Pleasure Activism

When was the last time you felt joy without guilt? Many of us are conditioned to believe that pleasure is something we must earn — a rare indulgence or even a weakness. In Pleasure Activism (by adrienne maree brown), the author turns that idea inside out. She argues that pleasure is not only central to living fully but also revolutionary. Her bold claim is that embracing embodied joy and satisfaction can dismantle oppression, reconnect us with our bodies, and build a more sustainable, just world.

Brown frames pleasure as a political act. When marginalized people — those oppressed by racism, sexism, homophobia, or systemic inequality — reclaim their right to feel good, it becomes defiance. "Pleasure activism," she writes, is the work of recovering our whole, happy, and satisfiable selves from the wounds of supremacy and oppression. Through essays, stories, and interviews with activists, artists, and healers, she invites readers to rethink pleasure as the key to self-liberation and collective healing.

Pleasure Beyond Indulgence

The book begins by challenging the way society teaches us to distrust pleasure. From early on, many internalize the idea that desire leads to moral decline. Brown counters this with a call to moderation without repression — what she and interviewees describe as “everything in moderation.” Pleasure is not about excess; it’s about wholeness. She distinguishes between abusive indulgence that disconnects us and the kind of embodied pleasure that nourishes connection. This balance is essential in her philosophy — enjoyment should be life-affirming, not escapist.

One memorable story is Alana Devich Cyril’s. Diagnosed with late-stage cancer, Alana felt betrayed by her own body. For a time, pleasure seemed unreachable. Yet through karaoke nights, friendship, laughter, and intimacy, she re-discovered satisfaction even amidst sickness. Her story mirrors brown’s assertion: pleasure is not a privilege reserved for the well or wealthy; it’s a fundamental part of being human. Pleasure helps us reinhabit our bodies and find connection even in struggle.

The Erotic as Empowerment

Building on the work of Audre Lorde — specifically her essay “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power” — brown expands the definition of pleasure beyond the physical or sexual. The erotic, she explains, is not pornography or superficial arousal. It’s a deep, embodied awareness that awakens power and creativity. The erotic allows us to reclaim our bodies from shame and repression, turning what society deems inappropriate into a source of radical love and self-understanding. This reinterpretation reminds readers that empowerment often begins in the body. You must love your body to access your fullest pleasure — a message shared by burlesque artists such as Taja Lindley and Una Osato, whose performances transform trauma into liberation.

Pleasure as a Compass for Desire

Brown’s philosophy centers on what she calls the “orgasmic yes.” If you spend your life repressing desires, you become accustomed to not receiving what you truly want. Pleasure activism teaches you to listen for that resounding yes — the intuitive sense of alignment and expansion that indicates real satisfaction. Learning to trust your yes, she says, leads to better decisions and opens pathways to collaboration and creativity. Inspired by Toni Cade Bambara’s idea to “make the revolution irresistible,” brown encourages readers to connect their yes to collective change. Social transformation should feel good, not punishing.

Finding Boundaries and Balance

Brown doesn’t shy away from complexity. She discusses drug-induced pleasure, acknowledging both its healing potential and its dangers. Her experiences with marijuana, ecstasy, and mushrooms brought profound feelings of connection — yet she remains vigilant about her addiction risks. Pleasure should awaken, not numb. Moderation and mindfulness help maintain this balance, reminding readers that the pursuit of pleasure must be responsible and self-aware. Through her partnerships with harm reduction organizations, she advocates for humane, nonjudgmental approaches to drug use — emphasizing compassion over control.

Healing Through the Body

After years of depression and trauma, brown turned to somatics — a movement-based therapy connecting body awareness with emotional healing. Through somatic practices, she learned to feel her emotions rather than suppress them, gaining empathy for herself and others. Somatic awareness becomes a bridge between personal transformation and social activism. You can’t heal the world until you heal your relationship with yourself. Organizations like Generative Somatics and BOLD (Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity) offered her spaces for grief, community, and joyful political engagement, illustrating how body-based healing fuels social justice.

Radical Honesty for Collective Futures

Pleasure activism ultimately builds toward radical honesty. Drawing inspiration from Octavia Butler’s visionary Afrofuturism, brown imagines communities of truth, interdependence, and compassion. In Butler’s stories, survival depends on deep communication and connection. Similarly, brown insists that our world needs honesty, empathy, and pleasure at its core. Feeling good isn’t frivolous; it’s freedom. It’s the foundation for sustainability and love — for ourselves, for each other, and for the planet.

