Prelude: Pleasure is The Measure

earth and rain. Maybe you were writing in line somewhere and a song came on that just happened to be exactly the song that captured your current mood, and in that moment you felt like the whole universe had your back. This is pleasure, Oh my god, I mean so many things are pleasurable, Honestly, just laying down with my boyfriend in bed, listening to music I love asmr at the beach, at the park, reading a book, just being in nature, making ceramics or cooking, or painting my nails and doing

face masks, like pampering myself. What if every choice you made about your sexuality was about following that feeling, that feeling of yes. I'm Emmilinagaski. I've been a sex educator for over twenty five years. I'm the author of two best selling books. Come as you are and burnout, and my purpose in life is to help people live with confidence and joy in their bodies. And this is that Come as you Are podcast where I answer your questions about sex with science. Hi there, I am. I have

a question for you. I have a question regarding six draws orgasm. How can I increase my spontaneous desire again? So I'm just a little confused on that, and I kind of point your advice. I would love some, hope. I get questions every day from people all around the world, and they're amazing, important questions that deserve great evidence based answers. So that is what I'm going to be doing on this podcast. Every episode, I'll answer your questions and bust

myths and misconceptions about sex. But before we even get into talking about sex, we first need to talk about pleasure. Whether you're having sex with yourself, with partners, or not having any sex at all. Finding your genuine pleasure is the bedrock of everything I'll be talking about on this show, and it's relevant to everybody. In my quarter century as a sex educator, everything I've learned can be summarized in one statement. Pleasure is the measure Pleasure is the measure

of sexual well being. It's not about how much you crave sex, how often you have it, or who you do it with, or where or in what position, or even how many orgasms you have. It's whether or not you like the sex you are having, whether it's genuinely pleasurable to you. And you can only get to pleasure if you know what pleasure feels like for you in

many different contexts, and if you practice accessing it. And you may be saying, Emily, how am I supposed to remember what pleasure feels like in this post row capitalist healthscape where our democracy is failing and we're teetering on the edge of climate crisis and totalitarianism. Good question. It's a question I've been asking myself over the past few years, no surprise, and to answer it, I've had to get really specific about what pleasure is and how to practice it.

I've had to relearn my own pleasure pathways and reconnect to pleasures small and large in my own life. To help introduce the life changing exercise of pleasure, I've asked for help from a pleasure activist, writer and organizer, Adrian Marie Brown. Pleasure it's not something that just happens to you in the same way, like no one's ever just going to ride in on a white horse and scoop you up and take you off to Loveland. You know,

pleasure is a practice. Adrian's written half a dozen books, including this gorgeous m dream of a book called Pleasure Activism. My copy is highlighted, written all over, and filled with page markers. It is a practical and poetic guide to accessing greater pleasure. You ask in Pleasure Activism for readers to consider who taught you to feel good? Yes, what pleasure activism really is is reclaiming our right to have pleasure and contentment from the myths of supremacy and oppression.

And for pleasure activism, the lineage is really Audrey Lord, who as a black feminist poet and organizer. In nineteen seventy eight, she published this essay called the Uses of the Eroticus Power and same thing she really talked about what it means to be satisfiable and satisfied. Audrey Lord is the origin story of understanding the connection between pleasure and social revolution. I could spend hours talking about her work, but I'm just gonna say if you haven't read it,

or honestly, even if you have. The uses of the erotic is on YouTube, read by Audrey Lord herself. After you listen to this episode, take a break and give yourself a gift. Sit outside or lay in bed with your eyes closed, and listen to Audrey's powerful message. She has the best definition of erotic I've ever heard. The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos and power of our deepest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once

we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. Once we actually experience true erotic awakening to yes, to living our lives, to a full yes, it becomes impossible to settle for suffering. In touch with the erotic, I become less willing to accept powerlessness, all those other supplied states of being which are not native to me, such as resignation, despair, self effacement, depression, self denial. It feels like she gave

us this key. It's like, Oh, if you have experienced oppression, or if you're experiencing oppression, part of what's been taken from you is the idea that you could be satisfied in this lifetime and that you could have contentment and small pleasures. There's so much about being a body in this world that trauma happens, and life happens, and oppression happens, and then you reclaim yourself And what does that mean? That I say, of course, is extremely important to anybody

who does this kind of work, including me. I quote it extensively. And one of the most powerful things for me is the idea that erotic is not sexual. Erotic isn't even necessarily pleasure itself. It is aliveness. It's aliveness as someone who is in the process of menopause, aging

and disability and chronic pain. Recognizing that the discomforts of my body when I can turn towards those with kindness and compassion, patience and a welcoming that acknowledges their passage through me, it increases my sense of like, I'm alive, That sensation is there because I am alive, which is really good practice for me to recognize pleasure when it comes to recognize its passage through me. It's my aliveness.

