I Like the Erotic and the Porn: Looking Back at Audre Lorde’s “Uses of the Erotic”
By Sexual Correspondent Andrea Plaid
I feel like I can’t call myself a “good” Black feminist if I’m not down with Audre Lorde. I feel fake if I don’t raise my fist or give an “Amen!” when another Black feminist or a feminist of color says/writes/puts on a t-shirt, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”
Then I add “sex-positive” to the “Black feminist” descriptor–I try to be of “do-you-with-lots-of-latex-lube-and-consent” crew–and then I feel like Audre and I don’t see sexing it up the same way, especially around ideas of what’s erotic and what’s pornography.
So, I sat down and reconsidered her essay, “The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power.”
But first, some background about me: I came to feminist theory, as bell hooks says, to explain the pain of my surviving rape at the age of five. I needed an answer to the pain of someone feeling entitled to override my bodily integrity, my being able to sexually consent. I also looked at my late father’s porn at a very early age, too. My mom said a “good Black woman” didn’t have sex before she was engaged and the “facts of life” were explained via her old nursing books or when a biological event (like my first period), a TV show, or a book mentioning sex precipitated the discussion by her.
Something had to give—or synthesize.
The feminism I studied said I have that right to say yes to sex–though what that sex was, at the time, fraught with, to put it delicately, tension. The owner of the feminist bookstore where I worked was a staunch follower of the late Andrea Dworkin: deeply believed that anti-porn legislation was necessary because all porn exploited women; any sexual relations with men was tantamount to at least sleeping with the enemy and at worst rape; wearing nail polish was a manifestation of a woman bending to The Patriarchy. Yet I knew that hooks, Susie Bright, Lisa Jones, and Wendy Chapkis weren’t saying this –if nothing else, they were saying 1) that men can be—and should be–a part of women’s liberation, 2) fucking them–as well as whomever else I wish—didn’t make me a “bad” feminist, and 3) porn and erotica were OK as vehicles to explore sexual expressions. Yep, I witnessed the feminist porn wars…and I wiped my brow when the pro-porn side won.
Now, some context on this essay: Lorde presented this in 1978, the middle of the Second Wave of feminism and in the midst of arguments on whether pornography was a tool to oppress women. She tries to redirect the argument by redefining what erotic and pornography are.
…comes from the Greek word eros, the personification of love in all its aspects – born of Chaos, and personifying creative power and harmony. When I speak of the erotic, then, I speak of it as an assertion of the lifeforce of women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives.
The erotic is a measure between our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. For having experienced the fullness of this depth of feeling and recognizing its power, in honor and self-respect we can require no less of ourselves.
[T]he erotic offers a well of replenishing and provocative force to the woman who does not fear its revelation, nor succumb to the belief that sensation is enough.
The pornographic, then, “…is a direct denial of the power of the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling. Pornography emphasizes “sensation without feeling.” Furthermore, Lorde believes the pornographic degrades the erotic:
In order to perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy for change. For women, this has meant a suppression of the erotic as a considered source of power and information within our lives.
We have been taught to suspect this resource, vilified, abused, and devalued within western society. On the one hand, the superficially erotic has been encouraged as a sign of female inferiority; on the other hand, women have been made to suffer and to feel both contemptible and suspect by virtue of its existence.
It is a short step from there to the false belief that only by the suppression of the erotic within our lives and consciousness can women be truly strong. But that strength is illusory, for it is fashioned within the context of male models of power. As women, we have come to distrust that power which rises from our deepest and nonrational knowledge. We have been warned against it all our lives by the male world, which values this depth of feeling enough to keep women around in order to exercise it in the service of men, but which fears this same depth too much to examine the possibilities of it within themselves. So women are maintained at a distant/inferior position to be psychically milked, much the same way ants maintain colonies of aphids to provide a life-giving substance for their masters.
Lorde’s definition of the erotic affirm a woman’s way of knowing via feelings and living fully in and with those feeling to inform everything she does, be it working for reproductive justice, making jewelry, creating a blog, or sexing it up with herself and/or others. Just do conscientiously and fully, whatever it may be.
