"Another important way in which the erotic connection functions is the open and fearless underlining of my capacity for joy. In the way my body stretches to music and opens into response, hearkening to its deepest rhythms, so every level upon which I sense also opens to the erotically satisfying experience, whether it is dancing, building a bookcase, writing a poem, examining an idea."
—
Audre Lorde, Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power
Paper delivered at the Fourth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Mount Holyoke College, August 25, 1978.