Home > Work > Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good
1 " revolution cannot be created by conforming to existing roles in relationships already defined by the systems we want to overthrow. "
― adrienne maree brown , Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good
2 " Money buys protection. It buys time off and privacy. And it buys nice, pretty shit. Money also buys food, housing, and health care. Getting paid enough to meet our needs—and more—feels good. I’m not romanticizing the sex industry, I know it has risks; I’m just not going to romanticize economic deprivation in the name of being a “good girl,” either. So do sex workers feel pleasure at work? Yeah. Because you know what feels amazing? Surviving capitalism. "
3 " People try to shame me for being fat. When I am walking down the street, men lean out of their car windows and shout vulgar things at me about my body, how they see it and how it upsets them that I am not catering to their gaze and their preferences and desires. I try not to take these men seriously because what they are really saying is, ‘I am not attracted to you. I do not want to fuck you and this confuses my understanding of masculinity, entitlement, and place in this world.’ It is not my job to please them with my body. "
4 " In other words, I want an erotic that demands space be made for honest bodies that like to also fuck. "
5 " Women and femmes who love money are free to be demanding. The world has tried to fool them into thinking that getting paid for care or sex “cheapens” it. Please. You know what’s “cheap”? When men think they’re entitled to free and unlimited care, attention, and sex. That’s cheap. "
6 " I believe that all organizing is science fiction - that we are shaping the future we long for and have not yet experienced. "
7 " Your no makes the way for your yes. Boundaries create the container within which your yes is authentic. Being able to say no makes yes a choice. "
8 " Liberated relationships are one of the ways we actually create abundant justice, the understanding that there is enough attention, care, resource, and connection for all of us to access belonging, to be in our dignity, and to be safe in community "
9 " I touch my own skin, and it tells me that before there was any harm, there was miracle. "
10 " Our radical imagination is a tool for decolonization, for reclaiming our right to shape our lived reality. "
11 " We need radical honesty—learning to speak from our root systems about how we feel and what we want. Speak our needs and listen to others’ needs. To say, “I need to hear that you miss me.” “When you’re high all the time it’s hard for me to feel your presence.” “I lied.” “The way you talked to that man made me feel unseen.” “Your jealousy makes me feel like an object and not a partner.” The result of this kind of speech is that our lives begin to align with our longings, and our lives become a building block for authentic community and ultimately a society that is built around true need and real people, not fake news and bullshit norms. "
12 " There is no way to repress pleasure and expect liberation, satisfaction, or joy. "
13 " I believe our imaginations—particularly the parts of our imaginations that hold what we most desire, what brings us pleasure, what makes us scream yes—are where we must seed the future, turn toward justice and liberation, and reprogram ourselves to desire sexually and erotically empowered lives. "
14 " In her essay “On the Issue of Roles,” Toni Cade explains that if we want to have a revolution, we have to craft revolutionary relationships, in action, not simply in rhetoric.56 She explains that a revolution cannot be created by conforming to existing roles in relationships already defined by the systems we want to overthrow. We have to practice creating new relationships. "
15 " Pleasure is the point. Feeling food is not frivolous, it is freedom. "
16 " This is relationship building. And this is building trust. And consensually understanding how to be moved and inspired by each other without sometimes assuming that energy has to be sexual. That maybe that’s just an erotic exchange that’s actually about sharing knowledge, memory, power, and that to me is understanding levels of intimacy in relationship to liberation. "
17 " We also learn that love is a limited resource and that the love we want and need is too much, that we are too much. We learn to shrink, to lie about the whole love we need, settling with not quite good enough in order to not be alone. "
18 " ...it must become an incredible pleasure to be able to be honest, expect to be whole, and to know that we are in a community that will hold us accountable and change with us. "
19 " Pleasure activism is the work we do to reclaim our whole, happy, and satisfiable selves from the impacts, delusions, and limitations of oppression and/or supremacy. "
20 " I believe that we are in an imagination battle, and almost everything about how we orient toward our bodies is shaped by fearful imaginations. Imaginations that fear Blackness, brownness, fatness, queerness, disability, difference. Our radical imagination is a tool for decolonization, for reclaiming our right to shape our lived reality. "
