I started my writing career as a sex columnist for a men’s magazine. People usually have ideas of what it is like to be a sex columnist. Predictably, I’m compared to Carrie Bradshaw who experimented with countless paramours and made them characters in her column. Something like kiss and write. But what many may not know is from beginning as a sex columnist to being an investigative journalist covering gender and sexuality, I’m often a sounding board and my DMs sometimes look like a cross between a therapy session and a confessional box.
People tell me things. Really intimate things. Sometimes they tell me these things through the detachment offered by a camera, a microphone, or some kind of a recording device but sometimes, they tell me things in the most unlikely moments — at events, in random run-ins at weekend markets, or a cafe.
They tell me about their first times, their last times, the times that never should have happened but did. They tell me about the one who got away, the kiss that still lingers, the fleeting holiday romance that left a permanent mark. They tell me about pleasure, about guilt, about the aching space between longing and shame.
The stories we carry
These are the stories that we hold in our skin. Some are painful — abuse, betrayal, regret — and too heavy to carry. Others are pure romance — kilig — a lingering kiss, an evening of sexual abandon, a moment of eroticism that made me feel so alive.
But here’s the one thing about these stories: they reshaped the way that we see ourselves and that’s exactly why they need to be told. But more often than not, the person telling them doesn’t know who to tell them to. (Maybe that’s why they tell me?)
So we tuck these experiences away. They’re too raw, too complicated, too embarrassing to say out loud and bring into the reality of the world. But they don’t disappear. They live in our skin, in our bones, in our flesh. They show up in our dreams, in our relationships, in the quiet moments when we allow ourselves to feel.
When we write these stories down, we allow ourselves the gift to think, to reflect, to understand.
Writing with your body
Writing with your body means paying homage to the stories, the sensations, and the longing your body holds. It means giving yourself permission to tell your own story, not for anyone else, not to be judged or consumed — but just for you.
That’s why I created this workshop. Write With Your Body. It isn’t about writing the perfect sex scene (though that’s fun too) but more about translating your intangible reality — desire, intimacy, loss — into words you can hold.
Some people need to write through trauma. Others just need a space to immortalize a moment that meant something. The way a lover’s fingers traced their spine. The way a single night in a foreign city made them feel alive in a way they never had before. The excitement of a Friday night that slipped into the intimacy of a Saturday morning tangled in sheets and sunlight.
Your story, your life in your own words
For so long, women’s stories — especially those about sex — have been written for us. Whether through the depraved lens of the colonizer or through how others want to “categorize” us, we’ve been reduced to tropes, fantasies, to footnotes in men’s narratives.
But when we write our own experiences, we take them back. We make sense of them using our own words. We turn memory into meaning. Our meaning.
And that is why writing with your body is more than just writing about sex. It’s writing about you.
So, if you have a story resting in your skin, waiting to be told — let it out. Write with your body. Write for yourself.
You deserve to. – Rappler.com
Ana P. Santos is Rappler’s gender and sexuality columnist. Join her workshop, Write With Your Body on March 29, 2025 here. The workshop is in partnership with Unprude.