Transcript: ADRIENNE MAREE BROWN on Pleasure as Birthright /115
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Ayana Young Welcome to For The Wild Podcast. I'm Ayana Young.
adrienne maree brown There's a lot that we take for granted right now that I don't think is actually going to be around for much longer, or I don't think it's going to be around in the same way much longer. But I think we... I think there will still be humans, and there will still be relationships. And so a lot of the book you'll notice, is not like how do I get access to things, but it's how do I be with others in a way that's actually liberatory?
Ayana Young Today, we are speaking with adrienne maree brown. adrienne is the author of Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds and Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, and Co-editor of Octavius Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements. adrienne facilitates social justice and black liberation through the Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute, the Detroit narrative agency, and as a part of Black organizing for leadership and dignity. She and her sister, Autumn Brown co-host the podcast, How to Survive the End of the World.
Ayana Young We ended our last interview with a really brief bit on your most recent book Pleasure Activism. And I'm so happy we are able to pick up again this year. Well, I guess a year later. And for our listeners here...
adrienne maree brown Yeah, it's been awhile.
Ayana Young Yeah. And so for all of our listeners who are tuning in who are unfamiliar with Pleasure Activism, you write in the book's introduction that your intention around this topic is to connect pleasure to freedom. And that in increasing what gives us joy and pleasure and then decreasing self denial and repression, we can actually really achieve liberation. And I just have to say, your writing and the essays and interviews you include really convey this. And Pleasure Activism, because it's just such a beautiful map that really guides us through lessons on relationship, harm reduction, embodying pleasure, and so much more. And I see this book really as a catalyst for many meaningful conversations around recentering. Pleasure. So thank you, adrienne, for all you do and thank you for sharing this time with us.
adrienne maree brown I'm glad I'm really glad that it's landing that way with you. You know, this is always the interesting part of releasing a book when you're like, Okay, I know, I wrote something that was meaningful for me and now let's see what happens when it goes out to the world. And, you know, is it going to be what people expected? Or something different? And so it's great to be in this place, nown I'm just starting to hear back from people how it's landing with them.
Ayana Young Yeah, I feel like it's going to be a manifesto for many. But I'd really like to ground this interview with a quote from Audrey Lorde's Power of the Erotic.
adrienne maree brown Great.
Ayana Young So quote, "We are taught to separate the erotic demand from most vital areas of our lives other than sex. And the lack of concern for the erotic route and satisfactions of our work is felt in our disaffection from so much of what we do. For instance, how often do we truly love our work, even at its most difficult? The principle horror of any system which defines the good in terms of profit rather than in terms of human need or which defines human need in the exclusion of the psyche and emotional components of that need. The principal horror of such a system is that it robs our work of its erotic value, its erotic power, and life appeal," end quote. And this really seems to be a foundation which so much of Pleasure Activism is built upon, that during this point in time when we have responded to suffering collapse and unfulfillment for so long, it's critical that we reorient our practices around the power of the erotic. However, at the beginning of Pleasure Activism, you clarify that you want to broaden the scope beyond the terminology of the erotic. So I'd love to begin by asking you how you differentiate erotic activism versus pleasure activism?
adrienne maree brown That's a great question. I feel like, for me, it was really important to be tuning into pleasures that are not necessarily sexual or pleasures of the body. They might be pleasures of the mind. They might be pleasures of connection. But I wanted to give myself some space for pleasures that were not sexual, even though a lot of what the book is is talking about sexual pleasure. But when I was doing the research around it, you know, when I looked up, you know, it's like, Oh, the erotic is specifically around pleasure and the body and then there's pleasure, which was like contentment, satisfaction and joy. And that that could happen in the body, but that could happen in other spaces too. Like it could happen in the collective space and it could happen in activities that have nothing to do necessarily with sex. And that felt important to me. I don't know if it actually is important. So I want to make that distinction–is that it felt important for me to take the risk I wanted to take in the writing process. But I'm always, you know, I'm really open to people being like, Oh, it's not actually that big of a difference, or there's no need to make this distinction. Like I always, you know, I'm just like, Okay, teach me, you know.
So I'll say that that for me was when I heard the term "pleasure activism," it was a long time before I read the piece by Audrey Lorde. And so I had heard this term from... I speak about in the book, Keith Kyler, who was the founder of Housing Works, which is a program in New York that does incredible work. They started... the big thing that I'm most familiar with, is that they started basically like a series of thrift stores where people come in, you donate your items, so you donate your goods or stores can donate extra items that they might have to the service, and then they sell those in these thrift stores, and then all the profits go into things that help with folks who are living with HIV and AIDS and who are dealing with homelessness related to that. And I was blown away by the program. And I was blown away by Keith. He's one of these beautiful humans who, like if you were around him, if you ever saw him on a dance floor, if you ever, like were in a meeting with him, you just wouldn't forget him. And he was larger than his body and larger than life. And then he passed away, shortly after I met him–maybe a year or so after I'd come in contact with him. But that terminology really stuck with me–that he lived in a way that was so vibrant, and so alive and there was so much pleasure in it. And so much it was like we need to stop feeling so ashamed about the things that bring us pleasure. And I was hooked on that idea.
