"You Fucking Cunt!"

I absolutely and vehemently believe that the act of deriving pleasure from degrading, slapping, choking, inflicting pain, humiliating, calling someone names, and using sex as a form of power comes from a place of low self-esteem.  It is my unwavering belief that the person who is driven to perform those sorts of acts to someone else does so to boost their own sense of self, not from a place of true power or benign sex play, but the need to objectify and demean someone else comes from a need to feel more empowered, to make themselves feel worthy, to feel superior to someone because there is something inherent in them that feels inferior.  It’s not psychologically healthy to want, need, or get pleasure from making someone else feel worthless or even inflicting pain on someone.  Conversely, it has to be said that the need to be and the act of deriving pleasure from being called names, degraded, humiliated, objectified etc., comes from an unhealthy psychological place as well.  There is something collectively wrong with our society that it creates people who both need to degrade and need to be degraded. 

Queue the entire BDSM community and people on both sides of the equation who are unwilling to look at their behaviors as unhealthy.  They will defend their behaviors as normal and rationalize that there is absolutely nothing wrong with their preferences.  Even average Sue and Sally who get aroused at being called a slut and a whore during sex will claim feminist status for this issue alone and defend her right to be choked and slapped as her right.  And it is her right.  But that doesn’t mean that it comes from a psychologically healthy place.  Western society is set up to reinforce to men who get off on degrading and humiliating women that it’s their right as manly MEN (grunt grunt) to slap women around and pull them by the hair, that it’s the way God with a penis wants things to be.   And men who desire to be subjected to degrading and humiliating behavior sexually are so conflicted that they will never acknowledge publically that is a desire or preference because that will mean that they will be seen as less than a real man.  NO ONE wants to acknowledge or give credence to the notion that there is something unhealthy, dysfunctional, or psychologically damaged about the way they view and experience sex.  No one wants to admit that, Goddess forbid, that there may be something “wrong” with them. 

I don’t think, in fact I KNOW that the fault doesn’t lie in the individual but society in general that doesn’t reinforce, teach, and structure healthy self-esteem into our children.  We, collectively, are doing something tragically and detrimentally wrong in the way we are raising our children.  We are shaming out children about sex and sexuality.  It’s manifesting itself in unhealthy behaviors behind closed doors as adults and the system is set up to keep things just as they are.  Patriarchy is unhealthy.  Corporal punishment is unhealthy.  Whatever is it that we do to raise our children where they can’t grow up to see their inherent worth, beauty, and divinity and say, “No, I don’t find it arousing to be disrespected,” or “No, I don’t need to slap, choke, or degrade someone in order to feel better about myself,” is WRONG. 

Our culture is set up to reinforce that sex is dirty and bad and wrong and shouldn’t be discussed in any way.  The entire system is set up so people refuse to acknowledge that there might be a better, healthier way to have sex and that this whole concept that WHATEVER we do is just fine as long as we don’t have a problem with it.  This puritanical, right-wing, close-minded, oppressive system of shaming people about their sexuality is set up so that even the people who like things that are sexually dysfunctional can pretend to be outraged, offended, and disgusted by even the mere mention of the word sex.  We don’t know how to determine what’s healthy and what’s unhealthy because we can’t even have a conversation about sex in any meaningful way without the slut-shamers, the bible thumping holier-than-thous, and the “I’m fine just the way I am, you can’t tell me,” contingency INSISTING that nothing is wrong with the way we are dealing with, addressing, and looking at our sexuality.  There has to be a better way. 

There IS a way to relate to each other in a healthy, enlightened, erotic, sensual way that doesn’t involve degradation and humiliation.  We can explore sexuality in a myriad of ways, far beyond vanilla, boring, unimaginative sex, that doesn’t involve the objectification of one partner to get our rocks off.   

