The very word erotic comes from the Greek word eros, the personification of love in all its aspects—born of Chaos, and personifying creative power and harmony.
― Audre Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic,” Sister Outsider (1984)

At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.
― Ernesto “Che” Guevara

Preface

I wanna start with a brief note about the collective prevailing mood before we talk about eros (from the Greek, “desire,” of uncertain origins). It’s hard to feel safe in our bodyminds and to freely express our creative, loving spirits when we’re pissed off and activated.

I started writing this in Autumn of 2024. I’ve been feeling for a while now that we are transiting into an energy that (riffing on Lorde and other feminist writers) I’m calling the Erotic Revolution. Now I believe we’re seeing more evidence that we are coming into greater collective awareness of the power of the erotic and the importance of reclaiming it for ourselves. 

While this aspect of Revolution may have soft launched in 2024, its transformative power lies in our conscious engagement with its teachings and channeling of its creative force, which is unfolding in this very fear-inducing, chaotic present. We are gaining momentum—even as we’re becoming conscious of the fact that we’re driving. No doubt, it’s a bit scary; the temptation is to apply the breaks. But just like a pilot or a stunt motorcyclist, we actually need this acceleration, this energetic boost, to pull off what might seem like an impossible feat. There’s an acceleration sweet spot to hit the right velocity; some of us are saying “Slow down!” and others “Go faster!” As we head for the jump, we need to keep our eyes on our landing point. 

Drawing on my reading of Lorde, I argue that we do not need to conceptualize ourselves as sexual beings or experience sexual energy or attraction to access the power of the erotic. Sex and sexuality are merely aspects or expressions of erotic power, which is far more elemental. Erotic power is the original creative force that brought the (uni)Verse into being. It shows up in whatever ways we experience desire, how we express ourselves creatively, whenever we activate our imaginations, whenever we get into our Flow.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), our creative power is sourced in the liver, the home of our Ethereal Soul (the part of our energy that keeps going after our material body dies). This also happens to be the main organ that helps us process strong negative feelings like anger. So when we stifle anger, rage, and upset, these emotional energies clog the liver’s flow, inhibiting its functions (e.g., filtering and detoxifying the blood, metabolizing proteins, supporting immunity). TCM says that impaired liver function manifests as feeling dysregulated, disembodied, listless, and directionless. However, we can release these energies and restore balance to our liver by practicing creative expression. Here’s a few ideas to get things moving:

• Put on your favourite angry song and sing along. Loudly. Even better, dance while you’re singing.
• Dance without music. Dance to your own internal rhythm. Let Intuition move your bodymind.
• Cook and eat something spicy.
• Break something. Take some old ceramics or electronics, something that will make a satisfying crunch. Put some safety glasses on and smash the ever-loving sht outta them.
• Masturbate consciously.
• Record a video of yourself giving someone (an actual person or an abstract character) a piece of your mind. Vent, rant, scream, cuss—and then delete it. Or write your rant down and burn it. Whether burning a piece of paper or “burning” a video, set it alight with your imaginal fire and release it to the Aether. Rinse and repeat. 

Some of us are really, really angry. We should be doing release and rebalance practices at least as often as we work out. Creating mindful rituals can help us harness and channel the power of anger in creative (rather than destructive) ways.

(I will be posting more later about what Lorde calls “the uses of anger” and their connections to embodiment, somatic safety, and intimacy. Stay tuned.)

Okay, with that said…

The Erotic Revolution, LFG

2025 is a very exciting time—especially for relationship, sex, and intimacy coaches—as it officially kicks off the Erotic Revolution! To be fair, we’ve been shifting into this energy for a while, and now we feel it expanding and surfacing more tangibly in everyday life. For some, this energy is still submerged, while others have been feeling it for a hot minute now. No matter where you are in relation to this shift, it’s worth devoting some care and attention to the concept of the erotic and how you do or do not relate to it.

This revolutionary thread is one of many (and the thread of eros is itself composed of many strands, each with their own history). Here I am specifically focusing on the Erotic Revolution, but it is not separate from other revolutionary shifts that are gearing up / taking place right now. In fact, I think we’re being invited to imagine how to weave them together. 

Whether big or small, many of us are experiencing shifts around romance, sex, sexuality, intimacy, relationships, and human connection. Some of these shifts look like:

• Going through the end of a relationship
• Coping with loneliness, both inside and outside of relationships
• Discovering new parts of our sexuality
• Falling in love, especially unexpectedly
• Deciding to abstain from sex or practice celibacy
• Taking a break from dating / exclusive relationships
• Cheating on a partner
• Seeking relationship therapy
• Dating ourselves
• Releasing shame
• Healing from relationship trauma
• Confronting our relational patterns that have hurt ourselves and others
• Exploring sexual desires
• Exploring pleasure
• Exploring sex, touch, and romance with previously platonic friends
• Exploring outside of the sex/gender binary and compulsory heterosexuality
• Coming out as queer, ace, trans, kinky, nonmonogamous, celibate, etc.
• Blurring relational lines, especially between “romantic” and “non-romantic” relational categories

Whether we chalk it up to TikTok, astrology, pandemic blues, endstage capitalism, (first/last quarter or mid-) life crisis, a combination of these and/or other phenomena, the erotic times they are a’changin’.

The Erotic Revolution is a shorthand way of talking about the cumulative, collective effects of these individual shifts. 

As more and more of us begin to shift, we will bring these “individual” dynamics to the surface of collective consciousness. This is gonna be uncomfortable for many of us, to put it mildly (more on this later).

Like intimacy, the erotic is not exclusive to the realm of the sexual. In other words, let’s not immediately assume that we’re talking about sex when the words “erotic” and “intimate” come up. (Truly, much of the sex that we’re having these days is sadly bereft of erotic energy.)

As quoted in the epigraph that begins this post, Black feminist writer Audre Lorde says that “erotic” comes from Eros, the personification of love. This is often taken to mean romantic love, but here I think we can benefit from the Christian conceptualization of god as love, what inspired Che Guevara to say that the true revolutionary is guided by love. But where many so-called revolutionaries seek to impose (new) order in the process of enacting change, Lorde points out that Eros is born not from order but from Chaos (from the Greek “void,” “emptiness,” “abyss”). In most forms of Buddhism, this no-thingness is what is achieved with Buddhahood (or becoming totally awake), and many Buddhist teachers encourage loving compassion as a fundamental teaching for getting started down that path. This also suggests that the nature of “reality” is love.

This abyss of no-thingness is cool and all, a good “starting” and “ending” point, if you believe in that sort of thing, and at the same time, Stuff is Unfolding, the Verse is versing. All of this in-between Stuff took a lot of energy to get started. Lorde certainly seems to suggest that this massive energetic source is erotic power, and it exists inside each of us—which is what I’ll be talking about in Part 2.

To make things even more interesting, Venus is retrograde in Aries from March 1 to April 12. I reckon we will feel very challenged in our relationships with our selves and others—and challenged to move into our power.

Stay tuned!