Reclaiming the erotic: A sex therapist's reflection on Audre Lorde
Key Takeaways
The erotic, as Audre Lorde describes it, is not about sex in the narrow sense; it is a deeply embodied source of inner authority, wisdom, and aliveness that patriarchal society has worked to suppress in women
When women reconnect with their erotic, they become increasingly difficult to control, not because they seek power over others, but because external systems lose their hold
The current cultural push encouraging women toward traditional femininity is not new; it is a familiar attempt to locate women's sense of self outside of themselves and in the hands of external authorities
Reclaiming the erotic is not simply a personal act of self-discovery; it is a political act that challenges the systems of capitalism, patriarchy, and colonialism that depend on women's self-doubt
This work is not equally available to all women: BIPOC, LGBTQ+, disabled, and otherwise marginalized women have long had to cultivate inner authority to survive, and this must be recognized rather than romanticized
There is no wrong way to be a woman; the question is not which role you occupy but whether you arrived there through your own knowing or through compliance with external expectations
There is a renewed cultural push asking women to return to a narrowly defined version of femininity.
Across social media, popular culture, wellness spaces, and political discourse, women are increasingly encouraged to become more "traditional," more agreeable, more beautiful according to prescribed standards, more nurturing, more self-sacrificing, and more "natural." These messages are often framed as pathways to fulfilment, belonging, and authenticity. Yet beneath this rhetoric lies something far more familiar: a patriarchal binary that defines what kind of woman is worthy, enough, and acceptable.
What makes this resurgence particularly insidious is that it encourages women to locate their sense of self outside of themselves. Rather than cultivating an internal relationship with their own knowing, feeling, and discernment, women are invited to adopt external authorities as their compass.
Industries tell us what body is desirable. Influencers determine what forms of movement, expression, and femininity are socially acceptable. Cultural norms dictate how women should eat, speak, sit, parent, work, love, and age. The result is not simply conformity, it is disconnection from ourselves.
This is precisely where Audre Lorde's work remains profoundly relevant.
In her book essay, The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power, Lorde offers an understanding of the erotic that has little to do with the narrow sexualized meanings patriarchal society has assigned to it. Instead, she describes the erotic as a deeply embodied source of wisdom, aliveness, and internal authority.
Lorde writes, “The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling.”
The erotic can be understood as a profound source of knowledge within women's lives. It is the place where our deepest feelings, intuitions, desires, and sense of rightness reside. Measuring from where our sense of self begins to the depth of our strongest feelings, the erotic becomes an internal compass that reveals not only who we are, but what we are capable of experiencing.
“The erotic is not a question only of what we do; it is a question of how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing,” explains Lorde.
The erotic is not simply about sexuality
It is an orientation toward life itself. It is an internal guide that illuminates our capacity for joy, fulfilment, depth, and authenticity.
It is relational: “Sharing deeply any pursuit with another person. The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual”.
It is also about our capacity for feeling:Lorde explains that the erotic functions through the “open and fearless underlining of [our] capacity for joy”. It is present in moving one's body to music because the rhythm calls us, rather than because social media has determined what movement is acceptable. It is found in eating food that is nourishing and satisfying rather than what diet culture sanctions as permissible. It is experienced whenever we engage fully with our lives instead of performing them for external approval.
The erotic reminds us of our capacity for aliveness. Once we know what genuine satisfaction feels like, we begin to recognize what falls short of that possibility.
Women who know their erotic are dangerous
Not because they seek domination, but because they become increasingly difficult to dominate.
When women reconnect with this life force, they begin demanding excellence, not perfection, but lives that honour their humanity. Self-image, relationships, institutions, role models, industries, and systems become unmasked for what they are: social constructions that derive their authority only through collective belief. Their limitations are revealed as neither inevitable nor natural.
As Lorde writes, once in touch with the erotic, “I become less willing to accept powerlessness, or those other supplied states of being which are not native to me, such as resignation, despair, self-effacement, depression, and self-denial”.
It is dangerous for women to come to know their erotic because it teaches them the depth of their own knowing, feeling, and capacity for joy. Once this has been realized, external systems lose much of their power.
The social media influencer who determines what form of dancing and expression is acceptable no longer dictates how we move on the dance floor. The beauty industry that insists one body is more valuable than another no longer determines our worth. The culture that prescribes the correct way to eat, sit, speak, dress, or embody womanhood no longer determines our right to exist comfortably in our own skin and belong.
These systems do not exist for collective or individual human well-being
They thrive by making us susceptible to exploitation, obedience, and oppression. They become the cultural henchmen of capitalism, patriarchy, and colonialism, sustaining themselves by encouraging women to doubt their own authority while placing their trust in external definitions of success, desirability, and morality.
This is why Lorde argues that patriarchal society has worked so diligently to diminish the erotic.
As Lorde argues, patriarchal societies have invested enormous time, energy, resources, and influence into monitoring, regulating, and containing women's relationship to the erotic. Gender roles were constructed that encouraged women to distrust this source of power. Rather than recognizing it as a source of knowledge and liberation, it has been reduced almost exclusively to sexuality, and even then, only within forms that often serve others’ interests.
When women reconnect with their erotic, they begin to demand more, not from entitlement, but from an embodied knowledge of what life can feel like.
