What if I told you your pleasure is radical?
Reclaiming what feels good in defiance of oppression
One of my favorite topics to discuss and educate on is PLEASURE, and I'm talking about way more than just the sexual kind.
Believe me, we are very sex-positive around these parts, but I think it's a mistake to relegate pleasure to something that can only be experienced in the bedroom. Pleasure is multifaceted. It's intricately wrapped up with joy, play, delight, and presence. It's something we feel and experience as part of our aliveness in our bodies, and it quite literally gives us something to live for.
Seeking out pleasure is also such a wonderful way to get to know yourself better. What's pleasurable for you might be different from what's pleasurable for your partner or your friend, so digging into your own pleasure requires getting more in touch with who you are and what you like.
Pleasure has so much potential to be this pure, nourishing experience, except almost all of us wrestle with things that hold us back from being able to fully access and tap into it. Some things that may be keeping you from embodying pleasure include the negativity bias in your own brain, a pleasure-negative society that directly stems from systems of oppression, and our culture's conviction that guilt and pleasure should go hand in hand and pleasure must be earned (thanks, capitalism!).
There are a lot of strategies and techniques available for working through barriers to pleasure and getting in touch with pleasure, but today, I want to focus on just one concept:
Prioritizing your pleasure is a radical act in a world that regularly reinforces the idea that only the pleasure of a select few matters.
What if you viewed your pleasure as an act of resistance against the status quo? A tangible way of aligning yourself with your values? Would you be more likely to prioritize it? If your body is the epicenter of the oppression enacted against you, then reclaiming your pleasure in defiance of that oppression is a middle finger to the system and all who uphold it.
Consider that:
It's radical for folks who have experienced trauma to reclaim their pleasure from those who once took their agency away from them.
It's radical for anyone who's ever fallen prey to the diet mentality to reclaim their pleasure from diet culture's overarching message that thinness at all costs is more important than feeling good.
It's radical for queer and trans folks to reclaim their pleasure from a cisheteronormative society that paints queer love as perverse and trans and non-binary bodies as legislative battlegrounds.
It's radical for Black and brown folks to reclaim their pleasure from a white supremacist world that simultaneously hypersexualizes their bodies and represents a danger to their safety and well-being.
It's radical for disabled folks to reclaim their pleasure from an ableist society that infantilizes and others those with disabilities.
And on and on and on.
Viewed through a lens of liberation, prioritizing pleasure becomes a bold act of resistance in a society that wants you to remain disconnected and disembodied from what feels good.
Further, opening yourself up to pleasure has far-reaching effects. When you're able to embody pleasure in your own life and reap the benefits, it becomes abundantly clear that a just world would be one where everyone could embody pleasure in their lives. It lights a fire in you to take an active role in creating such a world.
So, if you're open to it, a suggestion: Commit to one action today that prioritizes your pleasure, big or small, brief or time-consuming. Lean into the feeling. Bask in your act of resistance.
You are worthy of experiencing pleasure just as you are.
Queerly yours,
Shohreh
p.s. Shout-out to some of the wise folks who have helped inform my views and teachings on pleasure: Sonya Renee Taylor, adrienne maree brown, and Dawn Serra. I highly recommend seeking out their books, essays, and social media for more on this topic.
To get in touch, shoot me an email at hello@shohrehdavoodi.com. For more from me, follow me on Instagram, TikTok, and Threads.
If you'd like to support me outside of becoming a paid subscriber to The Queer Agenda, you're welcome to purchase a gift for me from my Amazon Wishlist or purchase an item for yourself from my Amazon Storefront, which contains all of my most-recommended products.