INTRODUCTION

The role of the artist is to make the

revolution irresistible.
—Toni Cade Bambara
Hello. Welcome to Pleasure Activism: The Politics of
Feeling Good.1
My name is adrienne maree brown. I am a facilitator,
emergent strategist, doula, healer, auntie extraordinaire, and
pleasure activist. I am your host in this sensual space, your
learning companion on this pleasure journey, possibly even
an arrow pointing to your erotic awakening. I have gathered
here everything I know so far about pleasure activism in the
form of essays, interviews, profiles, poems, and tools.
My intentions for readers of this book are that you

• recognize that pleasure is a measure of freedom;

• notice what makes you feel good and what you are
curious about;
• learn ways you can increase the amount of feel-
ing-good time in your life, to have abundant pleasure;
• decrease any internal or projected shame or scarcity think-
ing around the pursuit of pleasure, quieting any voices of
trauma that keep you from your full sacred sensual life;
• create more room for joy, wholeness, and aliveness
(and less room for oppression, repression, self-denial
and unnecessary suffering) in your life;
• identify strategies beyond denial or repression for nav-
igating pleasure in relationship to others; and
• begin to understand the liberation possible when we
collectively orient around pleasure and longing.
1 If you can, I suggest that you have an orgasm before diving into this
book and at the beginning of each new section. I am not joking—an
orgasm a day keeps the doctor away and the worries at bay.
 4 pleasure activism

• Bonus: realize you are a pleasure activist!

Trust is a crucial part of the intimacy that yields pleasure

for ourselves and others. Most likely you don’t know me, so
whatever trust can exist between us will come from how well
I can share and how much you can open yourself to what I
share. In that spirit, it feels important that you know a bit
about my identity, contradictions, practices, and desires as
they relate to pleasure.
I have a Black father and a white mother with a big love
story, and I grew up in all of the possibility of that. My family
has not escaped white supremacy, racism, internalized racism,
or colorism, but we have experienced those patterns and sick-
nesses from a position of love that can see through them to
the humans beneath the socialization. Mostly.
I identify as a Black mixed person in the particular racial
construct of this country at this time. I understand that race
is a social construct, not a biological one—and in this life I
experience a lot of pleasure in being Black. I love Black girl
magic, Black joy, Black love, and work toward Black libera-
tion. I feel unapologetic glee at the ways in which we subvert
white supremacy, dominate culture, and “coolness,” often
inviting people to the pleasures we have constructed from
dreams and thin air.
And … I understand this to be temporary—that there
were, among my ancestors, feelings of love to be of tribes
whose names I will never know or from nations no longer
on any maps. In the future, there may be a time when the
term “Black” feels to my nibblings’ nibblings the way the
terms “Negro” or “Quadroon” sound to me now;2 perhaps
these future nibblings will invent new terminology indicat-
ing some way of understanding themselves that I cannot
comprehend. There may be a time beyond these borders,
beyond these racial constructs, beyond this planet even. I

2 “Nibblings” is a gender-neutral word for referring to the children of

your sibling, introduced to me by Tanuja Jagernauth.
 introduction 5

feel humble in the face of all that time. And, in this time,
it’s a gift to be Black.
Similarly, I am learning that much of how we experience
and practice gender is a social construct—and I love the par-
ticular pleasures of being a woman. I love being of women
who transform the brutal conditions we survive, who are
upending rape culture, knowing we are inferior to no one,
weaving our suffering into a fierce togetherness, into homes,
chosen families, radical sisterhood, and tomorrows.
And I’m a woman with some boy in me and haven’t found
the language for that.
I know it is a privilege to feel aligned with the gender
assignment I was given at birth. I love the bodies I was born
from and with. And I love the wildly diverse spectrum of bod-
ies I have gotten to hold, kiss, doula, and love in my lifetime.
I imagine there have been periods in my ancestry when
gender was held very differently, maybe didn’t matter so
much, or was less binary. And I imagine there will be a future
with a multitude of widely known and understood genders.
In this moment, I get to be part of the expansion of possible
genders that can live and love safely on this planet.
This book will center the experiences of Black women
pursuing and related to pleasure, because these are the par-
ticular experiences with which I am both most familiar and
most in community. But I am also always human and take se-
riously the truth that I am connected to all humans. I do not
subscribe to any politics of reduction. I may see the humor
in stereotypes, but I do not live my life or desires through
the lens or limitation of anyone else’s construction of power,
identity, or supremacy. This book includes a few voices that
are not Black or woman-identified but that I trust in the hu-
man experience of finding pleasure beyond oppression.
I have been a student of facilitation since my late teens,
learning how to make it easier for people to be with each
other. Along this journey I have been asked to facilitate
people at a lot of different levels, each request teaching me
more about what facilitation can do—coach, healer, doula,
 6 pleasure activism

