A Caring Sexual Ethic

Skyler Outler #36.3


Art by Trenity

A Caring Sexual Ethic Skyler Outler

University of North Florida

Introduction:

The goal of this paper is to abandon the traditional approach to sexual ethics that focuses on justifying sexuality, sexual deviances, and perversions by highlighting sameness in their attempt to be ethical. This reduction to sameness neglects the social aspect of ethical reasoning and decision-making, as it ignores the relationality we have with others and rarely tasks us to be good towards them. Through this, it fails to provide a practical ethical framework. Instead, the ethic that I am proposing values the alterity of others, prioritizes care, and recognizes the relational aspect of our sexual experiences. This revision of sexual ethics will first go in depth about the current sexual ethic and its downfalls. Then I will combine Feminist Care Ethics with Emmanuel Levinas’s concept of the “Other” in Totality and Infinity to create a sexual ethic that focuses on “A relationship with the Other that does not result in divine or human totality, that is not a totalization of history but the idea of infinity.” (Levinas 52). Through this, I will provide real-life examples and applications of this ethic. I hope this reformulation doesn’t just bring improvement and flourishing in our sex lives, but also challenges us to be good to one another, not despite our differences, but in recognizing them.

Analysis of Current Ethical Approach:

The current ethical outlook follows the Ethics of Justice approach that relies on universal norms based on rights, fairness, and equality. The Ethics of Justice’s main focus is upholding an individual’s rights through the universality of principles. This follows the ethics of Kant, Rawls, and other philosophers who base morality and ethical decision-making solely on reason and an ideal model of humanity. This ethical approach is solely concerned with the rights that a person has, and views ethical decision-making as “Conflicts between egoistic individuals’ interests on the one hand, and universal moral principles on the other.” (Held 12). Furthermore, this outlook views personhood to be identical as it is based on universality. Even though this attempts to promote equal treatment, it ignores the nuances and complexities that should be considered in ethical decision-making involving others. This Ethic attempts to promote equality strictly through laws and rules has downfalls such as objective blindness. This ignores that person’s unique circumstances and only acknowledges the rights violated. The American Judicial system prides itself on this, with the depiction of Lady Justice with a blindfold over her eyes. I find that this illustrates the valuing of laws and principles over the people to whom they are applied and ignores the effects of these laws. The ethics of justice have similarities to the first generation of human rights and can be seen to be founded in them. (Faust). The first generation of human rights protects individuals civilly, and politically, and like justice is applied universally. This universality strips away the characteristics that make up a human identity and views them solely as a legal subject. In this, it aids justice’s ability to enforce laws but the inability to sustain them, as it ignores the underlying causes of injustice and instances of inequality that can still be present even with these laws in place. Justice is shortsighted and it shows in laws and policies that don’t fix the root of issues. Justice prioritizes universal principles and rights of individuals, by doing so it ignores the relationality and mutual concern for the other. Feminist Care Ethics

Feminist Care Ethics is transformative as it lifts the veil of blindness from people’s eyes since it views people as “relational and interdependent, not rational agents of the perspective of justice and rights.” (Held. 72). In this ethical approach, care is a value and a practice. (Held 37, 39). Care is a value that we should strive to have and exhibit in our actions and practices, such as sensitivity, trust, mutual consideration, attentiveness, and responsiveness. The values of care are seen in caring practices, as they use these values to build relationships with others that are concerned with “The effectiveness of its efforts to meet needs, but also with the motives with which care is provided. It seeks good caring relations.” (Held 36). Caring practices don’t just uphold the values of care but are used to cultivate caring relations. Viewing care in this way dismisses the notion of care as a natural disposition and leads to the idea of care as a practice or skill that is perfected through caring relationships. Caring relationships are filled with mutual consideration and concern for others, as they often are in friendship, marriage, siblingship, parenting, and citizenship. For example, watching a movie in a public theater with others relies on practicing proper movie theater etiquette, such as not being on our phones, talking during the movie, or acts of PDA. This is a caring relationship as we are exhibiting the values of care such as consideration and sensitivity to others in this shared space through movie theater etiquette. This does not mean that care is something that you achieve once and stop practicing as relations never cease to exist. Relations are the way we live and form bonds with others without them society would fall.