However, Lorde defines eroticism and pornography so broadly that they almost threaten to desexualize what both words mean. For Lorde, “There is a difference between painting a black fence and writing a poem, but only one of quantity. And there is, for me, no difference between writing a good poem and moving into sunlight against the body of a woman I love.” Pornography, on the other hand–”[w]hen we look the other way from our experience, erotic or otherwise, we use rather than share the feelings of those others who participate in the experience with us. And use without consent of the used is abuse”–can define the US War against Iraq and the exploitation of undocumented workers as farmhands as well as the adult film industry.
I can see one reason why Lorde would want to expand both definitions: a basis for political action. So, a person who sees, for example, the US War in Iraq and the plight of im/migrant farm workers the same as the adult-film industry–as forms of human exploitation and destruction, of using without the consent of the used–then a person making such connections would be hopefully willing to fight to end all three or ally with folks fighting to end them.
Lorde steeps her approach to using the erotic in the “personal is political” thinking, a cornerstone of Second Wave feminism. As guest conributor and regular commenter atlasien wrote to me: “[Her] strategy of developing ‘the erotic’ sounds very helpful to many people. It could be unhelpful to others. If someone internalizes it to the degree where they judge themselves at every point—‘is what I’m feeling erotic or pornographic?’–it could also produce feelings of crippling inadequacy.”
Lorde’s definitions, however, as my collaborator Fiqah would said, don’t make me wet. Though fighting to end US involvement in Iraq and the undocumented agricultural workers’ continued exploitation may make me feel great–the biochemicals of shouting at a rally, the jump-up-and-down joy of hearing that a petition campaign led to raised wages–it doesn’t make me orgasm or even get aroused. Both porn (I personally connote it as the visual representation of sex acts, usually in the form of video or film) and its literary counterpart, erotica, does turn me on–and sometimes I want the sensation without the feeling. Lorde sees all pornography exclusively in terms of getting fucked over; the porn and erotica that I enjoy is about fucking with consent.
And that’s part of the problem: Lorde doesn’t directly address that industry or its products and players. Yes, there are women–and men and children–who are used without their consent in it. Then again, there are adults—and what I mean by “adult” in this argument are those people over the age of 18–who are happily and freely and consciously doing porn and thoroughly enjoying themselves. Lorde’s O Magazine-esque definition allows for her to squick around pornography just like her Second Wave sistren. Her essentializing men as using women’s erotic power for their own nasty ends falls a little too neatly into the “men=bad, women=good” rhetoric that has gotten some feminists into trouble back then and even now because it offers gender as a moral identity and disallows any nuance, complexity, or, ultimately, humanity for women and men.
Even the complexity to dig porn as consumers, producers, and actors.
Ever since Lorde wrote and presented this essay–helped along by the porn wars, the rise of sex-positivity, and the maturation of Third Wave feminism–women have more vocally embraced porn, for ill and for good. The mainstreaming of sex industries–helped along by the porn wars and the rise and maturation of the Third Wave feminist movement, among other factors–has been a mixed blessing: the latest reports of straight men “manscaping” and women getting labioplasty in order to gain the Perfect Porn Star body join with the loosening of US tongues to discuss sex toys on Oprah (and sell them at Target), have sex shops catering to the “mommy crowd,” and pole-dancing classes offered at gyms. And it untied the tongues of communities of color to read, write, and talk about what images we see and want to see in porn, if not try to do certain acts ourselves.
However, I don’t disagree with all of what Lorde says. I see a point where her words can be a mandate specifically for sex-positivity aimed at women of color not vibing on the current rhetoric that may leave WoCs feeling oversexualized because it may come off as fulfilling racialized sexual stereotypes. It rests with the this essay’s catchphrase: “[U]se without consent of the used is abuse.” As Lorde says:
When we look away from the importance of the erotic in the development and sustenance of our power, or when we look away from ourselves as we satisfy our erotic needs in concert with others, we use each other as objects of satisfaction rather than share our joy in the satisfying, rather than make connection with our similarities and our differences. To refuse to be able that might seem, is to deny a large part of the experience, and to allow ourselves to be reduced to the pornographic, the abused, and the absurd.
This is where Lorde and I (sort of) agree. Sexual consent, to me, means saying–and being fully able to say–yes to it, whatever those acts and expressions may be. It means that, after a Black woman has considered it, she decides she want to seduce her Asian-American female lover by dancing like a rap video model on a stripper pole and the lover is game…between the two of them, I’m not going to argue because they said yes to it. If the seducer is nervous and wants to get a drink to “help with the butterflies,” teetotaler me can understand. However, if the drinks were plied in order to coerce the woman into dancing…then no. Just no.