relationship supporter, grief supporter and death doula,

breakup guide, and confidante for sexual adventures, as well
as an organizational, network, and coalition/alliance facil-
itator.3 I have often said yes, sometimes with trepidation,
often with enthusiasm, because I am fascinated by how we
interact with each other.
This book comes about partially because I realized that I
have supported thousands of people in taking steps they craft-
ed, articulated, and needed to take—steps closer to pleasure
and liberation. I have seen, over and over, the connection be-
tween tuning into what brings aliveness into our systems and
being able to access personal, relational and communal power.
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.
I enter this book with a lot of experience pursuing plea-
sure and power in human systems and a ton of hope and
curiosity about what might be possible if we were all living
our full pleasure potential. What would happen if we aligned
with a pleasure politic, especially as people who are surviving
long-term oppressive conditions?
In the writing and gathering process, whenever I came to
one of my edges or limitations, I reached out and gathered
in a comrade who knows more than I do—about sex work,
BDSM, burlesque, legalizing marijuana, pleasure during gen-
der transition, recovering pleasure after childhood sexual
abuse, pleasure while battling cancer, pleasure over age sixty,
and parenting to generate pleasure-oriented children. I think
the tapestry of voices here shows how many people are ori-
enting toward and around radical pleasure in this political
moment and just how many ways there are to do that.
Some other things to know:

3 People also ask me for directions a lot, even when I am in a new place
and feel lost.
 introduction 7

If I were living purely from my mind, I might have be-

come a nun. And I don’t mean a naughty nun with no panties
under my habit—I really love routines and quiet. I can get
a ton of pleasure from precision, rigor, and discipline (those
who have experienced me as a teacher may have an inkling
of this). I like being of service. And I feel a thrumming, full
aliveness when in conversation with the divine. I think a lot
about what god is, how god is, and where we are relating to
and running from and surrendering to god. My answers are
always shifting, but that conversation has been continuous
in my life.
But! If I were living purely from my body, I might have
achieved some world record for sexual activity, or at least
be the belle of some wild bordello. Perhaps a Black Moulin
Rouge singer4—I love seduction, I love sex, I love an exposed
shoulder, the curves of the hip, the moment of realizing that
under the top layer of clothing there’s no bra or boxers con-
taining the body I am observing. I love the unspeakable heat
of romance. I love all the ways we are sensual. I like to smell
good, taste everything yummy, feel how alive skin is, listen
to sounds of breath and pleasure, see the beauty of flesh and
bones. Laugh uncontrollably. Play. Feel alive. My body has
the capacity to sense immense pleasure, and as I get older I
keep intentionally expanding my sensual awareness and de-
colonizing it so that I can sense more pleasure than capitalism
believes in.
I am a hermit nudist at heart. It has taken me a while to
learn this, but I feel most at home when I am alone and naked.
Or with someone where we can be alone/together, naked.
I know that my body could never be inappropriate. If I
walk around naked all the time, or wear a muumuu slit to the
moon to show my big dimpled thighs, or let my tummy hang
soft and low, it’s right. I am of nature. I have cycles in my body
that reflect the cycles of day and night, of the seasons, of the

