Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good (Emergent Strategy Book 1)

“make the revolution irresistible.”

Conversely, I have seen how denying our full, complex selves—denying our aliveness and our needs as living, sensual beings—increases the chance that we will be at odds with ourselves, our loved ones, our coworkers, and our neighbors on this planet.

And we need more tolerance. If you want to break through to the multi-orgasmic level, you have to be willing to kind of push through something that feels like discomfort the first few times. You’re like, “Can I get there?” And you’re like “yes, I can.” It’s just like, if you do, then something else is going to become possible.

We learn to shrink, to lie about the whole love we need, settling with not quite good enough in order to not be alone.

The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible. —Toni Cade Bambara

When I feel pleasure, I know I am on the right track.

how do we center creation and desire as integral to liberation?

Finally, I am constantly discovering new parts of myself to bring into the light, and that feels like an essential aspect of pleasure activism. I am discovering things as I write this book, and I will keep discovering things afterward.

We don’t learn to love in a linear path, from self to family to friends to spouse, as we might have been taught. We learn to love by loving. We practice with each other, on ourselves, in all kinds of relationships. And right now we need to be in rigorous practice, because we can no longer afford to love people the way we’ve been loving them.