In short, Pleasure Activism is a manifesto for reclaiming joy as resistance. It invites you to ask: What would it mean if pleasure guided your life choices? What if liberation felt like laughter, dance, or rest? Brown’s answer is clear — when we honor our bodies and our desires, we cultivate both healing and revolution. Pleasure is personal, but it’s also profoundly political. And that, she argues, is how we change the world.

For adrienne maree brown, feeling good is not about escaping reality—it’s about inhabiting it fully. The author challenges one of society’s most pervasive myths: that pleasure equals excess. Instead, she reframes pleasure as balance, mindfulness, and wholeness. Many people, especially women and marginalized individuals, have been taught to repress their desires to avoid being labeled selfish, indecent, or indulgent. But repression has consequences—it disconnects us from our bodies and our humanity.

Moderation as Freedom

Brown emphasizes “everything in moderation,” where moderation is not denial but choice. This idea plays out in the story of Alana Devich Cyril, whose battle with late-stage cancer forced her to redefine pleasure. Despite pain and illness, she found joy in community—karaoke nights, friendly visits, and intimate moments with her partner. These modest pleasures helped her reconnect to her humanity, proving that satisfaction doesn’t rely on luxury but on connection.

Pleasure as Resistance

Every smile, every dance, every act of self-care becomes a refusal to obey oppressive norms that equate suffering with virtue. Brown sees this reclamation as political: when people who have been silenced choose joy, they reclaim autonomy. It’s reminiscent of bell hooks’ argument that self-love and pleasure are radical acts under patriarchy (as noted in All About Love). Brown’s pleasure activism builds on this theory, positioning fun and satisfaction as critical tools for healing social wounds.

Embodied Healing

Pleasure helps us reconnect with our bodies—often sites of trauma and social control. For Alana and many others, finding satisfaction amidst pain redefined survival. Brown encourages readers to see pleasure practice as part of emotional resilience. It can coexist with grief, sickness, and imperfection. Instead of escaping discomfort, genuine pleasure nurtures the strength to stay with it emotionally and physically. In this way, moderation and embodiment become two sides of the same liberating coin.

This is the first gateway to pleasure activism: learning that feeling good isn’t indulgent—it’s your birthright. Liberation doesn’t happen through denial of desire but through claiming pleasure as self-awareness and balance.

When you hear the word “erotic,” what comes to mind? For many, it’s synonymous with sex or pornography. But adrienne maree brown—echoing the vision of Audre Lorde—asks you to see it differently. The erotic is vitality, creativity, and the deep pulse of life itself. It’s not just about lust but about awakening the senses to self-expression and truth.

Reclaiming the Erotic as Power

In Audre Lorde’s essay “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” she defines the erotic as a source of strength and self-knowledge. Brown takes this concept and turns it into activism. When you understand the erotic as empowerment, you see that connecting to your body is an act of resistance. It helps overcome trauma, shame, and cultural repression that label sensuality as taboo. For brown, erotic power is about knowing your body deeply enough to love it and let it guide transformation.

From Trauma to Liberation Through Art

Artist Taja Lindley embodies this principle. Through her burlesque performances, she revisits childhood trauma. For her, performance becomes therapy—a chance to release the pain stored in her body, especially around her throat, the site of past injury. That moment of release turns art into healing and turns the erotic into liberation. Burlesque artists like Michi and Una Osato echo that sentiment. To perform, they must radically love their bodies, not in a superficial way but in a celebratory one.

Eroticism as Creation

The erotic isn’t limited to dance or sex—it’s present in music, movement, poetry, or even activism. It’s about creating something alive and meaningful. When you feel pleasure without shame, you create from abundance, not pain. For brown, this is also political art—it envisions the kind of world we want to live in: free, embodied, and expressive.

This chapter’s message is profound: when you honor your erotic self, you not only heal but also create the conditions for collective liberation. The erotic frees us from objectification and replaces shame with power.

What does your body say when something feels truly right? adrienne maree brown invites you to listen for your “orgasmic yes”—that full-body affirmation that signals alignment, joy, and truth. This isn’t only about sexuality; it’s a compass for life decisions. Learning to identify your authentic yes helps you move toward satisfaction and away from struggle.

Learning to Trust Pleasure

Most people have been conditioned to distrust pleasure. To want something deeply often feels risky or selfish. But when you suppress your desires, you lose access to clarity. Brown explains that listening to your yes transforms how you navigate work, relationships, and creativity. It builds discernment—an emotional intelligence grounded in bodily awareness.

The Revolution Must Feel Good

Inspired by writer Toni Cade Bambara’s phrase “make the revolution irresistible,” brown insists that activism should feel good. When change feels joyful rather than punishing, people are more willing to sustain it. Pleasure becomes both fuel and direction. This is a radical reversal of traditional activism that often relies on guilt and exhaustion.

