Intimacy Is Political

Cat Ferris
5 days ago
4 min read

(And Why I Can’t Be Apolitical in My Work)

Graffiti seen in Italy with the English words "All You Need Is Love"

Lately, I’ve been walking around with a low-grade ache in my chest.

I’m watching what’s happening in the world (places like Minnesota) and I feel it in my body before I ever find words for it. Government-sanctioned violence. Families torn apart. People disappearing into systems that don’t see them as human. The language of “law and order” being used to justify fear, force, and silence.

It’s not abstract. It’s not theoretical. And it’s not something I can leave outside my work.

I’m feeling it too.

This past week alone, the majority of my client sessions weren’t shaped by relationship conflict or desire discrepancies, but by survival mode. Trans clients bracing themselves just to move through the world. Clients of color carrying fear about ICE. Nervous systems on high alert—scanning for danger even in spaces that are meant to feel safe.

And while their fears may look different from mine, the sensation underneath is familiar. Tightness. Vigilance. The question of who can I relax around?

When this is the water we’re swimming in, intimacy doesn’t just get quieter.

It gets more fragile.

And it’s in moments like these that I’m reminded why I can’t pretend my work is apolitical.

The intimacy recession isn’t just about sex

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the so-called sex recession: declining partnered sex, lower desire, more loneliness, more disconnection. It’s easy to locate the problem inside individual relationships—communication issues, mismatched libidos, too much screen time.

But what I see, again and again, is something deeper. I can’t soften or sidestep it out of a fear of politeness or decorum. It’s something that needs to be clearly acknowledged if we’re going to make sense of what’s happening.

The political climate affects intimacy not only through laws and policies, but through trust.

Politics involves bodies. Rights. Autonomy. Safety. And when those things feel uncertain, people start asking (often unconsciously) Who is safe to be real with? Who can I trust with my vulnerability?

When people don’t know who is safe, they pull back. Not because they don’t want connection, but because their bodies are doing exactly what they’re designed to do: protect.

You can’t make yourself vulnerable—body, mind, spirit, soul—when you don’t know how your existence will be received.

This is one of the most overlooked contributors to the intimacy and desire recession. It’s not that people have lost interest in sex. It’s that safety feels harder to come by.

Politics enters the body first

There’s a comforting myth that sex and intimacy are places we can escape politics. And sometimes they are. Intimacy can be relief. Transcendence. A brief forgetting.

But it is never separate.

We don’t show up to intimacy as blank slates. We bring our histories, our identities, our stress responses, our fears. Our bodies remember what our minds try to move past.

When rhetoric, laws, and cultural narratives are aimed at bodies—at gender, reproduction, race, migration, autonomy—those impacts land in the nervous system long before they reach conscious thought.

For many people, their bodies are already politicized before they ever enter a relationship or a coaching session.

What I mean when I say my work is political

When I say my work is inherently political, I don’t mean that I’m here to persuade anyone how to vote or what to believe.

I mean that I believe bodily autonomy matters.

I believe consent is non-negotiable.

I believe safety is not a luxury—it’s a prerequisite for desire.

I believe pleasure is not frivolous—it’s regulating, healing, and deeply human.

Those beliefs shape how I work. They always have.

Helping someone learn to feel safe in their body again in a world that asks them to stay armored is not neutral. Helping people reconnect to desire when numbness feels like the only way to survive is not neutral. Creating a space where fear is not dismissed or minimized is not neutral.

It is care.

And care is a stance.

Inclusivity without erasure

I want this work to be accessible. I want people to feel welcome here—including people who are still questioning, still learning, still unpacking beliefs they inherited or never had space to examine.

You don’t have to share my political views to work with me.

You don’t have to have the “right” language.

You don’t have to arrive fully formed.

What matters to me is willingness. Curiosity. A respect for bodily autonomy and basic humanity.

I know what it feels like to have your fear waved away by well-meaning people who insist there’s nothing to worry about. I’m not interested in doing that to anyone. Fear doesn’t need to be debated to be real. It needs to be acknowledged before the body can soften.

This work isn’t about ideological alignment. It’s about relational responsibility.