4 You might be thinking that movies aren’t real life. I am thinking that
the line between the real and the imagined is a construct.
 8 pleasure activism

moon and the tides. My body is a gorgeous miracle. I know it

is only conditioning and shame, particularly fat shame, that
keeps me covered (especially when I am in places where it’s
too hot to wear a top and men are running around shirtless).
For now, I wear clothes because I enjoy fashion and to get
warm during colder parts of the year. But as I get older, it’s
hard to keep clothing on at home, and what I do wear needs
to flow and not make a big deal against my skin or it can’t
stay. I also feel this way about the company I keep—that I
need people around me who can adapt, have a gentle bright
presence, who make me feel free, creative … and beautiful in
every aspect.
And even though I have this hermit nature, I get down
with people and love it. If I am forced to choose labels to de-
scribe the ways I move toward people, I say I am pansexual to
express who I am attracted to and/or queer for how I relate to
sex and the world. Pansexual means my desire is not limited
by the biological sex, gender, or gender identity of a potential
lover. I would add species, just in case new hot aliens arrive in
my lifetime. So far, I have been most attracted to gender-fluid
beings, particularly masculine women, effeminate men, and
trans men.
And I am queer, in the grandest sense of the word. I buck
the norms in my sexual life and in the rest of my life. For in-
stance, while I enjoy a solid dose of masculinity in my lovers,
it only intrigues me if I can top, bottom, and sideways them,
and if they can see the woman and the boy in me.
I have tried on monogamy, open relationships, polyamo-
ry, and solitude. Nonmonogamy tends to suit me best, even if
I am occasionally focused on one lover. A recent lover shared
a framework with me called relationship anarchy, which is
the most precise articulation I’ve come across so far of my ap-
proach to love and sex, basing connection in trust, freedom,
change, and honest communication.5
5 See the essays “Love as Political Resistance” (p. 59) and “On
Nonmonogamy” (p. 409) in this book for more on relation-
ship anarchy.
 introduction 9

So that’s the sex and relationship landscape … now, onto

the drugs!
Before I share my drug history, I want to say that I believe
that most drugs should be legalized and that there should be
safe spaces to use them. I have been privileged and fortunate to
safely move through my explorations. Those who are currently
incarcerated for getting medicine to people should be released
and given opportunities to actually lead in their industry.
I have been an active drug user since my sophomore year
of college, when I first smoked weed. I have smoked, vaped,
salved, and eaten cannabis products since that fateful day and
really enjoy the moderation I have been slowly growing, as
well as the cultural shift toward legalization that is sweeping
the United States.
I also love mushrooms! I think they are truly magical, and
I have had some delightful weird experiences of perceiving
the world’s aliveness while tripping on mushrooms on multi-
ple continents.6 In general, the role that fungi play in nature
is wonderful—they are communicators, they process toxins,
they break down dead material and make it serve life. I think
fungi are a crucial part of any functional ecosystem, includ-
ing our human ecosystems. But I also like to imagine mush-
rooms giving trees and squirrels hallucinations, for kicks.
I went through a period in my twenties where I was doing
ecstasy all the time, and I believe it saved my life, to be able
to buy and swallow happiness when I could not figure it out
internally.7 My pleasure goddess self definitely began to burst
the seams of my post-sexual-trauma-frumpy-girl disorder
during those years.
I haven’t gone much further in the realm of drugs—a sniff
or tab here, a recreational Vicodin or Percocet there. But I
was once hospitalized with vampire bites,8 and they put me

6 I recommend putting them in a fruity smoothie or dark chocolate.

7 See the essay “Ecstasy Saved My Life” in this book (p. 263).
8 I feel your doubt. It was three sets of paired bite marks on my left arm
and two sets on the right. The hospital didn’t believe me and said it was
from dangerous urban composting. Like vampires don’t like leaves.
 10 pleasure activism

on an IV with Benadryl and Dilaudid. Within a day, I was

lying about the amount of pain I was in so they would give
me more of whichever one was making everything feel like
a cloud. When I left the hospital, I understood that I could
never play with injection drugs, not if I also wanted to do
things with my life. I think of this as harm reduction (which
you will learn a lot about in this book), basically reducing or
limiting the harmful impact of drug use on my life.
I love sex and drugs. I have an addictive personality, a gift
and learning edge I inherited from my paternal grandmother,
so I’ve learned to only engage those activities in substances I
can moderate. Except sugar—so far that one tends to be all
or nothing.