Following the Body’s Guidance

Brown compares this process to tuning in to the body’s wisdom. When confronted with choices, check for that internal sense of opening or contraction. Pleasure and desire serve as guides for intuitive living. Learning to read these signals creates space for authentic work and joyful collaboration instead of struggle and resistance.

This key idea redefines success not as sacrifice but as satisfaction. The more you follow your yes, the closer you get to your truest purpose—and, as brown reminds us, revolution begins with that truth.

Brown approaches substances like marijuana, ecstasy, and mushrooms with both curiosity and caution. She doesn’t moralize drug use but explores it as another path toward embodied experience. Drugs, she notes, have long been politicized—especially attacking Black and Brown communities while white entrepreneurs profit from legalization. Yet she believes drugs can offer healing and connection if approached responsibly.

Pleasure Without Numbing

For brown, drug use should heighten awareness, not suppress it. She’s clear about her limits: having addictive tendencies, she uses moderation as a safeguard. When substances help her feel alive and grounded, they serve her pleasure activism. When they begin to numb pain, she stops and resets. Her approach parallels harm reduction philosophies that emphasize compassion over punishment (seen in groups like the Harm Reduction Coalition).

The Politics of Legalization

Brown critiques the hypocrisy of legalization structures that criminalize marginalized communities while rewarding privilege. She hopes future industries will redistribute wealth and opportunity fairly. This insight reminds readers that pleasure is never separate from justice: enjoyment must come with equity and consciousness.

Responsibility and Awareness

She uses drugs only in contexts that expand creativity or reflection—never while writing nonfiction. By maintaining boundaries, brown models mindful participation in pleasure that honors both body and mind. Her lesson is simple: pleasure is political, but so is restraint. True liberation requires self-awareness, not self-destruction.

Through this lens, drug-induced pleasure becomes part of the wider conversation about freedom, healing, and consciousness. For brown, pleasure will always be about being awake, not escaping the world.

After years of depression and substance use, adrienne maree brown found healing through somatic practices—therapies that reconnect the mind and body. Somatics helped her uncover buried trauma and rediscover the ability to feel fully. The principle is simple but transformative: when you reconnect with your body, you reconnect with life.

The Healing Power of Presence

Somatics teaches that trauma disconnects us from our bodies and surroundings. Movement and bodywork help restore that awareness. Through courses like “Somatics and Social Justice” and communities like BOLD (Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity), brown experienced deep emotional release and renewed empathy. These spaces allowed participants to grieve collectively, find dignity, and transform their personal healing into political strength.

Empathy and Social Change

Connecting with the body also strengthens compassion. When you truly feel your own pain, you become more attuned to others’ suffering. Brown aligns this with social justice—change begins inside before it manifests outside. Somatic healing turns personal recovery into collective empathy, aligning with thinkers like Resmaa Menakem (author of My Grandmother’s Hands), who similarly argues that racial trauma must be processed somatically to undo inherited pain.

Through somatics, brown learned an essential truth of pleasure activism: liberation begins with embodiment. You must be present in your own skin to create change that lasts.

The heart of adrienne maree brown’s vision culminates in one bold declaration: feeling good can change the world. In this final principle, she blends pleasure with radical honesty to imagine sustainable futures inspired by Octavia E. Butler’s Afrofuturism. Butler’s speculative worlds thrive through transparency, empathy, and physical or telepathic connection—qualities brown believes our real world desperately needs.

Radical Honesty as a Social Practice

For brown, honesty is more than moral conduct—it’s a shared survival strategy. When people communicate openly about need, pain, and desire, they cultivate trust and interdependence. Butler’s worlds demonstrate that thriving communities require truthfulness, not domination. Similarly, brown argues that future societies must place pleasure at the center, using it as a compass for integrity and connection.

Pleasure as Planetary Healing

Pleasure activism extends beyond personal or political freedom—it invites ecological compassion. Brown warns that the Earth’s current crisis stems from disconnection: from body, from nature, from honesty. Reconnecting through joy can rebuild these bonds. Feeling good, she insists, is not frivolous—it’s functional. It teaches us to care for ourselves and for our planet simultaneously.

A Future That Feels Good

By aligning personal pleasure with collective healing, we can build communities thriving on interdependence rather than extraction. This, she says, is true liberation—rooted in honesty, empathy, and satisfaction. Pleasure activism becomes a new model of social imagination, where joy, truth, and justice coalesce. It’s not just the revolution—it’s what makes the revolution irresistible.

Brown’s closing message is both poetic and practical: heal yourself to heal the world. Pleasure, felt fully and shared openly, is not an indulgence—it’s the foundation for a compassionate, sustainable future.