So, no, every White person or woman (and man) of color are moving, living people existing in this Otherland where whites (and even other PoCs) are inherently entitled to enact, and get us to enact, all those sexual things “they’ve heard about us or seen us do” (implication: the person saw some porn) without our saying that that’s what we want to do. However, we PoCs can’t front as if there is/are some unattainable PoC sexual expressions and acts that we continue to be deprived of since the arrival, installation, and maintenance of, to borrow from Lorde, “European-American male tradition” that lie outside of this system and its worldview. We also can’t police and shun consenting adults within and outside our racial and ethnic groups because they’re participating in safer consensual sex that makes us squick and use The Group as justification to criticize them and, by extension, defend our discomfort. We can’t use another group to dictate how we’ll sexually conduct ourselves because we fear we’ll be responsible in perpetuating stereotypes, either.
PoCs, for example, can’t start invoking the ancestors (or the children), The Race, or White people—including explicitly or implicitly saying that doing such acts means the participant isn’t “down with the Race”–when our PoC pals confide in us that they’re down with, say, rimming or race play in order to shame our friends out of what gets them off. I know the intention is to protect our friends and oppressed communities from disparagement and other negative ramifications. This thinking, combined with our understandable sensitivities to a groups’ historical sexual imageries have created and are still being perpetuated, coupled with their attendant harm, may give us the idea that, as members of those communities at whom these images and ideas are aimed, the prerogative to tell our friends to not jeopardize themselves and our groups. I fear that, when we do this, what we sacrifice is our unique sexual selves. I believe the most we can say to zie is, “Hey, it’s not me, but do you. And are you being safe with this, like using dental dams or having a safe word?” Going on and on about how wrong you and, by some self-appointed proxy, The Group, thinks of “such things” may have the intended effect of dampening…more than likely, your friend in confiding you again.
Now, that doesn’t mean that everyone of a particular group wants to hear your, ahem, love for them. It’s not cool, for example, a white guy to approach a random Latina at the park or the club and proceed to say all sorts of stereotype-based things about his Chicana sex partner. Trust, more than likely talking like that is not making her want to befriend or turning her on. Her being Latina is not the cue to roll up like that—and the speaker’s race or ethnic group is not an excuse, either. Such talk flattens her–and the speaker’s–humanities.
I think that’s what Audre Lorde gives to us in this essay: the permission to take agency in how we feel erotically, including sexually. But her theory is one way–not The Way–to sexual freedom. As atlasien wrote in our email exchange:
“[T]here really needs to be multiple strategies for getting from A to Z. The path to sexual liberation for a white male is usually going to be different than that for a woman of color, and then within those broad groups there’s a lot of variation and overlaps.”
I simply wish Lorde could have seen how pornography, as problematic as it is, may still be a space for some people to explore their sexual expressions.
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A bouquet of thanks to atlasien for her help!
Image Credit: Google
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
JR wrote:
and I wiped my brow when the pro-porn side won.
When did this happen? I thought they were ongoing.
Posted 09 Jul 2009 at 10:22 am ¶
AJ Plaid wrote:
@JR–The war over porn seems eternal, yes.:D However, the particular battle I’m talking is described here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_Sex_Wars
and here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism#Sex-positive_movement
Posted 09 Jul 2009 at 10:55 am ¶
N wrote:
Interesting post and some excellent points were made!
Posted 09 Jul 2009 at 11:01 am ¶
Tim Jones-Yelvington wrote:
This is helpful.
Posted 09 Jul 2009 at 11:02 am ¶
missdee wrote:
I’m afraid that my point of view is going to seem old fashioned and maybe I am but I’ve noticed a real difference between men I’ve been with who absolutely love porn and those who watch occasionally, if at all. The men who seem the most into it seemed to have somewhat of a hard time connecting with me physically and emotionally during sex itself- sex seemed to feel like a series of moves to be performed, rather than a shared interaction. I think this is what Audre Lorde may have been referring to. I’ve also noticed that I become intensely worried about waxing every inch from my orifice and became just more self-conscious about sexual performance in general. I’ve also noticed that it seems a lot easier for some of these men to categorize women as objects- because, let’s face it, the woman/man/god forbid child on the screen can’t disagree/argue/or voice discomfort with a sex act. (And by discomfort I mean the occasional “ouch” and “eh, do we really need to do it this way?” that may come along with any sexual act. This is just my personal experience and maybe it means that I’m not “free” enough or whatever but it’s an observation.
