# paper --- **title**: Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power **authors**: Audre Lorde # highlights --- >[!highlight|#ffd400]+ pg. [](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/ZVA22MNI?page=&annotation=3WC5KIKK) > >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. > > > > >[!highlight|#ffd400]+ pg. [](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/ZVA22MNI?page=&annotation=54CRMZTE) > >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. > > > > [[every oppression must corrupt or distort]] >[!highlight|#ffd400]+ pg. [](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/ZVA22MNI?page=&annotation=CZAVF66T) > >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. > > > > >[!highlight|#5fb236]+ pg. [](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/ZVA22MNI?page=&annotation=X5JPBZHG) > >But the 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. > > > > >[!highlight|#ffd400]+ pg. [2](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/ZVA22MNI?page=2&annotation=UDCCUMAU) > >The erotic has often been misnamed by men and used against women. It has been made into the confused, the trivial, the psychotic, the plasticized sensation. For this reason, we have often turned away from the exploration and consideration of the erotic as a source of power and information, confusing it with its opposite, the pornographic. > > > > >[!highlight|#5fb236]+ pg. [2](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/ZVA22MNI?page=2&annotation=3XXJANCA) > >pornography is a direct denial of the power of the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling. Pornography emphasizes sensation without feeling. > > > > >[!highlight|#ffd400]+ pg. [2](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/ZVA22MNI?page=2&annotation=TZIBVJ78) > >The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. > > > > >[!highlight|#ffd400]+ pg. [2](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/ZVA22MNI?page=2&annotation=7K4Z8NUL) > >It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. > > > > >[!highlight|#ffd400]+ pg. [2](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/ZVA22MNI?page=2&annotation=WBXA8W4W) > >It is never easy to demand the most from ourselves, from our lives, from our work. To encourage excellence is to go beyond the encouraged mediocrity of our society is to encourage excellence. But giving in to the fear of feeling and working to capacity is a luxury only the unintentional can afford, and the unintentional are those who do not wish to guide their own destinies. > > > > >[!highlight|#ffd400]+ pg. [2](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/ZVA22MNI?page=2&annotation=GI6R5K3Z) > >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 extent to which we are capable of feeling that sense of satisfaction and completion, we can then observe which of our various life endeavours bring us closest to that fullness. > > > > >[!highlight|#ffd400]+ pg. [2](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/ZVA22MNI?page=2&annotation=5A2CHH8J) > >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. > > > > >[!highlight|#ffd400]+ pg. [2](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/ZVA22MNI?page=2&annotation=NNSTBNBE) > >Of course, women so empowered are dangerous. So we are taught to separate the erotic demand from most vital areas of our lives other than sex. > > > > >[!highlight|#5fb236]+ pg. [3](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/ZVA22MNI?page=3&annotation=IGBWM53B) > >the principal horror of such a system is that it robs our work of its erotic value, its erotic power and life appeal and fulfilment. Such a system reduces work to a travesty of necessities, a duty by which we earn bread or oblivion for ourselves and those we love. > > > > > > >systems of oppression >[!highlight|#ffd400]+ pg. [3](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/ZVA22MNI?page=3&annotation=AZ7TLEWF) > >The very word erotic 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. > > > > >[!highlight|#f19837]+ pg. [3](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/ZVA22MNI?page=3&annotation=J4M8NYE8) > >ascetic > > > > > > >characterized by or suggesting the practice of severe self-discipline and abstention from all forms of indulgence, typically for religious reasons. >[!highlight|#f19837]+ pg. [3](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/ZVA22MNI?page=3&annotation=NC2D6ZNE) > >abnegation > > > > > > >the act of renouncing or rejecting something. >[!highlight|#ffd400]+ pg. [4](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/ZVA22MNI?page=4&annotation=I3PKTPXG) > >The 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 lessens the threat of their difference. > > > > >[!highlight|#ffd400]+ pg. [4](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/ZVA22MNI?page=4&annotation=FBWMGJQW) > >Another important way in which the erotic connection functions is the open and fearless underlining of my capacity for joy. In the way my body stretches to music and opens into response, hearkening to its deepest rhythms, so every level upon which I sense also opens to the erotically satisfying experience, whether it is dancing, building a bookcase, writing a poem, examining ai idea. > > > > >[!highlight|#ffd400]+ pg. [4](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/ZVA22MNI?page=4&annotation=AYXAEXG8) > >That self-connection shared is a measure of the joy which know myself to be capable of feeling, a reminder of my capacity for feeling. And that deep and irreplaceable knowledge of our capacity for joy comes to demand from all of my life that it b lived within the knowledge that such satisfaction is possible and does not have to be called marriage, nor god, nor an afterlife. > > > > >[!highlight|#ffd400]+ pg. [4](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/ZVA22MNI?page=4&annotation=BATLGNCV) > >once we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we begin to demand from ourselves and from our life-pursuits that the1 feel in accordance with that joy which we know ourselves to b capable of. Our erotic knowledge empowers us, becomes a lens through which we scrutinize all aspects of our existence, forcing us to evaluate those aspects honestly in terms of their relative meaning within our lives. > > > > >[!highlight|#ffd400]+ pg. [5](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/ZVA22MNI?page=5&annotation=7LSV9ZKR) > >The fear that we cannot grow beyond whatever distortions we may find within ourselves keeps us docile and loyal and obedient, externally defined, and leads us to accept many facets of our oppression as women. > > > > >[!highlight|#ffd400]+ pg. [5](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/ZVA22MNI?page=5&annotation=LM4WVJBD) > >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. > > > > >[!highlight|#5fb236]+ pg. [5](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/ZVA22MNI?page=5&annotation=ZL7J594K) > >In touch with the erotic, I become less willing to accept powerlessness, or those other supplied states of being which are not native to me, such as resignation, despair, self-effacement, depression, self-denial. > > > > >[!highlight|#ffd400]+ pg. [6](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/ZVA22MNI?page=6&annotation=T3GANJ74) > >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. > > > > >[!highlight|#ffd400]+ pg. [6](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/ZVA22MNI?page=6&annotation=F9GCZY5Y) > >To refuse to be conscious of what we are feeling at any time, however comfortable 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. > > > > >[!highlight|#ffd400]+ pg. [7](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/ZVA22MNI?page=7&annotation=UMUJ5P79) > >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. > > > > >[!highlight|#ffd400]+ pg. [7](zotero://open-pdf/library/items/ZVA22MNI?page=7&annotation=26GNJ8LQ) > >For not only do we touch our most profoundly creative source, but we do that which is female and self-affirming in the face of a racist, patriarchal, and anti-erotic society. > > > >