I understand care as a practice and value through Aristotelian ethics, with the concepts of Energeia and Hexis. Energeia or “being at work” is working towards the “active condition” or Hexis, which is where the values of care are demonstrated in caring relationships with others. (Sachs 2002). The relational self within the ethics of care recognizes the underlying connections that are present between people even among strangers. “Those who conscientiously care for others are not seeking primarily to further their own individual interests; their interests are intertwined with the persons they care for. Neither are they acting for the sake of all others or humanity in general; they seek instead to preserve or promote an actual human relation between themselves and particular others.” (Held 12). Whether it is strangers in a movie theater, patrons in a store, or a loved one, these should be relations filled with trust, mutual consideration, and sensitivity.

The Two Sides of Totalization

Levinas talks about totalization in another way, in terms of relation. In this conception of the word, totalization is how we interact with objects and others in the world. “This refusal of the concept drives the being that refuses it into the dimension of interiority. It is out of home with itself. The I is the mode in which the break up of totality, which leads to the presence of the absolutely Other, is uncertainly accomplished.” (Levinas 118). This is how we should view others, not as an object through totality, but as a subject through alterity. Furthermore, we don’t seek to control the objects in the world but, simply enjoy them in their fundamental state of being. Levinas states, “Enjoyment is the ultimate consciousness of all the contents that fill my life- it embraces them.” (Levinas111). In this fundamental enjoyment of life, we depend on the “good soup” or the satisfaction of our needs that give us nourishment and this is how we enter into a relationship with the world and the Other. This “living from” creates the containment of the “I” or the separation of the “I” that allows the possibility for there to be an “Other” which is exterior to me. Totalization through relation is the interdependent and relational aspect that is discussed in Feminist Care Ethics. The need for the other is to have this sense of “I” that helps us know who we are. This relation to the Other happens in the shared world that the “I” is based on and where the other challenges the possessions of totalization. This conception of totalization views the Other as infinite, stating, “To think infinite, the transcendent, the stranger, is hence not to think an object.” (Levinas 49). Furthermore, the Other is filled with alterity that we acknowledge and uphold by being in a relationship with them while simultaneously experiencing our fundamental state of being.

Totalization and Possession within the Ethics of Justice

The Ethics of Justice is the current ethical outlook that is seen through the narrow lens of generalization and universality. An example of this is the “treat others the way you want to be treated” mindset that many of us were taught as young children. Through this, we learned to treat others in a way that upholds their rights because we wouldn’t want our rights violated. For example, if someone is playing with a toy that I want to play with, I shouldn’t take it from them because I wouldn’t want them to do that to me. We all have the right to play with our toys and this should be respected and upheld. If our rights are violated in any way we can do the same to them, and the mindset of doing good to others is gone. Even though this is meant to ensure fairness between others, it lacks the actual understanding, care, and vulnerability that is required for caring relations and long-term human and social development. I see gender roles as a form of generalizations as they reinforce strict rules and boundaries that make us feel obligated to act a certain way according to these strict rules. This generalization of the other through gender also mirrors the Ethics of Justice and the aspect of totalization through possession that Levinas described. We do not see the Other but understand them like a concept that I can apply ideas, rights, and rules that allow me to view and treat them as an object. To illustrate these points further, I am going to use the pro-life argument to illustrate the Ethics of Justice, how the recent overturning of Roe V. Wade in the American Supreme Court has a general and totalizing view of women, and how this has impacted the way we view and treat the Other in the context of a sexual ethic.

The aspect that separates pro-life and pro-choice is the understanding of care and justice. Pro-lifers view the issue of abortion through the lens of rights as the most important thing is the “right” of the fetus and they believe that pro-choicers are against the right to life. Although I am pro-choice myself, I am not against the right to life, but I am against putting the “rights” of the fetus over the care that is required for the survival of the fetus and eventual child, which is not going to be provided by anyone else besides the person in gestation or the people raising the child after birth. In Coming to Life, Bertha Alvarez Mannien writes an essay on the dichotomy between pro-life and pro-choice. She includes the philosopher Judith Jarvis Thomson and her article A Defense of Abortion with her infamous violin and kidney example, quoting the article, “I am not arguing that people do not have a right to life…. I am arguing only that a right to life does not guarantee having either a right to be given the use of or a right to be allowed continued use of another person’s body— even if one needs it for life itself. So the right to life will not serve the opponents of abortion in the very simple and clear way in which they seem to have thought it would.” (Mannien 171-192). This “right” that is argued for, that a fetus has to my body for development and eventual birth can be seen as totalization through possession, as I am reduced to my body and how it can benefit the fetus. In this view, pregnancy is something that is required of women’s bodies and ignores the array of emotions that pregnancy can have. These emotions and feelings are what will create relations between the fetus and the person, which will manifest in practices of care such as taking prenatal vitamins, not smoking, drinking, recreational drug use, etc. It is through these practices of care that the fetus will be taken care of. Care allows the longevity and sustainability of rights, laws, and in this case, life. Furthermore, pro-lifers have their argument in this generalization of rights that view pregnancy through a narrow lens that lacks care, and emotion which will sustain the well-being of the child.