And it started to unfurl for me in, you know, that like, Oh, if we were not ashamed of our pleasure what would become possible? And if we started to understand that pleasure is something that everyone should have access to, what would become possible? And then I went down the rabbit hole, you know, so that it's like, Well, why don't we all have access to it? And Audrey Lorde's thinking on this, right? That it's like, once you have actually felt pleasure and erotic aliveness flow through you, it becomes impossible to settle for suffering. And so that that will spill over into your work and spill over into family and spill over to every part of your life. That became like... I just was like, Okay, maybe we're going about this in an opposite way from where we need to? That when we get full of anger, and we feel disempowered, we point our finger kind of like the furthest away from us and say, That's the place where we need to start fighting and that's who's to blame for this oppression. And it's like, absolutely, but how are we partnering with our oppressors? How are we collaborating with them? And I think one of the major ways we collaborate in our own oppression and suffering is by buying into the lie that we don't all deserve access to pleasure.
Well, I really appreciate how you just said, how do we collaborate with our oppressors? That's really, gosh, I'm gonna have to think on that a lot after this interview, but I know you get a lot of–
I think it's one of the main things we do. You know, I think that like, when I look back at, you know, as a Black woman with our sisters who were enslaved, I look back and I'm like, Oh, we didn't have to be slaves. I don't believe that in any way. And I think that there's all these ways that we begin to collaborate with white supremacy and collaborate with slavery during that time, including, you know, folks who are like, I'll try to get ahead by becoming an overseer who participates in the oppression of my own people. I'll try to get ahead by, you know, being kind to people who are beating me on a regular basis. I'll try to get ahead and you know, by mixed race, you know, mixing babies, right? Like, I'm a mixed race baby from this time. But I look back and I'm like, Oh, like, that was a strategy that some people were engaged in to try and reduce harm. It didn't necessarily work, but it was a strategy that people were engaging in. And I get really fascinated by all the ways that people were trying to survive back then and which of them were collaborations and their own oppression, for the sake of survival. And it makes me think, Oh, we must still be doing that. I see people still doing that now, trying to approximate something akin to whiteness even if they're a bad person or living in a black skin, and I get curious about it. Or watching women be like, Okay, the only way to get ahead is to to take on this hypermasculinity to move into the workplace, and often that means, you know, stomping out femininity in the workplace or above other women. So I see all the ways that this shows up and I think it's something we have to always be mindful about is that I don't think anyone can keep us enslaved if we don't want to be. And I don't think anyone keep us oppressed if we don't choose to participate in some way in it.
And I just had this incredible panel that I got to sit and listen to where folks were talking about the slave rebellions in Haiti. And it's so invigorating and enthralling to just hear about the ways we were like, No, we are going to fight back, we're not going to accept this. And to think about what has to happen for people to ever say no to their oppression.
Ayana Young Thank you for that. Now, I know you give a lot of examples of social conditioning that transpires through our lives. And it's just so apparent that these norms strip us from our lineages of pleasure, power, and agency really. You know, for example, from an early age, we learned that we are meant to be pleasurable for others, but not for ourselves.
adrienne maree brown Yes.
Ayana Young You know, we understand desire through the needs of others, rather than our own bodies. So around this topic, I'm thinking about our own personal pleasure lineages. and why is it so important that we see and experience pleasure growing up in our families, and or our communities?
adrienne maree brown You know, there's a little section in the book that I keep thinking, I wish this section was, like, ten times bigger. But, this is the way books go. But there's a little section in there on raising sexually-liberated children. And one of the things I talked to a few parents who I know, who just are kind of blowing my mind with the ways that they have raised or are raising their kids as it relates to pleasure. And one of the things they speak about is how the most important thing is that your child actually sees you as someone who is unashamed to experience pleasure, and who makes that a part of their lives because children learn so much just by watching and mimicking, and they learn what's important, because they see what we place priority on. Right? If we place priority on, you know, being on our phones all the time, then children will want to constantly be holding your phone and using the phone to interact because that's what they think is an important thing, right? So I think about that I'm like, Oh, what are the ways that you show, you know, that you don't hide your affection for your partner in front of your child? And what are the appropriate ways to be in relationship around children and with children so that children understand, like, it's beautiful to be in relationship with the adults in your life and to love them and to care for them?
And also, you get to have boundaries? What are boundaries look like? It's really hard to teach children boundaries that they don't see their parents having any, right. So it's like, how do we model good boundaries, practice good boundaries with children? One of my favorite practices for that is really letting kids know they have the right to say yes or no to hugs or kisses or anything. And you know, I wasn't raised in a generation where that choice felt like an option, right? Just like kiss your grandfather or hug, you know, whoever's coming around to give them a hug and a kiss. And I'm around so many parents now, where you can just feel the subtle shift. That's like, actually, you have choice? Do you want to give a hug? Do you want to say goodbye? No? Okay. And not shaming, not embarrassing a child for making a choice about what they want to do with their body in that moment. And I will say, with a billion siblings in my family and in my community, it feels so good to have that authentic love from a child. You know, where they're like, I do want to hug you. I do you feel safe. I do want to blow you kiss, I do care about you. You know, and that is not a coerced expression of, of care or intimacy. It's like an authentic one and I get excited about what those children's lives are going to unfold like because from this very early age, they're being encouraged to express authentic emotion and be respected for their expression of authentic emotion. I get excited.
