Exonerated pleasures: how women experience the relationship between pleasure and power
Exonerated pleasures: how women experience the relationship between pleasure and power
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Issue Date
2006
Authors
Mellinger, Kendra D.
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Abstract
Pleasure is a complex word, with a complex history. It encompasses a variety of different meanings, depending on its context and usage. Through time, it has been riddled with cultural connotations, and even moral forbodings. Classical writings and Christian scriptures cast a suspicious overtone to the pursuit of pleasure. American advertising has used the concept of pleasure to sell everything from cigarettes to college educations. The mass media have developed rigid ideals dictating who is worthy of experiencing pleasure, and who is worthy of being an object of another's pleasure. More specifically, double standards have developed in American culture concerning men's and women's pleasure. Men are expected to pursue pleasure; women who pursue pleasure become morally suspect.
While feminist writers have deconstructed patriarchal constructs of pleasure, as well as the power dynamics involved with pleasure among men and women, one critical voice seems to be missing in literature, in the media, and in the church: what are women's experiences of pleasure? Is pleasure a powerful experience for women? How are pleasure and power related? How is it that, underneath the complex layers of suspicion built up around the word, pleasure sometimes describes, in a reverently sacred manner, the very essence of what it means to be alive; what it means to be human?
This research illustrates how many of society's ideas—and fears—regarding pleasure have been constructed in response to men's experiences of pleasure, and men's behaviors regarding pleasure. Men have traditionally been conditioned to experience power as being pleasurable; the more power one has, the more pleasure one will experience. Such power, defined by the ability to control others or to control one's environment, to hold unilateral authority over others, or to use force or coercion to affect one's will, has historically been oppressive to marginalized members of society. This danger, along with the projection of sexual and immoral temptations onto women, resulted in the historical demonization of both pleasure and women, and especially women's pleasure.
The true "danger" of women experiencing pleasure may well have been (and may still be) direct access to embodied epistemological information, or a woman's way of knowing. This phenomenological research project draws on the interviews often women to develop new definitions of pleasure and power that benefit both the individual and the larger community; which differ significantly from mainstream definitions. It offers insight into how the different genders may experience these two phenomena differently. These women describe pleasure as an experience of comfort, emotional stimulation, alleviation of everyday stress, self-realization, and connecting with another. They describe power as an experience of self-determination, improving a relationship, accomplishment, and the ability to surrender to something beyond the self. What in either of these descriptions could possibly be. construed as being dangerous or suspect?
In exploring women's experiences of pleasure and power, we begin to recognize the need for exoneration of some pleasures and their pursuits. We begin to question why pain—in the form of menstrual pain, birthing pain, emotional pain, pain from uncomfortable clothes, etcetera—has become an expected norm for us, and why "indulging" in "guilty" pleasures requires justification. We begin to perceive how these marginalized experiences and perceptions of pleasure and power have the potential to change the world for the better—much, much better.
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Consciousness