AfroerotiK

Erotic provocateur, racially-influenced humanist, relentless champion for the oppressed, and facilitator for social change, Scottie Lowe is the brain child, creative genius and the blood, sweat, and tears behind AfroerotiK. Intended to be part academic, part educational, and part sensual, she, yes SHE gave birth to the website to provide people of African descent a place to escape the narrow-mined, stereotypical, limiting and oft-times degrading beliefs that abound about our sexuality. No, not all Black men are driven by lust by white flesh or to create babies and walk away. No, not all Black women are promiscuous welfare queens. And as hard as it may be to believe, no, not all gay Black men are feminine, down low, or HIV positive. Scottie is putting everything on the table to discuss, debate, and dismantle stereotypes in a healthy exchange of ideas. She hopes to provide a more holistic, informed, and enlightened discussion of Black sexuality and dreams of helping couples be more open, honest, and adventurous in their relationships.

Showing posts with label feminism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label feminism. Show all posts

Sunday, November 15, 2015

Empowerment and Respectability

In college classrooms all over the country, Black young women are being taught that anything and everything that a woman does is empowering.  They are being taught that sex work, promiscuity, vulgarity, and choosing to be degraded is a Black woman’s agency.  They are being taught that respectability is a dirty word, meant to oppress women and people of color, and make them conform to some sort of 1950s, Caucasian model of behavior.  Feminism in college classrooms all across this nation has come to mean conforming to sexist, oppressive, misogynist standards of attractiveness to men. 

I know EXACTLY the moment this new scholarship began.  I witnessed its birth.  More than a decade ago, Bill Cosby spoke out publicly saying that Black people shouldn’t buy $200 pairs of sneakers for their children when they don’t have a computer and that they shouldn’t name their children ghetto names.  He was quite detailed and went on and on about how Black people have “dropped the ball.”  White people ate it up.  White people heard their role model dissing the behaviors they found offensive from Black people and they rallied around him like he was the Moses himself delivering the Black commandments.  

The response from the Black masses, way back then before our collective consciousness became anti-intellectual and ghetto, fell in one of three camps.  The first were the “Yeah, Bill, you tell them! Those niggers! I’m not like them,” camp.  They suffer from what I call the AIC or the Assimilated Inferiority Complex.  They think whites are superior and they want to be liked, seen as good as, and respected by whites.  They needed to distance themselves from “those” Black people so they ridiculed the patterns and behaviors that habitually show up in impoverished black communities.  It should be noted, they were the loudest and most populated camp. 

The second camp was the, “Don’t air our dirty laundry in front of white people,” camp.  They were willing to admit that the things that Bill Cosby was talking about had some validity but that he couldn’t talk about it in front of white people, he could only discuss it in private in front of other Black people so a whole lot of hang-ringing, finger-pointing, and accomplishing-nothing could be done.    Apparently, it’s not okay to talk about our dysfunction in front of whites but it seems to be a greater sin to actually work to heal the collective ills that plague our society. 

The third camp roasted marshmallows and sang campfire songs about how the ghetto was some sort of Black cultural manifestation of creativity and survival that was a bastion of all things good and righteous.  It is this third camp that created this backlash against respectability.    Respectability was associated with whiteness and therefore ipso facto respectability became bad.  This group, this small faction decided that any behavior Black people collectively exhibit was deemed inherent to our blackness and thus it was all good.  Buying your three year old $200 sneakers was fine because if white people could do it, so can we. 

All three camps are misguided and wrong.  The “I’m not a nigger but those other Blacks are,” the “We might have problems but let’s not talk about them in front of white people,” and the, “Everything Black people do is justified no matter how dysfunctional it is,” philosophies are all flawed.  Perhaps the most detrimental is the third camp who feels that anything and everything that Black people do is somehow a cultural inheritance.    We don’t have to speak well because speaking well means you are trying to be white.  Noooooo, slaughtering the English language is some sort of adaptation of Gullah dialect that is passed down blah, blah, blah.  In reality, our inarticulation is because whites have denied us equal education.  There is nothing inherently Black or African about not using verbs other than Blacks have been historically denied education to keep us stupid.  But to the misguided masses, they want to believe that not being able to use the English language makes you more Black.  Only to the deluded does being intelligent, being an academic mean you are denying your Blackness, as if intellect is only the domain of whites. 

Education does not make you white.  Speaking correct English does not make you white.  More importantly, not everything that you do is empowering.  Today’s youth has no concept of what the concept of empowerment means.  To them, manipulating people is empowering.  To them, lying, cheating, stealing and using people is empowering.  Dear God, anything that gets you money is supposedly empowering, even if you must sell your soul, your humanity, your dignity and your body to get it.  If men use women, that’s supposedly empowering as long as women co-sign it.    

Then, there is poor old me.  I’m the fourth camp.  I belong to the “Yes, there are collective dysfunctional behaviors in the Black community but we have them because we have been historically, systematically, and institutionally disenfranchised for centuries, NOT because we are inherently inferior.”  I am member of the, “I’m not afraid to call out our dysfunctional behaviors because I have solutions and alternatives to the current slave mentality that continues to keep us oppressed.”  And I am the leader of the,  “Education, articulation, and respectability are NOT the domain of white people and striving for excellence is not to be as good as white people, it’s to be the absolute best you can be as a human being of African descent,” camp.    Being respectable is not a bad thing, it’s not inherent to white people.  Empowerment means gaining power, autonomy, and integrity through your actions. 

