Own Your Pleasure, Part 1: Anticapitalist Sexuality

My next couple of blog posts are of the cultural criticism variety. I want to talk with you about owning your pleasure, which is key to your enjoyment of life and to your empowerment as a sovereign human being. 

Here in the U.S., we are living within systems that keep us from owning our own pleasure. Capitalism and patriarchy are both working their magic to keep us in line, and we need our own magic to reclaim our pleasure and our freedom from the oppressive systems we’ve inherited.

Today I’ll focus on anticapitalist sexuality. My next post will be about antipatriarchal sexuality. My overarching mission in life is to dismantle these interlocking systems of oppression… through pleasure. Sound like a good time to you?? Let’s gooooo!

Humans are oriented toward pleasure. We like to feel good! However, living under capitalism, our natural orientation toward pleasure has been perverted and co-opted to serve the accumulation of capital (money) in the hands of a few people, at the expense of the rest of us. 

Here and now, our pleasure is being sold to us in so many eye-catching packages. As consumers, we are fed constant messages that we are lacking in a multitude of ways–and that buying products or experiences will solve our malaise or discomfort or pain or general sense that we don’t have enough, that we are not enough. 

As a self-employed sexuality educator and pleasure guide, I participate in this dynamic from a few angles. Mostly, I’m a consumer in the capitalist machine. I’m also offering a service that people pay for, and the traditional and prevalent marketing advice is to identify the “pain point” of prospective clients, and then communicate to them how working with me will solve their problem, or alleviate their pain. 

I don’t like either of these roles: I don’t like feeling that I’m lacking and need to consume in order to fix that, and I don’t like capitalizing on the feeling of lack in my clients. So a third way that I participate in capitalism is as a conscientious disruptor of the system. That’s how it goes with systemic change… we’re a part of the systems that we’re working to dismantle and shift. 

So here’s how capitalism plays us: We are kept in a perpetual state of wanting (of desire) and we’re fed little dopamine hits of pleasure (desire fulfillment). Most of us are so entranced in the spell of consumer-based capitalism that these moments of fulfillment or pleasure are fleeting. Our attention is very quickly reoriented toward the next thing that we want, the next way we are lacking. 

As consumers in a capitalist system, if we aren’t able to have what we want, we believe it’s because we aren’t working hard enough, or we aren’t playing the game to our advantage. The thing is that the game of capitalism is rigged to benefit a very small percentage of people, and the rest of us keep working for our little dopamine hits, enriching the people who already own most of the material wealth.

So what does capitalism have to do with your sex life? 

Under capitalism, we are conditioned to live in desire, not pleasure. If we all felt content with what we had, and were able to live in our pleasure, we wouldn’t be motivated to work so much or buy so much stuff. Many of us have some inner resistance to pleasure, especially an abundance of pleasure. We feel we don’t deserve it, or we haven’t earned it, or we’re being selfish or indulgent. These anti-pleasure voices are not our friends.

Allow me to introduce you to the practice of centering pleasure in your life. The overriding goal is to spend more of your time and energy simply being in the present moment and feeling good. If you catch yourself wishing you had something that you don’t, or avoiding pleasure because you must be productive, or settling for a little pleasure when you could go for more, I encourage you to pause, pat yourself on the back for noticing, and then reorient toward pleasure.

Cultivating erotic energy and enjoying sexual pleasure have positive impacts on many aspects of our lives. A person who knows how to feel good and orient toward pleasure tends to feel more energetic, with a more uplifted mood. This improves the quality of their relationships and their ability to accomplish goals, especially creative pursuits. 

Sexual energy is life force energy. When you allow or encourage sexual energy to flow through your body, you are encouraging energy in general to flow through you.

Owning your sexual pleasure begins with knowing how to pleasure yourself. A regular solo sex practice is the best way for you to know what sort of touch feels best to you, as well as what sorts of thoughts or fantasies help to stoke your sexual desire. 

When it comes to solo sex, it can be very easy to fall into a habit of going straight for orgasm as quickly as possible. Let’s get this thing done, so we can be productive, right?? While there’s nothing wrong with a stress-relieving quickie every once in a while, making time for more pleasure-indulgent solo sex will serve you well. Try changing your goal from orgasming ASAP to feeling as much pleasure as you can, whether you orgasm or not.

It’s also important that self pleasure be integrated into partnered sex. When you’re having sex, your number one priority is to feel really good–any and all ways that are possible for you. Pleasure through your own touch is one of those ways! 

Using toys like vibrators, dildos, butt plugs, etc. can also add to your experience of pleasure. Strive for a pleasure-positive attitude toward sex. Feeling good is the main priority, and your partnered sex will be most satisfying if the people involved are open to all the ways that pleasure happens. 

At the root of it, the most anticapitalist move you can make is to orient your life toward pleasure:

Be happy with what you have.

Buy less stuff. 

Have more sex.

Indulge in pleasure.

Tune in next time to explore how we own our pleasure within and despite the patriarchy: Own your pleasure, Part 2: Antipatriarchal Sexuality

©️2026 Sarah Goodrich, Goodrich Sexuality Education, LLC. All rights reserved.