Also, while I think it is wrong to intentionally shame someone about their preferences for certain kinds of race play in sex (it is a private act after all) once it gets documented and put out there on video tape I should have every right to object- not call for it to be banned- but to raise real questions about how its existence afftects me- because in the end, we don’t live in isolation.
Posted 09 Jul 2009 at 11:30 am ¶
erin wrote:
Such a good post, thank you. This also reminds me of the internal conflict I had as a young feminist who adored (and still does) Alice Walker…and who was also coming to realize my interest in BDSM. Walker’s essay against BDSM was hard for me, but helped me learn to reconcile the fact that I could deeply respect and admire someone and not always agree with them.
Posted 09 Jul 2009 at 11:35 am ¶
atlasien wrote:
@Andrea: thanks for the dialog, and I think this piece is really great.
@missdee: “This is just my personal experience and maybe it means that I’m not “free” enough or whatever but it’s an observation.”
This is exactly why I’m an ex-sex-positive feminist! I thought that being around mainstream porn and the sex industry wouldn’t affect me, because I was sex-positive and therefore “free”… but I found out it didn’t work that way. It really was negatively affecting me, and making me feel even more self-conscious and inadequate. Once I dropped that “I can handle anything” projection of myself, and realistically assessed my vulnerabilities and tolerances, I felt a lot better. Everyone is going to have different levels.
That’s just the flip side to what Andrea is exploring in this piece. If you’re determined to be totally authentic and “pure” in your patterns of sexual activity and response, that’s a very difficult path. Erotic vs. pornographic is going to work for some, it won’t work for others. A more laissez-faire approach is going to work for some, it won’t work for others.
I’m interested in what Andrea is saying about judgment too. I think we should always reserve “the right to judge”, but how we judge is important. It’s just hard to know when to draw the line. For example, I don’t want to make automatic negative judgments of Asian women who are in relationships with white men (I’m one of them). But I don’t think we’re automatically “above judgment” either. I’m friends with an older Japanese-American women who just broke out of a horrible, exploitative marriage with a white man who was incredibly racist towards her. I wish she had had more people in her life who did judge, and who told her even before her marriage, “please leave, this is terrible for you”.
What Andrea is outlining about “The Group” works toward establishing a rough standard of when and how to judge. Is it about upholding the sexual honor of “The Group” or is it about the welfare of real individuals belonging to that group? Are you criticizing to uphold an abstract ideal, or because someone is really being harmed or exploited? Is your criticism coming from a place of privilege, or not, and what affect does your opinion have on the people you are judging? I don’t think you can ever really draw a firm line but those are some questions to ask in order to know when and how to judge.
Posted 09 Jul 2009 at 12:51 pm ¶
jp wrote:
“This is exactly why I’m an ex-sex-positive feminist! I thought that being around mainstream porn and the sex industry wouldn’t affect me, because I was sex-positive and therefore “free”… but I found out it didn’t work that way. ”
I think when we speak of pornography we have to remember that it isn’t just the hardcore interracial gang-bangs you can find on the internet, or the soft-core playboy of the 80s. We are speaking of sexual imagery. While clearly different today, the nude body and sex has been represented visually for as long as time. And has played out in different ways for different people.
For me, what is GLARINGLY missing from this conversation is the place of queerness. This is especially odd considering Lorde’s lesbianism. How sexist and heterocentric to only speak of porn made by men for men of cisgendered normative women. As a queer dude whose life was literally saved by gay internet porn found during adolescence, this discussion excludes and erases me.
The question, then, isn’t “Is porn bad for women?and can we try and censor it?” Any more than one would ask “Is visual representation always already misogynistic? And shall we suppress all forms of media?” Clearly, its not about the camera. Its about the cameraman. Rather than struggle (i think quite futilely) against depictions of sex that are arousing and consumable, we should make more porn. More porn with fat bodies, more porn with hairy women, more porn with trans men and women and gender queers and intersexed bodies, more porn with tenderness, more porn with power play, more porn that begins with a discussion of consent, more porn with laughing and silliness, more porn with the realistic “ouch” or “this is not comfortable lets switch it up”. I would buy that kind of porn. And in fact with the proliferation of porn we have seen a great broadening of porn. All of what I have mentioned exists. Some of it fetishizes the Other bodies of PoC and non-normative gendered bodies. But we cannot throw the baby out with the bath water, because what is soo amazing is that some porn DOESN’T fetishize said bodies. Lets sit for a minute with the idea of REVOLUTIONARY PORN. What do you want to see? How can we get there? We need vision and multiplicity.