Lorde writes that once we know this depth of feeling, we can no longer settle for “the convenient, the shoddy, the conventionally expected, nor the merely safe”.
This does not mean every moment will be easy, convenient, or comfortable. It does not mean entitlement or superiority. It means asking whether our relationships, work, communities, political structures, and daily practices allow us to live fully. It means refusing lives organized solely around compliance. It means questioning inherited expectations that ask women to shrink themselves in order to be considered good.
Owning this power requires courage because it also requires responsibility. Once we know ourselves, it becomes increasingly difficult to betray ourselves.
Lorde's conceptualization of the erotic reflects the journey many women undertake, from “fearing the yes within” to gradually dismantling the distortions that have kept them externally defined. Learning to access one's erotic becomes a compass not only for intimacy but for every domain of life. It guides decisions about work, creativity, relationships, community, justice, rest, and purpose.
We are living inside the exact moment Lorde was writing about
Women today are increasingly offered gendered binaries that promise fulfilment if only they choose correctly. These binaries imply that one path possesses greater moral worth than another and that there is a correct way to perform womanhood.
Yet none of these identities is inherently more ethical, authentic, or valuable than another.
There is no wrong way to be a woman. Mother, homemaker, business owner, academic, artist, wife, partner, single, child-free, none of these roles hold moral high ground. The question is not which role a woman occupies but whether she arrived there through a relationship with her own knowing or through compliance with external expectations.
The invitation is not toward a particular identity but toward ourselves.
Some women never had the option of believing the system was on their side
This invitation is also not equally available to all women. Many women, particularly BIPOC, LGBTQ+, disabled, impoverished, and otherwise marginalized women, have rarely been afforded the illusion that these systems exist for their protection or benefit. They have long recognized that patriarchal, colonial, and capitalist structures were never designed with their liberation in mind. Their lives have often required them to cultivate forms of inner authority simply to survive.
There is privilege in being able to remain unintentional about one's relationship with the erotic because the system has, at least temporarily, appeared to work in one's favour.
Recognizing this allows us to resist romanticizing the very structures that have consistently excluded so many women from safety, dignity, and self-determination.
Returning to the erotic is therefore not simply an individual practice of self-discovery. It is also a political act.
It asks us to turn toward ourselves amidst the noise of culture and ask: What feels deeply right? What allows me to feel most fully alive? What is my potential? What life emerges when I stop measuring myself against externally imposed definitions of womanhood?
The answers will not always be easy. But they will be ours.
This work is collective
We can/need to turn toward one another, not to prescribe a single correct way of being women, but to support one another in living more fully into our own capacities. We can collectively challenge the systems that allow some women access to power while asking others to remain confined within socially constructed limitations.
Audre Lorde reminds us that the erotic is not merely a feeling. It is a way of knowing. It is a source of power. It is a practice of liberation.
Perhaps now, more than ever, we need to remember that the most radical act may simply be trusting ourselves enough to feel deeply, know fully, and build lives from that place.
Lorde's work is not simply an invitation to read differently. It is an invitation to live differently, to turn toward your own knowing, your own feeling, your own sense of what is deeply right. That work does not happen in isolation. It happens in a relationship, in a community, and sometimes in a therapy room with someone who is genuinely equipped to sit with you in it.
If any part of this resonated, if something in you recognized what Lorde is describing, we would love to talk. Your erotic, your authority, and your capacity for a fuller life are not things to be earned. They are already yours.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Audre Lorde describes the erotic not as sexuality in the narrow sense but as a deeply embodied source of inner knowledge, power, and aliveness. In her essay, "The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power", she argues that the erotic is a resource within each of us that reveals our capacity for joy, depth, and authentic feeling. It is an internal compass, present in creativity, relationships, movement, and any experience of genuine satisfaction, that guides us toward lives that feel ours fully.
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Because they become increasingly difficult to dominate. When women reconnect with their erotic, their own sense of what feels deeply right, satisfying, and alive, external systems of authority lose much of their power. The beauty industry, social media, diet culture, and prescriptive gender roles all depend on women distrusting themselves. A woman who trusts her own knowing is far less susceptible to the exploitation and compliance those systems require.
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More than you might think. So much of what brings people to sex therapy is rooted in exactly what Lorde describes, a disconnection from their own bodies, desires, and sense of what feels right, often as a result of shame, cultural messaging, trauma, or external expectations around gender and sexuality. Sex therapy at Mareel is, in many ways, a practice of helping people reconnect with their own authority, their capacity for pleasure, intimacy, and self-knowledge on their own terms.
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Deeply so. The current cultural moment, with its growing pressure on women to return to traditional femininity, prescribed beauty standards, and narrowly defined gender roles, is precisely the moment Lorde was writing about. Her argument that patriarchal systems work to diminish women's relationship to their own knowing is not a historical observation. It is happening right now, across social media, wellness culture, and political discourse.
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Therapy, particularly sex therapy and relationship counselling, can be one of the spaces where the work Lorde describes becomes possible. A good therapist does not tell you who to be or how to live. They create conditions where you can hear yourself more clearly, trust your own experience more fully, and build a life from that place. That is what Mareel aims to offer: a warm, non-judgmental space where your own authority is always the starting point.
