The Politics of Feeling Good
'Pleasure Activism' by adrienne maree brown is a transformative book that argues for centering pleasure as a political act. It offers insights on harnessing pleasure to create social change, and exploring the idea of a world where joy, freedom, and justice are intertwined.
Pleasure is freedom. To feel happiness, joy, and satisfaction – in short, to feel pleasure – is to know you are alive and liberated. In this regard, pleasure can be political, especially if you identify as a woman, femme, LGBTQ+, or have had to live in an oppressive environment.
Experiencing pleasure as an act of defiance is where the term pleasure activism comes in. In the author’s own words, 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.” As someone who identifies as a queer, Black, mixed-race woman, the author has had to learn ways to understand and move through childhood traumas. Finding pleasure, and finding a way to her yes, has been central to that process.
The key message here is: Pleasure is about feeling whole and satisfied – not about indulging in excess.
Many of us have grown up with certain beliefs that have trained us to equate pleasure with indecency or needless indulgence. We’ve been taught to repress our desires for pleasure so much that any sort of allowance is seen as excessive. As a result, when people hear ideas about embracing pleasure, their thoughts often immediately turn to these negative perceptions. But that’s not what pleasure activism is about. The author and those she interviewed like to say, “everything in moderation.” So, while we extol the virtues of pleasure, try not to think of it in terms of excess or overindulgence!
Alana Devich Cyril’s story is a great example of this mantra. After being diagnosed with late-stage cancer, finding pleasure and experiencing satisfaction despite feeling sick a lot of the time became more important than ever.
For a while, the cancer and the chemotherapy left Alana feeling betrayed by her body, and pleasure was something that seemed inaccessible. But thanks in part to friendly health-care workers, her friends, and her loving partner, she was able to gradually bring pleasure back into her life. There was pleasure in having friends over, throwing a karaoke party, and eventually reengaging in sex. It took effort to once again open herself up to these experiences, but, for her, they were life-affirming.
As Alana sees it, a big part of being a human being on Earth is to experience pleasure. And when she advocates for “everything in moderation,” she emphasizes the “everything.” Through her journey, we see that adopting pleasure as a practice can help when we feel dissociated from our bodies or find ourselves slipping into depression.
Pleasure Activism (2019) offers an introduction to the politics of pleasure. It explores the ways in which we can break free of repression and marginalization – and instead embrace the feelings of freedom. It offers ways in which we can gain a better understanding of past traumas and move forward with a deeper connection to our bodies and our communities.
Pleasure activism is about learning what it means to be satisfiable, to generate, from within and from between us, an abundance from which we can all have enough.
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