Touching and Feeling the Erotic: Audre Lorde, Pelvic Physical Therapy, and Interactional Embodiment

• In Event: Eros and Agency

Abstract

Most healthcare in the US keeps us distanced and alienated from our own bodies and pelvises (Bynum and Porter, 1993). “Biomedicine” thus serves white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism not only through unjust distributions of health/care, but also because suppressing embodiment and “the erotic” is a tool of oppression and social control. Audre Lorde famously redefined the erotic not as that which simply arouses physical sexual desire, but as an internal resource of power and information, rooted in deep and spiritual feeling, which points us toward collective liberation (1984). This paper, which draws from my dissertation data, brings attention to a liberatory version of Pelvic Physical Therapy (PPT) as a counter-model of healthcare which furthers Lorde’s vision of putting people back in touch with their bodies and sensations. In so doing I also respond to Angela Jones’ call to apply a Black Feminist Erotic Imagination to sociology of sexualities scholarship (2025). PPT addresses pelvic floor conditions (pain, incontinence, sexual dysfunction, childbirth impacts, etc.) by manually treating internal anatomy via the vagina, rectum, and/or external pubic area. The liberatory PPT I focus on (LPPT) merges empowerment goals with biomedical framings, which allows stakeholders to maintain insurance coverage and professional legitimacy while challenging biomedical reductionism and harm (Underman and Sweet, 2022). Using 48 phenomenological interviews with PPT recipients and providers and three focus groups with PPT providers, this work helps expand, decolonize, demystify, and shift narratives around the pelvic body and PPT.

Author

• Bex MacFife, University of Oregon