The overturning of Roe v. Wade is sending a message about women, gender roles, and sexual scripts that go along with them. Typical gender roles depict men as logical creatures who are in positions of power and control in and outside the home. Whereas women are nurturing, submissive, and primarily only hold power in the domestic sphere. People who believe in strict gender roles believe that these roles compliment each other and create harmony within relationships. In actuality, they create transactional relationships that lack actual connection as they place value and success of a relationship on the performance of gender roles. Understanding others primarily through their identities such as gender, race, sexuality, etc. enables one to control them according to these social constructs. In this way, we view each other not in terms of relationality, but utility. Katherine Angel’s Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again illustrates this, as she describes stereotypes about male and female desire. Male desire, she describes as, “Permanently up for it, constantly asserting libido and achieving conquest”( Angel 67). Female desire is “An exchange of a good, a resource that women “give up”, risking a loss of value to themselves in the process, in exchange for something they value more” (Angel 64). According to these stereotypes, men are slaves to their desires, naturally sexually driven, and see sex as a way to unleash their patriarchal power onto women. In contrast, women’s sexual desires are motivated by non-sexual reasons, such as intimacy, procreation, and obligation. As we are fed these gendered ideas of desire; we internalize, act upon, and reinforce them, even if they do not align with our actual desires. Through these gendered ideas, we do not have an open relationship with the Other, as we are afraid that it may expose us to pleasures that don’t align with the traditional gendered ideas of femininity and masculinity. Through this, we view the other not as a transcendent being, but as a way to fulfill our gender roles. This is why I consider gender roles to be a generalization of the other, that makes us view others through their utility and makes sex an act of obligation that upholds gender roles for men and women to reinforce and follow. Through this, sex loses vulnerability, the thing that makes pleasure a possibility as it gives us the chance to see the Other and exposes us to our transcendence as well. Angel states. “Feelings, sensations, and desires can lie dormant until brought into being by those around us. We need to be able to allow this to; we need not fight so hard against our own porousness, our own malleability. (Angel 113-114). The Other can make our desires known to us, but if we aren’t vulnerable and allow a relation to form this can never happen. Through vulnerability, we can fully understand and experience our desires.

Black Feminist Critique

Levinas introduces the concept of recollection, which is stepping back from the world and trying to understand life outside the dwelling. Stating “Deginates a suspension of the immediate reactions the world solicits in view of a greater attention to oneself, one possibilities and the situation.” (Levinas 154). Levinas further explains that this is made possible through, not the transcendental other that commands us through language, but through this lack of language, which he calls the “female alterity” Levinas goes on to describe female alterity as “a delightful lapse in being, and the source of gentleness itself” (Levinas 155). “And the empirical absence of the human being of “feminine sex”(Levinas 158). This lack of language and absence of being creates a field of intimacy and gentleness, which makes recollection possible. Levinas’s female alterity goes against his philosophy as it embodies Seyla Benhabib’s concept of the “generalized other” that views people through universalistic moral theories that are seen in the work of Kant, Rawls, and others who have an abstract and general view of humanity as autonomous and independent beings. Within these theories, women are excluded in numerous ways. One way is the metaphor that describes humans as mushrooms that have just sprung from the earth, this denies the woman’s role in reproduction. Women are excluded as they are objects that do not define themselves but are defined by men, the subjects. This is a lack of self-definition which can be seen as a way of silencing women and can be seen in Levains’s conception of female alterity that characterizes women as being without language. This silencing of women places women in the private sphere which is characterized as “the sphere of care and intimacy, is unchanging and timeless.” (Benhabib 484). This view creates a generalization of women as being the ultimate caregiver who occupies the private sphere through being timeless and unchanging. Women are not just defined by men but are defined by what they are not: Men. Women are “defined by a lack- the lack of autonomy, the lack of independence, the lack of the phallus. The narcissistic male takes her to be just like himself, only his opposite.”(Benhabib 484). If women occupy the private sphere, men occupy the public sphere, and if the private sphere is unchanging, the public sphere is progressive. Furthermore, Levians’s concept of female alterity embodies Benhabib’s generalized other and reeks of misogyny and sexism.