Ayana Young Yeah, I want to continue on this theme of authenticity and lying as the maybe on the other end of that spectrum. Because I know collectively, we're also taught that lying is one way to show care and consideration and you give examples of little white lies that we often tell for the sake of convenience or in order to spare somebody's feelings even And while an individual, you know, white lies here there seem harmless, the long term effect is that we lose authenticity along the way. So I'm wondering how is practicing radical honesty necessary if we want to pursue any avenue of pleasure?
adrienne maree brown I am a big fan of radical honesty. I'm also a big fan of kindness. You know, Octavia Butler taught us that kindness eases change and I think about that a lot. And I think that there's someplace between radical honesty and kindness where we can find like the the most caring and loving way to communicate to each other. You know, so I noticed that, like, if I've spent a lot of time cooking something, and I bring it and set it before the kids, and they're just like, No, you know, I hate that. Or I won't even try it or anything. I'm like, Oh, I appreciate your honesty, that you're not, you know, going to force or coerce yourself into eating something, and where's the kindness? Where's the acknowledgement of labor? And I think a lot of times, we end up with a sort of passive aggression and expression of inauthentic emotion that's actually trying to attend to this other thing which is, Can we can we acknowledge all the component parts that go into care, without necessarily wanting to be the recipient of that particular mode of care, right?
So I think about this, like with my mom,. My mom and I have an amazing relationship and she's a very sensitive person. And so I think all the time, like, when she's making an offer to me, I want to be kind, even if it's an offer, that's like, that's not really what I want right now or this is not a good time for that. And I want to be really open to her so that she knows like, I love you. I love the way you love me. I love the offers you make to me, and this is not a good time, right? Or, and this is not the right offer for me. And like a great example of this is around the holidays.... Like sometimes she'll give me an item of clothing and I am ridiculously picky about clothing for no good reason. Like it's not like I'm like a style maven necessarily. I just am particular, right? So she'll get me something. And like this past year, she got me a shirt or something. And I was like, I could hold on to this and pretend like I like it, but I don't. I would never wear it. And it would be kind of a waste of her resource when she wanted to give me something. So instead, I was like, "This isn't really my thing and she was like, "Awesome, let's go find your thing. And see, though, we ended up having a great outing to go find something that was going to be really useful and give me pleasure. You know, like, we got these, like, awesome pants that make me happy every time I'm aware of them snd I think about the day that we spent together and going to find them together. You know, like, I just was able to create an authentic experience together instead of lying and suppressing even this small thing, which would decrease authenticity between us and decrease, then our connection.
Ayana Young Yeah, and decrease the intention behind the gifts she was trying to give you even like the energetic.
adrienne maree brown Exactly.
Ayana Young Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I definitely had moments that I can recall that and, and I think it's really important that we see all the ways in which we distance ourselves from others by trying to stay connected, but really it does create this fissure. Now I'm thinking about how in developing an activism oriented around pleasure, we really have to grapple with our understanding of what is reasonable. On The Rigorous Practices of Love you write, quote, "We can no longer afford to love people the way we've been loving them," end quote. And I really immediately thought of an article written by [First Name] Lamone in “The Aftermath of Trayvon Martin's Murder”. And Lamone writes, quote, "I want to be loved unreasonably by an unreasonable love because we've nearly drowned in the poison of reasonable loving, reasonable liking, reasonable living, reasonable essays, reasonable art, and reasonable political discourse," end quote.
adrienne maree brown Yeah
Ayana Young And I love this. And so...
adrienne maree brown He's so good.
Ayana Young I know, I know. And I'd really like to ask you about the importance of understanding and practicing love and pleasure outside of linearity and reasonability in terms of how these practices contribute to creating society that values life. You know, we've been given so many templates that limit our desires and fantasies. And, of course, all dominant templates center on the whims of history of what the Eurocentric male gaze has dictated and valued so I'm thinking about, you know, how we need to play with desire and fantasy and how liberating this for everyone who occupies a body that has been in some way shamed by society. You know, we have to begin creating fantasies that center ourselves and QTBIPOC non binary folks, you know, those who use wheelchairs, neurodivergent people, you know, the list goes on because, by and large, almost everyone has been written out of the accepted desire. So, I'm just curious to hear...
adrienne maree brown Except this fetish, right? Like, I think this is so important. I mean, I include [Unknown] in the book, you know, he talks about, he says, "[unknown], we need all the pleasures,' you know. And I remember it sticking with me like, yes, I want to hear, particularly hear a Black man from the south talking about pleasure, and talking about love and talking about the things we realize we need. So I'm really grateful for you uplifting that. And I do think this piece around the whole idea of something being reasonable and being able to be categorized as reasonable is in and of itself limiting, right. And I think all the time about all the different limits that have been placed on our radical imaginations and that that includes our imagination for what our body can feel, can do, how it can be treated. And I get blown away. Whenever I find myself communicating clearly to a lover, for instance, Here's how I really want to be touched. Here's how I want to be treated and finding that it's possible, and then wondering, like, Why is this such a surprise to me that I could have what I want? And it's like, Oh, yeah, like a lifetime of socialization that my body is not meant to have its own desires. I'm meant to sort of put on a play for a man who desires me and I'm supposed to be able to put on a play in which his pleasure is the center of the engagement and the beginning and end of the engagement.
