual effects of body-shaming are not part of mainstream conversation, although they are the most damaging because our sexuality forms part of our identity.

Negative body image is associated with less sexual satisfaction, because while we worry about what we look like, we are not paying attention to bodily sensations.

Our bodies belong to us, and all of us should have the capacity to be able to enjoy them.

SLUTDOM: Reclaiming Shame-Free Sexuality by Dr Hilary Caldwell (out now through UQP, RRP $34.99).