Rather than fight against our desires, we should fight against the culture that dictates those desires along lines of oppression. What could porn look like in a world of active anti-sexism that aligns with anti-queerphobia to discuss violence, trauma, consent and pleasure? Fight the disease, not the symptom.
Posted 09 Jul 2009 at 8:38 pm ¶
Sarah wrote:
Thanks for this, it’s a conversation that always needs to be had.
Posted 09 Jul 2009 at 10:34 pm ¶
erin wrote:
@JP – I think I understand and agree with much of what you’re saying, but I think you may have a misconception that I’d like to address:
you say: “For me, what is GLARINGLY missing from this conversation is the place of queerness. This is especially odd considering Lorde’s lesbianism. How sexist and heterocentric to only speak of porn made by men for men of cisgendered normative women.”
Lorde was writing this work during the late 70s when there was little to no porn produced by women for women. Her comments, thoughts and theories need to be taken in that context before immediately decrying her work as sexist and heterocentric. Do I agree with all of her thoughts? Certainly not. But were she still alive, she most likely would be still engaging and evolving as a critical thinker and writer. Context is important here.
Also, while I agree that more porn should be produced with bodies and sexualities outside the porn mainstream, I think you’re ignoring the baggage and history of the very real and valid concerns many women had/have about porn. I speak as a very pro-porn, sex-positive feminist, but also recognize some of the systemic problems with it at play here.
Posted 10 Jul 2009 at 12:54 am ¶
flowersk wrote:
@erin: I just did a google search for that Alice Walker article on BDSM but couldn’t find it. Do you remember what it was called? Thanks
Posted 10 Jul 2009 at 1:52 am ¶
Adrianna wrote:
Great post as always AJ! I can see what she is saying . I get it . For me as a young women of color some of the young men my age mostly see me as sex object. I am pornified whether I want it or not. I have to sit an listen to young men dissect a young woman’s body as if she was chicken dinner. How do I reclaim my sexuality in a environment where sex positive movement does not exist? I keep to myself and explore by myself. Sex seems to be devoid of any eroticism.
Posted 10 Jul 2009 at 3:48 am ¶
atlasien wrote:
@jp:
“How sexist and heterocentric to only speak of porn made by men for men of cisgendered normative women.”
You’re discounting male privilege and the fact that many women are strongly affected by mainstream porn even when we don’t watch it… whether we’re lesbian or straight.
You’re also arguing that every kind of sexual imagery is porn. There is no dividing line, like the one Lorde argues for. I can’t agree with that… all I’m saying is that there often is a line, and different people should be allowed to draw it in different ways.
Gay men obviously are going to have a different relationship to porn than straight women, but I don’t think it’s possible to characterize either group according to rigid archetypes.
I’m not pro-porn but I’m not anti-porn either. The idea that people who have some issues with pornography (like me, and lots of other women of color) think all sexual imagery is bad and we’re prudes and we’re standing in the way of the sexual revolution… that kind of judgmental extremism is, again, why I’m now ex-sex-positive.
Posted 10 Jul 2009 at 10:06 am ¶
Fiqah wrote:
So this was what was on the burner, huh? It was worth the wait – VERY well done, AJ! It’s been really cool reading all of these posts in conjunction with one another. Like you, I adore the late great Ms. Lorde…but I had some issues with a.) some feminists’ insistence on divorcing masculinity from the realm of the sexual in the name of female empowerment and b.) highlighting the violence and oppressive aspects (race, gender, et al) of pornography while patently refusing to acknowledge its compelling erotic appeal. ( That’s not just my opinion. It’s a billion dollar industry!)
Anyway, I’m blah blahing – again.
Good job!
