Hi, I’m Molly Frances. I write about topics my Catholic mother would detest. I’m available for hire for erotic stories, researched sexuality content, and professional editing. I also take requests for erotic stories and research topics, so feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you’d like me to write next!

Who is Molly Frances?

I learned that being a slut was bad before I learned what the word meant. Now, I’m owning it.

 At eleven years old, when my father caught teenage boys staring at my prematurely-developed figure in summer shorts and tank tops, he slapped me across the face, giving me a black eye and calling me a slut for the first time.

My father wasn’t generally abusive, though my parents spanked us, this was out of character for him. The lesson I learned at eleven was that my body was shameful just because it dared to exist.

I already had an uncomfortable relationship with my body. I was just out of elementary school, when all the other girls are devoid of hips, and beginning to wear training bras. I had this hourglass figure and large breasts and didn’t know what to do with any of it. My father’s reaction only further shamed me.

I didn’t have the tools to protect myself

At twelve, a 19-year-old male babysitter groped me. I froze, I let it happen because I didn’t know how to stop it. I never told anyone, and it continued until he stopped being our babysitter.

When I was fourteen, my teenage boyfriend assaulted me in the back of his mother’s van while she drove. I never told my family — my parents had already established that we didn’t talk about sex.

When we broke up, my boyfriend spread rumors around the small-town high school that followed me until graduation and, in many instances, into college.

As a teenager, I learned more about how bad sex was

When my parents divorced, I heard stories about my father kissing his graduate students in front of my mother, and about how he’d rub his affairs in her face. I shouldn’t know those stories, I should have been allowed to have a nurturing relationship with my father. Again, I got the message: sex was bad

When I was 16, my boyfriend and I decided to have sex for the first time, so I went to the local free clinic and got birth control. When my mother found out I was on the pill, she scoffed and called me an idiot.

When my friend came out as gay, my mother told me that if any of her children told her they were she’d never speak to them again. This was the same year I began to experience feelings for female friends that I found confusing. I certainly couldn’t discuss it with my parents.

At 17, after an argument with the man my mother was living with, they kicked me out of the house. I moved in with my father and step-mother. When my father caught me masturbating in my bedroom that had no door, it was a source of teasing and laughter for the adults in my life.

I graduated high school two years later. I had a new boyfriend who was six years older than me and whom my parents loved. As I stood in my red cap and gown, my Magna Cum Laude ribbon around my neck, my mother expressed her relief that she’d gotten me to graduation without my getting knocked up. I was the first woman in my father’s family to make it that far.

At 19, I moved across the country with a man who was both too old and too overbearing. He seemed safer than staying in the ring while my divorced parents slung mud at each other. It turns out my 19-year-old self was right about that.

I married the wrong man

My first marriage was entirely devoid of passion. As a woman, my body was full of shame and sin, and I wasn’t supposed to desire sex — but I did. I wanted a lot of intimacy.

I remember a time; I asked my ex-husband for a kiss.

“No,” he said, pushing me away.

“Why not?” he often said no to affection, and I’d never asked before.

“I don’t want you to get used to it and think you can get it anytime you want.”

Did he think I was a dog?

In my early twenties, I didn’t know how to advocate for my emotional and sexual needs. I didn’t even know that pleasure, intimacy, and orgasms are my right. I learned to hide my sexuality, to deny it, and never to talk about it.

Eventually, my ex-husband convinced me I was a sex addict when he caught me watching porn because “women don’t do that.” I attended Sex Addicts Anonymous meetings for months. I went to therapy to fix my broken sexuality and stopped asking for sex. Instead, I channeled my sexual energy into writing sexy stories.

My ex-husband found an erotic novella I’d written and deleted it from my hard drive — along with my entire collection of short stories. He didn’t think a woman should be thinking about those things, and this was clear evidence that I was, in fact, an addict.

Finally enjoying sex

I didn’t learn to enjoy sex until after my marriage ended. Before I even filed for divorce, I was dating (by dating, I mean fucking around). For the first time, I was experimenting with all of the things I’d heard about or seen in porn. I was getting tied up, spanked, having my hair pulled, fingering assholes, and finding out that sex was more than just penetration.

I enjoyed orgasm, after orgasm, after orgasm. I just didn’t dare tell the various men and women about each other; none of them could keep up with my drive on their own.

When I met Hubby, he was supposed to be a fling, like the string of men who entered me during my post-divorce slut phase. I sort of figured I’d wind up married to a woman. But Hubby kept up with me; in fact, sometimes, he exhausted me. And then, he did something I’d never expected; he accepted not only my high sex drive, he encouraged my bisexuality as well. I met a man who didn’t think that being in a relationship gave him exclusive rights to my vagina.

When we started discussing our sexual pasts, we were monogamous, nearly living together, and planning to marry. I never minded hearing about my partner’s previous sex lives because I enjoy learning how one becomes a sexual being.

Suddenly, someone didn’t just tolerate my insatiable desire. My sexuality was accepted, celebrated, a source of excitement.

I write about sex because when I was young, I needed to read the things I’m writing.

I needed to hear that female desire should be revered. I needed to know that masturbation was not only healthy — but necessary because orgasms boost our immunity, mood, and provide pain relief.

I needed to read that partnered sex can be both dirty and porn-tastic, or slow and sensual. I didn’t know I was supposed to enjoy sex, or that it was okay for me to advocate for my desires.

When Hubby and I discussed non-monogamy, I needed to read that there is more than one way to be married — and that desiring sexual variety doesn’t make people broken. I needed to read accounts of open relationships that work.

I write about sex, so the next generation of women and men know that they aren’t caged in by societal pressures to conform. They don’t have to enjoy heteronormative missionary sex, but they can. You don’t have to have an orgy on your bucket list, but it’s alright if it’s at the top of your list.

I needed to learn that there was more than one way to define your sexuality. I wrestled with romantic and sexual desire for women my entire life. It wasn’t until I told Hubby that I found someone who was understanding and encouraging. Bisexual women are often over-sexualized by men, so I’d kept it hidden as my little secret. Now, I know that being in a heterosexual marriage doesn’t mean I can’t also enjoy women.

My husband used to hide his porn watching from me — he’d been shamed for it by previous partners. I write for the men and women who need to know that their desire for sexual stimuli doesn’t make them weird.

I write about sex because researching human sexuality is fun.

I write about sex because I want to share the methods I’ve researched for sharing the truth about sexuality with our children. I know I’m not alone in wanting my children to have a better relationship with their bodies that I had. Before parents can teach their children to have a healthy relationship with sex, they need to have it figured out.

I write about sex because it turns me on. There is no greater aphrodisiac than writing the naughty bits of an erotic tale.

Sex is funny. This is an objective fact and if you haven’t laughed during sex you’re not getting creative enough. Writing about sex allows me to get a bit silly, and laugh at my own blunders. 

Most of all, I write about sex because knowing about the mechanics of sex, consent, and understanding that I am in control of my sexuality could have saved me from being sexually assaulted. I am not a victim; I am just one of many women with a crappy experience they have to grow through. When women own their sexuality, they don’t allow anyone to take it from them; they gift it to the deserving.

I am a SLUT, Sexual, Lustful, Unique, Temptress.

A Previous version of this story appeared in Sexual Tendencies