Levinas’s female alterity paints the idea of caring and nurturing to be a natural female disposition and this is present within Western philosophy called the “Eternal Feminine” which describes women as being naturally caring and nurturing stating “Women possess an immutable nature that makes them fit for some things and unfit for others.” (Bergoffen 121). This is a generalization that places women in subservient roles to their male partners and family while men are fit for roles outside of the domestic sphere. Through this, women become the primary caregivers of children and are expected to be self-sacrificial to the needs and wants of their children and partners. They are rewarded with the title of “supermom” for doing so. This idea presents mothers as otherworldly beings who can do any and everything and cannot do any wrong. She is the “archetypal female who is both a career woman and a housewife and whose to-do list spans cooking, cleaning, parenting, earning a substantial paycheck and sexually satisfying her husband — all without a hair out of place.” (New York Times). This title puts women on a moral pedestal and forgets the humanness of women and mothers and their fall from this is brutal, and harsh and is visible in public reaction when women commit crimes of abuse to their children. Popular family vlogger Ruby Franke of 8passengers was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison for child abuse along with her business partner Jodi Hildebrandt. Father Kevin Franke, who was separated from his wife during this time had no contact with the children and was shocked about what his wife did stating, “I’ve chosen to trust my wife with the children,” Franke told police later that “I’ve had no reason to believe or think there was anything going on.”(The Salt Lake Tribune). This father being clueless about the safety and well-being of his children is not uncommon, as most would assume that their children are safe with their mother, not because she is a good person, but because it is believed that a mother’s affection for her children is natural. In Dr. Sarah LaChance’s book Mad Mothers, Bad Mothers and What Would Good Mothers Do she quotes Nel Nodding to describe this detached feeling as the principle-oriented morality that is aligned with the “ethics of the father—“the detached one” Nodding uses the example of Abraham in the bible being able to kill Isaac due to this, and it follows the stereotype of men and fathers having this detached moral approach and women naturally possessing care stating “But for the mother, for us, this is horrendous” (LaChance Adams 43). This isn’t true just in these extreme cases of abuse but, in everyday cases of childrearing with men using weaponized incompetence when it comes to being caregivers. Weaponized incompetence is “the deliberate feigning of incompetence to avoid certain tasks or responsibilities” (Forbes). For example, fathers act like they don’t know how to change their child’s diaper or do it wrong so they don’t have to do it. This is also seen in the form of husbands praising their wives for being able to do it all and saying “I could never do what my wife does” This is an example of that pedestal of being otherworldly and untouchable that we put women, and in particular mothers on and it makes emotional labor seem impossible for men to do. However, the truth is that men can do what their wives do but they don’t want to. Furthermore, I find that this pedestal leads to ignoring a mother’s needs, wants, pain, and suffering and disguises it as something that is just a part of motherhood. An example of this is mothers having an empty stocking on Christmas day. A TikTok video went viral when a husband realized that his wife’s stocking had been empty for the past ten years. Initially, he thought that it was an extra stocking, and he asked his wife she replied “I guess Santa forgot about me” and laughed it off. The mother in that video responded to the comments criticizing her partner, saying “I know it looks like I was sad sitting off to the side with no gifts surrounding me, but I wasn’t sad at all,” Aubree says. “I was doing what most moms do, which is just enjoying my kids being happy on Christmas morning.” (TodayShow). This is true for most mothers, watching their children, partner, and even the dog enjoy their Christmas presents while they find joy in their excitement over the gifts they got for others. This is not about gift giving, it is about giving care and the expectation of mothers to do it and it not being reciprocated back to them. This also shows the invisibility that mothers go through.

