The power of the erotic plays many roles. It has this deep undercurrent effect on women
that most of them don’t recognize it’s there. When we think of the the term ‘erotic’, a few words
come to mind: Sex, pornographic, desire. These things may be fine if you’re at a particular
convention in Las Vegas, but they actually mean something quite different. They go beyond the
sexual desire of a woman and dive into her creativity, expressionism, and the overall true feeling
she may have well beyond an orgasm. Within this research paper, I will show how many
hetero-sexual women feel constricted and unable to express their true erotic and how lesbian
women, although looked at as something taboo in most cultures, have harnessed the true
meaning of the erotic. I will further conclude that, if spread throughout all women, the power of
the erotic can influence a great deal within our country and possibly the world.
First, we can look at how the erotic is measured. Audre Lorde explains that, “The erotic
is measured between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest
feelings.”(54) This is something that speaks volume, especially when it comes to how women are
suppressed throughout the world. Most women are taught from a young age how to act. The
characteristics most hold are simple: be polite, well mannered, and unrevealing. However , these
characteristics can be deemed as something that prevents them from feeling any type of
empowerment of any kind. Not to say that they can just simply run wild, doing whatever it is
they please, but moreso unable to have the ability to express themselves, creatively or erotically.
Yet it is seen that within lesbian life, that they stand up for themselves much more
commonly than the hetero-woman and feel much more empowered. “‘ I feel I can take the
initiative, and be dominant, and be active, whereas in straight relationships I’ve had, ah, I never
felt that was allowed , or was okay, or I would have been seen as masculine if I
did.’”(Ussher-29)
What I found fascinating is how lesbian women didn’t use their sexuality as a token for
becoming a woman, they used it as a sense of purpose, a sense of being, where they and they
alone were able to control how they lived their lives.
I understand that at times it can be more difficult to be a person who is attracted to the
opposite sex, but as many lesbians within Ussher’s text talked about how they truly felt after they
had their first sexual experience, and how that experience identified who they were, not just what
they were, the more I believed they harnessed a clear cut feeling of their true erotic nature.
“When I speak of the erotic, then, I speak of of it as an assertion of the lifeforce of women; the
knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our … lives.” (Lorde-55) This is a clear
cut sign that most lesbian women believe they have that lifeforce inside of them when they
realize they are lesbian. Hetero-sexual women,when dealing with their first sexual experience,
feel moreso as finally a girl turned woman. That being said, it does not necessarily put them in
control.
It cannot go without notice that fear is a driving factor on why the power of the erotic is
not a driving force within most areas of the world. In a masculine driven world, it is much
harder to hone in on the erotic nature that women possess because of how they are treated
throughout the world. It is this fear, put into the minds of men that know and understand what the
power of the erotic can do for such women who have it. It could be reasons why there have never
been any women presidents. The country has always been run by a man, and the fact that it was
almost possible for a woman to hold office, is something that would never be allowed from a
man based on the fear that it could start a paradigm of events.
In order for most hetero women to absolve themselves from such oppressive behavior,
they must first live outside themselves. “When we live outside ourselves, and by that I mean on
external directives only rather than from our internal knowledge and needs,… when we begin to
live outward, in touch with the power of the erotic within ourselves,… we begin to be responsible
to ourselves in the deepest sense.” (Lorde-58) This is a very profitable piece of information that
would help any women be able to express emotional, physical and intellectual forms of who they
are. By doing so, it opens up their ability to do exactly what they want to do in any capacity.
An external source I have found was that of New York Times writer, Guy Trebay, who
wrote an article in 2004, expressing how much of the fashion that we dealt with within that
decade was in some form or another created by lesbian women. “ About the last people to get
hold of the look were heterosexual men, added Suzanne Ethier, a Manhattan retailer, whose
vintage store, Rags-a-GoGo, is tube-sock central. ‘The straight boys didn’t realize that they were
rocking a style that originated with a bunch of dykes,’ Ms. Ethier said.”(Trebay-1) What makes
this article correlate with what we have discussed is the simple fact that these lesbian fashion
designers have had so much influence of not just their own kind, but women and men all over the
worlds. He even discussed how the show “Sex and the City” heavily influenced women on how
to dress fashionably through the eyes of actress, Cynthia Nixon.
In closing, I found all three texts to be extremely helpful in understanding what it is
meant by women getting in touch with their erotic side without the means of sexual desire. You
clearly see this more in lesbian women than in hetero women based on the fact of how easy it is
they can decide to be who they want through erotic power based on the fact they have much
more liberty to act out without any masculine tone holding them back. “Recognizing the power
of the erotic within our lives can give us the energy to pursue genuine change within our world,
rather than merely settling for a shift of characters in the same weary drama.” (Lorde-59) By
hetero-sexual women realizing what is needed to change the way they can go about their lives,
they can ingest the power of the erotic, thus causing them to live outward and giving them the
ability to express themselves as lesbian women have done over time.