And so it's been such an interesting thing. You know, my own journey really began with trying to really see my body outside of the lens of colonization. And to see my body as you know... so I'm like, Oh, through the lens of colonization, I have a fat, black body that's wearing glasses, that's moving slowly, that, you know, that has scars on it. This is the body that I have. But through my own eyes, I see something so different, I see a body that is full and that is lush, that has been well fed, that has survived. And I see a body that is extremely desirable to me. Over time, I've learned to really be like, Oh, and I look at myself like, Yes, excellent. That's great. And now I'm in this next phase of it, which is like, Okay, I love how my body looks and now I want to really love how it feels. And it feels like Oh, I'm focused on will feel like the right things in my lifetime, rather than putting a lot of attention. So I don't put a lot of attention on like, how can I prepare my body to be palatable for the male gaze? You know, I'm not thinking like, let me shave and wear, you know, shoes that are damaging to my entire skeletal structure and let me do my eyebrows a certain way or whatever, I'm really not thinking about anyone else's gaze, you know. I'm just thinking what what looks good and feels good to me and to my body and then what makes me a good member of community inside this body.
And that's been a really interesting, interesting thing to learn is that when I'm... there's one value or one or I think it's a principle in the book that says, When I'm happy, it's good for the world. And my friend, Jodie, is the first person who said this to me and I was like, What???! That's like a mind blowing concept to me, you know, like, how do you not teeter into individualism? But then I noticed that when I walk out into the world feeling really beautiful and powerful in my skin then other women, especially other women who are fat or other women who are black, look at me, and they're like, What, how did you get all that freedom and like, you look like happy, you know, and there's a lot of surprise, there's a lot of wonder, and it opens up conversations.
I sit in the gym and just had the most amazing conversations with people about how we're loving up our bodies and what we're doing to be good to ourselves and what we're learning about it. And a lot of these women are like over 50, over 60 years old, getting to this place of like, Wait, my body does not just a working body for someone else. My body is like, for me. So a lot of it is to try to figure out like, how do we reclaim that earlier in life? And how do we understand that it is an act of decolonization?
And then, you know, the book has a lot of practices, right? Like, do some homework so that you can start to shift that relationship if there are places where it's stuck. And I'm hopeful that it will be a few generations, but it's not out of reach. That it will become a new norm. It will become a new norm that children are raised to feel excellent in their bodies, whatever their bodies are like. It'll become a new norm to the we're not centering anyone who's not ourselves in our pleasure, but we center connection. You know, I love the idea of centering, having a connection and being able to please and be pleased. There's a mutuality to it. But it's that piece, you know, nurture the nodes, nurture the nodes, nurture the connection between the nodes instead of thinking all the time, how do we nurture the top of some pyramid that's far away and it's never ever gonna give us anything back?
Ayana Young You being happy is good for the world. I mean, as simple as that is, it's mind blowing at the same time. You know, I've heard a lot you know, Love yourself. Love the Earth. Love Your Body. Love the Earth. But it is always something that I kind of was like, yeah, yeah. But just seeing how...
adrienne maree brown It doesn't make sense unless you understand were connected to it. Do you know what I mean? Like, I really am like, Oh, I'm of the earth. I came from Earth, I'm gonna go back into Earth. I come from body. You know what I'm saying? Like, I'm of nature and I love nature. I'm like, nature is stunning and beautiful and, you know, humbling. And, Oh, so am I. So, yeah.
Ayana Young So I'm thinking about one of your subchapters and it's comprised of reflections regarding the discourse and strategy that has emerged from all the iterations of the Me Too movement. And I think we share a lot of the same sentiment and that responses to Me Too our potentially furthering a culture of repression, and which will, you know, potentially just continue to be just as toxic and harmful, if not more so. And I know this articulation is often taken out of context or shut down and I think in large part that is because of a conflation of desire and sexual energy as as the source of sexual harassment. But in this subchapter, you point out that we are asking people to be less honest about the complexities as an easy fix to this problem that we've been swirling in for a very long time. So I'm curious about the possibilities of addressing the culture that continues to be revealed by Me Too while preventing further repression, you know. How do boundaries come into play here? And how can we have boundaries that are healthy for us but don't shame desire, either?
adrienne maree brown Yeah, I mean, those are the questions, right? Like, I'm trying to figure it out, too. I feel like one of the things that I get inspired by is actually seeing what Tirana Burke is up to, you know... There's so much of her focus is like, how do we actually heal? How do we heal? Like how do we move from telling our stories to actually being able to heal the harm and the wounds that have happened? Be able to grow to a next place where we are able to reclaim pleasure where we are able to reclaim connection and healthy connection and like.. You know, Tirana, someone I really look up to because you can see the pleasures of her life, you know. The way that she dresses herself and shows up in a space she loves. She loves fashion. She loves to look amazing, you know. Like she has for a long time before this moment in the spotlight. I remember being a big fan of a blog of hers where she was just documenting her amazing fashion choices. And I was just like, Yes, I love this person. and I love how she claims pleasure. And I think is very... I think it's very deep to me that this… like, she as a Black woman, as a person who kind of got this off the ground and put these words, you know, out there is someone who cares about pleasure. So that's a first and foremost piece for me is, like, Yes. Like her call was not let's go out and tear people down. It's like how do we unveil and lift women up, lift survivors up and lift the stories home? And then how do we begin to heal?
