Discussion

RE LORDE ,Al.ID

,___ v.ses o OTfC: S POWER (1984) . -"---" .., ,. - ....- . - .. - ... --

Lorde (1934-1992) was an acclaimed · d h1,Audre wn er an educator whose books included Sister Outsider (1984), ~ e Journals (1980), and Zami: A New S II" f d

cancer . pe ing O My Name (1982). She held many teaching positions and toure Id as a lecturer founding Sisterho d · s . ,

the wor . ' 0 in upport of Sisters (SISA) in South Africa and the St. Croix Womens I. · n She published ten volumes of po t • d . b ·

coa 1t10 · , e ry, numerous essays, and won awards and honors, inclu ing eing

d New York States Poet Laureate Sh f d d • narne · e co- oun e Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press.

There are many kinds ofpower, used and unused acknowledged or otherwise. The erotic is a re~

source within each ofus that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling. In order to perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources ofpower 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.

We have been taught to suspect this resource, vilified, abused, and devalued within Western so­ ciety. On the one hand, the superficially erotic has been encouraged as a sign of female inferiority; on the other hand, women have been made to suffer and to feel both contemptible and suspect by virtue of its existence.

It is a short step from there to the false belief that only by the suppression of the erotic within our lives and consciousness can women be truly strong. But that strength is illusory, for it is fash­ ioned within the context of male models of power.

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 ofmen, but which fears this same depth too much to examine the possibilities of it within themselves. So women are maintained at a distant/inferior position to be psychically

milked, much the same way ants maintain colonies ofaphids to provide a life-giving substance for their masters.

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 sensa­ tion is enough.

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 ofthe erotic as a source of power and information, con­ fusing it with its opposite, the pornographic. But pornography is a direct denial of the power of the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feel­ ing. Pornography emphasizes sensation without feeling.

The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. For having experienced the fullness of this depth of feeling and recognizing its power, in honor and self-respect we can require no less of ourselves . ...

This internal requirement toward excellence which we learn from the erotic must not be mis­ construed as demanding the impossible from ourselves nor from others. Such a demand incapac­ itates everyone in the process. For the erotic is not a question only ofwhat we do; it is a question ofhow

Source: From Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde - published by Crossing Press. Copyright c 1984, 2007 by Audre Lorde. Used

by permission of the Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency.

181

SEX.U~UTY

acutely and full n I in th d ing. know the extent to whi h, pabl of feeling that sen of sati faction nd compl ti n, then obse hi h four lifi bring u l t to that fulln

The aim f ea h thing th t d li and the Ii of our hildren ri h r nd mo

J>Ossibk. Within the eel bration of th rotic m 11 our nd vors. m work become a con ciou

decision-al nged-for bed, which I enter gratefully

and from which I ri up empowered. Of course, men so empowered are danger-

ous. are taught to eparate the erotic demand from most ital areas of our lives other than sex. And the lack ofconcern for the erotic root and satis­ factions ofour work is felt in our disaffection from so much ofwhat we do. For instance, how often do we truly love our work even at its most difficult?

The principal horror of any system that defines the good in terrns of profit rather than in terms of human need or that defines human need to the exclusion of the psychic and emotional compo­ nents of that need-the principal horror of such a system is that it robs our work of its erotic value, its erotic power and life appeal and fulfillment. Such a system reduces work to a travesty of necessities, a duty by which we earn bread or oblivion for our­ selves and those we love ....

As women, we need to examine the ways in which our world can be truly different. I am speak­ ing here of the necessity for reassessing the quality ofall the aspects ofour lives and of our work and of how we move toward and through them.

The very word erotic comes from the Greek word ems, the personification of love in all its aspects­ born ofChaos and personifying creative power and harmony. When I speak of the erotic, then, I speak of it as an assertion of the life force 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.

There are frequent attempts to equate pornog­ raphy and eroticism, two diametrically opposed uses of the sexual. Because of these attempts, it has become fashionable to separate the spiritual (psy­ chic and emotional) from the political, to see them

ntr di t r or ntith tical. ... In the sarn. h tt mpt d to s p rat th spiritual a e way,

nd ti , th r by r ducing th spiritual to a w the

Orld fl tt n d ffi t, a world of the ascetic who a . Of to fi l nothing. But nothing is farther fro spires

truth. For th ascetic position is one of the h~ the fi ar, th grav st immobility. The severe abst' ghest

. . tnen of the ascetic becomes the rulmg obsession A. ce

is one not of self-discipline but of self-abne~at~d it The dichotomy between the spiritual ancton.

th political is also false, resulting from an incorn e

1 . 'k ld Peteattention to our erotic now e ge. For the brict e which connects them is formed by the erotic ~

-t11e sensual-those physical, emotional, and psych· expressions of what is deepest and strongest ante

richest within each of us, being shared: the Pas~ sions of love in its deepest meanings.

Beyond the superficial, the considered phrase "It feels right to me," acknowledges the strength of the erotic into a true knowledge, for what that means is the first and most powerful guiding light toward any understanding. And understanding is a handmaiden, which can only wait upon, or clarify, that knowledge, deeply born. The erotic is the nur­ turer or nursemaid of all our deepest knowledge.