Beliefs
The other thing I want to share with y’all are a few founda-
tional beliefs that shape everything else that will flow from me.
I believe that all organizing is science fiction—that we are
shaping the future we long for and have not yet experienced.
I believe that we are in an imagination battle, and almost ev-
erything about how we orient toward our bodies is shaped
by fearful imaginations. Imaginations that fear Blackness,
brownness, fatness, queerness, disability, difference. Our radi-
cal imagination is a tool for decolonization, for reclaiming our
right to shape our lived reality. Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction
from Social Justice Movements explores these ideas in depth.9
I believe that we are part of a natural world that is con-
stantly changing, and we need to learn to adapt together
and stay in relationship if we hope to survive as a species.
Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds explores
these concepts in depth.10

9 Walidah Imarisha and adrienne maree brown, eds., Octavia’s Brood:

Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements (Oakland, CA: AK
Press, 2015).
10 adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing
Worlds (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2017).
 introduction 11

I believe in transformative justice—that rather than pun-

ishing people for surface-level behavior, or restoring condi-
tions to where they were before the harm happened, we need
to find the roots of the harm, together, and make the harm
impossible in the future. I believe that the roots of most harm
are systemic, and we must be willing to disrupt vicious sys-
tems that have been normalized. I believe that we are at the
beginning of learning how to really practice transformative
justice in this iteration of species and society. There is ancient
practice, and there will need to be future practices we can’t
yet foresee. But I believe that with time it must become an in-
credible pleasure to be able to be honest, expect to be whole,
and to know that we are in a community that will hold us
accountable and change with us.
I am in this practice in as many spaces as I can be in my
life. I believe that transformative justice is actually a crucial
element in moving toward the kind of large-scale societal
healing we need—transformative justice is a way we can be-
gin to believe that the harm that has come to us won’t keep
happening, that we can uproot it, and that we can seed some
new ways of being with each other.
I also believe that I am not creating the ideas in this
book but observing a beautiful pattern of pleasure shifting
the ground beneath us, inside us, and transforming what is
possible between us. I have learned from so many teachers
living and dead. To that end, I have an extended section of
this book that is lineage, tracing the streams that are flowing
into this particular river in ways that I hope create common
ground, even a common titillation, between you and me.
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.
As I gather this book together I am sitting in a quiet
house, off season, on Martha’s Vineyard. Right now, I am
watching two massive swans slowly extend their long necks,
bobbing in icy water, reaching toward each other, equal parts
 12 pleasure activism

tentative and persistent. It is that energy in me as I take the

tentative steps into this realm of the erotic, of the sensual,
and ask us to explore together all of the power we potentially
wield together.
In these pages, I am intentionally bringing academics
into conversation with experiential experts, to show the pat-
terns of aligned interest and learning happening across the
language barriers that exist between us. I am bringing to-
gether a lot of different styles of expression in order to weave
this tale. I asked contributors to share themselves as whole
people, in the spirit of the Combahee River Collective,
who taught me that “from the personal, the striving toward
wholeness individually and within the community, comes
the political, the struggle against those forces that render in-
dividuals and communities unwhole. The personal is polit-
ical, especially for Black women.”11 Each person in this text
is whole, complex, and brave in how they are shaping the
world around them.
We are in a time of fertile ground for learning how we
align our pleasures with our values, decolonizing our bodies
and longings, and getting into a practice of saying an orgas-
mic yes together, deriving our collective power from our felt
sense of pleasure.
I think a result of sourcing power in our longing and plea-
sure is abundant justice—that we can stop competing with each
other, demanding scarce justice from our oppressors. That we
can instead generate power from the overlapping space of de-
sire and aliveness, tapping into an abundance that has enough
attention, liberation, and justice for all of us to have plenty.
We’re going to keep learning together. These pages are a
space to ask shameless questions, to love what we love and ex-
plore why we love it, to increase the pleasure we feel when we
are doing things that are good for the species and the planet,

11 Combahee River Collective, “The Combahee River Collective

Statement,” in Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology, edited by
Barbara Smith (New York: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press,
1983), 264–74.
 introduction 13

to cultivate our interest in radical love and pleasure, and to

nourish the orgasmic yes in each of us.

What Is Pleasure Activism?