And something that I feel like I'm wrestling with and trying to figure out is the idea that, you know, we want to eliminate or desexualize every part of society and that we think that somehow that will keep us safe. Right? That like, you shouldn't be thinking about sex in the workplace. You shouldn't be thinking about sex in the store, in the gym---you shouldn't be thinking about it. But the reality for a lot of people is they are thinking about it or they are feeling attraction or they are moving through the world in that way. And I think what happens as we miss an opportunity to teach people, here's how you actually express attraction in a healthy way. And then here's how you handle rejection in a healthy way. And I think if we could start to depersonalize, both of those things, so it's just like, that's a normal part of life. You feel attracted to people, they may or may not feel attracted back to you. You express it in an appropriate way. And they can tell you whether they feel it or not. And you deal with your rejection or you get to get a new lover.
You know, like, it's like, we've gotten so far off course. And I think the main reason we're way off course is because capitalism has so tightly woven itself through every kind of human interaction that we can have. So there's a constant sense of, Do I own you? Do you own me? Are you my possession? Are you my belonging? Are you going to please me? Do you think that you could possibly please someone else? I don't think so. You belong to me. And then we turn it all into consumerism, right? It's like, Because you belong to me, I buy you this expensive ring and I buy you a house and I give you money and you raise our children. It's like really looking at, like, what is the old sort of construct of marriage and construct of love? And that sex was supposed to happen only in that context of you belong to me, so you give me sex. And if I'm tired of having sex with you, then I'll go buy sex somewhere else. I mean, it's fascinating when you really start to like, understand, like, how deeply capitalism and patriarchy have got us hemmed up into thinking that pleasure and sex and love are things that have to be part of ownership. And so then you end up in this hyper repressed state where we have really taken away the nature that is in us, that is like love and attraction flowing freely, bodies flowing freely, bodies belonging to the person who has the body and not to anyone else. And so I'm interested in a return to those things.
And I think there's a lot of interesting experiments around this. Like, I think a lot of what people are trying out in terms of poly relationships plays a role in this not because that's, um... I don't think poly is some higher state of being or higher, you know, some better way of being, but I do think it's as prevalent as monogamy, right? Like, I think there are as many people who want to be in multiple relationships at a time and who feel the capacity to be in that as there are people who want to just be in a monogamous relationship. And so I think it's one of the ways to challenge these old assumptions, right? It's like, Oh, I love you, and I care about you and I don't feel ownership over you. And if you feel attracted to someone else, that's okay, too. And here's what I need around that. Let's have some good agreements, and like, make sure we talk about it. Or maybe the agreement is I don't want to talk about it, right? And making sure you're aligned with your lovers or your partners around those things. And all of it just means being able to say stuff.
And I also have to say, I'm not really a big process person, maybe to my detriment. But I'm not necessarily putting out like, we should just be in a million processes around everything we feel and think. It's much more we need to practice, being in our own agency and freedom, and giving people room to be in their own agency and freedom. Acknowledging that we have a complex set of emotions, including attraction, and that this is ever changing. And so because we have all that, we need to have great practices of communication, boundaries and consent.
Ayana Young Mm hmm. And it feels like the repression and the shame really actually stop people from being able to communicate what they need, what their desires are, even what boundaries are. And it's so interesting to hear your take on it all because yeah, we're in a big... we're in a big mess. And it's, we've gotten ourselves in this really complex state where many of us don't even know how to be in a healthy relationship. How to express healthy desires... whether or not some of us even understand what our desires even are, I mean, really starting at that level. So it's, yeah.
Another part of the book... and this kind of reminds... because the Me Too movement you know, kind of going back to that there's a lot of pain associated with, you know the experiences that people have had. And while reading through I kept coming back to the relationship between pain and pleasure and how pain is so often the messenger in our lives. How can we understand pleasure as a remedy? And you write, quote, "I recognize that my sorrow carves out the space for my joy. And that both in this lifetime and in the cycles of my lineage, there is so much space that has been carved out by sorrow, and I get to fill it up with joy and pleasure. What a pleasure it is, after all, to be a free black queer woman, to be a human self aware, to be of the earth. With such beauty and interconnectedness, pleasure is the point. Feeling good is not frivolous. It is freedom," end quote. So I wanted to ask what is the role of pleasure in alleviating our pain? And then maybe to take it a step further, I'd like to discuss the difference between healing pain through pleasure versus numbing pain through pleasure and have you found a successful way to navigate this thin line?
adrienne maree brown There's a lot in that question, Ayana. I feel like you know, well, one thing is that one of the first books I was ever familiar with as a child was The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. And I felt like, it's a great teacher in terms of this but you're.... your sorrow carves out a space for your joy and conversely, your joy carves out the space for your sorrow. And that part of being a human is being on the pendulum between those two spaces, and that you don't get to live without one or the other. Right? So that feels important because it's the thing that makes the distinction between pleasure activism and hedonism for me is that I'm not saying, you know... Hedonism says pleasure without the pain, right? That it's all pleasure, and that we want to live in a society where suffering doesn't have to happen, pain doesn't have to happen. I don't see it that way. I feel like I know what it is to really love so deeply that when you lose someone, you feel pain, and that the pain is a direct measure and a direct expression of the love and the pleasure and the joy that that person brought to you. I don't want to necessarily give up their pain. Like I don't mind it, you know, like, it feels like it's appropriate. I feel like there's a lot of inappropriate suffering, there's a lot of pain that is wrong. And I think that there's a distinction, you know, to me, when I think about like, oh, what are the cycles I'm trying to end in life? It's not like grief in general, you know. It's not the grief that comes from losing someone who's naturally aged and died. It's the grief and suffering that comes from violence and harm and inappropriate death and unnecessary death and unnecessary suffering and suffering that falls along the fault lines of race or class or sexuality or something else that you don't have control over. That's the kind of suffering you know that I move against.
