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.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade was the WORST in Human History
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Slave Hair
I had all the arguments against relaxed hair PERFECTED. I would argue with any woman who suggested that my straight hair was anything other than a mere styling option. I convinced myself that I was right and that any woman that even suggested that relaxed hair was some sort of Eurocentric standard of beauty was insane.
I was the same as all the women who rationalize their self-hatred, who condemn me, and who defend their slave hair.
Then, I evolved. I grew. I got strong. I put aside the memories of my grandmother telling me that nappy hair was ugly. I rejected the comments, jokes, and taunts of little boys telling me that my natural hair wasn't pretty like white girls. At the time, I was becoming more spiritually aware, I stopped eating meat, I was becoming healthier all around. I was still holding on to my slave hair. I was terrified that if I let go of my slave hair, that I'd be ugly. I was horrified that if I let go of my slave hair, that I'd never get a job, I'd never get a man, that the world would look at me as something less than human and certainly not beautiful. Then one day, I woke up and I realized that history is prologue. I accepted that my natural, nappy hair was my birthright, that I could be beautiful with the hair that God intended me to have, without chemicals, without the messages that every little Black girl gets beaten into them that tells her to be ashamed of her natural hair. It was only then that I became liberated from my slave hair. It was only then that I became free.
Monday, March 16, 2009
We Must Excel, Not Just Exist
We, as descendants of slaves, as people of color, MUST strive for excellence in all that we do. We must live according to principles of excellence in our daily lives, spiritually, emotionally, physically, and mentally. Living in alignment with excellence means making a conscious choice to do what’s right over what’s easy, what’s comfortable, or what’s familiar. In lieu of spending hours gossiping on the phone or endless hours on the computer in the pursuit of meaningless sex, we must examine our selves, our lives, and look to grow, mature, and evolve.
I challenge you to stop thinking of yourself as better just because you go to church every Sunday, dressed in your overpriced fineries to show off to the congregation, when you step over the homeless on Monday without so much as an ounce of compassion or love in your heart for those who need a helping hand. We must stop trying to get over on the system, trying to figure out the easy way to get something for nothing, and rather make the choice to have integrity, to do what’s right for the community, not just yourself. It’s time now to consider the ramifications and consequences of our actions and stop living for the moment or the almighty dollar. If we consider the feelings of others, if everyone considers the feelings of others, we can transform ourselves from a selfish, insensitive, immature community to a compassionate, giving, enlightened family. Find a reason to see the good in someone, to reach out to another because you connect on a deeper level, not just because you think they have something to offer you, or because you want to feel insecure and petty jealousy.
Speak truth to power. Hold your tongue when you feel the urge, the driving and compulsive need to lie, and utter only those words that are true. Embrace honesty with your entire being and reprogram your brain from your conditioning that tells you to create stories and deceptions that make you feel better about yourself and learn to be honest and truthful with yourself so that you might be able to be honest and truthful with others.
We must accept our greatness, our royalty, and our divinity with humility, grace, and modesty. Would a Queen exchange her body for a car payment or money to get a new pair of shoes? Would a King create a prince or princess only to leave them unprotected and un-nurtured? Would a true manifestation of the Divine be more concerned with a car, clothes, or plasma TV than in helping those less fortunate?
Ask yourself, are you living a life of excellence or do you merely exist? Are you striving to become a better person every day? Are you actually trying to become a better person: not richer, not more attractive, not get more stuff, not sleep with more women, not use more men, not cheat the system, not beat the man. Are you striving to dispel the myths and combat the stereotypes? Are you daily striving to learn more, to push yourself further, to excel in all you do?
Pick up a book, go back to college, take a night class, use the Internet to learn out our history instead of just wasting your life away.
Copyright 2008 AfroerotiK All Rights Reserved
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Healthy Black Sexuality Part 2
Black Enterprise Magazine approached me, approached ME, about doing an article on my work as a Black female entrepreneur. I was excited as I was about to get the national exposure I have so long been seeking to combat that wretched Zane and her horribly offensive and degrading crap she calls erotica. Finally, I was going to get a national platform to talk about healthy Black sexuality. They told me that I would be getting a list of interview questions in an email and that I was to fill them out and send them back. I waited for that email, and waited, and waited. Finally, I contacted the young lady again and I told her that I hadn't received the interview questions and that I was anxious to get them. She then told me that Black Enterprise readers weren't interested in "my topic" and that they had a much more conservative readership. At which point I asked her if Black Enterprise readers had sex and she promptly hung up on me.
