and when sex becomes a betrayal of the self
“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”
Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: “Uses of the Erotic”
This is a personal piece.
I know of a lot of people, particularly women, who have agreed to do something they were uncomfortable with in the heat of the moment, even if it means ignoring something inside of you telling you not to. I’ve done that too. Without delving too much into details and my issues with boundary setting and assertion, this compelled me to look more into why I found this experiences so upsetting.
Sometimes sex can feel like someone is just using your body to jerk off. This is a sentiment I know I share with many people, specifically women, specifically sex-positive women with whom I like to talk about issues of sex and dating with. I am a sex-positive feminist. For me, this conviction includes an adamant rejection of unsatisfying, inconsiderate and/or coercive sexual acts. For me, any sex that is not centered on connectivity, love (self-love included), and pleasure, is dangerous.
I want to be clear that this is not a critique of people who have sex for other reasons, including economic reasons. I’m speaking from my own experiences, drawing on a piece from Audre Lorde that I found particularly timely, moving, and essential to my understanding of my own sexual agency.
The above quote is from a piece in Sister Outsider called “Uses of the Erotic” in which Lorde explains the importance of prioritizing our intuition and our “deepest and nonrational knowledge” that as women, we learn to distrust in favor of being nice and agreeable. This inner knowledge is the erotic. To Lorde, this is something deeply human, all-knowing and powerful. And as explained by the quote above, to disregard one’s erotic power can have detrimental consequences.
The erotic is our inner most desire along with our ability to connect with others on this level of intimacy. These connections to the self and others is what drives our capacity for joy, pleasure, and peace. This is a power that isn’t defined by sexuality as much as it includes it as a form of the erotic. The erotic also includes creative energy and love. So why so we ignore it? What are the consequences in terms of sex?
Lorde argues that “we have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings.” By creating this distrust of our own knowledge, we become exposed to the will of others who claim to know better than we do about our selves, our needs, and our own desires. I think of coerced celibacy, slut shaming, “prude” shaming, and compulsory heterosexuality. This contributes to the making of the pornographic: performing a role for the pleasure of someone else in defiance of our own personal will.
I’m struggling to separate this claim from one that could easily become victim-blaming. How possible it is for me to guard myself against pressure or coercion in patriarchal, heteronormative society? How much of this seeps into my sex life and how avoidable is this form of coercion? I limit the type of people I interact with, but right now I don’t have answers to the question of the extent to which one could be truly sexually liberated, especially as a woman who sleeps with men (though some feminists argue that liberating sex with men in this context is impossible).
I’ve had moments where I’ve slipped up, and for a variety of reasons, chose to ignore my erotic energy. I’ve learned to forgive myself and move on, but the lesson stuck with me. Whenever we act against this erotic power, the most intimate parts of our very being, we cut ourselves off from the knowledge that it provides, the truth we all possess, and the intuition that guides us. Whenever we give in or trust someone more than this quiet voice, we weaken it, effectively making us distrustful towards ourselves. To me, the erotic is something sacred, and worth protecting at all costs.
The Sensual Scholar 