The Erotics of Liberation or Why Liberation Lies Also in the Hips
I’ve always felt too political for spiritual spaces, and too spiritual for activist spaces. I believe that somewhere along the way, spirituality and politics got mistaken for being separate things.
By now, most of us have noticed that New Age spiritual spaces tend to avoid politics and focus mostly on personal feel-good vibes. We’ve painfully experienced how these spaces often end up upholding oppressive systems: sexism and patriarchy, racism and white supremacy, neocolonialism and capitalism. Rather than acknowledging these structures, reflecting on them, or actively working against them, they just talk love and light without embodying it.
On the other side, we have activist spaces. These are the people who are aware of systemic injustice, and who put in their emotional, mental, and physical labor to fight for a better world. Often academic, but not always. People who don’t prioritize feeling good, but who prioritize action. Change. Reality.
But in academic and activist circles, mental capacity tends to be overvalued. Liberation is treated like a theory—something to be dissected, quoted, and cited. What often gets forgotten is that liberation is not only a thought process—it’s something alive. It lives in the body. It needs the body.
A few years ago, I attended the ISD Bundestreffen in Germany—a large gathering of the Black community, a space to connect, share experiences, learn, and empower each other. I was surprised to find that there was almost no bodywork involved. I offered something I called “Afro Yoga” back then. Another person offered a physical session. But the rest was all talking, panels, discussions. Words, words, words. The only physical movement came at the final night party, when we danced.
And I thought: where is the liberation of the hips in all this activism and empowerment?
Because we know—trauma is stored in the body.
We know—our ancestors used dance, drumming, sound, rhythm, movement, and ritual for liberation. We know this. And yet, we still ignore it.
New Age spirituality, of course, has long appropriated these practices. Practices rooted in our ancestral, Indigenous, and spiritual traditions. Take ecstatic dance: in New Age spaces, it's often reduced to a tool for personal bliss and self-expression. But in the process, the communal roots—the collective healing, the resistance, the sacred rituals our ancestors held—get erased.
So where is this awareness of body liberation in our political circles?
If academia and activism want to talk about liberation, they can’t ignore the body. The actual physical body that they claim they’re fighting for. Liberation can’t just sit in a thesis.
And spirituality cannot claim to be about liberation without a reckoning with the outer systems that keep our bodies, minds, and spirits hostage. It cannot stop at the individual body without looking at the outer cosmos—all bodies, and what they go through based on gender, race, class, sexuality, and more.
When I read Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde, I sighed deeply. Finally—someone who is widely respected in Black, Queer Feminist activist circles, someone whose words carry so much weight—was speaking about the erotics of liberation.
Of course, Audre Lorde uses different language than I would. But I felt her words deeply. Because she was speaking about spirituality. About the spiritual act of living, being, loving.
She speaks of the erotic as a resource—one all people carry on a deeply feminine and spiritual level. She writes about the erotic as a bridge between the source of our consciousness and the chaos of our deepest feelings. She says the erotic teaches us our inner striving for the highest.
Audre Lorde speaks of an erotic that is profoundly spiritual and activist at once. An erotic that has nothing to do with what we’ve been sold as “erotic” by media, films, or society.
The Neo-Tantra movement, which tries to recreate spiritual eroticism, in my opinion, comes from this same inner knowing—that spirituality is erotic and the erotic is spiritual. But how it’s practiced—mostly by white, privileged people, based on and appropriated from a simplified and misused version of Indian Tantra—is another topic for another post.
Not only through Audre Lorde, but especially through her, I came to realize what I always knew but didn’t find reflected in my surroundings: activism has always been a spiritual thing.
When she wrote about the erotics of liberation, it was like all my chakras lit up at once—like the first time I practiced Kemetic Yoga and felt that beam of energy, that deep cellular knowing, pulsing through my body and spirit.
Because I understood—seeing activism and spirituality as separate only serves the oppressor. That split is a modern invention. It’s the same source that created all the other systems of separation and oppression that patriarchal, capitalist white supremacy profits from.
Activism and academia need to become spiritual again. And spirituality needs to become activist again.
And when they meet, a force will rise—unstoppable in its clarity, power, and capacity to transform. Because liberation means liberation of mind, body, and spirit.
So when I say liberation lies also in the hips, I mean:
let your body breathe through the process.
Involve it. Let it dance.
Let it be spiritually erotic.
Let it grieve, scream, rest, shake, stretch, orgasm.
Let it express joy. Let it be free in its own diverse and beautiful ways.
Your liberation isn’t just something to think about. It wants to move. It lives below the brain, too.
If this resonated with you, moved you, or made you pause and reflect – consider this your cue. I’ve set up a virtual tip jar via Buy Me a Coffee. No monthly commitments, no strings, no memberships required.
Your sweet kindness helps keep the thoughts flowing, the energy exchange intact, and the glow of my inner goddess alive. It won’t fix capitalism, but it might buy me five minutes of joy (or at least a cortado).
Gracias. Thank you. Jërëjëf. Merci. Obrigada. Danke. Arigatō. Medaase. Grazie. Hvala. Tack. Asante. Shukran. Teşekkürler. Dziękuję.
