The sex therapist Dr Laura Berman at home with her children. Photograph: Chris Lake/RapportOne of my most memorable moments in TV talk show, was the day Dr. Laura Berman was on the Oprah show, calmly telling women to get out a mirror and see what we look like ‘down there’.

Dr. Berman, who does speak frankly about sexuality, wasn’t being cute but rather encouraging women to have a positive confrontation with our genitalia.

About seven years later from that profound moment — one of Oprah’s best shows ever — Dr. Laura Berman’s new show ‘In the Bedroom With Dr. Berman’ debuts this week on the Oprah Winfrey Network.

OWN Sneak Peek: In the Bedroom with Dr. Laura Berman

Dr. Laura Berman has also released a new self-help book, ‘It’s Not Him, It’s You! How to Take Charge of Your Life and Create the Love and Intimacy You Deserve.’

AOC in promotes a frank discussion around female sexuality. I’ve read all Dr. Berman’s books and find her understanding that most sexual ‘problems’ are about the power exchanges of relationships spot on.

“I work with heads of companies who can boss people around all day long but wouldn’t dare mention what they wanted in the bedroom,” Berman says. She believes that in subtle ways, women have been taught that they are “at the effect of everything,” waiting for men to propose or take the lead in their sexual lives. “It doesn’t occur to us that we can hold of the reins to our lives,” Berman tells the Washington Post.

Dr. Berman’s focus, like mine, is not on men’s performance in the bedroom. Without suggesting for a moment that men do everything right, they cannot give women permission for her own sexual satisfaction and pleasure.

We also believe that men at least in America — and surely in many countries in Europe — are trying much harder to be good lovers, often with little credit from American women who blame men for our lack of sexual satisfaction.

While we do hold culture and especially monotheism responsible for promoting women’s guilt about our embrace of sensual pleasure of any kind, only women can demand the right to be fully-integrated sensual creatures.

A Life-Sustaining Sensual Embrace

At Anne of Carversville, our top goal is for women to embrace sensual pleasure as life-affirming and a path to a more productive, caring human person. The very words sensuality and female sexuality have been condemned for centuries.

Reality is that many women like Dr. Laura Berman and myself believe that that women’s refusal to say “get out of my way, I WILL be a sensual creature” keeps us from reaching our full life potential as caring, productive, smart and spiritual women.

Our goal stated continually at AOC is that women — and especially American women who are mired in the muck of religious guilt in a way very different from most European and even Latin American women — say ‘no more!’

We stop blaming men for our lack of sexual gratification, get out the mirror and get going in a positive embrace of our own sexuality and power relationships with husbands, partners and lovers.

I am very positive about 2011 being a fruitful year for the global embrace of female sexuality. The Internet is bringing us together as a strong force of many voices. Let the European women help us understand how they embrace both body and soul in a way American women can’t.

Dr. Laura Berman has devoted her life to this issue, and it is my top priority as well. I will be writing more about my own confrontation with my body, not getting out the mirror because I did that as a younger woman, but getting out the camera.

Confronting the disgusting physicality of my own body with a camera was the only way I could finally love myself.

Years of abusive words and blows — the crowning event coming from a priest who refused me communion and hung a scarlet letter around my neck in public, because he believed my attacker who was also his drinking buddy, rather than me who was sexually attacked — left me hating my body as much as the Bible says I should.

When a priest denies you communion in public at age 15, passing you by because the day before he chose to believe your attacker and not you, is just one more example of the global boys club in action.

Luckily, this man’s next victim was a 45-year-old woman who didn’t go to her priest or clergyman for guidance. She gave this bastard 24 hours to get him and his family out of town, before she filed attempted rape charges.

The male-dominated clergy is not the source of solace for women who are struggling with identity and self love issues. There are exceptions, of course, but let the male clergy prove to women in words and actions that they are positive about our sexuality and sensuality.

The men who demonstrate they are worthy of our support as spiritual leaders will get it.

Anne of Carversville stands up for Smart Sensuality women around the world. You are smart, sensual, spiritual and have big hearts.

The Allyson Mitchell: Ladies Sasquatch exhibition at the McMaster Museum of Art is shown in a recent handout photo. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-McMaster Museum of Art-Cat O’Neil)Women Are Sexual Creatures

Let’s join hands in 2011, agreeing that women are sexual creatures and that responsible pleasure is life-enhancing, not life-denying. We are better women to everyone, including ourselves, when we stop believing that our sensuality is the work of the devil.

With two-thirds of American women believing in a male God who knows our every move, no wonder we have difficulty accepting sensual pleasure as a human right. Science is increasingly examining sexuality as a life force, a center of our human vitality.

I fully believe that American women’s obesity epidemic is partially anchored in our ambivalence about our sexual selves. When French, Italian and Brazilian women — who love their physical, sensual selves — are as obese as American and British women, I’ll refrain from making this argument.

We have lots to do this year, and I’m thrilled that Dr. Laura Berman’s show will give us lots to talk about. Anne