Your Sexual Secrets

The advent of the personal computer and the internet has created what I’m convinced is an epidemic of unhealthy behaviors.  EVERYONE, with so few exceptions as to be barely negligible, looks at, masturbates to, and is aroused by the myriad of porn and the extreme and various genres that are available literally at our fingertips.

Everyone has a sexual online identity that they would NEVER share with anyone else, that they don’t want another human being to know that they compartmentalize, hide, deny, and don’t acknowledge to even themselves.  Look at the user-submitted video sites online.  Look at how many videos are submitted DAILY that show people engaged in sexual behaviors that would never be considered mainstream or even discussion for polite society.  Even those of us who admit that we look at porn have sites we visit, we have things that arouse us that we would never share with another human being, not even our significant other.  The amount of extreme, fetish, and bizarre content that is available is all the proof I need.  It’s impossible to believe that only a handful of people are creating the volumes of extreme sexual content that exists online.  And for every individual who feels comfortable creating a video of themselves doing really extreme things, there are 10s of thousands, 100s of thousands, perhaps millions of individuals who would NEVER create or share a video of themselves, who would never comment on forums or message boards or take a chance that someone would link them with a subject matter that could be considered deviant. 

When I was growing up my mother had a collection of porn that was graphic and extreme and explicit.  To say that it was hardcore would be an understatement, it included every genre other than those that would be considered illegal.  My mother is as sexually-repressed and conservative, religious (hyper religious in fact), and as “normal” as the next person.  If she had that sort of collection, long before the internet was even a concept, then there is no way to convince me that in this day and age people’s normal curiosity doesn’t lead them, even those people who profess to be bastions of morality and chastity, to look at material that is “bizarre and weird”.  That sort of compartmentalization is unhealthy.   I look at porn that is bizarre and extreme and I happen to think that my sexual practices are far more conservative than most people.  I don’t’ compartmentalize my sexuality.  I make very concerted efforts to be honest with my partners about the types of things that have aroused me late at night, when I’m horny and lonely and desperate for arousal.    I’ve graduated from looking at the more tame genres to seeking out things that were once repulsive to me.  I know that when I do find a partner with whom I’m willing to share my body and my fantasies, that there will come a day when I MUST share ALL the things that have aroused me over the years.  I have to do that for myself, for our relationship, for the opportunity to be completely honest with not only him but with myself.

How many of us are ashamed of our sexuality?  We think that what we like, desire, fantasize about in private is different, extreme, and dirty in comparison to what society tells us is acceptable, to what other people like.  We don’t want to express our true desires to our lovers because we are afraid we will be judged, that we will be seen as abnormal, because we’ve been socialized to believe that what goes on between our legs is bad, dirty, and shameful. Join with me as we begin a new chapter in our lives in which we view our sexuality through different eyes, embrace our sensuality as part of our spirituality, and we begin to rethink the ways in which we’ve been taught to view pleasure at the various stages of our life. It's that sort of thinking that is revolutionary and AfroerotiK. 

Willful Ignorance

It’s the 21^st century.  We are living in a time when we have more access to information, to knowledge than any other time in recorded history.  It amazes me, it astounds me actually, the willful ignorance that abounds about sex and sexuality in this day and time truly boggles my mind.  We might as well be living in The Dark Ages with leeches to treat deadly plagues because people, the vast and overwhelming majority of people, believe the most stupid, asinine things about sexuality.   

Being bisexual does not mean that you have to be equally attracted to both men and women.  Being bisexual does not mean that you automatically want to form a romantic, emotional relationship with someone of the same gender, it simply means that you can have sex with both genders.  Just because you have a preference for one gender over the other that does not mean that you are somehow heterosexual.  It’s very possible to be sexually aroused by both genders without your masculinity or femininity being altered in any way.  If you are blindfolded and you are sexually stimulated you will be aroused regardless of the gender of person.  If a woman is sexually aroused by other women that does not mean she is going to become masculine NOR does it mean that a man is going to become feminine if he is sexually aroused by other men.  