Posted 10 Jul 2009 at 10:22 am ¶
AJ Plaid wrote:
@Sarah, Tim, N, erin, and Fiqah–thanks for the compliment! This Lorde essay was a wrestle for me for the reason that erin stated: it’s the challange of liking someone’s work but finding my viewpoint embracing ideas that are, honestly, quite the opposite. In this culture, disagreement tends to get viewed as dislike and disrespect. I honestly adore Lorde’s writing–I just don’t agree with all of it, that’s all.
@jp–I agree with erin on this one: Lorde’s writing is, for good and bad, the product of her times. So, “women” meant “ciswomen” and “men” meant “cismen,” regardless of whether they were gay or straight. So, back then, some feminists viewed gay men as part of the patriarchy and even the worst of it because their attraction to other men was the ultimate worship of it, gay porn included (if not the logical extension).
Bisexual women and bisexuality back then? Hmph, some of the feminists would say. Political fence-sitters because those women refuse to give up their straight privilege by still sleeping with men. Transfolks? Double hmph, some of the feminists would have said then. Some of them felt transwomen, because they weren’t “born” women, would disrupt “(cis)women-only” spaces with their male privilege. (This was quite a bit of the controversy behind allowing transwomen into the Michigan Womyn’s Festival.) And transmen were (cis)women who just want to fully participate in the patriarchy. (I’m thinking of the vitriol from some feminists when author Patrick Califia transitioned.) Gender fluidity as we know it now? Got some serious side-eye back then. Even identifying as “queer” back then would have gotten the direct side-eye in some feminist quarters.
The times have changed and, as erin said, were Lorde still alive, she most likely would be still engaging and evolving as a critical thinker and writer. And I apologize for not explicating that history in my post.
@atlasien–what can I say? You’re a great person to dialogue with! Oh, and thanks for voicing my opinion to jp re: porn and sexual imagery.
@atlasien and missdeeHmmm…I think it’s really easy to see how sex-positive theory can be a philosophical stance for anything (uncritically and sexually) goes, which as I’m growing into it, sex-positivity doesn’t. I think this juncture is where sex-positive advocates may need to discuss the ideas what I call the Sex-Positive Wall, the lines where we simply say, “Do you, but that’s not me.” To me, “that’s not me” is my way of drawing my sexual line, of voicing my judgment without getting hypercritical and invoking folks who didn’t ask me to speak for them.:D
Race-based domestic violence, like all forms of domestic violence, is the exact opposite of sex-positivity because the abused never consents to it. Race play, as horrid as it is to some of us, isn’t an abusive situation unto itself in the sex-positive sense because consent is freely given.
So, yes, a situation where an Asian American woman is getting emotionally abused by her white partner can and should be judged negatively–that’s *not* what she agreed to when she entered into a relationship with him. But, say, myAsian-American female friend who is a sub marries her white male dom and they continue their BDSM relationship, including their agreeing to have some elements of race play in the relationship, isn’t being abused in the sex-positive sense because she and her partner freely agreed to 1) engage in BDSM and race play (as a WoC who’s into race play said to me, “The only difference between BDSM and abuse is consent.”) and 2) the marriage itself. (And, no, I don’t have a problem with any combinations of interracial marriages.) So, I may squick about certain elements of that particular relationship (the race play crashes into my Sex-Positive Wall pretty hard), but I’d say to her, “Luvie, Lawd knows it ain’t me, but do you with *lots* of consent and safety. And *if *it gets non-consensual/abusive, let me know.” Now, say, if my homie and her husband get an amicable divorce, and the ex approached a random Asian American woman talking about the race play he and my pal did…then, ya know, I wouldn’t blame that woman for laying some serious whoop-ass on him. She didn’t ask for that.
@Adrianna–I think Latoya’s post, “Black Booty Body Politics” offers a way in the sense that one picks and chooses what from the environment and self what affirms one’s sexuality, what makes one feel sexy, be it images, people, what-have-you. As for the men who wish to talk about women’s pieces and parts, I have two rather womanish suggestions:
1) when the conversation starts to leans that way, get up and say, “In all due respect, gentlemen, I don’t appreciate your talking about my body parts in such a fashion.” And walk out the room.
2) depending on the age of the male conversants, get on the phone and talk to your homegurls about guys’ parts. And, as you’re getting to the part about their genitalia, walk out the room as you continue the conversation. The men in the room may be shocked into silence because they not think that women look at them in such a way and have a *gasp* judgment about the subject.
Posted 10 Jul 2009 at 1:19 pm ¶
jp wrote:
Thanks everyone for their critical responses.
