Sister Goddess: Hey Mama, what is this Pleasure Revolution you keep talkin’ about?
Mama Gena: The Pleasure Revolution is an adjustment to the soul of a woman. Women were never taught to guarantee their joy. They were taught to guarantee the joy of others, take care of others and then whatever crumbs were left from that were theirs, but when a woman reverses the order and really pays attention to her pleasure, making sure that each choice feels absolutely right to her and absolutely gratifying to her, she’s going to makes choices that enhance her life and enhance the lives of others.
So much was accomplished in terms of the creation of equality in the 20th century, but the evening out between the sexes was not enough. It was inadequate to the heart and soul and passion and fire and potential and the privilege of being a woman.
Pleasure was not something that we had the luxury to explore in the 20th century. It is the privilege of being a woman in the 21st Century. It is something that the world is very hungry for— the absence of pleasure has created an enormous amount of suffering.
SG: Privilege? Woman? Why?
Mama: It is my conviction that it is a privilege to be alive and that it is especially a privilege to be a woman. Woman is designed as the creatrix of life. We can conceive and bear children. We create with our thoughts and our desires. We have appetite for life, for things. The most beautiful, bold, sweeping moves, culturally and historically, were all inhabited by the desire of a woman. Woman has been muse, inspiration for all the great artists historically.
The power of a woman is phenomenal. It is fantastic to have that much power at your fingertips—a great privilege and a great responsibility. And I think that women have not been conscious of the opportunity and the fun that exists just by virtue of being born women. It is an idea whose time has come.
SG: How did you discover pleasure?
Mama: I was taking a class at More University and there was an exercise you had to do that you had to create a beautiful space as if the most important person in the world was coming to visit you, but it was you. I was used to taking care of other people, I had done that my whole life, but I had never taken my attention and placed it on myself with the object of treating myself really exquisitely.
It changed my experience of time and space and when I actually looked at myself, I thought, “Whoa, I’m beautiful” and I never really noticed before and even when I took my own hand and ran it up my own arm, I thought,“Oh my goodness, I’m able to use my own hand to deliver pleasure to my body. No one ever told me this.” I was shocked. It hadn’t been something that I had ever explored. I recognized immediately that the experience of pleasure that I was having was very much like the experience of pleasure that I had had when I was a little kid.
Somehow in the transition from being a child to becoming an adult, you are so busy studying, doing your homework, or handling your responsibilities and fulfilling those kinds of expectations, that you lose contact with the source of bringing joy to yourself. I had forgotten that I could create pleasure for myself. It was a missing piece of my education as a woman.
I didn’t know women that were conscious of the importance of pleasure or conscious of their ability to create pleasure for themselves. I, myself, thought pleasure was to come from the hands of my husband or boyfriend. It was a huge revelation for me to discover that I could generate pleasure for myself with my own attention.
In our culture we are taught that pleasure is frivolous, dangerous, and unproductive. There are so many negative viewpoints surrounding pleasure, but I think pleasure is the most important connection that a person has with themselves because it is the connective tissue between a person and their own life force and their own enthusiasm and their ability to generate that on an ongoing basis.
SG: So what happened as you began to embrace pleasure?
Mama: I wouldn’t say that I embraced pleasure. I was as suspicious of pleasure as everyone in the culture is. In fact I was an unwilling student. It was simply because I, like so many women in this culture, felt depressed, alienated, disconnected from my own womanhood. Pleasure was the first thing—it was like, when you plug in the Christmas tree and everything lights up. The lights are all strung, but you have to actually plug it into the wall and then it all lights up. For me, pleasure was like that.
I suddenly saw the connections between the different circuitry in my being and I had access to parts of my own confidence and enthusiasm and voice that I’d never had prior to the study of pleasure; and what I found more astonishing and more surprising was that with the inclusion of pleasure in my life, the desires that I had had for many, many years began to manifest much more quickly.
It happens that way, not only for me but for every student that walks through the door of the School of Womanly Arts. Pleasure adds jet fuel to whatever it is that a woman wants. The most extraordinary and incredible things happen.
Women are able to create the relationships that they want, revive marriages that were seemingly doomed, and redefine and recreate relationships with their children so that they aren’t drained but are actually engaged, and the relationships are filled with joy and generating enthusiasm from both ends. There are huge strides in a woman’s abilities to ask for monetary compensation from the jobs they are in, to get the raises they deserve.
It is astonishing to me every time I have a class session to see what the consequences are for a woman when she includes pleasure as a value.
SG: Can you give us a brag?
Mama: I brag that this morning before school my daughter Maggie and I danced like we were on a catwalk. Pleasure has taught me to be a much more playful mom, because it’s so hard to get your little kid up and get her on the school bus, so instead of resorting to yelling at her, I put on music and we dance our way out of bed. I’ll be a DJ in the morning instead of a nag and that’s such a better choice and I’m very certain I wouldn’t have come to that on my own without the Womanly Arts.
We were always taught, “Don’t be playful ‘cause you have to work now,” but it turns out that playful is the key to really operating at your top form and having everybody operate at theirs. Who knew?
SG: Do you use the Womanly Arts every day?
Mama: I use them and I forget them, just like everybody. Then when I forget them, I have to go back to chapter one and start all over again, but I’m pretty disciplined and I make sure that every day I am using the tools . . . gratitude, bragging, spring cleaning, the training cycle, all those things I practice all the time. The thing is, it doesn’t help if you just know the Womanly Arts, you have to practice them, otherwise they go away. As a woman you always have a chance at partying no matter what is going on around you.
It is so easy to live a miserable life and it takes great skill to live a pleasured life. You have to be so disciplined. Pleasure is not for sissies. It is for the courageous. You have to have a lot of guts to insist on you pleasure. Most people are not encouraged to be the source of their own fulfillment and their own joy. They are encouraged to be victimized by the culture, or the circumstances, or being a woman, or their upbringing. Pleasure forces you to take responsibility to really get yours.
SG: This feels at odds with the way the world works…
Mama: Yes, it is at odds, that is why it is a revolution.
SG: So, as a revolutionary, what is your vision for moving ahead?
Mama: My vision for moving ahead is that I really want to turn the world on. I’m interested in women regarding each other as sisters as they walk down the street, like a little wink and a “go baby, get yours… yeah…. isn’t it a privilege?” That that is the goods we exchange with each other rather than being cranky, that we are celebrating. That is what I see. I see a world of celebration.