Men and women have the EXACT same anatomy that allows them to experience arousal and pleasure when stimulated anally.  That’s not entirely true.  Men have a prostate that women do not have and when the prostate is stimulated, it provides pleasure.  Not just gay men.  Not just feminine men.  Not just some men.  ALL men have the potential to experience pleasure when stimulated anally.  It has nothing to do with a man’s sexual preference or his masculinity.  Bottoms, tops, sissies etc., they are all labels that reinforce the false belief that being a woman is synonymous with being submissive, being humiliated, being degraded and I have news for you, those things are not inherent to women.  There is no genetic markers that make women predisposed to being slapped, spit on, gangbanged or used.  If a man is anally aroused, putting on a dress and wearing stockings and heels does not make him a woman.  

Unfortunately, common sense, logic, reason, and facts have no bearing on the absurdity that people believe about sex and sexuality.  Black people especially.  Because we expect men to be one-dimensional, hyper-masculine Neanderthals, we claim that there is no such thing as bisexuality, that a man has to be gay if he is sexually aroused by both genders and that he’s just denying it.  Because we are so desperate to believe the white man’s religion that was beaten into us, we turn our backs on plain truths that can’t be denied.  There is no big bad sky daddy who watches what we do in the bedroom and who is offended by our pleasure.  We believe all sorts of truly stupid things: that the tightness of a man’s jeans or the color of his shirt can determine if he’s bisexual, that only bisexual men are responsible for the spread of HIV.  This is 2015 and people really believe that.  There is too much information at our fingertips, there is too much damn porn in genres that have to be seen to actually be believed that prove beyond all reasonable doubt that people are aroused by far more than heterosexual, missionary sex on a Friday night with the lights out.  Yet we live in willful ignorance and pretend that humans are supposed to be asexual and chaste.  I’ll tell you what’s a sin.  It’s sinful that we choose to be so close-minded and brainwashed. 

A Luta Continua

In my years of being AfroerotiK, I’ve had to contend quite a bit with those who say, “That’s porn. That’s inappropriate!  That’s dirty!”  Or, the ever-popular, “Well, that’s okay in private but I can’t put that on my Facebook (or any other public acknowledgement of their affinity for my work) because I don’t want people knowing I get down like that.”  It’s always from the repressed and pseudo-conservative middle class Black folk who want to insist that anything sexual is offensive and beneath them.  They are the people who are disconnected from their sexuality so much so that they do things behind closed doors that they condemn and denigrate people for in public.  They watch porn, they have unprotected sex, they engage in dysfunctional sexual and emotional relationships because they are so disconnected from any sense of healthy sexuality that they are in denial but they condemn, denigrate, and demean my work as offensive because they are desperate to hold on to this make-believe façade that they are asexual and sexually conservative. 

Then, there are the freaks.  They don’t want to hear anything about love or monogamy or intimacy or communication or emotional maturity.  Any time they see or hear the words dick, pussy, and fuck they proclaim how horny it has made them.  Any nude picture they see is porn, they have no discernment between porn and erotica, no standards, and they don’t care if an image is taken with a cell phone, out of focus, and only shows a close up shot of a woman’s cervix, they think it’s hot.  They don’t care about objectifying women, they don’t care about degrading women, they don’t care about anything as long as it’s sexual.  Nothing is offensive to them.  Their Facebook pages are filled with images that would get me banned if I had them posted, they belong to every sexual group there is, all with the same pictures of guys with pictures of their dicks next to remote controls and messages from women with their ass bent over saying, “How was your weekend?  Hit me up if you want some of this.”  The men have 1000s, hundreds of 1000s of pictures of women’s body parts on their computers and it doesn’t seem to get old or boring or tired.  The women all want endless compliments on pictures of their body parts, their feet, their asses, their lady bits.  They are really content to be sexually immature and anything other than heterosexual vanilla sex is  . . . ughhhh, God forbid . . . that’s nasty. 

