Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power

Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power

Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power

Audre Lorde explores the power of the erotic as a force of empowerment for women, challenging societal suppression and reclaiming the importance of deep, unapologetic feeling in personal and collective liberation.

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he erotic functions for me in several ways, and the first is in providing the power which comes from sharing deeply any pursuit with another person. The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and... See more

Audre Lorde. • Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power

Audre Lorde, Uses of the Erotic: Erotic as Power

The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling. 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.

Audre Lorde. • Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power

Femininity and power - Audre Lorde

But when we begin to live from within outward, in touch with the power of the erotic within ourselves, and allowing that power to inform and illuminate our actions upon the world around us, then we begin to be responsible to ourselves in the deepest sense. For as we begin to recognize our deepest feelings, we begin to give up, of necessity, being... See more

Audre Lorde. • Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power

I love this and I have felt this feeling much more recently - pole, dancing at home like when I was a kid pretending to be in music videos, moving my body the way I want to and wearing clothes that help me show my highest self

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... See more

Audre Lorde. • Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power

we have narrowed feminism and femininity through the lens of the male gaze and male expectations

This internal requirement toward excellence which we learn from the erotic must not be misconstrued as demanding the impossible from ourselves nor from others. Such a demand incapacitates everyone in the process. For the erotic is not a question only of what we do; it is a question of how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing. Once we know the... See more

Audre Lorde. • Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power

Audre Lorde, Uses of the Erotic: Erotic as Power

As women, we need to examine the ways in which our world can be truly different. I am speaking here of the necessity for reassessing the quality of all the aspects of our lives and of our work, and of how we move toward and through them

Audre Lorde. • Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power

Audre Lorde, Uses of the Erotic: Erotic as Power

Recognizing the power of the erotic within our lives can give us the energy to pursue genuine change within our world, rather than merely settling for a shift of characters in the same weary drama

Audre Lorde. • Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power

i want to teach this to others

The aim of each thing which we do is to make our lives and the lives of our children richer and more possible. Within the celebration of the erotic in all our endeavours, my work becomes a conscious decision - a longed-for bed which I enter gratefully and from which I rise up empowered.

Audre Lorde. • Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power

Audre Lorde, Uses of the Erotic: Erotic as Power

There are frequent attempts to equate pornography and eroticism, two diametrically opposed uses of the sexual .

Audre Lorde. • Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power

eroticism to serve men and eroticism for self empowerment