Pleasure Activism

The Politics of Feeling Good

adrienne maree brown

• Publisher: AK Press
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781849353274
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Feminism & Feminist Theory
• Index: Social Sciences

How do we make social justice the most pleasurable human experience? How can we awaken within ourselves desires that make it impossible to settle for anything less than a fulfilling life? Author and editor adrienne maree brown finds the answer in something she calls “pleasure activism,” a politics of healing and happiness that explodes the dour myth that changing the world is just another form of work. Drawing on the black feminist tradition, she challenges us to rethink the ground rules of activism. Her mindset-altering essays are interwoven with conversations and insights from other feminist thinkers, including Audre Lorde, Joan Morgan, Cara Page, Sonya Renee Taylor, and Alexis Pauline Gumbs. Together they cover a wide array of subjects—from sex work to climate change, from race and gender to sex and drugs—building new narratives about how politics can feel good and how what feels good always has a complex politics of its own.

Building on the success of her popular Emergent Strategy, brown launches a new series of the same name with this volume, bringing readers books that explore experimental, expansive, and innovative ways to meet the challenges that face our world today. Books that find the opportunity in every crisis!

adrienne maree brown, author of Emergent Strategy and co-editor of Octavia’s Brood, is a social justice facilitator focused on black liberation, a doula/healer, and a pleasure activist. She lives in Detroit.

PRAISE for Pleasure Activism:

"This is no self-help manual—it's a weighty text that discusses everything from enthusiastic consent to U.S. drug policy—but it's a genuine, well, pleasure to read as well. The book's open, identity-affirming view of sex is wildly empowering, particularly for young people who might not have had the idea ingrained in them that intimate contact with another person should always be initiated out of a desire for pleasure." —Vogue

“[brown] demonstrates how we can tap into our emotional and erotic desires to organize against oppression.” —Colorlines

“adrienne maree brown...continues to stake her claim as one of our most critical thinkers and strategists by intentionally combining the power of story-telling with practical applications to help readers conjure their own definition of pleasure and how it is inextricably linked to every part of our existence.” —Monica Simpson, SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective

"adrienne marie brown is back, again dropping wisdom about alternative ways to live at this deeply fucked-up moment ... Let this book be the best Valentine’s Day gift you’ve ever given yourself." —Vice/Broadly

“adrienne maree brown dives deep, head first, into a fast swirling pool of pleasure-related topics. She swims her way from one end of the pool to the other with some help from her body-wise, experienced, friends. This book is all at once so cool, and so hot, with a rainbow of glorious compleXXXities. Pleasure Activism is bound to make a huge splash!” —Annie Sprinkle, author of Explorer’s Guide to Planet Orgasm—For Every Body

“Engaging with politics and social justice issues, whether it's climate change, race, or gender, can feel like work (and it is). Adrienne maree brown makes the case that you can feel good while doing so ... [Pleasure Activism] will challenge you to rethink your approach to changing the world.” —Mashable

"Pleasure Activism is an invitation to know ourselves and be in conversation with the desire of our lustful imaginations... [I]t makes our personal liberation irresistible." —Jasmine Burnett, activist and anti-oppression consultant

"adrienne maree brown elucidates a philosophy of Pleasure Activism to transform individuals and so the world. Her explicit instructions encourage orgasms of the body, mind and spirit. First, in support of our own authentic lives, then so that we can live in loving community with others. It’s like a wise and juicy black goddess reopened Eden and said, 'Okay, everybody, let’s try this again.'" —Veronica Vera, author & founder of Miss Vera’s Finishing School For Boys Who Want to Be Girls

Table of contents

• Pleasure Activism
• Dedication
• Introduction
• Section One: Who Taught You to Feel Good?
• Uses of the Erotic
• The Legacy of “Uses of the Erotic”
• A Spoilerific Gush on How Octavia Butler Turns Me On
• Love as Political Resistance
• The Sweetness of Salt
• Why We Get Off
• A Pleasure Philosophy
• Section Two: The Politics of Radical Sex
• Sex Ed
• Pussy Power with Favianna Rodriguez
• Wherein I Write about Sex
• Section Three: A Circle of Sex
• Conversation with a Sex Toy
• Sex Majik (No One Told Me to Do It)
• Nipples Are Magic
• It’s Bloody Fantastic
• Fucking/Having Sex/Making Love
• The Highs, Lows, and Blows of Casual Sex
• Confessions of A Queer Sex Goddess
• Are you there, goD? It’s me, Day
• Feelmore
• Bodyminds Reimagined
• Fuck You, Pay Me
• A Timeline/Tutorial on Squirting
• Sub-section: Skills for Sex in the #MeToo Era
• From #MeToo to #WeConsent
• It’s about Your Game
• It’s Time to Reclaim Our Skin
• I Want You, but I’m Triggered
• Strategic Celibacy
• Liberating Your Fantasies
• Pornography and Accountability
• Use Your Voice
• Section Four: The Politics of Radical Drug Use
• Weed On, Weed Off
• Conditions of Possibility
• Experiments in Cannabis for the Collective
• Ecstasy Saved My Life
• Sub-section: The Politics of Healing Toward Pleasure
• Feeling from Within
• Black Woman Wildness
• Beyond Trans Desire
• Pleasure After Childhood Sexual Abuse
• Fuck Cancer
• Care as Pleasure
• Sub-Section: The Politics of Wholeness in Movements
• The Pleasure of Living at the Same Time as Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter
• On Fear, Shame, Death, and Humor
• The Power to Make Light
• Fly as hell
• On the Pleasures of Wardrobe
• Adornment and Burlesque
• Burlesque and Liberation
• Working the Pole
• Pleasure Over Sixty
• The Work of Parenting
• Raising Sexually Liberated Kids
• Tips for Raising Sexually Liberated Kids
• Sub-Section
• Radical Gratitude Spell
• Liberated Relationships, Expanded
• On Nonmonogamy
• Being Second
• The Pleasure of Deep, Intentional Friendship
• Principles in Practice
• Section Six: Outro, Thank Yous
• Outro
• Gratitude
• Also Available From adrienne maree brown
• Copyright
• Friends of AK