Audre Lorde & Eroticism

In her essay Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power, Audre Lorde challenges the modern view on eroticism in a patriarchal society, and instead presents an unconventional view on this concept, eroticism-a source of female power. In addition to revealing what “the erotic” means to her, she also discusses how it is misleadingly associated with the pornographic, and how women are taught to doubt this “non-rational knowledge” within themselves. This oppression, according to Lorde, …

…eroticism as a “resource within each of us that’s lies on a deeply female and spiritual plane”. I think that men are capable of feeling as deeply as women feel, and I do not see why they should not be at least partially included or mentioned in this essay. Overall, I found this reading to be interesting and thought provoking, I look forward to reading more of Audre Lorde’s work in the future.