There is a knee jerk reaction in the Black middle class community that kicks in every time there is mention of sex. We can't even have academic discussions of sex without someone deeming that "those sorts of conversations aren't appropriate for this forum." The more we compartmentalize our sex, the more we allow our sexuality to be defined as dirty. Sure, not every conversation is appropriate for every venue but not every one is inappropriate either. The very same people who are sooooo quick to try to silence me at the mere mention of the word erotic are the very same people masturbating to images of pornography that degrade, demean, and objectify us as a people because they refuse to allow any other avenue of sexual expression to be acceptable.
People ask me all the time why I started writing erotica. My response is and has always been, that I am a single, highly-educated, African-centered, Black woman who is not aroused by dogs, thugs, pimps, drug dealers, basketball players, or rappers and I'm not a ghetto hoochie, ghetto whore, nor am I a ghetto big booty freak. Where do I turn for sexual arousal? I started writing erotica because there was nothing that spoke to me. I started writing erotica because I don't find interracial images of black men fucking white women to be arousing and I'm not represented by Black women with weaves, fake nails, and stripper shoes who have no clue what it is to be sensual, only sexual. I'm a 42 year old woman who hasn't been in a relationship in so long that it boggles the mind and I'm tired of men approaching me and thinking that just because I have a big booty and they have a big SUV, that I'm going to have sex with them. That's why I started writing erotica. I wanted to have something that spoke to men, that represented the types of relationships that I was looking for, that get me wet, that allowed me to masturbate to something that represented my view of Black life. I can't be the only woman, the only Black person, who wants or needs to find a sexual outlet that isn't sanitized and sterile but that isn't degrading and cliche either.
There is always this "what you are doing is corrupting children" backlash that I get. I had sex when I was 16 years old. I was far from the first girl of my peers to have sex, in fact, losing one's virginity at around that age was pretty average among my very middle class, suburban peers. That was LONG before BET made Black women out to be freaks, bitches, and ho's. That was long before Zane's books, portraying Black women as nymphomaniac adulterous gold digging, superficial whores, were passed around like a virus. That was LONG before children had access to the internet where every vile, disgusting, perverse sexual act is available to view for free with the click of a mouse. To assert that children, young teens, are going to be warped by my discussions of sexuality is laughable. I'm the only voice that is speaking out and saying that sex should be about love, intimacy, openness, communication, freedom, and responsibility. If anything, young teens need to be exposed to my brand of erotica in order to counter the negative images they see at every turn and to combat the oblivious parents who think that if they don't talk about sex, that their children will somehow escape being exposed to it.
Of course, there's always the, "Blacks aren't the only one's who are victims of the same behavior" argument. My concern is not other communities. My concern is the fact that 7 out of 10 Black children are being born out of wedlock. My concern is that a Black woman in her mid 30s is more likely to be struck by lightning than to get married. My concern is that African Americans are dying of AIDS at a disproportionate rate than any other race. So while other races, creeds, and whathaveyou may very well be steeped in sexual dysfunction, it is affecting US more detrimentally. There are scores of Black men who are impregnating white women to feed the sexual fetish of white couples to have their wives "bred black." There are scores of Black men going into white couples bedrooms every night of the week to feed white couple's racist Nigger Buck Mandingo fantasies. There are young Black women who have never had sex unless it involves some sort of exchange of money or services. Those things are the perils that will destroy our race if we continue to censor our conversations about sex and let some absurd religious/pious sanctimony dictate that sex can't be discussed.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Sunday, February 18, 2007
God Doesn't Have a Dick
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
I AM my hair
The hair issue is unique to Black women because we are the only race of women who was kidnapped from our homeland and enslaved by a different race of people who used our color and our physical features to ridicule. Slavery in Africa wasn't based on race. It's impossible to denigrate someone for their nose, their lips, for their hair, if they have the exact same features as you do. White people used their diseased sense of superiority to tell enslaved Africans that everything about them was ugly. There is no other race of women who has had to endure such psychological torture.
Black hair care is a multi billion dollar business. I've always said that if white people wanted to effectively disable the black community, all they would have to do is stockpile all the relaxers, straightening combs, fake hair, etc. Within six weeks, Black women would be selling their souls and selling out the race for their straight hair fix.