Copyright 2013 Scottie Lowe

Rethink What You Know

Being Selective:

As sexually liberated as I am, I don’t want to do EVERYTHING with all my partners.  I wouldn’t say that I pick and choose what men I do certain things with but I do not give away my goodies casually.  Not every partner is deserving of everything I have to offer.  Especially if his motivations are not pure or transparent.  My partners and I get tested prior to having sex so it’s not about the higher risk for HIV.  It’s about the fact that it’s something so intense and explosive and thrilling and I don’t want to share that with just anyone.  I want to explore anything and everything with my partner.  I want to experiment and find new and exciting ways to please my partner and I’m always looking to introduce new levels of play with my partners.  I don’t, however, have casual sex, friends with benefits, or fuck buddies so I’m vastly different than most people in that anyone who is invited to share my most sacred space only gets an invitation because he has passed my very rigorous standards.  Were I to have casual sex partners, I would certainly not be motivated to give them my most erotic self; I would limit that to only the partners who had proven themselves to be exceptional. 

Swallowing:

If I’m in a relationship with my partner, I don’t have a problem swallowing my man’s ejaculate.  That being said, unless his diet is vegan and he takes extra precautions to eat well, drink water, drink pineapple juice etc., ejaculate doesn’t taste great.  It’s not the worst thing in the world but it’s certainly doesn’t taste like pussy, that’s for sure.  Most of the men I date at this stage in my life are in their 50s.  They don’t have the recovery time they had when they were in their 20s.  Cumming more than once a night is not very likely for the men I date.  That being said, at this stage in my life, I’d rather save that nut for our intercourse if we have time and energy.  If we’re out and I’m giving him head as a special treat or it’s something I want to do just to please him, I don’t have a problem swallowing at all.  The problem becomes when most men hold a woman’s head to force her to swallow.  I say, if you want me to swallow your nut, you need to be able to show me that you will eat it too.  If it’s disgusting to you, and you want eat your own, then don’t expect me to swallow it.  Most younger men are selfish.  They only think about their pleasure and they will hold a woman’s head to force her to swallow or they will cheat on a woman if she doesn’t swallow in order to appease their ego.  That’s where the problem lies. 

Satisfaction:

I would like to think that women and men will eventually come to understand that when they allow themselves to be emotionally open, honest, and vulnerable with a partner, when they expose their secrets, when they open their hearts and souls to loving and being loved that they will experience greater pleasure than just a maintenance date or a casual fuck.  Satisfaction comes from being able to tell all your sexual secrets to another person and knowing they still love you, want you, crave you.  Satisfaction comes from pouring out your heart and soul to someone and being able to be emotionally nude and go to a place where you don’t have to hide.  Most people assume that satisfaction and pleasure comes from some magic nut that makes you lose your mind.  We are sexually immature when we look at sex that way.  There will always be someone with a bigger dick, a bigger butt, someone more attractive, that’s not where satisfaction lies.  Satisfaction is in the connection and the bond and the unadulterated intimacy you form with your partner.  Once you get that, you won’t want to look for anyone else to satisfy you. 

Individuality:

What every woman wants in sex is different.  It should be based on her own body and turn ons.  I crave creativity, sensuality, eroticism, a willingness to go beyond just a pump and dump.  I want seduction and passion.  I want a slow, simmering building of extended foreplay that leads to mind-blowing sex.  I look for a partner who is committed to being honest.  That turns me on.  Fuck, that makes me explosive!  I’m definitely NOT looking for someone who thinks that blowing my back out is going to make me come back for more or someone who doesn’t care about me as a person.  I look for a man who is expressive.  He needs to be able to talk in bed and more than just saying, “Whose pussy is this?”  He has to tell me what turns him on and why.  He has to tell me what makes him feel good.  He needs to be able to communicate to me in very explicit terms what he is experiencing in the moment. 

Making Love:

Most men think that making love is fucking slow.  That’s not making love, that’s pretending to be tender when you really want to be blowing a woman’s back out.  Making love is being in love with my partner and having mind-blowing sex with him.  It can be fast, slow, it can be vigorous and rough.  If we are in love with each other, it’s making love.    I want to fuck like animals with the person I’m in love with.  That’s making love.  The connection is what makes it making love, not the pace at which the man pounds the woman. 