And if that’s not enough, now there is this emerging faction that seems to stand in unyielding opposition to AfroerotiK, it seems to be growing quite large in fact, that consists of young, Black, “educated” (and I use the term quite loosely because the educational system has dangerously mis and undereducated our youth for several generations now) “feminists” (again, using the term loosely because feminism has come to mean displaying vulgar sexuality with impunity, not fighting for women’s rights and equality like it meant in the good old days) who feel that anything and everything that Black women do is okay.  Degrading yourself?  Yeah, that’s great!  Objectifying yourself?  Yup, that’s not just fine, it’s great.  Conforming to patriarchal, misogynist, sexist, oppressive standards of what is means to be a woman?  You bet’ not say anything bad about the women who do that because they are choosing their own degradation and that’s empowering.  Wallowing in unhealthy, dysfunctional behaviors that are self-sabotaging and unenlightened?  Yeah, that’s their rallying cry, that’s the foundation of their movement. 

I get where it comes from.  Their motivations are pure.  They are tired of men and society in general demeaning and denigrating the Black female form.  They are trying, however misguided they may be, to assert that they are sisters with all women, regardless of their socio-economic status and position in life and they are saying that in solidarity, they want to be seen as equals to men.  Unfortunately, the “men” (using that term in the most generous way possible because Black males have been socialized to be emotionally stunted somewhere around pre-teens for several generations now) that they are trying to be equal to are not the standard by which anything should be measured.  They are genuinely trying to strike out against the status quo that says that men can be vile and repugnant and get a pass while women have to be held to absurd standards of purity and chastity in order to be considered valuable. 

The problem is that they are fighting the wrong fight.  They should not be fighting for women to be able to be as vulgar and sexually indiscriminate as men without repercussions.  What they should be fighting for is a system where men are held accountable, where they evolve, mature and grow, where women are not relegated to positions of sex worker, stripper, and ghetto diva.  They find the concept of women carrying themselves with dignity offensive, they fight against it saying that it’s “respectability politics” or the policing of women’s bodies to keep them oppressed.  They have no concept that there is something in between the standards of Victorian clothing and saving yourself for marriage and only having sex on Friday nights and having men pay to degrade and use you.  They can’t even comprehend of anything in between where women carry themselves with respect and own their sexuality without shame.  They are unilaterally outraged by the concept of me saying that you can own your sexuality, not be in denial of it, but it’s not okay to display it for all the world to see either or that it’s unhealthy to spend hours of your time making your ass clap so you can show it off on Vine.   They hear any critique of women’s sexuality as, “You are saying that women are bad for being sexual.” 

I can’t tell you how many Black folk fall into one of these three categories?  I obviously can’t give you an exact percentage but it’s the vast and overwhelming majority.  The people in the, “That’s nasty,” category aren’t reading this because I’m too offensive for them to follow.  The people in the second category aren’t reading this because it has too many words and all they want to see is porn.  The people in the third category read it all the way up to the part where I identified them and are right now preparing their counter arguments about how I’m slut shaming and about how they can twerk, make a few bucks on the stripper pole, use men for money while wearing seven inch platform heels to be sexy, and study for their exams and there’s nothing wrong with that. 

Then, there are the few, the proud, the AfroerotiKs.  There aren’t many of us, but there are a few who Black folk who don’t want to be ashamed of our sexuality anymore, who understand that we are entitled to pleasure and it shouldn’t be something we have to hide and pretend we don’t like in order to feel superior to anyone else.  We aren’t aroused by the sexually immature who are addicted to vulgar porn and who have no standards for what they find arousing.  And there are a few, hopefully growing in number, who understand that a great deal of the sexuality displayed in our society by the oppressed is unhealthy and detrimental and that there is a happy medium between purity and denial and “It’s all good.” 

So, I will continue to make erotica that shows people of African descent in loving, holistic, erotic, sensual depictions. 

I will continue to create art that doesn’t dismiss unhealthy behaviors as benign. 

I will continue to fight for ALL people of African descent to see themselves as sensual and erotic. 

And I will strive to create a new paradigm where there is balance, symmetry, and equality.  I will fight against oppressive standards that tell Black women that they must be virgins or they are whores and the diseased mindsets it creates in the men and women who believe on some level that sex is bad and dirty.  I will fight against the adult industry that dehumanizes, degrades, and objectifies women for the amusement of misogynists for a profit.  And I will not take up arms against those who staunchly defend unhealthy behaviors because they have never been shown a model of what healthy sexuality could be and they know nothing else.