It was Audre Lorde who gave birth to the idea of the erotic as power. She embraces it to be the passion, joy and connection within us all. Lorde distinguishes this power from the mere sensations involved in pornography, which represents the oppression of true feelings. She so boldly proclaims that, “We have been warned against it all of our lives by the male world, which values this depth of feeling enough to keep women around in order to exercise it in the service of men, but which fears this same depth too much to examine the possibilities of it within themselves” (537). And it is because of this fear, she continues, “The erotic has often been misnamed by men and used