The war on pleasure

White-supremacist patriarchy has been robbing us of the most fulfilling existence as humans.

It doesn't take long looking around nature to observe that nature is queer AF. Diversity is the spice of life, and that also applies to the human experience. We are curious beings, seeking pleasurable sensations from the moment we are born. The pleasure of touch, of smell, of taste, of sound, of being in our own skin. My earliest memories are all sensorial, most related to pleasure, some related to pain. That's how I learned to navigate the world around me: explore the unknown, find pleasure, avoid pain, learn the difference, repeat.

Against my will, I was assigned a gender at birth and prescribed a role in our society that would be reinforced ad nauseam throughout my life. I was reduced to body parts and told I had to conform or risk being rejected. So I tried to conform as best as I could, hiding parts of myself and silencing my innermost desires for a chance at "happiness". I followed the prescribed path, married someone from the opposite sex, and decades later woke up to the news that it was all a lie. There is no one-size-fits-all prescription for love, intimacy, joy and belonging. Some find it in the company of a dog or cat, or another non-human animal. Some find it with another human, either their same sex or from the opposite sex. Some find it with more than one human at the same time. These are all absolutely normal scenarios. I've witnessed them all myself having lived in places like San Francisco and New York City.

Love is a spectrum. Sex is a spectrum. Gender is a spectrum. The human experience is as diverse as can be and yet our society denies that fundamental truth by shoving us in boxes that confine us. There are infinite ways to love and care for each other. There is deep intimacy without sex, and there is sex with deep, spiritual intimacy. There is also everything in between. As long as there is consent from all parties involved, who cares what you're doing with your meat suit?

Your body is a beautiful, magical temple where your soul resides alongside trillions of microorganisms (see: your gut). You're here taking part in this mystery of an existence for a bleep of time -- you might as well enjoy it to the fullest. One day your body will be disabled too, maybe not like mine, but certainly disabled. That's what machines do overtime: they break down, even with proper maintenance, they just naturally wear off.

We don't have to deny ourselves pleasure anymore. It's 2026 for fuck's sake. It's time to evolve. It's time to stop catering to the fragile egos of all those humans pretending to know more than they actually do (see: religion). No human, EVER, ANYWHERE, could possibly have the answers to this mystery. We at best have some good guesses as to how we got here (thanks, science!), but we really know NOTHING of the TRUTH of it all. It's not for us to know. All that matters is that we are here, together, sharing our time on this magnificent gift of a planet. Our collective womb. And we are spoiling all the fun by letting some folks tell us who to be, how to be, what to believe, and who to blame for the inevitable discontent that arises from not being true to ourselves.

There is so much beauty and joy to be had while we're here -- why are we wasting our time limiting ourselves and controlling others? Why are we denying ourselves pleasure? It's making us insane and self-destructive (see: climate crisis). Contrary to what we were told, curbing our natural, innate need for pleasure will not earn us bonus points, some virgins, or guaranteed entrance in "heaven" (if such a thing exists). Focusing on the after life is robbing us of dignified lives right here, right now. All this body shaming is really doing is feeding ableism, normalizing cruelty, and paving the way for our own extinction.

In case you haven't noticed, nature will always thrive -- with or without humans here. The question of this moment in time is: will we open our minds and hearts in time to save our own species? It's going to be uncomfortable for a lot of folks to read these truths and sit with all the feelings they evoke long enough to let some light in. And yet, sitting with discomfort is where it's at. Discomfort is a seed for growth. It's what makes our capacity for love and compassion expand. It's what drives us to learn more about ourselves and the context where we came from to understand what's beneath that uneasy feeling.

Discomfort is liberating, really, because it's temporary, but once you train your monkey mind to sit with it for a minute here, a minute there, you realize that it too passes, and when it does, you feel stronger and more grounded in yourself. Discomfort challenges you to hold your ideas and beliefs to the light, examine them like precious jewels, to see if they bring real value to your life or not. If the road to hell (if such a thing exists) is paved with good intentions, then to road to heaven (if such a thing exists) is surely paved with discomfort. Sitting with our most difficult emotions is where the answers to most of our problems are.

Endless conflicts and wars have been waged because a few people (mostly white, mostly men) weren't able to deal with their own discomfort and instead chose to project their shit on someone else. But guess what, NO ONE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR OUR FEELINGS. They are just feelings (not facts) and they will eventually pass if we pause, breathe, and get back into our bodies. We don't have to act or react based on our discomfort. In fact, we'll probably make things way worse if we do.

Getting emotionally hijacked by our feelings is a thing (it happens to the best of us) but it doesn't have to be a destructive thing. That's how hurt people hurt people: by reacting from a place where 55,000 feelings muddle their reasoning and judgement. And that's how the world became this mess of a polycrisis that it is today. A bunch of people just offloading their discomfort onto someone else, on repeat. By learning to sit with your own discomfort, you will organically learn how to sit with someone else's discomfort, and that right there is a game changer. The more we can hold space for each other's feelings (and our differences), the more kindness and compassion will flourish, and the faster we can transition to a more just and equitable system where we all thrive. And that, my friends, will be a great pleasure.

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