Pleasure is a feeling of happy satisfaction and enjoyment.
Activism consists of efforts to promote, impede, or direct so-
cial, political, economic, or environmental reform or stasis
with the desire to make improvements in society. Pleasure
activism is the work we do to reclaim our whole, happy, and
satisfiable selves from the impacts, delusions, and limitations
of oppression and/or supremacy.
Pleasure activism asserts that we all need and deserve plea-
sure and that our social structures must reflect this. In this
moment, we must prioritize the pleasure of those most im-
pacted by oppression.
Pleasure activists seek to understand and learn from the
politics and power dynamics inside of everything that makes
us feel good. This includes sex and the erotic, drugs, fashion,
humor, passion work, connection, reading, cooking and/or
eating, music and other arts, and so much more.
Pleasure activists believe that by tapping into the potential
goodness in each of us we can generate justice and liberation,
growing a healing abundance where we have been socialized
to believe only scarcity exists.
Pleasure activism acts from an analysis that pleasure is a
natural, safe, and liberated part of life—and that we can of-
fer each other tools and education to make sure sex, desire,
drugs, connection, and other pleasures aren’t life-threatening
or harming but life-enriching.
Pleasure activism includes work and life lived in the realms
of satisfaction, joy, and erotic aliveness that bring about social
and political change.
Ultimately, pleasure activism is us learning to make justice
and liberation the most pleasurable experiences we can have
on this planet.
 14 pleasure activism

Pleasure Principles
• What you pay attention to grows. This will be familiar
to those who have read Emergent Strategy. Actually,
all the emergent strategy principles also apply here!
(Insert eggplant emoji). Tune into happiness, what
satisfies you, what brings you joy.
• We become what we practice. I learned this through
studying somatics! In his book The Leadership Dojo,
Richard Strozzi-Heckler shares that “300 repetitions
produce body memory … [and] 3,000 repetitions
creates embodiment.”12
• Yes is the way. When it was time to move to Detroit,
when it was time to leave my last job, when it was
time to pick up a meditation practice, time to swim,
time to eat healthier, I knew because it gave me plea-
sure when I made and lived into the decision. Now I
am letting that guide my choices for how I organize
and for what I am aiming toward with my work—
pleasure in the processes of my existence and states
of my being. Yes is a future. When I feel pleasure, I
know I am on the right track. Puerto Rican pleasure
elder Idelisse Malave shared with me that her pleasure
principle is “If it pleases me, I will.”
• When I am happy, it is good for the world.13
• The deepest pleasure comes from riding the line between
commitment and detachment.14 Commit yourself fully
to the process, the journey, to bringing the best you
can bring. Detach yourself from ego and outcomes.
• Make justice and liberation feel good.
12 Richard Strozzi-Heckler, The Leadership Dojo: Build Your Foundation
as an Exemplary Leader (Berkeley, CA: Frog Books, 2007), 59.
13 I owe this one to my incomparable, brave, and brilliant Canadian
woe, Jodie. Folks who are rooted in sensing and seeking pleasure, and
bring that energy into their work and relationships, are shining a light
for others—there is another path that isn’t full of stress, self-doubt,
pain, victimization, and suffering. There is a path in which everything
is learning, playing, practicing, doing things anew.
14 This is true in sex; it’s true in work; it’s just true.
 introduction 15

• Your no makes the way for your yes. Boundaries create

the container within which your yes is authentic.
Being able to say no makes yes a choice.
• Moderation is key.15 The idea is not to be in a heady
state of ecstasy at all times, but rather to learn how to
sense when something is good for you, to be able to
feel what enough is. Related: pleasure is not money.
Pleasure is not even related to money, at least not in
a positive way. Having resources to buy unlimited
amounts of pleasure leads to excess, and excess totally
destroys the spiritual experience of pleasure.