And what I realized is like, in my life when I was healed, I wanted to feel that ecstatic feeling all the time, or often, without having to take anything to feel it. And now at the age of 40, I feel that often. Like, I feel that on a regular basis, as I'm moving about the world, as I'm doing my work, as I'm playing with the children that are in my life, as I'm facilitating a meeting of social justice warriors, I often get this flood of ecstatic aliveness that comes through me. And it's a way that I know that I've healed, that there's some parts of my system that tend towards depression, because of long pain that have actually healed. And now when I say healed, it doesn't mean I don't think it means there's no scar, and there's no adjustment that's left behind, I'm changed by everything that I've lived through. But I also am not bound by everything that I've lived through. And that feels really important. And that feels important for people and they're looking at any place where there could be addiction and numbing, you know, it can happen in the realm of sex and the realm of drugs, it could happen in the realm of how you relate to food, it can happen in the realm of, you know, tobacco, coffee, it can happen in the gym, you know, anytime you're chasing something, and moving away from feeling, instead of relaxing and surrendering into feeling, it's time to be careful and see if there's adjustments needed.
I will say that in terms of pleasure being able to heal versus being able to numb... I think this is such a crucial question. And for me, the answer lies in my somatic practice, which is centering. Really being able to develop a sense of deep connection with my body and with my body as a place that I can center in, I can continue to come back to, and that is a source of a ton of data. And if I'm actually listening to my body, I can tell the difference between what is healing me and what has helped... What is numbing me? And sometimes I'll say I need mindful dissociation. You're right, I like things are too hard and I do need to numb it down. I do need to soften the blows somehow. But I don't want to live my life that way, right? And right now we're in this political, sociopolitical moment that is so overwhelming and so taxing, that I see a lot of people who are like, I just can't really handle being present in life at this moment. And a lot of people who are choosing to numb and it concerns me when I see it in myself and when I see it in other because I think what happens is we miss the miracle and we miss the cues that are coming. They're saying it's time to move or it's time to divest. It's time to stop participating in these systems. Like when it hurts this much it's actually not a sign to numb, it's a sign to leap or it's a sign to revolt. So I'm thinking a lot about that.
And I feel like the numbing piece. You know, there's a piece in there I talk about my use of ecstasy and how there was a period where it made me feel so alive. It really helped me move through sadness and understand that feeling good was a possibility and it was such an interesting juxtaposition to smoking weed at the same time. This was a while ago, you know, before it was like in dispensaries everywhere. And you know, this is before I knew the distinction between indica and sativa and like, what actually made me feel more alive and what actually made me feel numb. I would often smoke and then feel like I can't move. I can't really talk and I can't really feel anything and that's how I'm moving through life. And the juxtaposition that with ecstasy where I was like, I can move in ways that I don't even know if I normally can move and I want to move. I want to dance. I want to touch. I want to kiss. I want to feel happy. I want to run outside. You know, like, it's just such a different feeling. And what I realized, like, in my life when I was healed I wanted to feel that excstatic feeling all the time or often without having to take something to feel it. And now at the age of 40 I feel that often. Like I free that on a regular basis as I'm moving through the world, as I’m doing my work, as I’m playing with the children in my life, as I’m facilitating or leading social justice warriors, I often get this flood of ecstatic aliveness that comes through me. And a way that I know that I healed. That’s there some parts of my system that tend toward depression because on long pain that actually healed. Now when I say healed, I don’t think it means there’s no scar and there’s no adjustment that’s left behind, I’m changed by everything that I’ve lived through. And, also, I am not bound by everything that I’ve lived through, and that feels really important. And that feels important for people if they’re looking at anyplace where there could be addiction and numbing. You know, it could happen in the realm of sex, in the realm of drugs. It could happen in the realm of how you relate to food. It can happen around tobacco, coffee… It can happen in the gym, you know… anytime you’re chasing something and moving away from feeling instead of relaxing and surrendering into the feeling it’s time to be careful and see if there’s adjustment needed.
Ayana Young And I also really admire how you have spoken to, of course, you know, the surrendering to the feelings are, ultimately, I believe what we need to do as well. But there are times where, you know, we can use numbing as medicine, or maybe that's not the right way to say it? But I do, I know in my own life, there's times where I'm like, Wow, I really just needed to tune this out. I actually don't have the capacity to surrender at this moment. Although I don't want to escape from it. There is a lot of love and medicine to being able to, like, lower the frequency of situations when we really need that. So I appreciate you being able to speak to the complexity of that and really being open to diving into all the different angles in which people will come to this issue in their own life.