Inhibitions:

I’m not at all sexually inhibited and I haven’t been since I was in my 20s.  Most of what I had to overcome then was just insecurity about my body.  I was tall and skinny but somehow, I felt that I was fat and out of shape.  I think every woman goes through the counting stage.  You count the number of men you have sex with because you don’t want to hit that number that makes you a slut, whatever that number is for you.  Once I hit my 30s all my minor inhibitions disappeared and I was completely comfortable with my sexuality, what I wanted, what I needed, what I asked for, and how to get it.  Most people, and by that I mean men who want to fuck me and women who want to condescend to me because I’m not promiscuous, think I’m inhibited because I refuse to have casual sex.  I’m not slut shaming women who want to have multiple sex partners at all.  FOR ME, I choose not to share my most sacred space with undeserving me.  That’s not being inhibited, that’s being selective, having standards.  With my partner I’ll do anything and everything that we choose to explore as long as it’s consensual. 

Freaky:

Black people LOVE to throw the term freak around.  Sadly, pathetically, the term is used in place of meaning healthy sexuality.  There is nothing freaky about liking sex, wanting sex, or enjoying sex.  Unfortunately, because Black people are sooooooo incredibly sexually immature, they associate enjoying sex with being freaky. Even Black people who claim to be freaks are sexually conservative.  Most times they don’t like anything other than regular oral/vaginal sex and at times anal.  Being expressive with your partner isn’t freaky, it’s normal.  Exploring different fantasies with your partner isn’t freaky, it’s normal.  Wanting to open up your relationship and be poly isn’t freaky, it still falls within the realm of healthy sexual expression with your partner.  Freaky is wanting to mutilate your genitals for sexual pleasure.  Freaky is being aroused by inanimate objects more than human beings.  There are a whole host of things that are abnormal and extreme that are freaky but Black people are not into any of them for the most part.  As long as we identify ourselves as freaks for liking sex we are sexually stunted and immature.  I am sexually empowered.  I am sexually expressive.  I’m sexually mature.  I’m not a freak for enjoying pleasure.  I’m not a freak for wanting to explore sexuality with my partner.  I’m not a freak for liking more than vanilla sex on a Friday night with the lights out.  There is nothing freaky about my sexuality. 

Horny:

When I’m insatiable, when I feel like I’m about to crawl out of my skin with desire, when I can’t focus on anything but sex, I feel like a laser, everything is centered on the sensations of pleasure.  I crave stimulation.  I need visual stimulation, I need physical stimulation, I need the pleasure that comes from the journey, not the destination.  For me, when I get in that zone, I’m all about the sensations that come from arousal, I don’t really want the nut so much.  I want the pleasure to last as long as possible.  I never feel tense or evil or anything negative.  I feel a certain amount of frustration that I don’t have a partner with me to help me express my sexuality but that’s secondary to the sensations of wanting my nipples played with, wanting to revel in the sensations of my clit being stimulated, in feeling my wetness flow. 

Compartmentalizing

Morality and integrity, really and truly, are figments of my imagination.  They don’t exist.  Everyone has a need to lie, to cheat, everyone has a need to seek out the taboo and the forbidden.  Everyone has a desire, a very much socialized, driving, obsessive imperative, to portray themselves as righteous and without flaw which creates in them a secret drive to behave in ways that are exactly the opposite of what they portray in public.  It creates dysfunction, a mental disconnect.  This need to deny your sexuality in public and pretend to be asexual creates mental illness; it creates people driven by deviance, and it creates a world of liars, cheaters, adulterers who have absolutely no problem condemning and shaming people who get caught doing the exact same behaviors that they possess.  People don’t have a need or drive to do what’s right, we set up people in childhood by teaching them that the names for their privates are bad, we perpetuate the social disorder by calling natural, healthy sexuality “freaky”.  And we display the mental disorder every time we publically shame someone for expressing their sexuality when we have done the same or worse ourselves. 