A Word on Excess
Pleasure activism is not about generating or indulging in ex-
cess. I want to say this early and often, to myself and to you.
Sometimes when I bring up this work to people, I can see a
bacchanalia unfold in their eyes, and it makes me feel ten-
der. I think because most of us are so repressed, our fantasies
go to extremes to counterbalance all that contained longing.
Pleasure activism is about learning what it means to be sat-
isfiable, to generate, from within and from between us, an
abundance from which we can all have enough.16
Part of the reason so few of us have a healthy relation-
ship with pleasure is because a small minority of our species
hoards the excess of resources, creating a false scarcity and
then trying to sell us joy, sell us back to ourselves. Some think
it belongs to them, that it is their inheritance. Some think
it a sign of their worth, their superiority. On a broad level,
white people and men have been the primary recipients of
this delusion, the belief that they deserve to have excess, while
the majority of others don’t have enough … or further, that
the majority of the world exists in some way to please them.

15 But as Maya Angelou once told Oprah, even moderation needs

moderation.
16 My first memory of this concept, of being satisfiable, was from
Staci Haines.
 16 pleasure activism

And so many of us have been trained into the delusion

that we must accumulate excess, even at the cost of vast in-
equality, in order to view our lives as complete or successful.
A central aspect of pleasure activism is tapping into the
natural abundance that exists within and between us, and
between our species and this planet. Pleasure is not one of
the spoils of capitalism. It is what our bodies, our human
systems, are structured for; it is the aliveness and awakening,
the gratitude and humility, the joy and celebration of being
miraculous.
So rather than encouraging moderation over and over, I
want to ask you to relinquish your own longing for excess and
to stay mindful of your relationship to enough. How much
sex would be enough? How high would be high enough?
How much love would feel like enough? Can you imagine
being healed enough? Happy enough? Connected enough?
Having enough space in your life to actually live it? Can you
imagine being free enough?
Do you understand that you, as you are, who you are,
is enough?

Glossary
Why a glossary? Language changes so quickly these days. The
right way to speak about people, about identities, about gen-
der, about geography—everything is in motion on a regular
basis. I know that in writing this book I am creating some-
thing instantly dated. Given that god is change, there are
some terms in this book that I want to be super clear about.

Bitch is one of my favorite words. When I say it, I mean

you are fierce, I love you, wow, that’s the boss, be yourself,
yes yes yes.

Fat is a word I am reclaiming for myself, especially when

connected to sexy, #sexyfat. I am thick, I am big, but most
of what gives me this outstanding shape and feel is actual fat.
 introduction 17

Somatics is

a path, a methodology, a change theory, by

which we can embody transformation, in-
dividually and collectively. Embodied trans-
formation is foundational change that shows
in our actions, ways of being, relating, and
perceiving. It is transformation that sustains
over time. Somatics pragmatically supports
our values and actions becoming aligned. It
helps us to develop depth and the capacity to
feel ourselves, each other and life around us.
Somatics builds in us the ability to act from
strategy and empathy, and teaches us to be
able to assess conditions and ‘what is’ clearly.
Somatics is a practice-able theory of change
that can move us toward individual, commu-
nity and collective liberation. Somatics works
through the body, engaging us in our think-
ing, emotions, commitments, vision and
action.17

I teach and reference somatics often in these pages.

Pleasure is “a feeling of happy satisfaction or enjoyment” and

“to give sexual enjoyment or satisfaction to another.”

Erotic is “relating to or tending to arouse sexual desire or

excitement.”

Finally, I believe we are actively moving toward a nonbina-

ry gender future—one in which gender is understood as a
spectrum instead of a binary with two options to move be-
tween. I write as someone raised in, interacting with, and

17 “What is Somatics?,” Generative Somatics, accessed July 23, 2018,

http://www.generativesomatics.org/content/what-somatics.
 18 pleasure activism

intentionally disrupting the gender binary. I respect how peo-

ple identify themselves, what they know themselves to be.
When I use women in this text I mean any and all people
who identify as women. This includes those who identify as
cis, non-trans, trans, and anyone else who identifies with the
words “woman” and “women.” The same is true for men—I
include any and all who identify with the language of “man”
and “men.” Nonbinary and gender nonconforming in this text
refers to people who don’t identify with women/men binary
terminology. If the content requires a distinction that draws
on a specific trans experience—which includes the experi-
ences of those who identify as transsexual or transgender,
with or without surgery—then I (or the writer of that piece)
will make that distinction. In this text, the pronouns will
reflect the identity of the subjects being discussed—he, she,
they, et cetera. If this is being read in a future in which this
language has evolved, then please know I would be evolving
right along with you.