what is the erotic?

Our Praxis:

At the erotic root, we ground our work in Black feminist praxis — a framework that recognizes the major systems of oppression as interlocking and understands that our liberation as Black women requires addressing race, gender, class, and sexuality together. As the Combahee River Collective articulated in their foundational 1977 statement, Black feminism is “the logical political movement to combat the manifold and simultaneous oppressions that all women of color face.”

This means our embodiment work is not separate from our liberation work — reclaiming pleasure, rest, and erotic power IS the practice of Black feminist resistance.

In practice, this looks like:

  • Understanding that the disconnection from our bodies is not individual failure, but the result of systems designed to police, shame, and control Black women’s bodies, sexuality, and autonomy

  • Recognizing that rest, pleasure, and softness are not frivolous luxuries but necessary acts of resistance against capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy

  • Centering Black women’s knowledge, wisdom, and experiences as valid and essential — not secondary or derivative

  • Refusing to separate our healing from our politics, our bodies from our liberation, our pleasure from our power

What Is Erotic Power?

We are also divinely guided by Audre Lorde’s teaching on the erotic as power:

“The very word erotic comes from the Greek word eros, the personification of love in all its aspects - born of Chaos, and personifying creative power and harmony. When I speak of the erotic, I speak of it as an assertion of the lifeforce of women; of that creative energy empowered.”

This is not about sexuality alone. The erotic is far more than sexual or sensual contexts; it motivates excellence, survival, and delight through all of life’s activities. 

Reclaiming your erotic power means:

  • Refusing numbness and disconnection

  • Trusting your body’s wisdom

  • Choosing what brings you alive

  • Leading your life from your deepest feeling

  • Becoming, as Lorde says, less willing to accept powerlessness 

This is the work of the erotic root - guiding you back to this power within yourself.

Citations:

  • Combahee River Collective. “A Black Feminist Statement.” 1977.

  • Lorde, Audre. “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power.” Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Crossing Press, 1984.