*In Colonizing Bodies and Minds: Gender and Colonialism by *Oyeronke Oyewumi, states the following “More specifically, in the Yoruba case, females became subordinated as soon as they were “made up” into women- an embodied and homogenized category. Thus, by definition they became invisible.” (Oyewumi 153). I find that this invisibility is because of the pedestal that we put women and mothers on and comments like, “I could never do what my wife does”, or “A woman’s work is never done.” are what lead to ignoring a woman’s pain and suffering and disguising it as a badge of honor of motherhood. This invisibly is seen so often in women’s lives starting from early childhood. Pretending not to cry when a boy pushes them on the playground, covering their bodies because they are told that it is distracting to the boys and male teachers in their class, or not taking a job offer so they don’t make their male partner feel inferior. This invisibility for women is not uncommon and doesn’t start once they become mothers and wives but is conditioned into them since they are young, so once they become wives and mothers it is not questioned, but accepted by them. The sentiment that is present in the term “supermom” can also be seen in the phrase “Strong, Independent, Black Women.” this is the expectation of black women to be the emotional support system for African American communities (as well as society’s mammy) in times of racial crisis, they are called to help with activism while facing misogynoir and discrimination within the black community and in the world. I see this as the emotional fetishization of black women. Just as black women are fetishized for their bodies, they are fetishized for the emotional support that they can provide. Just as “supermom’s” lack of self-care is celebrated and admired, a black woman’s constant emotional and physical labor is labeled as being “resilient” while this resilience is seen as being “hard”, and not feminine. However, many black women are trying to claim their femininity back and rejecting the “strong, black women” stereotype by living a “soft life,” a life without stress, centering self-care and wellness. However, the original intention behind the soft life movement has gone in a different direction that has resulted in divine feminine coaches teaching women how to attract wealthy male partners or “high-value men” to obtain a life of material wealth. YouTuber Shera Seven is one of many dating coaches who teach women how to get a wealthy partner. When a woman asked what zodiac sign to avoid while dating, Shera said, “The negative bank account sign. The minus sign.”(Vox.com). Even though this is toxic, Shera Seven is mild compared to many on the internet. There are male podcasters such as Andrew Tate, The Whatever podcast, and the Fresh and Fit podcast that spew harmful rhetoric that describes a high-value woman as being “hot, but also possesses a laundry list of other qualities that make her ‘wife material,’ from dressing modestly to not being “ran-through,” meaning she hasn’t had sex with very many people, to be financially independent and educated — but not too educated and financially independent to intimidate the man. (Vox.com). They believe that second-wave feminism and its push for women to get educated, high-paying jobs, be financially independent, and be sexually liberated masculinizes women and turns men off, as they want their feminine counterparts. Through this, a soft life is living in your feminine energy to get a “high-value man” who will become the financial breadwinner, and live a life that requires the woman to be a subservient wife and mother, as this is her “divine” energy. This type of rhetoric creates a pipeline to right-wing politics that vouches for nuclear family structures, and traditional gender roles. Divine feminine, dating coaches and people who support and follow their ideas value the two separate spheres, the domestic sphere that they believe women should occupy and the public sphere that men occupy, and don’t want them to overlap with one another. These spheres have rigid boundaries that one has to stay in because if they don’t patriarchy and capitalism will not survive. One woman accounts her journey from leaving corporate America and describes how she went to college, got a good-paying job, and even received awards for being a top seller. However, she describes that while experiencing this massive success at work, she also experienced negative things, such as acne, lack of sleep, and hormonal changes. She blames this on the fact that she was living in her “masculine energy” She is now a lot happier living in her “feminine energy” working as a social media manager and describes her relationship dynamic with her husband as “letting him take on the reins”. (Michelle Zoltan[@michelle] TikTok, 18 Sep. 2023). I find what this creator was experiencing while working in Corporate America wasn’t her living in masculine energy but was the effects of a capitalist society that cares more about the product and productivity of its workers instead of their wellbeing. When this type of rhetoric is given to black women in the form of living a soft life, it is just a repackaging of white supremacist talking points that are rooted in anti-blackness. It isn’t liberating as it appears to help them escape the “strong, independent black women” stereotype but instead, it intensifies the emotional labor of black women as it demands that they have to give this to others, as doing so is living in their ‘feminine nature’

Sex as the “good soup”

