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Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power

 By Audre Lorde

 Before, I began to read Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power, I had no idea what it could possibly be about. I thought this piece was going to be like all the other works that we have been reading in class but in fact its not.  Audre Lorde is angry writing this piece and that is kind of why I wanted to do my blog on it.  Even though this piece was hard to understand at first, I believe that it is about her definition of erotic and also its opposite the pornographic.  When reading this piece, I came to the conclusion that she was, in a way, celebrating the erotic in comparison to her femininity.  Audre Lorde use of word erotic is how women are "embracing to the bedroom" and the key to her realizing her full potential, the way she can be strong.  She believes that you should "enter the bed gratefully and from witch she rises up with power."     

 Audre Lorde states that pornography is a corruption to ones soul.   "our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings"(537) She believes that it makes one loose their self respect because erotic is a celebration of feeling and embracing life and all its sensations.  I think her whole piece was to show that pornographic has no benefactor.  She thinks that sex should not just be sex but in fact have some kind of identity with all sorts of emotions. It gives you a sense of wholeness.  Porn uses no emotion.     

Everyone was made to be a spiritual person she states. "we have attempted to separate the spiritual and the erotic, thereby reducing the spiritual to a world of flattened affect, a world of the ascetic who aspires to feel nothing....the severe abstinence of the ascetic becomes the ruling obsession. And it is one not of self-discipline but of self-abnegation."(538) Erotic is used against us women.  Porn robs our work of it erotic value, power, life appeal and fulfillment. 

She believes that sharing per-suite with another person, open and fearless of joy is her very one erotic.  I agree with her and how she feels that erotic is what our society fears and how she says not to just settle for what in convenient. Also how she states that once you except the erotic in oneself it colors your life, allows you to walk freely because you appreciate and feel like you have importance in life/ you made your own choice.    

When thinking about today's society and also some of my friends, I notice exactly what she is talking about.  A lot of times women just settle because they want a sense of fulfillment but in fact it they do not get it because that person was just "convenient" to them.  Also, often times both men and women do not have sex for what it truly means "love" and the emotion that stands behind it.  They just have sex to have sex and that in a way makes someone look less about themselves and the power that they could truly withhold.