Think about who we consider beautiful. Beyonce has a blonde weave. Every time I see her on a magazine cover, I say, "Who is that white woman?" We don't love our Black skin, we don't love our thick full lips, we don't love our wide noses, and we sure as hell don't love our natural nappy hair. That's fucked up we don’t' see ourselves as beautiful. Is there any wonder why the state of Black relationships is so poor? We have Black men trying to get women who look as white as possible and Black women denying that changing their hair to look white has anything to do with jumping through hoops to distance themselves from their natural blackness.
If Black women woke up tomorrow, and they all said, "No more chemicals," I love myself the way God intended me to be, white people would be terrified. They would be terrified that we don't aspire to be look like them anymore. They would be terrified that we are defining our own standards of beauty. They would try to enslave us again, they would lose their fucking minds. They wouldn't be able to deal with an empowered people that didn't think the world revolved around them. They need to feel superior and they do as long as we are frying our natural hair, trying to mimic them. That gives them their power. If we were to stand up in mass and say, "I don't think long blonde hair and blue eyes are attractive, I think that big thick lips and wide noses and nappy hair is gorgeous white people would start a war against us. (Don't worry. Black people can't even think like that we've been so brainwashed but it's a nice thought)
I've heard a many a brotha tell me that he refused to have his daughter get her hair cut. Little black girls don't have a chance if their mothers and grandmothers are telling us how nappy and unruly our natural hair is and our fathers (absentee most of the time) are telling us we are only lovable if we have long hair. Is there any wonder we are fucked up? (Damn, I just saw a commercial for the All Star Game and there was a shot of Beyonce and for a split second, I said, "Who is that white woman?") Black men HATE nappy hair more than Black women. That's why they go after the Latina, White, Asian woman. Those women will give them children with "good hair" and light skin. Let's not be naive. Black women have to have straight hair or they are afraid Black men will never look at them. Add to the fact that slavery told us to be submissive to our men and you have women terrified to show their blackness.
The fear of being seen as gay is sooooooo pervasive in Black women. They might not mind being seen as bisexual but they sure as hell don't want to be seen as masculine. And everyone knows that short hair means you are a butch, right? Once again, we are allowing other people to define us. I tell little children who ask me why I don't have any hair that there are a beautiful people in Kenya that all wear their hair like mine and that short hair is a sign of beauty. They look at me like I'm crazy and their mothers usually tell them that I'm gay when they think I can't hear.
I can’t support India Irie and that song. She’s got women with weaved-out, blond, straight hair running around saying, “I am not my hair.” You know what? I AM my hair. I am my naps. I am my African wooly hair. I am every African woman who was beaten and told that she had to cover her hair or lose her life. I AM every slave woman who loved her nappy hair and who had to see white women and mulatto slaves get preferential treatment for having straight hair. I will NEVER as long as I live let straight hair define my beauty.
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Be careful who you idolize
Last year, during the Katrina horror, when Kanye West said that George Bush didn’t like Black people, the number of Black people who put him on a pedestal was off the charts. I stood as the lone person who refused to give him any accolades. First, it doesn’t take any genius to figure out that Bush doesn’t like Black people. He stated the obvious, big shit. Second, his popular Golddigger was out at the same time, reinforcing to all of America that poor black men are in fact niggers. In his Katrina benefit song, he called the people of New Orleans niggers. What the fuck sort of message is that sending to white people who you want to have compassion for those victims of racism? You get no props if you are promoting Black women as gold diggers and you get points taken away if you are using the N word in a song and urging white people to sing along at your concerts. Kanye West is far from a scholar or an activist, he’s not even remotely articulate and yet Black people lifted him up as some sort of new school voice of the oppressed hero. I got all sorts of grief when I challenged people to think seriously about whom they gave praises to and of course I was attacked and people defended him by saying, “He’s not calling ALL Black women golddiggers . . . The N word has changed, it means something positive now.” When you start making excuses for your make shift idols right off the bat, that’s a clear indication that they don’t have what it takes to be idols in the first damn place.
Now, we have Mr. West, saying in Essence magazine, that the only attractive women are mixed and he refers to biracial and light skinned women as mutts. Nice. While I’m sure he speaks for a great many Black men, and his sentiments reflect a reality that we don’t want to discuss, Mr. West, and his color struck fans are nothing more than little nigger slaves on the plantation, repeating what the massa told them to believe. Biracial people are not more attractive than dark skinned people. We have been SOCIALIZED to believe that biracial and light skinned people are more attractive because the slave master gave them the stamp of approval, declared them to have more value.