More after the break, I'm Emilinagosky and this is the very first episode of the Come as You Are podcast. It's a prelude an introduction to the most important concept of all pleasure. I know a lot about the science of sexual well being, but science has its limits. In fact, the science of pleasure is very limited. Sometimes the thing that really helps us to connect to our sexuality our aliveness is not science. It's poetry, and that's Adrian's specialty.

I believe in the power of science. I think it's going to be a necessary part of how we make the world a better place. And also the distance science has gotten me as a sex educator is pleasure is the measure of sexual well being. It's not how often you do it, or who we're with, or even how many orgasms you have. It's whether or not you enjoy the sex you are having. But you get all the way to pleasure is freedom. Yes, pleasure is the measure

of freedom. That's right. Was such a more expansive vision. Yeah, well, I mean it's related, right, It's all related. So freedom is what my orientation is as a black liberation oriented person. Right that I'm like, I was born into a context in which my freedom was curtailed. My freedom was like I knew that I should be freer than I was allowed to be, and both in race, but also in sexuality,

in gender, and all these other ways. You know, Like I was like hold up, I can feel inside myself a different reality than what the world is telling me. Even though my job is teaching people how to find pleasure themselves, I sometimes struggle to practice pleasure myself. Too often I fall into the trap of centering my life around productivity, or what Audrey Lord refers to in uses

of the erotic as a travesty of necessities. The principal horror of any system which defines the good in terms of profit rather than in terms of human need, or which defines human need to the exclusion of the psychic and emotional components of that need. The principal horror of any such system is that it robs our work of its erotic value, its erotic power, its erotic life appeal and fulfillment. Such a system reduces work to a travesty

of necessities. My producer Moan taught me the term chorgasm. It apparently describes the feeling you get when you cross the last thing off your to do list. Ach orgasm can admittedly feel great, and we live in a world that defines the good as making a profit instead of meeting human needs. So it rewards us for being productive and punishes us for our aliveness. So I, like everyone, have fallen into the trap of focusing on my productivity

and forgetting to notice my aliveness. I know a ton about the brain mechanisms underlying access to pleasure, and that doesn't mean I always have access to pleasure. What happens? So, like, I'm, you know, writing a book. Yeah, and it's a book about sexual pleasure. Yes, But I'm like so focused and so stressed and so busy that I can't let go. And there is a certain pleasure and joy in disappearing into a work project God knows. But like, I have a relationship, but a person I would like to feel

glad is with me. Yeah, that's right. I think there's this piece, this journey from understanding stuff theoretically into the being in the practices of it. There's this quote from Octavia Butler in the Parables where she says, belief initiates and guide's action, or it does nothing. And many of us are socialized to be in states of obligation with

each other, states of polite lying. We are trained to overdo everything in the spirit of capitalism, and we're trained that our value is only about what we can produce, which is very unsatisfying, you know, because you can never produce enough. I say that as someone who's like I'm like producing as much as I can, and I promise you there's no like clique. Yes, that was enough, That's not where satisfaction comes from. We will all be tempted

by the transient reward of being productive. And that's exactly why Adrian is reminding me that we all need an intentional practice of pleasure. Pleasure will take our hand. It will show us how good it is to be alive right now. It will remind us that we are already enough and unlike the fleeting, fickle, shallow rush of productivity. Once we start practicing pleasure in our everyday lives, then, and really only then, can we find our sexual liberation.

It's not enough for me to just believe that I'm sexually liberated and to build a whole system of beliefs around how I should be, but it has to initiate and guide my action. So at various points in my life that has meant different things, right, but one of them is I have a consistent practice of orgasm, for instance,

and not just orgasm. It's really broadened to just self pleasure, because sometimes I'll find that the most healthy thing for my day is actually to masturbate, but not to have an orgasm, right to masturbate and just feel the pleasure and feel connected to myself and deepen my breath and

notice what is generating desiring me in that day. And sometimes it's a poem is pounding at the door of my mind or the door of my heart, and I could try to hold it off, or I could release it and really feel the satisfaction of like, fuck, I got it onto the page, Like that's so good. I'm always asking myself how to make justice and liberation the most pleasurable things we can do, the most pleasurable experiences

we can have as humans. So how do we bring our attention back to like this gorgeous planet we've been given, that it's facunned, and like we can just go lay in the grass and receive sunline on us, and like that is an orgasmic experience. One reason I wanted to talk to Adrian is because I wanted her advice. During the pandemic, I was working from home day every day, so I spend the entire day writing in my office, and then I emerge at six pm feeling productive but

drained and disconnected from my body. I find myself struggling to get out of the headspace of productivity and planning and into the headspace of pleasure, aliveness, and connection. Adrian had a suggestion for helping me get into that different headspace.