So this next question is a bit different than the rest so far. And there's an essay... Well, there's just, there's an essay that was titled, Burlesque and Liberation. And it, I saw it oh, great, okay. And so her, Una and her sisters speak on exploring their identities as queer femmes of color through burlesque and I especially love this passage where Una says, quote, "We know the road to liberation for all peoples is a long one and something we might not see in our lifetimes. I feel like burlesque creates moments of liberation, moments of experience," end quote. And I just really love this focus on moments of liberation that are so accessible, and it reminds me of Chela Sandoval's writing in Methodology of the Oppressed where she looks at brief moments like trauma, desire or love in which a rupture happens. And through this rupture, there is a direct conduit to social change. And these brief experiences in our everyday lives actually move us towards a different consciousness. And I guess this line of thinking makes me or takes me towards this topic of utilizing pleasure activism in working towards justice. So I just really love to ask you to speak on how you see acts like burlesque or even sex work as acts of social justice and how can we broaden our activism to encompass unconventional and measureable performances as measures. You know, how does this impact accessibility?
adrienne maree brown Oh, that's great. Well, I mean, I think the, you know, I was really excited by both the piece that Una and Mishi did, and also, the piece that Chanelle Gallant does, which is "F–ck You, Pay Me", which is about sex workers and sort of the pleasure that comes from having, you know, actually being able to support your life and your family and meet your needs, you know, through sex work. And I feel like so much of it is really about where we enter and recognizing the system that we live in. So I've always felt this, you know, and I got this education pretty early in my life, it was like, as long as we live inside of capitalism, people are going to pay for everything. And so we need to stop punishing anyone who's surviving inside of capitalism by charging for anything. Like, that's not the place if someone's saying this is mine and this is something that I can trade that I can get that I can use in this way. I think there's something really powerful about that and so both burlesque and sex work use that basic technology, which is like, here's the body. I know how to make another body feel good with my body. And I'm going to do that I'm gonna do it for money. I'm going to do it for reward for pleasure, for exploration, getting to tell a story. And I do think there are these moments, like the moment of sitting back and having enough, the moment of sitting back and knowing that you are just seen and the people don't desire for you, the moment of having control, total control over people's experience of pleasure, even for a moment. I do think there's something really liberating about it. And I think for a lot of us, we don't know yet how to sustain a long, like an ongoing experience of pleasure.
So I'll speak to this very directly that I had a moment like a few weeks ago, where I was with a group of people that I adore, and we were watching something together. And I'd seen it before I was showing it to them. It was Amanda Seales' comedy special. I be knowing, and I love it, I think she's hilarious. And it's a really, you know, she really captures a lot of what I want. So I'm laughing. And I looked around at the group and I just felt this deep, like, deep, deep, deep contentment in me, like I was like, I love all these people. I love that they're laughing. I know how much hardship everyone in this room has been going through. I know that folks are tired. A lot of these folks are like, you know, I would say they're like joints inside the body of Black liberation, like, they're not the frontline workers, but they're the ones who are holding on and moving between these different parts of that Black liberation body that is trying to organize to get us free, and to sit and to see them rest down in the system, right? Because when you're laughing, there's so much surrender, so much relaxation is happening in the body. It's just, it was so nourishing. But I also recognize them like, oh, I can't keep this level of awareness, right? Like the whole time we're together it feels this good, but I can't stay. I don't know how to sustain this level of awareness of the joy. And I think in part is because my socialization still is to stay in awareness of what's wrong, what's missing, what needs to be deconstructed. So one of the things I'm often trying to do is create moments of deep pleasure and joy with others, and keep growing my capacity to sustain them. And then I think burlesque is one of those places where a lot of it is sustaining the experience of being under the control, under the seduction of someone who really knows what they're doing. And who is letting you follow them on a journey of self exploration, on a journey of them exploring their own power, and making often very political statements about how power works in the stories that they're choosing to tell. So I'm a big fan of, you know, burlesque. I'm a big fan of strip clubs that are run well and run fairly. I'm a big fan of anything where people feel like I'm an agency, I'm in my agency to give pleasure and I'm being compensated for in a way that feels fair to me.
Ayana Young Now, we've touched on capitalism a few times in this interview, and I've really been...
adrienne maree brown It's everywhere.
Ayana Young It's everywhere. And as I was thinking about pleasure in capitalism, I know that capitalism just manufactures false desire in relationship to lacking and scarcity. So I'm just really curious as to how you think our unhealthy relationship to pleasure is partly, perhaps, or fully a derivative of the structure of capitalism. But perhaps even more so than commodity money and pleasure, I'm really interested, actually, in thinking about forms of pleasure that are not driven by the fossil fuel economy. And how that ties into the accessibility of pleasure as well, because at this point, it just seems like even the simplest pleasures are so tied to fossil fuels. And I was just wondering if this thought is something that sneaks up on you as well. And I'll give you an example, when I was thinking about this question. I was like, you know, okay, I thought, well, what are the simple pleasures in my life? My... Oh, taking a bath. I'm like, oh, shoot, my bath sometimes is run off propane and then that propane is the fossil fuel economy. So it was just something that I really got lost in. And I just wanted to, yeah, hear your train of thought on that because I almost got into a vortex with it where I couldn't. It was really hard for me to find like...
adrienne maree brown There's no way out!
