A review by lactoseintolerant
Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good by adrienne maree brown

4.0

when people state who they're attracted to, a carafe of discomfort is poured into my being. i find myself listening for people like or not like me and the reasons given for my inclusion or omission, sucked in by the dehumanization of incidentally ranking my desirability. seeing this in the introduction made this book a little difficult for me to get into. i had to pause and investigate my discomfort in order to continue reading.

who we are attracted to is inherently political, and when someone states they're most attracted to masculine women, effeminate men, and trans men, boxes are created. what i hear is: my attraction to trans men is separate and distinct from my attraction to men. what i hear is: trans men is a category i see as separate from, and outside of, men. what i hear is: transmisogyny keeps me interested in trans people who aren't women. 

describing a generalized "who" we are attracted to is almost always harmful in some way to some people. an inverse is necessarily created. it is important we investigate who we find attractive, who we don't, and what political messaging has and continues to influence those inclinations. what were the first pieces of media you had an erotic reaction to? growing up, what did your family members say about different body sizes? how much transphobic rhetoric have you incidentally been witness to? how much of that was directed towards trans women? how has the misogyny around you shaped your opinion of femininity? how diverse was your upbringing, and what were community reactions to multi racial dating? how centrally was whiteness associated with beauty in your community, your schooling, your books, movies, and tv shows? how has colorism affected those norms? have any cultural taboos affected you, and how? how can we recognize the way society has shaped our desires without putting anyone down, singling anyone out, and without shaming ourselves? 

how can we, the people both named and unnamed in desirability politics, not get bogged down by the endless unsaid-but-ever-present statement of, "i could never be attracted to you," or, "i am attracted to you because i don't see you for who you are"? 

where's the chapter on deconstructing our attraction? how can we talk about pleasure without the politics of who we desire to experience pleasure with? adrienne marie brown touches on this within the context of herself, her relationship to gay sex, and what scenarios she and we as a culture fantasize about, but never who.

what is the best way to engage with the work of those we respect and find political kinship with, while honoring the critiques we have for said work? can the author of this book hold both awe for octavia butler's work, and critique her eroticized and unproblemitized age gap narratives, without having to re-assign an acceptable meaning to them? can i endlessly appreciate this work, while critical of how the author states her attraction, and critical of the missing questions and complications of who we desire? of the popular widespread use of the word "bodies" when we mean "whole ass human beings"? of the shrinking objectification of whole ass human beings to their bodies?

yes, but only by investigating and honoring our discomfort and critique. this book is full, worth reading, worth taking in, and worth investing real critical engagement and thought into. reading between the lines, finding the problems within a narrative, and contending with the pet peeves of language and its implications, is too, a pleasure.