The very first bullet point in adrienne marie brown’s Pleasure Activism is simple and straightforward and radical:
Recognize that pleasure is a measure of freedom
It’s easy to see freedom as the just the absence of restriction. But stopping there, it seems to me, offers a grey world of mediocrity; a future void of bright colors and deep loves and things that excite and inspire us.
Abolition can’t survive only as a vision to end the carceral system; a movement of mutual aid obligations and mediation trainings and community labor. (And it certainly won’t survive as one of esoteric jargon and more-righteous-than-you litmus tests.)
Without a clear vision for pleasure and joy, abolition becomes too easily caricatured as a movement for anarchy with required PTA meetings.
Abolition walks hand in hand with pleasure as the policing of pleasure grows. Abortion bans turn up the risk of sexual encounters. Anti-trans laws deprive people of feeling comfortable and finding pleasure in their own bodies. Renewed opposition to marriage equality steals joy from committed partners. Anti-immigration stances and anti-immigrant legislation say “you’re not welcome here, and you will never belong.” The outlawing homelessness and denying those living precariously the pleasure of a good night’s sleep.
Abolition requires us to recognize joy as freedom and therefore resistance.
Black joy. Queer joy. Incarcerated joy. Immigrant joy.
Human joy.
Abolition: Yes! 