You also might want to give yourself like a transition window, you know, because I think sometimes that's the thing for me, is like when I finish a piece of writing, or if I do a big event, right if I'm doing like a big event, and especially now in the pandemic, it's like you might do like a massive event, but

you're still sitting in your house, in your potamia. But I'm still like okay, but my whole system is flooded with the energy of what I was just doing, and so I need to take five minutes to you know, for me my energy, It's like sometimes I'll go and just put my feet on the dirt outside if it's warm, and just like run that energy down into the earth before I try to interact with anyone. Sometimes I need a full like I need to take a bath, and then I'll be a good human for other humans. Yeah, well,

thanks for solving that problem for me. I got it, I got you. Anything else we need to attend to? I mean that is like the fundamental circling question of my life is how do I both do a job I love and be a person around people I love? Yeah, every day, at the end of the day, I do a gratitude practice. And what I'm offering gratitude for is what pleasure was I able to experience in this day.

Gratitude is a major theme in Adrian's work. One of my favorite passages in Pleasure Activism is a poem titled Radical Gratitude Spell. Radical Gratitude Spell a spell to cast upon meeting a stranger, comrade, or friend working for social and or environmental justice and liberation. You are a miracle walking. I greet you with wonder in a world which seeks to own your joy and your imagination. You have chosen

to be free every day as a practice. I can never know the struggles you went through to get here, but I know you have swum upstream and at times it has been lonely. I want you to know I honor the choices you made in solitude, and I honor the work you have done to belong. I honor your commitment to that which is larger than yourself, and your journey to love the particular container of life that is you. You are enough, your work is enough, you are needed,

your work is sacred. You are here, and I am grateful. It's always radical to me that even on the worst days, and even in the days where I'm like, I don't understand this world and it's filling me with grief and despair, but even on those days, there are small pleasures. And even in my deepest grief, sometimes the only pleasure I have is thank you for giving me something I loved so much that I grieve it. But even on those days,

there's something I can notice. And that's the practice. It's so simple, right, You think of one experience of pleasure you had today, and you say it out loud, you express gratitude for that experience of pleasure. But I've been doing this or months now, and it has kind of changed everything. It's not just that it makes me more

aware of the pleasure in my life. It makes it so that it is so much easier for me to get to pleasure so that in that moment at six o'clock when I blearily step out of my office, I transition into my aliveness so readily, and the world seems so much more vivid to me. I walk past the window where the aglianema is growing, and I see the

new leaf that is starting to unfurl. I see my husband in the kitchen, cooking dinner for us, and literally he looks more beautiful to me now because I am training my brain to find pleasure more easily, to dwell in a state of pleasure, beauty, joy, and love. Highly recommend it. In the rest of the series, I'll be answering your questions. Are you supposed to have six when you get that old? What I'm saying, if you want it, I do want it? How can I increase my spontaneous

desire again? On the podcast, I'd love to hear your thoughts about sex after divorce, and as always, I'll be joined by my producer, mo Hi mo Hi. Emily, you want to plug the hotline before we go, do I? If you have a question for me, call my hotline six four six three nine seven eight five five seven, or send a voice memo to Emily at Pushkin dot Fm. Tell me your pronouns and name. Take a name, any name.

Your question might be answered on the show Commas You Are is a production of Pushkin Industries and Madison Wells. It's hosted by Emily Nagosky. You can find Emily on Instagram at e Nagosky and on Twitter at Emily Nagosky. You can also sign up for her newsletter at Emily Nagosky dot com, where she writes about everything from the clitterest in your mind to orgasm after having hysterectomy. It's an incredible newsletter, Highly recommended. This show is co hosted

and lead produced by me Mola Board. You can find me online at Mola Board and on TikTok at podcast dot slut, Sorry mom My. Co producer on this show is the fabulous Brittany Brown. Our editor is Kate Parkinson Morgan. Sound design and mix by Anne Pope. Executive producers are Mia LaBelle and leetal Malade at Pushkin. Thanks to Heather Fane, Carly Migliori, Sophie Crane, Courtney Guarino, Jason Gambrel, Julia Barton, John Schnar, and Jacob Weisberg at Madison Wells thanks to

Kylie Williams, Elizabeth Goodstein and Gg Pritzker. Additional thanks to Rich Stevens, Lindsay Edgecombe Frolic Media, and Peter Acker at Armadillo Audio Group. Original music for this series was composed by Ameliagosky and arranged and recorded by Alexandra Kalinovsky. Additional music from Epidemic Sound. You can find Pushkin on all social platforms at Pushkin Pods, and you can sign up

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