It is said that love is blind and sex impervious to reason. However, a person's view on sex is incredibly revealing of their fundamental view of life itself. For some it is a sacred act to commit within the confines of marriage only, and for others it is a fun act, to be committed at any light whim of desire. It has a different meaning for everyone. In Audre Lorde's essay "Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power", sex is described as an instrument of power for women, as a tool to be used to empower themselves and escape from repression, imposed both by others and by oneself. . Similarly, in her novel Sula, Toni Morrison illustrates sex as a tool that can be used to free women from the societal burdens and constraints of stereotypes and expectations. However, she also describes this attitude as something that can hurt and alienate. In his novel The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz describes sex as a symptom and symbol of deep-rooted cultural ills. All three authors establish sex as a function of society used to perpetuate stereotypes, a function largely dependent on women but belonging to men, and they work to encourage women to claim it as their right as well. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essay In “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” Lorde challenges the Western masculinist characterization of erotica as a element of human degradation, as well as its use as a tool of oppression. She argues that this framing of eroticism has ghettoized women's sensuality, a means by which people know and orient themselves to the world, thereby erasing a significant form of women's liberatory power. To confront this erasure, Lorde offers a vision of eroticism as a system of understanding that gives form to the knowledge of an era, a critical mode through which women can achieve excellence. Lorde's position on eroticism has established itself as a political, social and academic tool of deconstruction, subversion and imagination. Although the liberating power of eroticism lies in its point of origin (the self), Lorde suggests that women have learned to question the self as a source, "to suspect what is more deep within them,” which “meant a suppression of eroticism as a considered source of power and information” (Lorde 53). Oppression is a cyclical process that systematically suppresses various forms of power, and Lorde's essay is a response to this suppression, particularly regarding her assertion that the relationship between oppression and power is often marked through corruption and distortion: "In order to perpetuate itself, all oppression must corrupt or distort the various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide the energy for change" (Lorde 53). An example of such distortion is the way erotica itself has been misrepresented as pornography, a way of experiencing sensations, of gaining knowledge without feeling. This distortion of the power of eroticism reinforces docility, obedience, and external definition, all of which contribute to the cycle. of oppression through the process of dehumanization. Morality and equality are of no importance in the face of a man's libido, and it is this farce of societal understanding that Morrison highlights through his depiction of sex in Sula. The titular character operates under the understanding of sex as "..