Can you really harness your orgasm energy for everyday empowerment?

A friend of a friend said it would be fun. A group of women getting together on a Saturday morning to connect and meditate.

On arrival, all 12 women are wearing white diaphanous gowns, except, of course, for me. I was in leopard print. Inevitably I felt as though I didn't get the Wicca brief. And although I knew there'd be a bit of star-gazing (I'd been asked my birth time and date before-hand) I thought I was signing up for something akin to a book club (without the wine or books). Instead, what I got was a deep-dive into female self-pleasure.

I shouldn't really have been surprised — Instagram is awash with accounts extolling the benefits of feminine flow. And by this I don't mean a languid downward dog or easy meandering through the kitchen or flower garden. It means harnessing orgasm energy for daily empowerment. Tapping into the tantric to overcome the little niggles and inconveniences of everyday life. A development of breathwork — a concept I don't think my grandmother would have had the faintest affiliation with.

Whatever the perception a 90-year-old stoic Englishwoman would have had of a group of women writhing and chanting in a circle to simulate self-pleasure, I wonder more about her reaction to Cardi B's WAP video. That's apparently all about female empowerment and here I see buxom babes bouncing up and down on themselves and dancing in a pool of their own effluence.

The words are beyond me. I had to google the title — WAP = wet arse pussy, for those of you wondering. Call me a prude but I'm sure I don't want my pre-teen or teenage daughter watching this. A quick survey of girls ranging from their 20s to their 50s shows they all seem to agree — "It's disgusting," says one as her face physically contorts at the memory.

When I tell the same girls about the Wicca chamber there's more confusion than raw emotion. I explain that after lighting candles, smudging a stick and saying a few oms, we were all asked to start hip swirls, grinding in place to encourage the base juices to get flowing.

Then we went around in a circle talking about our personal experiences and ideas about sex. A lot of women, it seems, are still repressed. But it's not a repression imposed by societal sanctimony — it's a complex relationship women (indeed probably most people) have from loss of self-control, from getting totally naked and being infinitely vulnerable. Those who have been married for a few years vocalise the complexities of husbands wanting more sex, husbands not wanting enough sex.

My boyfriend tells me porn is just like a video game, that it's abstract, scripted, the actors repeat the same positions and play over and over. Quietly one night I go on Redtube to explore by myself. What I see is more like home movies — a camera in someone's living room while Eastern European teenagers and their boyfriends fumble on the couch. Admittedly I'm not behind a paywall.

I also see a vixen woman who looks pretty drugged out getting slapped in the face by three massive dicks as the men stand around her prostrate figure, grabbing her hair and pulling her face towards their pounding penises. I'm not sure this is so empowering. They look vicious. And while she's not bound, she doesn't really look like she's enjoying herself — scripted or not. Perhaps it's more a lack of gentleness. This doesn't look in any way like the divine feminine.

And that's what I finally realise it's all about — the shakti circle, the tantric alchemy posts on Insta, the yoni eggs being passed around the yoga changing room — harnessing the divine feminine energy as a tool for preservation in this crazy changing world.

If I'm really honest I know what I feel about the Cardi B video and the dick-thrashing in the red room: it makes me feel queasy and, even more, full of dread; I don't understand how it makes the world a better place. But then, maybe I don't need to understand it, maybe I should just stay home and use the takeaway fanny juice I got from the Wicca workshop to massage out all my worries. Say goodbye to 2020 with my own gentle pussy power, or is that pussy pleasure?