“Well, I can’t help what I’m attracted to and I’m attracted to light skinned women, it’s not my fault.” “You’re just jealous, you’re just hating because you aren’t light.” Those are the number one uninformed, ridiculous statements I hear from men in response to any discussion that stems from the glorification of light skinned women. You can’t help what features you are attracted to in a person but your preferences are shaped by the messages that you were given. Your grandmother told you how pretty that little light skin girl was, you saw how people ranted and raved over the little girl with “good hair,” you sat around with all the little boys in the neighbor hood and looked at pictures of porno mags with white women in them, it stands to reason that you would grow up and be attracted to women with white or damn near white features. Acknowledgment of that fact is the first step towards correcting your misperceptions. But do Black men really find dark skinned women attractive? No.
Black women are ugly. Wide noses are ugly, big lips are ugly, dark skin is ugly. Isn’t that what massa told us? Did African men see African women as ugly prior to our enslavement? No, of course not. It’s only after we were told by the slave master that mulattos and octoroons were the prettiest that we started to believe that. It’s then that we hated the features that made us beautiful. Kanye West and all those who think like him, and there are many, are convinced that light skinned women are the most attractive women and there’s nothing anyone can say to convince them otherwise because they believe that Black is ugly. They run off to Brazil to find the perfect mixed mutt, they use women like toys who are dark because they wouldn’t be seen in public with them.
And Black women are falling right in line with these dysfunctional men. Light skinned women believe that they have more value because they are light. They voluntarily identify themselves as redboned and yellow, as if that’s a benefit. Dark skinned women try to compensate for not being light by proving how sexual they are, how big their asses are, how willing they are to accept any ole trifiling behavior Black men dish out in an effort to show how supportive Black women can be. We raise our daughters to believe the diseased mindsets of the slave. Ninety seven percent of all media shows Black men with lighter skinned women. And then we act shocked when Mr. West calls light skinned women mutts and wonder how he could have said something so crass.
What Mr. West has done is articulate his self hatred. He hates women with features like his own. Until we can rid ourselves of this diseased perspective as a people, until we can recognize how detrimental it is to continue with the beliefs of the slave master, we will be forever enslaved. Kanye West is not worthy to be praised, he’s not even worthy of celebrity. He’s a minstrel bucking and dancing for Mr. Charlie who happens to have a very public platform. Unfortunately what comes out of his mouth is ignorant. It’s a sad commentary on a society that lifts up the dysfunctional as some sort of spokesperson and everything that comes out of his mouth is diseased. Maybe one day, Black America will celebrate someone who actually has something intelligent to say out of his mouth.
Saturday, April 15, 2006
Shit ain't Changed
Name one other word, in the English language or any other, that started out with a negative meaning and was changed to mean something positive. Name one. Black people used the word after slavery to refer to each other because that is all they knew to refer to themselves as. At no point in history did the meaning of the word change. The only thing that has changed is that you can now turn on the radio and here the word. White record execs are the masterminds behind the mainstreaming of the word, not some underground movement by Black people to change the connotation of the word. Do not fool yourself into thinking that we as a people made some sort on conscious decision to take the negativity out of the word. The word is now and will always be – NEGATIVE. I missed that meeting when we as a people decided to turn the word into a positive word with lots of love behind it. Who was in attendance at that meeting? Jay-Z, Ludacris , oh no, I guess it was Diddy and Snoop? I guess Dr. King wasn‘t at the meeting. Certainly, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, all the slain civil rights leaders of our history weren‘t there either.
I want to vote again. THE WORD NIGGER IS A VILE AND DISGUSTING WORD. Just because we use it commonly, does not mean that it is now positive. We need not even go back to slavery to find the abhorrent use of the word. My mother was imprisoned for demonstrating in the sixties. She was spit upon until her dress was ripping with spit. Read that again, dripping with spit. She risked her life so that we would not be called NIGGER and now it is on every song on the radio. My grandfather was a civil rights leader, he affected the lives of thousands. I have never heard him, to this very day, use the word when referring to another black person. NEVER! But I guess because Kanye does, than it is a term of affection. Right!
I find it very hard to believe that as creative as we are, that we can't find one other word to use that means brother. We have to defend the word that our ancestors were called when they hung from trees, their flesh ripped from their bodies with the whip.