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. 

AfroerotiK is . . .

I welcome critiques because it makes me hone my skills and it makes me a better artist.  That’s what I am, an artist.  I use words as my canvas to paint pictures of people of African descent as whole, emotionally-mature, sexually-evolved, sentient, complex human beings.  I have gotten quite a bit of critique that is unwarranted and I’m here to dismantle the misperceptions.  Thank you for the opportunity for me to define again what AfroerotiK is, its purpose, goals, objectives, and mission. 

AfroerotiK was created to show people of African descent in a healthy, erotic, mature sexual light.  We are a beautiful people but our sexual and emotional maturity is painfully stagnated.  We are wallowing in dysfunction and quite content with it.  We are using sex, we are using other human beings to fulfill our lusts without regard to the consequences in our lives, the feelings of our partners, or even our heirs we are creating without planning.  We are ashamed of our sex, living in denial of our sexuality and going behind closed doors driven to act out in ways that are detrimental to our identities not only as human beings but as descendent of one of the worst crimes against humanity.  Sex is wonderful, fun, exciting, and pleasurable.  We should not be ashamed of our sexuality, we should not hold on to Victorian and tyrannical rules that tell us that our sexuality is bad NOR should we be thinking that we can fuck anyone and everyone without repercussions.  Cheating is immature.  Manipulating and lying to people for sex is evil.  Sex in exchange for money devalues women as a whole and desensitizes the men who pay for it to not respect the humanity of the women they pay for.  (Please note I didn’t say sex that workers were bad people.)  HIV, the virus that causes AIDS is deadly and having a child with a person you barely know, or having to choose to terminate an unwanted pregnancy are things sexually mature individuals shouldn’t have to do because they have should have already communicated the essentials of STD status, protection, and birth control and emotional requirements long before hitting the sheets. 

AfroerotiK was created to show ALL people of African descent in a healthy light.  That does not just include heterosexual people, but includes the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered communities (I’m painfully aware that I am lacking in images of the trans community.  I am working to rectify that soon so that trans women can see themselves as loved, appreciated, and sensual.  I will make a sincere effort to show trans men of African descent in a positive, healthy, erotic light as well one day but my priority is trans women because they are sooooooooooo objectified by society and the adult industry overall.)  It also includes people of African descent who choose to date across color lines because it is my very strong belief that people who choose to date interracially should have an outlet that allows them to love their Blackness and their partner without having to feel shamed.  What AfroerotiK is not about is white people, validating them, reinforcing their racist beliefs.  If you read an interracial AfroerotiK story, you can be assured that the Black characters are not toys for the white person to play with but they are intelligent, informed, autonomous and enlightened.  And while not every interracial story is about domination, many are about love, you can bet your bottom dollar that I’m going to unapologetically show white people’s racism for what it is in every interracial tale I tell.  I created AfroerotiK to show women with dark skin, nappy hair, and fuller figures as beautiful and sensual and erotic as well.  In the adult arena, larger women are most often not shown artistically and erotically but merely as “meatier” objects of lust.  I want to show larger women not as a fetish but as divinely coveted human beings.  I have made concerted efforts to make sure that light skinned women are not exalted in AfroerotiK as more beautiful and they do not get special recognition as most coveted.  I have images of light skinned women but they are not paired with darker men to reinforce the colorism that plagues our community.  AfroerotiK is not only for people 35 and under.  AfroerotiK covers all people of African descent under the umbrella of acceptance and eroticism. 

AfroerotiK does not demonize safe, sane, consensual acts of intimacy and asserts that while not all sexual behavior is psychologically healthy, there is a whole lot that falls under the auspices of healthy sexuality that is dismissed by the African American community that we should be embracing.  Anal is not a sin, rimming is not yucky, BDSM isn’t freaky, and male anal arousal does NOT indicate a man’s sexual orientation.  I could go on and on and on.  Our sexual menus must be expanded past oral and vaginal sex as the only acceptable forms of sex and we can’t blindly say that as long as two people enjoy it, that there’s nothing wrong with it.  I’m not the sex police and I’m not going to tell anyone what is bad or wrong but I will say that the systematic abuse, degradation, and objectification of Black women is unquestionably unhealthy. I have written about almost every sexual act known to man and shown Black people as empowered in each instance.  I will not write about rape and I will not use negative or derogatory words to describe Black women.  I will not use the word nigger or any phonetic spelling thereof (other than an academic discussion to highlight the impact of the word, not to justify or rationalize its use) in any of my work because it’s offensive and not at all acceptable or erotic.  I do give space for Black women and men to be submissive and explore their dominant and submissive sides but it is not based on humiliation and degradation but rather intimacy and sharing, respect and pleasure.  I’m principled with my shit.   I will not demonize black bisexual or gay men while touting Black bisexual women as sexy.  That is inherently flawed and heterosexism is as problematic as the racism I fight against on a daily basis.  While I can’t say that every sexual act is healthy, because that simply isn’t true, I can work to make people not so ashamed of their sexuality that they are driven to act out in unhealthy ways behind closed doors because they are so at odds and conflict with their own desires. 