Are lying and cheating and this compulsive need to behave in ways that are antithetical to what is right, just and good inherent in human beings?  I don’t believe they are.  I think that the social architects, the individuals who DECIDED to convince people that sex and sexuality was bad and wrong engineered this paradigm.  The leaders who set out to control the masses knew on some intrinsic level that once they convinced the world’s population that sex was bad and shameful, that they could control them because the need to have sex in inherent in human beings.  What I don’t think they could have anticipated or predicted is how detrimental it would be to humanity.  I don’t think they could have ever foreseen how perverted and dysfunctional people would become in their need to hide their sexuality. 

The need to deny one’s sexuality, to compartmentalize it and to pretend to be chaste and pure has created pathological liars and people disconnected from reality.   I’ve seen the evidence of this all around me.  I’ve seen it in my mother who had an affair with her current husband for more than a decade, who now, BELIEVES in her heart that she didn’t start dating him until after he was married.  I’ve seen her ridicule and shame other women for the EXACT same things she’s done without even the faintest hint of irnoy.  I’ve seen her alienate and ostracize people from her life who know her secret, not because she consciously is self-aware enough to recognize her behaviors but because she’s so warped and deluded that she needs to pretend she’s saintly and holy and could never do anything that was immoral and her subconscious mind needs to create a world where her reality fits her delusions.  I’ve seen married spouses who cheat and lie get offended when their spouse does the same thing, only difference being they never got caught.  I’ve seen the same people who tell me how offensive and pornographic my website is behave in ways that are exponentially more dysfunctional behind closed doors than anything that could be found on AfroerotiK.  I’ve seen the evidence in my disgusting ex boyfriend who actually believes that his juvenile sexual techniques are so superior that he is able to entice married women to behave in ways that are contrary to their own, supposedly asexual natures.  Only problem is, no one is asexual.  He’s not enticing anyone with his very little dick and his substandard sexual skills.  He’s only boosting his ego by convincing himself that women would never be sexual without his ability to become whoever and whatever his latest conquests want him to be (those skills, I can testify, are exceptional).     I’ve seen the evidence on a daily basis of white men who beg me to do things to them that are so extreme and so deviant yet they walk around and pretend to be the pillars of morality and asexuality in public. 

Discomfort with one’s sexuality creates a mental disconnect, mental illness in fact.  People justify whatever behaviors they have, no matter how unhealthy they are, and then they find a nice little place to hide them away and pretend that they don’t exist.  Look at the Catholic Church.  How much more obvious could it bebthat sexuality is natural and when one shuts off their sexuality, when one denies that their sexuality exists, it manifests itself in pathological behaviors?  It’s the genesis of down low men and women (and TRUST me that there are just as many women lying about their bisexuality as men), it’s the origin of people going out and having unprotected sex without thought for pregnancy or disease.  It’s the reason that my PR agent was convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that the public wasn’t ready to deal with beautiful, tasteful, sensual images on my website when everyone, absolutely everyone is a sexual being and is looking for sexual stimulation.  She couldn’t wrap her head around the concept that everyone was sexual and committed to hiding it.  She would rather believe, like society has masterfully convinced us, that people are asexual, that no one has sexual desires, that sex is shameful and bad and dirty and that I was somehow going against the grain with my bold declaration that sex is beautiful, natural, and that everyone is sexual.  She believes in her head that only a few deviant, fringe people like sex and that everyone else is offended by the mere mention of the word.  And that’s true to a certain extent.  People do pretend to be offended at the mere mention of the word.  They are also the same people who have bookmarks to some of the most degrading sex sites on the net on their computers.  That mental disconnect is how people who cheat on their spouses can write books on how to get a man or how to be a good spouse without any mental conflict.  They have shut off the part of their brain that allows them to have guilt or shame about their actions.  They have been able to compartmentalize so much so that they don’t even recognize their own detrimental behaviors. 

I am comfortable with my sexuality.  I’m not ashamed of my desires.  I don’t have a need or drive to cheat, to lie, to be with anyone’s husband.  I would rather end the relationship with someone if I’m not happy rather than get to a point where I’m motivated to cheat on them.  I don’t have a need to sell my body to the highest bidder.  I don’t think I’m more valuable if a man with money wants me.  I have unparalleled integrity and I’m not driven to go out and have casual, unprotected sex with strangers because I get horny and don’t know how to stop when things get heated.  I have either released or I have had the good fortune to never possess the dysfunction of the masses.    I never really understood how different I was. 