Thursday, July 23, 2015

Empowering vs. Not Empowering

 Young Black women have been sold a bill of goods.  They've been told that anything and everything that they do is empowering.  They've been told that degrading themselves is empowering, that objectifying themselves is empowering.  Well, I've got to do something.  I know they won't hear me.  I know they will react violently, calling me vile names, but I must speak out and tell them that there is no power in devaluing yourself and your womanhood to your sexuality 

EMPOWERING
·         Owning your sexuality, not being ashamed of the number of partners you’ve had, not being slut-shamed for not conforming to the concept that women have to be asexual and pure to have value.  Human beings are sexual beings.  Women have a right to pleasure and they shouldn’t be ashamed of their desire and/or need for touch, intimacy, arousal, pleasure, or orgasms.  

NOT EMPOWERING
·         Being indiscriminate with your body, sharing it with people who have not earned your trust, respect, or who don’t value you as a person.  Having casual sex with people whose only intent is to get off, who don’t see your totality as a human being is not empowering.  Can you have casual sex?  Of course, that is your right as a human being.  Is it empowering to be used by someone in essence so they don’t have to masturbate?  No.  Is it empowering to use someone, to not take their humanity, feelings, and personhood into consideration?  No!  You derive no power from letting people use you, nor is it empowering to use other people. Using people is manipulative, it’s immature, it’s dysfunctional.  As much as people want to deny it, as much as people swear that casual sex has no consequences, it does.  Physical intimacy with another person is not recreation.  I’m NOT saying that sex is bad, I’m not saying people need to be chaste and asexual.  I’m saying it’s immature to think that using people is empowering.  

EMPOWERING
·         Feeling confident and beautiful in the skin you’re in.  Holding your head high, knowing that in your own unique imperfection that there is value and worth beyond anything that society can define or label. Empowering is being an individual who doesn’t conform, who doesn’t NEED external validation in order to feel attractive but who can graciously say, “Thank you,” when it’s given.  Empowerment is the unshakable knowledge that your beauty comes from being intelligent, having integrity, creating a style that is not contingent upon having men lust after how many of your body parts are on public display.  Empowering is knowing that you are sexy without having to show that you are sexy.  

NOT EMPOWERING
·         Spending inordinate amounts of money on your clothes, shoes, make-up, hair, and nails, often times to the point of debt, in order to conform to what society says is attractive is not empowering.  Needing external validation of your attractiveness = not empowering.  Putting your sexuality and body on display like it’s a commodity to be purchased.  Defining your beauty by what men determine is attractive to them.  Needing to alter everything about your appearance before you can feel confident, having to present to the world this false image of perfection at all times.  Calculating your self-worth by the number of people who tell you that you are sexy or hot, measuring your beauty by comparing yourself to celebrities is the very definition of not being empowered.  I KNOW, I know, you’ve been told that anything that women do is empowering.  You’ve been told that a woman objectifying herself is empowering.  Conforming to patriarchal, sexist, misogynist, limiting definitions of what it means to be a woman is not empowering however.  It’s the very opposite of being empowered if your power comes from being seen as pretty or sexually desirable to fuel men’s desire for you. 

Sunday, November 16, 2014

Assism is not Feminism

In response to the article ourlegaci.com/2014/11/15/assism-is-not-feminism/

I've been trying desperately to explain to this generation of young women who think that objectifying themselves is empowering that feminism is NOT about being as sexually indiscriminate as men.  I understand, recognize, and fully acknowledge that my generation has let them down.  We have let them be raped, molested, abused, and used.  We have let them grow up in a society that shames them for their sexuality and conversely celebrates men's sexist behaviors.  My generation dropped the ball.  We never told or taught our girls that being sexy should not be their objective.  We never taught our daughters to love themselves as unique human beings and individuals, instead we told them to be beautiful to get a rich man, to sell pussy to pay the bills, to be be competitive and petty with other women.  We didn't show them examples of love, of respectability so they rally against it, they reject and hate the very concept of respectability because they feel as if it invalidates their place on the planet.  We didn't teach them to lift themselves up, we let them wallow in dysfunction and we turned a blind eye to it because we never addressed our hurts from the men who used us, who violated us.

We let our daughters be raised by Zane's tales of adultery and promiscuity without offering a healthier alternative.  We didn't give them guidance and direction about becoming a woman and understanding their sexuality, we let them raise themselves.  Now, we have a generation of women who believe that showing your ass is empowering.  We have a generation of women who believe that being degraded and humiliated during sex is normal and healthy.  We have a nation of young women who righteously want to  strike out and rally against the oppressive forces that look to silence them and diminish them for their identity as Black women but we haven't properly armed them for the fight.  We have allowed them to set their standards so low that they consider barely literate, immature  criminals, thugs, and violent males as ideal partners.  We've not given them anything to strive for, no standards to set for themselves so they rally, they fight, they violently defend conforming to sexist, patriarchal, and demeaning sexual objectification because that's all they know.

My generation has to take full responsibility for dropping the ball.   We are to blame.  We let our daughters think that having a big ass gave them value, that having a man with money was more important than having a man with integrity.  We didn't teach them the difference between not being ashamed of their sexuality versus being proud of being vulgar.  They think the world is defined by their flagrant sexuality.  Deep inside, they want to feel valued and loved and understood for more than their sex, they have the very human need to be connected and partnered but we haven't shown them anything close to a healthy relationship let alone how to sustain one so they get offended if a man speaks to them, they are disgusted when someone suggests that all they've known to be true and right is wrong.


Assism is not Feminism but to tell that to a generation who has been raised with Beyonce flaunting her sexuality, with the degradation of women in porn available 24 hours a day before they become fully mature sexual adults, the subculture of weavism and housewives who don't do any housework but who marry one dimensional, sexist men with money has completely handicapped the Black community.  We've let boys continue with their emotionally immature, sexist, oppressive, bullshit and we've let girls think that wearing seven inch heels that cost as much as rent makes them have more value.