Interview: Regena Thomashauer | The Power of Pleasure & Reclaiming Radiance

Regena Thomashauer (aka Mama Gena)

Reclaiming Radiance

April 3, 2017, New York, NY

Photographs by Bill Miles

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My mission is to awaken women, to turn women on, to have women truly live rather than play small. I must model that.

Regena Thomashauer, ‘Mama Gena’

Kristen:           Regena Thomashauer, who shall forever forward be known as ‘Mama Gena’, is a revolution, a teacher, author, mother, and founder and CEO of the School of Womanly Arts, which began in her living room in 1998, and has since grown into a global movement, and a multi-million dollar business. She believes that women are the greatest untapped resource on the planet — and teaches them how to turn on their innate feminine power, to step it up, and to create a life they love.

She has appeared everywhere across mainstream media as an expert in modern feminism from NBC’s Today Show and 20/20 to the New York Times, and across pages of glossy magazines. She is the author of four books — most recently, the New York Times bestseller, Pussy: A Reclamation. Thank you, Regena, for inviting us into your home and into this journey of your work, the story that’s led to here, and to this movement.

Regena:           I’m thrilled to be here with you on this couch and to have a chance to impact your incredible audience and weave together with the magic you create — to see what kind of doors we can blow open for men and women with our collaboration.

Kristen:           Let’s do it, sister! Clearly, we have to start with the title of your book, Pussy: A Reclamation. As you say in the book, “It may be the most pejorative word in the English language. It’s the ultimate salacious smack to a woman’s dignity, used to hurt, humiliate, and fracture her humanity. Pussy is the lowest of the lows, for men as well. Essentially, it’s the last thing any of us want to be called.”

So, what possessed you to call your new book, Pussy?

Regena:           I suppose, ultimately, the quick answer is to be badass, a provocateur.

Like any expletive used effectively, it serves as a smack upside the head of a culture that disparages, dehumanizes, and ignores — that does not value — the feminine. It’s time for women to wake up and step into our magnificence because no one is going to give us permission. A woman has to awaken in order for the world to then follow. Especially now in this culture, the voice of the feminine is so longed for, and so required, and so needed to bring the culture forward. I’m proud of standing in a radical spot of awakening. My intention was to invite people to be both pissed off with me and scared. Ultimately, excited and inspired, and to break through a new form of feminism, which is about embracing the whole woman.

Kristen:           First of all, I want to make sure that people understand that when they think of the word, ‘pussy’ that this is not intended to be pornographic and not about being anti-male. Right?

Regena:           Yes. Let’s look at the culture. I have taught classes for thousands and thousands of women over the last 2 decades. When I ask a room full of women, “What did your bits and pieces get called when you were growing up?” There is a fascinating array of answers. From 1/3 of the group we get things like kitty, cuckoo, purse, little princess, knish, coochie. Another 1/3 will say vagina, which is actually anatomically incorrect.

And at least 1/3 of the women will say nothing. There was no name for that which is most essentially feminine. Now, if I have a room full of a thousand men and ask, “What did your bits and pieces get called?” They say, “Penis. What’s your problem?”

Kristen:           Right. Like, hello?

           We, as women, never have had an opportunity to locate and own the name and address