I sort of feel stupid for not recognizing the facts when the evidence was all around me.  You know who figured it out?  Zane, who writes about cheating and immorality and eroticizes it and people eat it up.  You know why?  Because they not only crave seeing characters act out in ways similar to how behave in private, it’s erotic to them, it adds a thrill for them to do things that are just outside of moral.  The more illicit their behavior behind closed doors, the better.  You know who else figured it out long before me and capitalized on it?  Shonda what’s her name.  It’s a turn on for women to feel like a man who shouldn’t want them openly does.  We’re told that when a couple gets married, that the desire to be with anyone else goes away.  So if a man who is married tells us he loves us, no matter how unhealthy, dysfunctional and morally wrong it is, that represents an extra special thrill to us.  It’s a dangerous metaphor.  Women who have been cheated on liking Scandal is equivalent to a woman who has been raped cheering for the rapist on Law & Order SVU.  But, I’m sure even that happens in the privacy of people’s homes because we are so sexually unhealthy as a nation that we don’t have a concept of what healthy sexuality is.  And, the truth of the matter is, we aren’t going to get healthy any time soon.  

Copyright 2013 Scottie Lowe

Seduction

All too often we use words without really knowing the definition of them.  Someone asked a question in my Facebook group that wanted people to share their definitions of what romance and seduction meant.  No one answered.  When I commented about that, what followed were responses that indicated that romance and seduction were foreign concepts to people.  It makes sense, we don’t teach, talk about, or provide a space for discussions of romance or seduction.  We either consume porn in private and in public decry that anything related to sex is taboo or forbidden.  We can’t even have healthy conversations about romance and seduction.  That’s tragic.  I asked a friend of mine what he would do to seduce me and he responded that he would take me to dinner at a jazz club.  That’s not seduction, that’s a date. 

According to the AfroerotiK Guide for Romantic Survival, romance can be defined as doing something special, going above and beyond to show your partner that you care for them, for their feelings, it’s taking the time to express your feelings for them in a way that would make them see how much you value them.  Several examples would be: writing a love poem for your partner and putting it on their car windshield while they are at work without them knowing it, planning a picnic with all their favorite foods and bringing it over on a rainy day, or making a planned public display or declaration of love that conveys that your feelings go beyond affection.  It doesn’t have to involve money.  It is not limited to one gender expressing romance to the other.  Romance is showing your partner that you have put effort into thinking about putting a smile on their face when you aren’t with them. 

Seduction is romance with the intent of stimulating the libido.  When I was in college, my boyfriend planned an erotic scavenger hunt for me.  He purchased wine glasses (which I still own) a night gown (that I kept until it fell apart), and some sexual aids for us to play with.  I spent the day finding all these items and getting more and more aroused as to what was going to happen when we got together.  Seduction is buying the candles, the massage oil, the erotic board game, the blindfold and the handcuff.  It’s not only buying dinner, it’s eating that dinner on the floor and feeding each other and licking and sucking each other’s fingers.  Seduction is running the bubble bath for two and massaging and caressing your partner to get their engine revved up.  Seduction is much more than just extended foreplay.  Seduction is making the bed with satin sheets before your partner comes home and having the Barry White queued up ready to go at the click of a button on the remote.  It’s telling your partner with your actions that you want and need to be intimate with them.  Intimate doesn’t mean it has to be soft and tender and gentle.  It simply means that you want to express your love in a very physical way. 

What romance/seduction is NOT.  It’s not lying to someone or pretending to be what they like in order to get them in bed, that’s manipulation.  It’s not getting along with someone more than others, that’s chemistry.  It’s not going out to the movies and holding hands, that’s affection.  It’s not saying, “I love you,” when you get off the phone or leave for work.  It’s not having extended foreplay or sex for a long time.  It’s not buying flowers on Valentine’s day because it’s expected or buying a card or gift after a fight to say that you’re sorry.