Every time I see another housing project blocked, or the usual suspects standing up at council with their tight jaws and fearful warnings about “needles” or “parking” or “character of the neighbourhood,” I can’t help but think: these people need to get laid. Or at the very least, they need to touch themselves with some tenderness. Because what I see when they rage against housing is not civic concern—it’s a profound lack of pleasure.
adrienne maree brown says in Pleasure Activism: “Pleasure is a measure of freedom.” That line sticks with me. If you can’t find joy in your own skin, if you’ve never learned to taste sweetness without shame, then of course you’re going to move through the world with a posture of scarcity. Pleasure-starved people will cling to control because control feels like the only thing left.
Flirting with the possible
Franco “Bifo” Berardi, in his conversation on flirting and desire, talks about how flirting is an economy of excess, a little gratuitous game that has no product, no outcome, no investment. Just play. Just a spark. He calls it a form of conspiration—literally “breathing together.” Imagine if the NIMBYs of Sarnia were less obsessed with defending their hedges and more obsessed with breathing together, flirting with their neighbours, finding ways to conspire toward joy rather than barricades.
bell hooks reminds us that love is “the practice of freedom.” Love and pleasure aren’t separate from justice—they’re the heartbeat of it. If we practiced love as freedom, we’d never stop housing from being built. We’d be too invested in other people’s flourishing, too turned on by the abundance of life to block an apartment building that might shelter someone’s child.
Scarcity is a failure of imagination
Alexis Shotwell, in Against Purity, reminds us that none of us are innocent, but we are still responsible. We’re implicated in mess, in compromise, in harm—but that means we’re also implicated in possibility. What if NIMBYism is what happens when responsibility collapses into fear, when people can only see harm in the form of others moving closer, living next door? It’s a small imagination. Pleasure, by contrast, expands imagination—it cracks open the tight fist of scarcity and says, “more is possible, more is allowed, more is beautiful.”
Indigenous teachings and abundance
Across Indigenous traditions, there are teachings about pleasure and intimacy as part of balance. The Haudenosaunee thanksgiving address begins with gratitude to the waters, the winds, the berries, the animals—a litany of pleasure. Gratitude itself is erotic: a way of touching the world with reverence. Many Indigenous writers remind us that land is not a possession but a lover. Robin Wall Kimmerer talks about sweetgrass as a gift, a beloved. If the NIMBYs could think of land as lover rather than commodity, maybe they’d welcome housing as an act of intimacy with place.
In Māori tradition, there’s the concept of manaakitanga—hospitality, care, generosity—that frames how people relate to one another. Blocking housing is the exact opposite of manaakitanga. It’s fear closing the door. True intimacy opens it wide.
Prophets and proverbs
The Book of Proverbs whispers: “Better a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.” Translation: abundance without intimacy is misery. You can have all the parking spaces in the world and still live in hell if your neighbours aren’t welcomed to the table.
The Sufi poet Rumi says: “There is some kiss we want with our whole lives.” He wasn’t talking about zoning bylaws, but maybe he should have been. The kiss is intimacy, the recognition of our entanglement. Housing is a kiss to the city—it says, come closer.
Even Jesus, in his own blunt peasant way, told people to stop storing treasure in barns and start building treasure in each other. Housing is treasure in each other.
Scarcity sex vs. abundance sex
Think about how bad sex feels when it’s rooted in scarcity. The anxious clutching, the fear of being left, the sense that there’s not enough love or orgasm to go around. That’s exactly the posture of NIMBY politics. It’s scarcity sex. It leaves everyone unsatisfied and ashamed.
Pleasure activism insists on abundance sex. On mutual flourishing. On everyone getting theirs, on consent and joy being the ground of everything else. A city can be abundant sex, if we want it to be. Apartments rising up, neighbours meeting in the hallway, kids playing in courtyards, laughter spilling over fences. That’s the sound of collective orgasm, of civic joy.
Go pleasure yourselves
So seriously: I wish the NIMBYs would go pleasure themselves. Masturbation is not just a joke here—it’s a practice of learning to love your own body without shame. It’s rehearsal for abundance. If the opponents of housing spent more time discovering the wonder of their own skin, or learning to touch each other without fear, they’d have less energy for fearmongering at council meetings.
Self-pleasure is a radical act in a culture of control. It unknots the body. It teaches generosity. It builds capacity for intimacy. And intimacy is what kills the scarcity mindset at its root.
Imagine a city of people who touch themselves with kindness, who touch each other with respect, who breathe together in flirtation, who practice love as freedom. That’s a city that builds housing. That’s a city that welcomes abundance. That’s a city that actually wants to live.
