Why pleasure?

About ten years ago, I had an aha while reading Pussy: A Reclamation by Regena Thomashauer.

I saw how the misogynistic world culture had come to dominate - by separating women from their pleasure. Pleasure was made wrong. Pleasure was made scary. Women in their pleasure were made witches.

Why villainize pleasure?

Because pleasure is a source of power for women. And women in their power aren’t predictable or controllable.

When women are in touch with pleasure in themselves, they don’t need permission, validation, or approval. They know that they can feel good all on their own. Women in touch with pleasure - with what they enjoy and feels good in their body - know their worth.

This gives them the motivation and power to walk away from situations, relationships, engagements that do not feel good. That are damaging, neglectful or abusive.

What happened?

It’s hard to know exactly what happened, but the basic shift was to fear and greed.

There were people - yes, men - in leadership that had accumulated wealth, decided they liked it, wanted more of it, were afraid of losing it, and would do what it took to keep it and get more. Church and religion play a big part in this.

People are easier to control and take advantage of when they are scared.

If people trusted themselves and each other, if they knew they had community to rely on, and had the support and resources to deal with challenges that came up - they were independent and secure. They were friends with the wild and the dark.

So, they had to be made scared. They had to be divided.

Things were labeled masculine and feminine and were given different status. Feminine was associated with pleasure, wildness, forests, nature, sensuality, sexuality, emotions, and dance. This became labeled as bad, scary and dangerous, and became something to control and punish.

Women perhaps have easier access to the feminine traits, but they exist in all humans. When the feminine traits were made “bad” though, for men to be men, they had to disown those parts of themselves. And for women to be “good” they also had to disown those parts of themselves. How sad!

The church did this deliberately so that they could control people and get more wealth. There are lots of other people who have discussed how. I don’t need to.

Now what?

Bring back pleasure. Bring back radical love of our bodies, sensuality, sexuality, feelings, wildness.

This needs to be done for all humans.

And because I am in a body that was assigned female at birth, and also identify with that gender, I focus on the experience of this group of people - cis-women. For my ease, I am calling these people women. And, yes, transwomen are also women.

Why I’m a Pleasure Revolutionary

I’m a pleasure revolutionary.

A pleasure revolutionary is someone dedicated to finding enjoyment in all parts of their lives. Someone who is devoted to the pleasure to be found in their own body. Someone who honors their desires as sacred.

Why is this important to me?

Because I want to live in a world where women are valued, and I see the first step as women valuing themselves. And pleasure is the bridge to that.