What does it mean to be Mer-Made for Pleasure?

What does it mean to be Mer-Made for Pleasure?

We cannot talk about pleasure without acknowledging that we are taught to disconnect from ourselves and each other.

From the get go, many of us in adulthood have had minimal experience with trusting and understanding our bodies. As children, information about our bodies was withheld, we didn't often learn the names of all of our body parts, and we may have been told to hold in big emotions. We are then socialized according to our perceived genders, which includes how we relate to others based on their gender.

Tell me if you've heard any of these before:

"Don't cry. It's not going to fix anything."

"Hey! Don't touch yourself down there!"

"Oohh! You're going to be very popular with the girls/boys!"

"You can't trust girls/boys! They're always causing trouble!"

"Boys/girls don't do that!"

"If you lost weight, you'd be so pretty."

Or some stereotype about another culture, gender, or sexuality.

This isn't to villanize our elders, as they had even less access to the information than we have today. They are also products of a society that hyper-focuses on making people fit into an unrealistic ideal.

These ideals are often based on cis male white supremacy that wants us to conform so that we can maintain a capitalist system. It makes us hustle more to try to keep up. It puts us in constant competition with each other. It makes us fear others who don't look like us, and pit Black, Brown, and Indigenous people against each other.

And yet, when we turn to adults, we're just supposed to know how to trust ourselves and relate to others?

Add on any personal and/or societal trauma, and it's easy to see how the odds are stacked against us and our pleasures.

We cannot evolve if we pretend that everything has been perfect.

We need to call out and expose the systems of oppression that perpetuate misinformation. We need to be critical of anything that makes us feel shame.

We shine a light and name anything that makes us feel less than, giving us the ability to recognize that the power of pleasure has always been part of us.

Pleasure is power and worthiness.

Pleasure is healing and expansive.

Pleasure is a right and a revolution.

To reconnect to our pleasure requires us to redefine who it centers, and how it can cultivate care and liberation for ourselves and our community.

Everything, and I mean everything, we thought we knew has been based on the point of view of cis white men. How we define success, healing, pleasure, self-care, love, wealth...the list is endless.

It's time to shift the center, shake it up so that it's virtually unrecognizable.

What would it look like to center Black, Brown, and Indigenous bodies? What would it look like to center Trans and Non-Binary bodies? What would it look like to center disabled bodies? What would it look like to center fat bodies?

What would it look like if we realized that centering the self is not in opposition to centering the community? What would it look like if we shifted away from either/or, this/that binary thinking?

What would pleasure look/feel/sound/smell/taste like?

Are you ready to shift the center?