Our sexual experiences and interactions are a reflection of how we view ourselves and others, and the ethics of justice have made our fundamental understanding of sex strictly on consent. Consent is giving permission for something to happen or to be done to you. Through this, consent presents our desires to be black or white. But what about the in-between, or gray areas? We can say no in the middle of sex, but what about saying yes after that? Consent presented this way has made us understand our answer to be final, but what if it isn’t? This rigid understanding of consent is not strong enough to account for this, and shouldn’t be our foundational understanding of sex. Katherine Angel agrees with this stating, “This is not a reason to dismiss consent; it is a reason to question the limits of its consent and ask whether the burden of sexual ethics should be placed on consent, rather than, say, conversation, mutual exploration, curiosity, uncertainty.”(Angel 113). Angel’s approach challenges our fundamental understanding of sex that is based on the typical understanding of consent that views people as autonomous legal individuals who potentially have to protect themselves from others, but through a relational understanding that doesn’t see our uncertainty as a vulnerability that can be taken advantage of, but the thing that makes pleasure possible with the other. With this approach, sex is not founded in the rigidity of consent, but the gray area and this doesn’t make navigating sex harder, but it requires us to implement the values of care in our sexual experiences such as attentiveness, mutual understanding, and vulnerability. In this, I propose a caring sexual ethic that won’t transform just our sex lives but other relationships, as we will see ourselves and others not strictly as a legal subject of consent, but ourselves in caring relationships with others. Like Levinas, feminist care ethics views people as relational beings stating, “The view of persons as embedded and encumbered seems fundamental to much feminists thinking about morality.” (Held 15). Levinas has many ideas that support feminist care ethics, such as the aspect of vulnerability that must be met with responsibility, stating, “To hear his destitution which cries out for justice is not to represent an image to oneself, but is to posit oneself as responsible, both as more and as less than the being that presents itself in the face.”(Levinas 215). I find that this aspect of responsibility that he mentions is what sustains caring relations and practices in feminist care ethics, as vulnerability is not a sign of weakness but a call from a transcendent Other that must be met with an ethical response that upholds their alterity. The way that this alterity is maintained is through relations, and not just any kind of relations, but caring relations. According to Levinas, relations are how we view each other as transcendent beings who we live among and experience life with, not in possession of. In this, we are in our fundamental state of being. Relations are the things that we live from, or the “good soup,” and gives us the ability to experience this stating, “Entering into relation with something other, this relation does not take form on the plan of pure being. Moreover, action itself, which unfolds on the plane of being enters into our happiness.” (Levinas 112-113). This action is what I consider to be care in caring relations described in feminist care ethics. “Requires mutuality and the cultivation of the ways of achieving this in the various contexts of interdependence in human life”(Held. 53). The relations that are a part of this “good soup” are caring relations as care is the action that sustains connections between others as care is a practice that involves being attentive and responsive to needs. Sex is a relation, but once care is prioritized, it can respond to vulnerabilities with an ethical response that upholds the Other’s alterity. It is through care that sex is a part of the “good soup” as through the acts and practices of care, such as being responsive, sensitive, and attentive, we view the Other as a transcendent being. Through this, we are experiencing the pleasure inherent in sex, and this is only possible through viewing the Other as relational to me, not an object that I use and discard, and not through a legal framework that solely sees them as a legal subject. Sex nourishes our lives, as the Other gives my desires and pleasure meaning and helps me understand them. Angel describes the same sentiment stating, “We are social creatures; and our desires have always emerged, from day one, in relation to those who care, or do not care, for us. Desire never exists in isolation. This is also what makes sex potentially exciting, rich, and meaningful” (Angel 39). It is through the Other that sexual desires can be realized, and pleasure can be experienced as they are an external point that gives my existence meaning.

A caring sexual ethic will transform the way that we approach sex, as sex will be seen as another caring relationship in our lives. Sexual desires will not be seen through the rigidity of consent or the lens of gender that upholds traditional ideas about masculinity and femininity but will be shaped by embracing each other and our ever-changing and evolving desires as transcendent beings. Slut shaming will also be obsolete, as the concept of gender is nothing compared to the infinite Other and their desires. Vulnerability will not be a sign of weakness but a call from the Other that leads us into a caring relationship that upholds their alterity and introduces us to our transcendence.

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Michelle Zoltan[@michelle]The soft girl era isn’t for everyone, but it is for me & it’s the best thing I have ever done for myself. Forever staying in my feminine. #softlife #softgirl #feminineenergy #masculineenergy. TikTok, 18 Sep. 2023 https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTLfGHdNf/