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Transcript:

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:00:00] Welcome to United Bodies, a podcast about the lived experience of health. I’m Kendall Ciesemier your host. 

Today, we’re talking about pleasure. I can already tell that some of you are wincing. Pleasure is experience in our bodies and keeps us full of aliveness, whether that’s the pleasure that comes from feeling the sun on our backs, tasting our favorite treat, or from a steamy sexcapade.

We’re talking about it all today with the person who wrote a whole book about its importance. adrienne maree brown is the New York Times bestselling author of Pleasure Activism. She’s a writer, activist, and organizer who believes deeply that the only reason that we can continue to resist oppressive structures, and actually, the only reason to resist oppressive structures is to experience the fullness of pleasure in our lives.

We weren’t made to suffer, we were made to live irresistible, joyful, satisfying, and good lives. Now, pleasure can be hard to come by, specifically if you live with a marginalized identity, are disconnected from your body, or have experienced a weaponization of pleasure. But adrienne says that especially then, pleasure is important.

To fight for and to access. So today we’re digging in with adrienne as she takes on the task of proving to all of us that finding pleasure is worth it. adrienne, welcome to United Bodies. I’m so excited to have you. 

adrienne maree brown [00:01:36] Kendall, thank you for having me here. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:01:38] You were actually one of the guests that I had on my kind of vision document when I was putting this proposal for the podcast together so, this was really a full fruition of my idea. I really wanted to have this conversation with you so I’m so pleased. 

adrienne maree brown [00:01:59] I like to be a dream come true. One of my top favorite things to do. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:02:04] Yeah, that sounds ideal. I would like that too. So for those of you who don’t know, aren’t, aren’t aware, you’re the author of Pleasure Activism, which is a book that acts as a user’s manual, helping to guide readers to find pleasure in all different forms, but with an emphasis on sexual pleasure. Pleasure activism is a term that was first coined by Housing Works founder Keith Cylar, but for those who haven’t heard the term before, what is pleasure activism? 

adrienne maree brown [00:02:38] Yeah, it’s, I mean, it’s so many things. And I, I’m always like, yeah, it’s this and it’s that and it’s this. But the primary things are helping people, especially those who have been disconnected from being able to feel pleasure in their bodies or, or have made to feel that their body is just for labor or just for being in service to someone else’s desires or just for anything outside themselves, helping people to come back into their body and reclaim the permission and the agency to feel pleasure in their own skin and in their own lives.

There’s an idea of pleasure activism that is, what would it look like to make justice and liberation the most pleasurable experiences we can have with each other? That when we are actually doing right by each other and right by the earth and right by our communities, that that’s actually the most nourishing way that we can be in the world.

And it actually brings us joy, satisfaction, happiness. Which, pleasure, I always break down to people, I’m also like, you know, because people are like, what is pleasure? And it’s very confusing. What is pleasure? What is the erotic? What is this? What is that? And I’m like, pleasure is really about being able to feel satisfaction and happiness and contentment in the current moment. So, a presence. Yeah, it’s a, it’s like I land in this moment and I can actually feel the contentment, the satisfaction, the joy that’s available in it. There’s pleasure in it, right? And for many of us that has felt out of reach and so we’re trying to get it back, make it accessible to everyone, make it something you can expect in your life.

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:04:11] Which is exactly why we’re talking today. In the book you specifically draw upon the work of Audre Lorde and Octavia Butler. What do they, specifically us Black women, teach us about pleasure? 

adrienne maree brown [00:04:25] So, Audre Lorde has this essay that was published in August of 1978 called “The Uses of the Erotic as Power.” And she writes, actually, beautiful erotic and pleasure filled text in a lot of her work.

But in that essay, she takes it head on and talks about what it means to feel erotic aliveness in the body and in your life and that it’s not something that necessarily comes from sex, although that can be a source of it, but it can also come from painting a fence or writing a poem. You know, she talks about the sun coming in through the window and feeling that and she talks about the power of it. Which I found to be very compelling, which is once you have tasted that aliveness, that erotic aliveness in your skin, it becomes impossible to settle for the self-negation and the depression and the oppression that we’ve been given as, these are our natural states and this is how it’s always going to be, right. It’s like, actually, I felt something else. I have direct data from my body that something else is possible. We become ungovernable in a way and, you know, in the best kind of way. Right. And then Octavia Butler, less directly, but she wrote all these characters. Characters that are leading in the future and all of her characters have pleasure practices. So one of her characters in the midst of a wild apocalyptic moment where they’re imprisoned and they’ve been stripped of their land, takes on an artistic practice, starts drawing everything that she can. What I always pay attention to is how Octavia talks about the role that pleasure plays in building community, right, that you build community with people who you can experience pleasure with and who you want to create pleasurable experiences for. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:06:15] And did you make those connections in Octavia’s work when you were reading them? Did that come to you a little bit later when you had already read the Audre Lorde work? 

adrienne maree brown I read Audre Lorde’s work in college for the first time and then kept returning. I was like, there’s something in this that could unlock my whole life. And I could really feel as I was reading it that I was like, I don’t, I don’t know this satisfaction she’s talking about. I want to know that, right? And it kind of set me in pursuit of not just getting the surface level satisfactions or the quick level satisfaction or something I could buy, right? But like, how do I get that deep, internal sense of self? And, yeah, it’s changed my life. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:06:57] And you knew it was possible because she wrote about it. 

adrienne maree brown [00:07:00] I knew it was possible because she wrote about it and, you know, I saw people like Keith Cyler on a dance floor. I would see people around me who I was like, they’ve got it. There’s, there’s something has clicked on, clicked into aliveness in that person. And I especially noticed it in people where I’m like, I’ve been told that that person shouldn’t feel that free, or that joyful, or that embodied. I saw it in disabled bodies, I saw it in Black bodies, in queer bodies. I kept coming across this thing where I was like, “You’re not living inside the confines that you’ve been given by the society. You are accessing the truth in your body.” Like, in your body you can tell that there’s something that feels really good about being alive, and I want to know about that. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:07:44] And so a lot of that practice of feeling alive and of experiencing pleasure is bodily pleasure, right? Even if it’s not sexual, it’s whether you’re painting a picture or you’re basking in the sun. it is experienced through being in our bodies.

adrienne maree brown [00:08:00] Yeah, there’s something about being present and being able to be present in the body. You know, for me, I normally am able to drop in through my breath and come into like, okay, this is the vessel through which I feel sensation. This is the place where I get to experience life. I have had experiences. doing, mushrooms and while doing ecstasy and weed and, and sometimes just in really deep meditation where it feels like I’m accessing this pleasure and it’s not necessarily through the body, but most of the time, or at least it feels like I’m generating it, from not necessarily in my body, but the majority of my life It has been an embodied experience either on my own or with others. And it includes laughter, it includes fashion. It includes sex. It includes certain drugs and it includes moderation, you know. I talk about that in the book. It includes learning to love my body as it is right now and to be naked and to ask for what I want and to fantasize about myself and really to, you know, become a lifelong and life wide object of my own desire. You know, um, I think everyone deserves to have that experience. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:09:18] I do too. Yeah. I mean, I, I think that what is so striking to me about the book is that, and about how you talk about pleasure, right, is that it just feels like a really foreign concept in our society. Like it just, in the mainstream portrayals of what pleasure is, it’s not what you describe, right? It’s, it’s a very narrow minded look at what pleasure can be. 

adrienne maree brown [00:09:45] You know, that’s on purpose, right? 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:09:47] Yeah, of course. I mean, keep us in a, keep us in a box, right? 

adrienne maree brown [00:09:52] Well, keep us in a box and we will, if we don’t think pleasure is accessible through our own bodies and our relationships, we will keep purchasing it elsewhere. We become consumers who are constantly trying to find it. And I blame capitalism, but I think that it’s possible even inside this capitalist world, even as it’s changing to find pleasure. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:10:13] I agree. I agree. I want to talk about that. I want to talk about bodies. I want to talk about pleasure, particularly sexual pleasure, and I want to talk about how bodies access pleasure in that order.

So, I was born into illness and subsequently disability, having my first major surgery at two months old, and then consistently throughout my life, the only life I’ve ever known. I would say I’ve never felt in control of my body. It’s consistently tried to kill me. It’s caused a lot of pain and suffering.

It’s made me feel lonely and broken and different. It’s been the source of a shame and fear and anger and I read recently the novel Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. I don’t know if you’re familiar, but one of the characters Sam grew up with a lot of challenges with his leg, lots of surgeries, pain, difficulty, persistent disability.

And this is what his character says about sex, which I wanted to ask you about: “Sam did not believe his body could feel anything but pain. And so he did not desire pleasure in the same way that other people seemed to. Sam was happiest when his body was feeling nothing. He was happiest when he did not have to think about his body, when he could forget that he had a body at all.”

There’s also an essay in Pleasure Activism from Alana Devich Cyril called Fuck Cancer, where she writes that “Since cancer,” in quotes, “I often feel betrayed by my body now. It can make it very hard to experience bodily pleasure.” Adrienne, this is exactly how I feel. I have never felt more represented by what the character in the book, Sam, felt about just honestly seeking to be not a body, just seeking to have neutrality, seeking to feel nothing, not going from zero to ten, going from negative ten to zero and staying there. So what do we do if we feel betrayed by our bodies, when we don’t even want to have feeling? We just want nothingness. I can see that this applies to, you know, people who might experience gender dysphoria as well, people who feel at war with themselves. 

adrienne maree brown [00:12:36] Yeah. I mean, I definitely feel you in this struggle. I have early onset arthritis and Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. And so I’m just like, my body is often a place of massive pain and debilitating, like, I just can’t do what I want to do, go where I want to go, feel what I want to feel. And, and I know a ton of people who have those kinds of experiences. Yeah, a ton. And those shift as we age, you know, one of the things I feel like I didn’t understand about disability is that it’s basically an inevitability for all bodies. It’s just like, that’s what it means to be a human being, um, as your body is moving from whatever to whatever. We’re on a journey.

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:13:20] It’s an ebb and a flow. Yes, exactly. And we’re always going to be in and out of disability. 

adrienne maree brown [00:13:24] One of the things I like to do is relocate the point of blame, right? That I’m like, my body… is the only body I’ve ever had, and it’s just doing its best job here, right? And the problem is that we live in a world that is not actually designed around the full breadth of bodies that we have. So we live in a society where there’s a very small, narrow definition of what a normal body is, and everything in the world is created for those bodies: clothes, the transportation, the toilets, everything is designed for those bodies, how stairs going in and out of a building, like, you know, the things that I now notice because I’m like, I can’t do that. I can’t go in there. I can’t go up that. I can’t. Um, and then sex and it’s also, you know, sex toys, like the sex industry, the porn industry, like what we’re taught to desire, you know, without disability on the table, what we’re taught to desire is very rarely our own bodies. Right? We’re taught to desire these bodies that have been altered and shaved and cleaned up and you know that are being shot at a certain angle and it’s like this is what sex looks like, right?

That’s not what sex ever looks like. It’s not what it feels like it’s not the pace of it. Nothing about that has anything to do with sex, right? I’ve been having this talk with young people in my life because they’re like discovering porn. I’m like that’s not sex. That’s something but that’s not sex. So then you add disability into it. It’s like oh I can’t think of a time in my life when I got to see a disabled person having sex uplifted as this is hot. This is some hot shit right here, right?

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:14:59] Or even if it is uplifted, right, it’s done in a very fetishizing, very dehumanizing way.

adrienne maree brown [00:15:07] Exactly. Yeah so all of that means that the conclusion that you reach right that I don’t even I’m not even aiming for this in my body is a socially constructed conclusion, right? That it’s like, we don’t know what it would look like to live in a world where everyone’s bodies were seen as some normal bodies, right? It’s like, these are all just our bodies and some bodies have surgery at two months old and some bodies have inflamed knees and some bodies don’t have arms and some bodies have this.

These are all the different variations we have on bodies. And all these different variations are desirable. They all can feel, right. I had a really beautiful conversation with my friend, Abigail Bankston, who’s a singer. And we talked about this, that like, great sex happens if you stop thinking about what you look like and really focus on what you feel like, right? And it’s the same thing with great singing, right? But if you’re singing and the whole time you’re like, how do I look? You’re probably not gonna sound like Whitney Houston at any point in that process, right? Right, if you throw your head back and you actually let your body contort to become the sound that you’re trying to make, you’re gonna sound like you, right?

And that’s going to be awesome. Now we get into this other piece, which is if there’s a lot of pain that your body is carrying regularly, right? If that’s your norm, then what does pleasure mean in that context? And pleasure actually might be the relief of pain in that context. So I have one of my lovers who recently did this thing for me where I traveled all day, parts of me were inflamed and I was like, you know, I’m supposed to feel sexy because I’m getting together and done it up. But I didn’t. I felt like, I’m inflamed and I’m in pain and this person surrounded me in hot water bottles and then covered me with a weighted blanket, right? And, and I started singing “Heaven is a Place on Earth” and then they put that music on, blasting.

And I was like, this… Is an immense pleasure for me, not just the someone being like, “Oh, like you need this right now for your body,” but taking care of me in that way, like really being like, “Oh, let me do it. Let me actually construct this,” and like, make it sensual, like make it warm and make it weighted and make it, it’s just the idea is for you to feel good.

You know, it was like, so, um, connected. It felt so connected. And for me, connection is a lot of what actually drives pleasure. I’ve also been in situations with someone who’s like, well, we’re technically having sex, but I’m like, I don’t really feel connected and I don’t really feel much at all, right? 

KENDALL CIESEMIER Yeah, that’s a really good point.

adrienne maree brown Yeah. So, so some of those can point to answers. I also think that the more we have people who have chronic illness, chronic pain, and what’s currently classified as different forms of disability, the more we get to be in decision making places, places of power, places of policymaking, I think we’ll see a lot of shifts in terms of like, what do we even have access to, to manage our pain, right?

Like I’ve been a long term person where I’m like, I feel a great management of my pain through the use of cannabis and the fact that that is not legal everywhere. I have to buy it from someone on the street and hope that it’s the kind that I need for my body. No, now we’re, the first time I went to Amsterdam and I was like, wait, I can select the exact experience I want to have, which is please relax my body while keeping my mind clear. That’s what I need and that cannabis can do that. So there’s things like that, that I’m like, I think we’re heading in a direction where pain management becomes more accessible. Our bodies become less marginalized and dismissed as points where pleasure could even happen. And then we begin to be able to be in connection around the actual bodies we have and the actual needs we have in real time.

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:19:02] I think especially the challenge that connection doesn’t always happen in kind of what we perceive as quote unquote a sexual encounter, right? And that, that, that there’s actually, uh, just a bigger, broader definition of what pleasure can consist of, I think, or sexual, even, even sexual pleasure.  

adrienne maree brown [00:19:25]  I’ve had to learn, and I will say, I’m constantly learning.

I’m not, I wouldn’t say I’m like, I’ve got this. I’m like, I am figuring this out because my body’s changing all the time. Yeah. Right. It’s a really big thing to get. And like the way I was socialized around sex is that anything to do with the actual functioning of my body should be kept off stage. That has nothing to do with this, right?

I’m just like, period. I don’t see anyone during my period. Whatever it is, right? Instead of just being like, I have a body. It does all the things that bodies do and it feels this kind of way. So I’m learning to bring it into conversations more to say this is what’s happening with my body right now. I’m learning to have check ins with lovers when we’re coming together to just be like, how is your body? Here’s how my body is. What is your body need? Here’s what my body is gonna need and that way we can maximize what we have together and we can say maybe sex is not, you know, sex the way we think of sex traditionally might not be on the table for this time we’re together or it might be but it could look like this, you know a few years ago I hooked up with someone who had arthritis in their hands and it was like you know, the conversation was just like, “Hey, I really need to use toys to maximize what I’m able to be able to do with you.”

And I was like, “Great. I love that.” You know, whatever. But it was, it was just being able to be honest and say like, how to, how are we going to do it with friends as well with family members as well. I think that one of the things that happens is we don’t think about every time we’re around other people, there’s an opportunity to normalize our bodies to each other.

And like, if I’m going to visit my parents now, I’m like, “Hey. Here’s what I’m doing when it comes to food. So this is what I really need to have in the house. If I don’t have it in the house, I’m going to leave the house in an inflamed mess. And it’s going to be a very sad thing, which I don’t want to do that when I come visit y’all. Cause then that’s how I’m going to associate visiting y’all with bad body feelings.”

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:21:17] With having to sacrifice your body.

adrienne maree brown [00:21:19] Yeah, exactly. Right. Instead of being like, I think for a long time I was like, oh, I don’t want to be the one who has these needs. And instead it’s trying to pivot to like, we all, everyone in this house has different needs. Everyone does. Mine are like this. What are yours? Right, and I think it actually helps people bring more to the forefront. Like when I do that with people then I learn, Oh, yeah, I’ve got this thing in my hip. Oh, yeah I’ve got this–like so many people are walking around with silent pain and hidden pain, right and instead of like passing for painless, I think trying to bring it more to the forefront be like, how do we have hugs?

You know, I have a friend who has chronic pain in her chest and so it’s like I don’t squeeze the crap out of her because that wouldn’t be a good feeling for her. The root of this is like actually becoming more conversant and I think that this is I have a group of friends right now led by Aja Taylor they’re working on a book on kink, black feminist praxis for kink and BDSM. And I think that that’s actually going to open a lot of doors and understanding this because it’s like the black feminist approach of how do we liberate everybody by liberating those who are experiencing the most harm in a condition. Totally. Bringing that to the brilliance that comes from the BDSM world, which is how do you negotiate the scene? How do you negotiate the situation that’s about to happen so that everybody knows what is doable, what is not doable, what is negotiable, everything is clear before you head in. That combination of wisdom actually aligns deeply with a disability justice approach too. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:22:56] Absolutely. Yeah. What are your needs? It’s actually not easy, it’s not easy to tell people your needs, but it is a step. It is a concrete step. 

adrienne maree brown [00:23:06] And it gets easier, it gets easier the more you do it. How ever I’m coming into a relationship with people, that starts to become a way that I, I’m like, let’s enter it this way. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:23:16] And you also have to recognize that, you know, I think you even made this point, that when you open that question yourself, other people, you might be surprised to hear what other people have to offer, right? You might find out that other people have needs. And that, I think, is really helpful because I think we sit in this myopic version of our own little world where we think we’re the only ones who have needs, right? 

adrienne maree brown [00:23:42]  The only way you can hold a norm in place is if everyone who doesn’t fit that is made to feel isolated and shamed and quiet about it.

Yeah. I remember when I had my ectopic pregnancy, I mentioned it to someone and it was like almost everyone I mentioned it to had had a pregnancy loss of some sort. We all knew each other. We’re all like in community and we had not talked about it. And I’m like oh, there’s a whole field of knowledge that is not being shared because we’re all thinking, I’m so embarrassed that this thing happened. My body couldn’t do this thing that other bodies can do, whatever happened, how, whatever narrative we have around it, right? I think that happens over and over. And I think so much of what this moment in our human history is about is really pushing that, putting that back away from us and actually seeing, you know, what is body sovereignty actually mean it’s happening now on so many front lines, right? 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:24:39] Yeah, so many front lines. It’s the core theme. 

adrienne maree brown [00:24:42]  But the conversation, when you look at trans people, when you look at the abortion struggle, we look at the vaccination struggle, we look at all these different things, it’s all variations on a theme, which is what does it actually mean to be sovereign and responsible for the body that you’re in? And what does it mean to hold the line for that? 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:25:00] Okay, so I’m going to pick up from where you’re at, which is body sovereignty, because I want to talk about what happens when that is taken as well. Because, you know, people who are disabled are 40 percent more likely to experience rape or sexual assault.

You do write about this in the book. You have other people submit essays. You know, I think for some of us who have endured this kind of violence, and there are plenty, pleasure has been very much weaponized. I think, in particular, those who experience it as children, as I did, before I even really knew what was going on. Oftentimes, I think, in that circumstance, we feel complicit because of the ways our bodies receive an assault. In the ways that we, you know, it doesn’t always feel painful, it can actually feel good and be the first time we ever felt that kind of good. And so then it really, I think, can warp our ideas of what is pleasure. And is that safe or liberated or powerful? Because in many ways it can feel wrong and make us feel powerless. I wanted to follow up with you on it because you do touch on it in the book and Amita Swadhin, um, who is another survivor of sexual abuse, right, writes a beautiful piece, but I just wonder how do we fix this distortion of pleasure?

adrienne maree brown [00:26:25] I mean I think one thing is the good news all along is our bodies are wired for pleasure, even when we’re kids. And the bad news is that people take advantage of that and that actually doesn’t have to do with pleasure. It has to do with power, right? So that’s something that has helped me so much as a survivor is I’m like, what that person was doing to me was not about their pleasure. It was about their power over me. It was about them using that power to take something that wasn’t theirs to take. And my body didn’t do anything wrong. My body has never done anything wrong when it’s feeling pleasure. What I want to do is be able to reclaim that, but then practice my agency to be with people who honor my power and honor my sovereignty.

And I’ve gone back and done healing work around this. And I’ve also, you know, I think this is part of what leaning into kink has done for me too. It’s been able to work out some of the, you know, I’m like: okay, can we make the power more explicit? I want to make the power dynamics of the sex more explicit. I want to see what it feels like to practice being in total power of this situation. I want to see what it feels like to surrender completely to the situation, right, with my own agency. And I find that it actually has helped me a lot to be like, okay, now I know what it feels like on every spectrum of this within a healthy range of consent to practice the power play, right?

I know where I feel most comfortable within that spectrum and I know that the consent is like–not having consent is the violation and having consent allows me to reclaim all the positive, good, beautiful feelings that I can feel inside of my body. I say this in the book in one way, but I think I’ve learned so much about it, but having a no makes a yes possible, right? If you don’t have a clear no that you can count on and that you can say you don’t really have a yes either, right? Like if you don’t feel like you can ever say no. I think this is part of the way that adults, especially who experience harm as children or young people, but really, I mean, like, when you’ve been violated, you have to reclaim that agency. And one of the biggest ways is to be in active consent practices, even with yourself, right? So one of the, you know, so I’ll go through periods where I’m like, oh, I need to not get high before I masturbate. Like, I actually want to be fully sober and present with myself and make sure that I really want to do this.

Like there’s something about rebuilding your relationship with yourself that has to happen and then I had to forgive myself for decisions I made because, you know, for a while I was like, I’m gonna reclaim this. I’m gonna do something. Right? And I had a lot of messy situations that were not necessarily good for me, but they were on the path towards me understanding and reclaiming and being able to access what I feel now, which is, I feel now the most satisfaction I’ve ever felt in my life. I’m actually here while it’s happening, if that makes sense. So, I think for a lot of survivors, we know about being like, yeah. I had sex. My body was there doing sex and I was over here observing and being like, girl, make a bigger moan or whatever it is and then return later, right? I think a lot of people know that experience and now I’m more and more able to be like, hold on, slow down, stay in my skin, say what I like, say what I don’t like, you know, really feel this thing from within.

And I offer that because I do think that that is possible for most of us, but it took like 10 years of really focused healing work. And I’m like, the sooner you start on that, the better, because that being held by others who can hear your survivor story and not flinch, who can hear your survivor story and affirm your agency is really important.

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:30:15] I also really like that you, you mentioned this a lot in the book, that pleasure is a practice. And, you know, even you saying that it took you 10 years to kind of get to the point where you are today. I think that that’s really important for people to hear because I think oftentimes, it feels like it should be faster, it should be easier.

adrienne maree brown [00:30:39] It feels like you should just be able to read like a women’s magazine cover and be like boom 10 steps. Got it.

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:30:46]  Yes, exactly Like the Cosmo tips should work for all of us. 

adrienne maree brown [00:30:50] I’m like, why isn’t this working?

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:30:53]  Magic, yeah, or that pleasure shouldn’t take work, right? 

adrienne maree brown [00:30:58] Yeah. I mean, I really think that we don’t know I don’t have any way of knowing this I think that in this society, in this moment, pleasure has to be a practice. I can imagine a past and a future where it was a much more organic relationship that was not steeped in shame. Right? Like even in the Bible, it’s the first story is we were naked in an abundant garden. You know, I’m like, okay, well probably that was a much easier place to feel everything we were supposed to feel, right? Right. But the human condition has been one that introduces shame and introduces repression and introduces control and consumerism into this organic space. So we don’t know what it would be like without all this, but with all this, we have to practice. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:31:43] As we’re talking about this, like, pleasure being a practice, there are so many people who have come before us who have broken, and we’ve talked about this throughout, right, whether that’s, you know, you referenced the kink community, you know, I think even the way we can learn from trans, non-binary, queer folks, disabled folks. There’s such a narrow perception of, or narrow narrative rather, that it’s a very WASPy, heteropatriarchal, cis version of what sex is. What sex encompasses, when it ends even, you know, the idea that it ends when a man comes from penetration, like, it’s all very, very limiting.

Who are people that we can look to that are existing in our ecosystem, in our space right now, who we can say, okay, I can learn something from these people. I can, I can read. We talked about, you know, Audre Lorde, obviously Octavia Butler, Pleasure Activism. What are other resources in the space that you think that could be helpful to people?

adrienne maree brown [00:32:51] I really love the book. The Body is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor. I think that that’s a just a crucial read for getting back in touch with like, wait, what is my body? Like, what is my body for? And how do I want to live within it? Then there’s this book Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski that I also find remarkable.

And she’s also started a podcast, but she comes at it from a scientific approach. And she looks at pleasure in the body through this lens that is really interesting for me. I find it normalizes a lot of the shameful things I was told. There’s this incredible actor, writer, poet, fashionista named Alok, who I also think people should go and watch as much of Alok’s content as they can, because the way they move through the world is they’re literally like a wave of liberating presence and ideas.

And every time I interact with that thinking, I’m just like, oh, oh, oh, like, I don’t have to be caught inside of any of these small boxes for my body. I highly recommend Prentis Hemphill and the Embodiment Institute. They have this self-guided embodiment course that anyone can take. It’s like five sessions that really just helps you to learn how to center and drop in and, and just kind of get in your body.

So I think those are some of the people that I’m like, geeked out about right now. And then in that kink world, my friends. Her name on Instagram is @the_goddesshoneyb, but Aja, who’s writing the kink book, she’s one of the, I mean, there’s a whole field of people now who are just teachers, sexologists, like folks who are helping people come to understand their body.

There’s also this book called Healing Sex by Staci Haines, which, especially for survivors, I find really useful, and it’s got workbook components to it, so you can, you read it. And you’re also reflecting a little bit on like what you know happened to you, what imprints it’s left in your body, and yeah, how you could heal the relationship you have to sex.

