Queer Pleasure: Sexual Liberation and Abolition Within and Against State Violence

Abstract

What does the pursuit of queer pleasure and sexual liberation look like within the limits of discriminatory institutions structured by patriarchal police and mass punishment? Writing from a perspective largely indebted to queer and Black feminist thought, diverse formations of sexuality are considered within key sociohistorical contexts of racialized sexual deviance. Proliferating carceral constructions of sexual offense are troubled by looking at cycles of violence definitive to the prison industrial complex, patriarchal family relations, and white supremacy. In response, this paper then considers moves toward sexual liberation, theorizing a politics of erotic autonomy, comprehensive sex education, and abolitionist intervention. Interrupting unequal access to self-determination and pleasure will require structural intervention that prioritizes accountability and transformation rather than additional exposure to violence. Providing people of all races, genders, and abilities consistent age-appropriate knowledge focused not on gender-role socialization but on creating norms of empowerment, mutual respect, consent, and communication can help develop social foundations that refuse embodied entitlement and outsourcing conflict resolution to the state. The paper concludes that even with a comprehensive introduction to sexuality that celebrates autonomy, pleasure, and communication, collective sexual liberation ultimately requires building new life-affirming institutions and ways of life that reduce and eliminate violence.