Erotic rebellion
“The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings.” – Audre Lorde
By Madelene Kadziela
When Audre Lorde wrote these words in 1978, she wasn’t just reclaiming sexuality. The erotic, in her view, was a wellspring of knowing, creativity, and aliveness. And yet, decades later, her words still resonate with unnerving clarity. If we’ve moved forward, have we moved far enough? Or are many women still living lives neatly contained, polished on the outside, or driven by ambition shaped through traditional ideals of power — but somehow, both estranged from feeling?
Like many women of my generation and those before, I was raised in a world where femininity was shaped less by what a woman expressed, and more by what she concealed — from the slut-shaming of Monica Lewinsky in the 1990s, to the way Britney Spears’ public breakdown became both a spectacle and a warning: female emotion deemed unstable, pain turned into entertainment. That pattern persists: women like Amber Rose and Cardi B have been criticised for expressing sexual agency on their own terms. The erotic, when voiced by women, still seems to require justification. We see it in the censorship of women’s bodies on social media, in the policing of pleasure, and in the growing number of bans on abortion and reproductive rights around the world.
Take, too, the phenomenon of the ‘trad wife’. She’s an aspirational version of femininity while also being a mockery; at once a guiding light, and a scam. Meanwhile, professionally, we’re expected to perform in ways traditionally associated with masculinity: assertiveness stripped of softness, ambition without vulnerability. The result? Women who learn to shapeshift, but rarely to feel.
Sexuality, meanwhile, is to be left at the door. Whether you play the good girl or the competent woman, desire remains a liability. In the eyes of polite society, the erotic is destabilising, too unruly to be respected, and too threatening to be seen. Despite shifting narratives through years of progress, much of what passes as empowerment remains built on patriarchal scaffolding. The aesthetics have changed — more gloss, better branding — but the structure still holds. A “good woman” is still one who edits herself: her voice, her body, her pleasure.
As a third-generation Italian growing up Catholic in the rural town of Mildura, Australia, my girlhood was a border patrolled by aunties, glances, and rules. Cleavage had to be hidden. Anything resembling desire (real or imagined) was swiftly shut down. Some girls feared puberty and the changes it would bring. I longed for it. I couldn’t wait to be a teenager, for my breasts to grow, to emulate the women I saw in film. But the moment they arrived, so did the cardigans. I remember slipping into a top I loved, now full-figured, only to be met with a stern look, followed by the motion of wool being tightly wrapped around my chest, a silent tug at my buttons. No words, just an unspoken command: don’t be foolish.
At the time, these lessons felt like protection. Later, I realised they were tools of control. Yet in me, they sparked something else: quiet rebellion. I didn’t yet know what I was rebelling towards, only that I was resisting the suggestion that my body, feelings, and desires were problems to manage rather than truths to live.
The aesthetics have changed — more gloss, better branding — but the structure still holds. A “good woman” is still one who edits herself: her voice, her body, her pleasure.
Still, another dichotomy was at play; my upbringing had beauty. Picking olives with my Nonna under the dry Mildura sun, making tomato sauce in late summer. The women, my aunties, cousins, sister, mum and Nonna sitting in a semi-circle, their hands working in quiet synchrony as skins were slipped off and glass bottles filled. Food was abundant in summer but always made to last the winter. My Nonna, refusing to buy anything store-bought, would call out, “Madalena, vieni qui,” showing me how to make soap from scratch. “You must learn,” she’d say with pride, before following it with, “for your husband.”
These moments taught me that nurturing was a language, that softness (when chosen) was strength. But this came at a price, to belong fully often required the concealment of my other self: the expressive, sensual, questioning self. Lorde wrote, “The erotic has often been misnamed by men and used against women.” I didn’t know that quote as a teen, but I knew its truth. I saw how desire was either punished or demanded, but rarely respected.
In my twenties, free from the restrictions of my adolescence, I threw myself into desire. But what I mistook for liberation often felt like performance. I had no roadmap for erotic power on my own terms, only cultural scripts inherited from the male gaze: hyper-visible sexuality, commodified sensuality. The early 2000s didn’t offer women much beyond objecthood masked as agency… and I wore the costume well. Red lips. Confident banter. A practiced hair toss. But it was a kind of power that relied on being consumable. Lorde again: “Pornography is a direct denial of the power of the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling. Pornography emphasises sensation without feeling.”
This is the culture that taught me to perform pleasure instead of inhabit it, until I began asking different questions. Not “how do I look? but “how do I feel? What if the erotic wasn’t spectacle, but substance?
This is the culture that taught me to perform pleasure instead of inhabit it, until I began asking different questions. Not “how do I look? but “how do I feel? What if the erotic wasn’t spectacle, but substance?
In my early professional career, I played with the detachment of sexuality altogether, believing that adopting masculine traits was the key to success. Success is often synonymous with speed, volume, visibility, and detachment. Within this paradigm, softness becomes a liability, and feeling is a threat to efficiency. I experienced this firsthand after years in the beauty industry, which is, despite catering largely to women, still male-dominated. I sharpened myself to survive within that model. It worked, until it didn’t. The pandemic, while globally destabilising, also exposed the fragility of the systems we had been told were unshakable. In the stillness it created, the rigid ideas of womanhood I once absorbed no longer held the same authority.
That collision between submission and rebellion seemed to ease, as I began to reconnect with the rituals of my childhood: kneading dough beside my grandmother, sharing unhurried meals, talking softly and slowly with family, time stretching out in front of us.
This was the beginning of Bruxa, the sensual wellness brand I founded in 2023. After years of suppression, sexual awakening, and cultural unlearning, it felt right to create something that honoured that journey. It was a love letter to my younger self, where sexuality could be sovereign. Lorde writes, “The erotic has often been misnamed… made into the confused, the trivial, the plasticized sensation.”
In the work I do now, eroticism is no longer abstract. I see it as a compass. It shows up not just in sex, but in leadership, intuition, creativity. In how I make decisions. In how I listen, to myself, then to others. Lorde reminds us: “Our erotic knowledge empowers us… becomes a lens through which we scrutinise all aspects of our existence.” I see that lens now in our community, at our events, spaces grounded in radical self-acceptance. Lorde also wrote, “Recognising the power of the erotic… gives us the energy to pursue genuine change… For not only do we touch our most profoundly creative source, but we do that which is female and self-affirming in the face of a racist, patriarchal, and anti-erotic society.” This, to me, is soft power. Perhaps the most radical act now is not to harden ourselves in order to be heard, but to deepen our capacity to feel. In doing so, we model a new kind of leadership.