Ayana Young Yeah, yeah, exactly.
adrienne maree brown Yeah, I mean, I think that part of it is like I live in reality, I live in this world right now so how do I unhook myself from the systems of this world for pleasure, and most of us can't. Most of us are not even at that level of awareness. You know, and I don't think it's a necessity. I think one of the things, you know, for me the most fundamental place of pleasure is inside the body and it's not that you need anything outside the body to give you that pleasure. So I think a lot about how to turn off pornography and disconnect from your sex toys for a little while, even though I'm very pro sex toy. But to remember that you can always be a body with your own body or with other people's bodies, right? That it doesn't have to be anything you buy, anything that you sell, anything that you go outside yourself to get, and that so much of the deepest pleasures actually come from just being really, really present in a given moment. So for me, there's always that piece.
I would love for the book to be the kind of thing that people are carrying around even when they're not able to fly around anymore, right? That it's something that people are like, Oh, I can still use this, to think about how I flirt and how I get naked and how I get into right relationship with my lover and how I get a trade relationship with my children, and how I turn up humor, right? That most of the technologies are ones that actually don't rely on a capitalist system. This seems really important to me when it comes to access as well. Because I have found that, for me, getting my access needs met is primarily about being in relationships that are open and clear and clean enough that I can actually communicate what I really need in real time and doesn't matter like, Oh, can I get a car from here to there? Or, Is there an elevator? All these other things like that stuff is secondary to whether I can actually express my need in real time to the people that I'm with, and that we can work together to figure out how we can meet that need.
But then I don't want to ignore this. You know, it's like, there's, there's a lot to this idea of, like, how do we start to practice things that bring us back into a different relationship with the world's resources? Right. And so one of the places in the book, when I talk about the liberated relationship... Liberated relationship, for me, is one of the main ways that we can actually practice being in a different relationship with each other, with the world around us, that is not an oppressive one, that is not taking from anything. It's being in relationships where everyone actually is in their agency, in their power to be there. So for me, um, like, a lot of the other pleasures. You know, like I say that I'm a hot tub person. I love a bath. Like I love all those things. I'm totally with you. I'm like, that being a limitation. But I'm also really tuned into at some point... So I live with a lot of apocalyptic awareness, right, that I'm like, there's a lot that we take for granted right now that I don't think is actually going to be around for much longer, or I don't think it's going to be around in the same way much longer. But I think we... I think there will still be humans and there will still be relationships. And so a lot of the book, you'll notice, is not like how do I get access to things, but it's how do I be with others in a way that's actually liberatory, and that's intentional.
And so I've got arthritis, and I travel all the time. And for years, I have been making my pain so much worse because I was scared to just say out loud, Here's what I actually need, Here's how my body's doing. And that has really shifted, and it's been so powerful for me. And I'm not all the way there yet, but to start saying, like, I have this disability. I have this need. And I'm bringing that into the bedroom as well, you know, that when I take a new lover that I talk a little bit about, Hey, you know, my knees don't work like they used to. I still think there's that we can do everything, but we're just going to have to work together to make it happen. And I think about how many people don't have that practice, don't have that space to feel like, Oh, I can do this. I can tell someone what I need. It's a legitimate thing to have a need and that capitalism is not going to answer those needs, right? It never has, and I don't think it ever is going to, or it only answers the needs if, if, if it can make a profit off of them. And that always makes me kind of excited about what comes next, you know, what is the next phase of human development where people are caring for each other not because they can get something out of it, but because they actually care for each other.
Ayana Young adrienne, thank you so much. I was hoping in closing this interview, you'd be willing to share one of your personal favorite assignments. In the book, you include the Hot and Heavy Homework assignments. So I would love for you to share one of your favorites with our audience that they should hear at this time.
adrienne maree brown I love getting naked. I love this assignment for people to actually get naked and to look at themselves and really understand themselves. Like the same way, you know, like, I'll look at a seahorse or turtles or I'll look at a horse running across a field or a flock of birds in the sky. I try to bring that same level of awe when I spend time looking at myself naked. And I really want to encourage others to be in that practice. So that's one of the pieces of Hot and Heavy Homework is to get naked, spend some time in that naked space. Really observe yourself. Find things that you love. Find things that you can, you know, find ways you're like, Oh, I can see nature. Yes, I can see myself, miracle, miracle, miracle. To me, it's this unexpected gift of this time is that it's actually a really beautiful thing to be in a body and to be in relationship with other people who care for their bodies and love their bodies and see their bodies as a part of nature. So I'm here for it. Let's do it.
Ayana Young Thank you for listening to For The Wild Podcast. I'm Ayana Young. The music you heard today was from The Boom Booms. JB the First Lady and Small Town Artillery. I'd like to thank our podcast production team, our podcast audio producer Andrew Storrs, our media researcher and writer Francesca Glaspell. Our social media coordinator Eryn Wise, Hannah Wilton is on production outreach, and our music coordinator is Carter Lou McElroy. If you'd like to hear the bonus content from this episode, head over to our Patreon or you can sign up there and receive not only bonus content from adrienne maree brown, but pretty much everyone else that we interview as well. And please, please rate us on iTunes. It really helps us spread these messages to wider audiences and keep the mycelial web building.