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:35:00] Thank you for all those resources. I think there’s a lot. That’s a lot. And I would just cosign Sonia Renee Taylor’s book, and I would cosign Alok’s work wholeheartedly. I want to ask you just one final hard question, which is for people who are afraid. You know, they’re hearing this conversation, maybe it’s stirring something in them, maybe it’s bringing up a lot of different kinds of stuff. What should be their first step? Or what, what, what kind of piece of advice would you give someone who might feel hesitant or some fear around all of it? 

adrienne maree brown [00:35:39] I’m going to source this from my own life. So I’m thinking of the last time I felt really afraid. I was in a relationship where my needs, my pleasure needs were not getting met.

And I was complaining to a friend about this regularly, and I was like, I’m too scared to be alone. I’m too scared to, maybe I should just settle. Maybe it’s fine. You know? And my friend said to me, okay, are you down to just spend the rest of your life not experiencing pleasure? Like, I mean, if you’re fine with that, don’t complain to me about it anymore.

It was tough love because that’s the kind that I respond to really well, but I offered that because it cut through the fear like a sharp knife. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER Because what are you more afraid of? 

adrienne maree brown Exactly, right? I was like, I’m much more afraid of never experiencing this pleasure and the satisfaction than I am afraid of, you know, the process of getting myself out of a situation where it’s not happening.

And I know I can, you know, I’m like, I’ve, I can survive going through breakups or going through relationship changes. I know I can survive that. And I know I don’t, I’m pretty sure I cannot survive. That’s why I’m complaining all the time and I was and so there’s something about that that I would ask the listener to kind of turn on themselves because I’ve never not afraid when I take a risk I’m never not afraid when I grow. I’m never not afraid when I publish a book. Like publishing Pleasure Activism was a wild leap for me. I was a person who took myself seriously as an executive director and I was like my parents are gonna read an essay about me squirting like that’s terrifying potentially like this can’t happen and I was like, I’m more afraid to not share with the world that so many more of us can squirt and ejaculate than we know about and we should all be doing it.

That’s more terrifying to me that I would contribute to stopping us from that level of release and also remembering all the people that you might be scared of seeing you in your pleasure. Seeing you feel good. Check that out. Right? Because sometimes the thing is, we’re scared because we’re gonna have to outgrow the circles that we’re in.

And I’m like, you might have to outgrow those circles. You might get to bring some of those people with you. You might be surprised to find that there are so many circles out there that are dedicated to increasing pleasure in all kinds of ways. I promise you, you won’t regret it. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:38:02] I, for one, I’m really glad that your book is a New York Times bestseller and that you are on the forefront of pleasure, cutting back the brush for all the rest of us. 

adrienne maree brown [00:38:15] It’s just me and my machete. What’s next? What’s next? And I’m really grateful because I was born in 1978. And the idea that Audre Lorde put that essay into the world in 1978 and that my whole life it was in the world and I still didn’t get to it for like half of my life, that to me is why we have to keep being these echo chambers and being like, do you know about Audre Lorde? Do you know about Toni Cade Bambara saying that we need to make the revolution irresistible? Do you know about Emily Nagoski? Do you know? Like, tell everyone. Because I’m like… folks really don’t be knowing. They don’t. 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:38:52] They don’t. Wow. Thank you so much, Adrienne. 

adrienne maree brown [00:38:55] We did our part today, right? 

KENDALL CIESEMIER [00:38:57]  We did. We did. I really, really, really have enjoyed this.T hank you so much. 

Thank you so much for listening. You can subscribe to United Bodies wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, it would be so helpful to us if you would rate and review the show. That helps more people like you find us. 

We’ll be back next week with more. United Bodies is a Ms. Magazine and Ms. Studios production. The show is created and produced by me, Kendall Ciesemier. Michele Goodwin is our executive producer.