I just wanted to clarify that I was NOT calling the late great “black, lesbian, feminist, mother, poet warrior” sexist and heterocentric. I understand that dyke porn wasn’t as popular then as it is now, and even now it is extremely limited and often expensive. For the record though, lesbians have been representing their sex since forever, and I wonder how Lorde felt about lesbian BDSM which flourished in her own time.
I was speaking about this POST which ignores lesbian porn, gay porn, queer porn. Now I’m certainly not calling the author a homophobic patriarch. But when you write about sex and leave out non-normative sexuality, as if it doesn’t exist – thats erasure. Which is particularly odd when discussing the work of a lesbian…
Posted 10 Jul 2009 at 1:56 pm ¶
Wendi Muse wrote:
waaait…they sell sex toys at target? are you talking about like the minivibes and rings that come with condoms or like full on, i can buy this at babeland kinda stuff?!?!
Posted 10 Jul 2009 at 2:06 pm ¶
AJ Plaid wrote:
@jp–Maybe you missed this part of my response because it’s tucked in with everything else. So, once more and with feeling:
And I apologize for not explicating that history in my post.
Posted 10 Jul 2009 at 2:08 pm ¶
AJ Plaid wrote:
@Wendi Muse–LOL!! No, luvie, you can’t buy a Rabbit Pearl at Target. (Yet.) Just the smaller ones.
Posted 10 Jul 2009 at 2:14 pm ¶
erin wrote:
@flowersk – I don’t remember the name of the Alice Walker essay, sadly…I do remember that I saw it in a book, and if I remember correctly (this was 10-12 years ago!), it was in a small book that was all writing by feminists against BDSM (and possibly porn, too). It might have been in “In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens”…hmmm…
Posted 10 Jul 2009 at 4:17 pm ¶
Joseph wrote:
@AJ
Wow. This is really great. What a minefield! Critiquing a black/feminist icon, dealing with sex and gender, and writing about PORN… if you can juggle while you do that I have an agent you should meet. However, even minus the juggling, you have done a really sensitive job of making your way through the personal, political and erotic in this post.
I can’t argue with a rallying cry for revolutionary porn (a la jp) I can’t help but wonder.. what if you don’t want any revolution in your porn? I keep think of the Perverted Negresses’ hilarious comment in your interview with her, “My vagina is not particularly interested in uplifting the race.” I had two reactions to that thought 1) BWAH! and 2) Hmmm.
And I think that is where I am right now, between those two visceral responses.
Thanks for making me think.
Posted 13 Jul 2009 at 2:50 pm ¶
NeNe wrote:
I think Lorde has a point that is unexamined when she says that pornography is sensation (sexual, even) without feeling (sexual).
So, when I think about the erotic, as Lorde means it, I think of a freeing of sexual feeling that is free of… I think she says it best. To the point where you can get wet from more than sensation.
When I really think about it, it reminds me of a friend of mine who could have orgasms based on her feelings alone. She would think about a woman she was crushing on, lock onto the feeling, get wet and cum. It pissed me off because I could eventually tell (the reddening of the face was always a dead giveaway), however, I think this is an example of the freeing of the erotic that Lorde advocates. Somehow, my friend was able to find a path outside of all those social forces to find pleasure without it needing to even involve someone else physically. But emotionally…
And that’s what Lorde is talking about yes? How women are socialized and coerced into feeling that their emotionality is too wild, too “lesser than”… that it must be controlled, but within that emotionality which so much effort goes into controlling lies an erotic power so powerful as to be transformative.
I dunno. That makes me wet.
Posted 13 Jul 2009 at 8:19 pm ¶
Mkali-Hashiki wrote:
Thank you so much for this post. I do Erotic Wellness Facilitation (yes I made that up, but it fits), and as a queer woman of color, one of the demographics that I focus on is other queer women of color. I often quote pieces of Lorde’s essay, even at the same time that I’m quite disturbed by portions of it. And usually I just use the “it’s over 20/30 years old” to address that part of it. I really appreciate such a thoughtful analysis.
I *just* started my blog The Enstatic Body which will mostly be about the intersection of sexuality & spirituality, but through an implicit filter of race/class/gender political thought http://bodyenstasy.com/blog/
Posted 30 Sep 2009 at 4:48 pm ¶