The erotic functions for me in several ways, and the first is in providing the power that 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 ofwhat is not shared between them and less­ ens the threat of their difference.

Another important way in which the erotic con­ nection functions is the open and fearless under­ lining of my capacity for joy. In the way my body stretches to music and opens into response, hear­ kening to its deepest rhythms, so every level upon which I sense also opens to the erotically satisfying experience, whether it is dancing, building a book­ case, writing a poem, examining an idea.

That self-connection shared is a measure of the joy that I know myself to be capable of feeling, a reminder of my capacity for feeling. And that deep and irreplaceable knowledge of my capacity for joy comes to demand from all of my life that it be lived within the knowledge that such satisfaction

d does not have to be called marriage 'ble an ,

is po • nor an afterlife. 110rgod,. ne reason why the erotic is so feared

fsI is o hf often relegated to t e bedroom alone

811d so . ecognized at all. For once we begin to it 1s r .

,111ien all the aspects of our hves, we begin to I deePIy d f .fee d from ourselves an rom our life-pursuits

derfl 30

feel in accordance with that joy that we t theY bl f1113 selves to be capa e o . Our erotic knowl- ow our

Jell owers us, becomes a lens through which dge ernP f .

e t'nize all aspects o our existence, forcing scru 1

we evaluate those aspects honestly in terms of us to · · h ' 1· . relative meanmg wit m our 1ves. And this is ,tieir ·1· · d f · h

responsib1 1ty, proJecte rom wit in each grave

a ot to settle for the convenient, the shoddy, of us, n

ventionally expected, nor the merely safe. 1tie con

ouring World War II, we bought sealed plas- . ckets of white, uncolored margarine, with a

(IC pa . . ,·ntense pellet of yellow colonng perched like uni .

a topaz just inside the clear skm of the bag. We would leave the margarine out for a while to soften, and then we would pinch the little pellet to break it inside the bag, releasing the rich yellowness into the soft pale mass of margarine. Then taking it carefully between our fingers, we would knead it gently back and forth, over and over, until the color had spread throughout the whole pound bag of margarine, thoroughly coloring it.

I find the erotic such a kernel within myself. When released from its intense and constrained pellet, it flows through and colors my life with a kind of energy that heightens and sensitizes and strengthens all my experience.

We have been raised to fear the yes within our­ selves, our deepest cravings. But, once recognized, those which do not enhance our future lose their power and can be altered. The fear of our desires keeps them suspect and indiscriminately power­ ful, for to suppress any truth is to give it strength beyond endurance. 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.

When we live outside ourselves, and by that I mean on external directives only rather than from OU .

r internal knowledge and needs, when we live

183Uses of the Eroti c

· h' ur-away from those erotic guides from wit m 0

ndselves, then our lives are limited by external a alien forms, and we conform to the needs ofa struc­ ture that is not based on human need, let alone an individual's. But 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 cur-

· t rec­selves in the deepest sense. For as we begm 0

ognize our deepest feelings, we begin to give up, of necessity, being satisfied with suffering and self­ negation and with the numbness which so often seems like their only alternative in our society. Our acts against oppression become integral with self, motivated and empowered from within.

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.

And yes, there is a h ierarchy. There is a differ­ ence between painting a back fence and writing a poem, but only one of quantity. And there is, for me, no difference between writing a good poem and moving into sunlight against the body of a woman I love.

This brings me to the last consideration of the erotic. To share the power ofeach other's feelings is different from using another's feelings as we would use a kleenex. When we look the other way from our experience, erotic or otherwise, we use rather than share the feelings of those others who par­ ticipate in the experience with us. And use without consent of the used is abuse.

In order to be utilized, our erotic feelings must be recognized. The need for sharing deep feeling is a human need. But within the European American tradition, this need is satisfied by certain pro­ scribed erotic comings-together. These occasions are almost always characterized by a simultaneous looking away, a pretense ofcalling them something else, whether a religion, a fit, mob violence, or even playing doctor. And this misnaming of the need and the deed gives rise to that distortion which re­ sults in pornography and obscenity-the abuse of feeling.

184 SEXUALITY

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. 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 experi­ ence and to allow ourselves to be reduced to the pornographic, the abused, and the absurd.

The erotic cannot be felt secondhand. As a Black lesbian feminist, I have a particular feeling, knowl­ edge, and understanding for those sisters with whom I have danced hard, played, or even fought. This deep participation has often been the forerun­ ner for joint concerted actions not possible before.

But this erotic charge is not easily shared b . d ywomen who continue to operate un er an exclusive}

European American male tradit!on. I know itwas n; available to me when I was trying to adapt my con­ sciousness to this mode ofliving and sensation.

Only now, I find more and more women­ identified women brave enough to risk sharing the erotic's electrical charge without having to look away and without distorting the enormously pow­ erful and creative nature of that exchange. Recog­ nizing 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.

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.