AfroerotiK works to address the dysfunction in our community and provide a model that is healthy.  Decidedly feminist, I do not male bash, I show Black men the error of their ways, shaped by a society that allows them to remain emotionally immature and I try my best to provide them with a way to view their sexuality and their identity in the world that is infinitely healthier than what is being perpetuated now.  I have never said, “Black men ain’t shit, they are all dogs.”  That is male bashing.  I will point out how Black men self-sabotage their relationships and their lives with behaviors reinforced in a society that raises emotionally immature black boys to never truly become men.  Conversely, I do not give women a pass simply because they share the same chromosomal makeup as I do.  I will call out unhealthy behaviors regardless of gender so that we might heal from the constant barrage of unhealthy messages and brainwashing we have been subjected to for centuries.  Our sexuality is not in a vacuum so it is affected by politics and current events and our perception by the majority and the media.  I can’t try to effectively bring about social change without addressing those issues and our role in a society that hates us and our heritage, identity, and culture because we are the descendants of those who were deemed inferior. 

I do not create porn and I take serious issue with the people who call my images thusly.  I create erotica.  Erotica is art or literature created to arouse the senses.  Porn is images created to arouse one’s genitals.  There are those who pretend to be sexually conservative who malign my work as porn because anything that isn’t G rated is too sexual for them.  Then, on the other side of the spectrum are those who can’t differentiate between my art and the proverbial Big Booty Bitches genre that is Black porn.  AfroerotiK creates art.  Every image is about intimacy, connection, emotion, about the lust one feels with a person they are connected with.  It’s not about sex with the lights out in the missionary position nor is it shots of fallopian tubes and meat sticks.  There are some images that are more explicit than others but there I have never, not once, taken a pornographic image.  The lighting, the composition, the models everything has been meticulously crafted to look at if you are peeking in a room with a couple in the throes of intense passion.  I don’t just hire models to fuck and click pictures while they are doing it.  I painstakingly create erotic images to show Black people that we can be erotic and sensual and own it without shame. 

Lots of people take offense with me, my work, and my mission for some reason.  Fine.  There’s tons of content on the net that will fill your desires.  As long as I have breath in my lungs, I will FIGHT for my people, to remove the chains of complacency and misogyny and slave mentality that plague us.  That rubs a lot of people the wrong way and that’s is truly their prerogative.  There are others out there, others like me, who want to find some sort of balance.  We want to be sexual without absurd limits, we want to explore and expand our sexual repertoires, and we want to be more comfortable in our own sexual identities without having to accept that sleeping with anyone and everyone is some sign of empowerment.  The rampant objectification of Black women isn’t fine.  The perpetuation of the hyper-masculine male as the ideal is not fine either.  The compartmentalizing of our sex and the public shaming and feigned indignation of anything even remotely mature let alone sexual is equally as unhealthy as the people who are lying and cheating and sleeping with anyone who will let them just to get a nut.  Not every encounter has to be with someone you love but it should be with someone with whom you are open, honest, and connected to. 

Most importantly, AfroerotiK is about forming relationships.  Those relationships can be poly or open or monogamous or some self-determined definition that is personal specifically to you but it’s about connection and love and intimacy and all that stuff that makes sex amazing.  The strength of our race depends on our ability to communicate effectively, to apologize when we are wrong, to own up to our mistakes, and to WORK to form bonds that are not casual.  Relationships take effort and work and commitment.  They require people to put aside their own selfish needs and desires and compromise.  That takes emotional maturity.  So many people want to ridicule and disparage me for saying that sex should be about relationships and love because they don’t know what love is, they can’t understand the concept but sex with someone you love, who loves you, is the best fucking you’ll ever get.  It’s that space where you feel accepted, where you don’t have to hide who you are, where you are free to be yourself and know that you are appreciated and to have an intense connection where you wake the neighbors and fuck the sheets off the bed.  Because we are so jaded as a community, because we have never seen love nor do we understand it, respect it, or covet it, we shun anyone who mentions love and commitment and relationships as being oppressive or old-fashioned because we have never had that feeling of safety and security that comes after the mind blowing orgasm where you know that who you are as a person is valued and cherished.  I am not saying that casual sex is bad.  I’m saying that sex with a person with whom you’ve nurtured a very intimate bond is amazing.  Conversely, I’m not saying that the only valid sex is married sex.  I’m saying that until we can be vulnerable and connected to another human being so much that their very presence is arousing to us, that their feelings are more important to us than just the nut we are going to get, we are missing out on what makes sex mind-blowing. 

Detractors, I may have many.  But, I am fighting to restore a sexuality to us as a people that is healthy and mature and I will not be deterred. 

Sincerely,

Scottie Lowe

Abuse

Hear  me clearly when I say that I do not condone, endorse, defend, nor can I justify the actions of Ray Rice or the dude who beat his child with the switch.  I CAN and do understand why they behaved the way they did; I understand how Black men across the country are filled with rage, unable to process their emotions, and developmentally stunted so much so that the only thing they know is to perpetuate the violence that was inflicted upon them.  If there had ever been any significant study done on the effects of slavery in this nation, a slavery that is different than any other crime against humanity in the history of the world, there would have been investigation into the repeated and persistent torture and abuse that slaves suffered and how it affected them.  Because white people, and let’s put the blame squarely where it belongs here, again, because white people are intent on denying, ignoring, and negating the impact of slavery on the mentality and psychology of contemporary African Americans, the practices learned and handed down from generation to generation, the practices we learned at the end of the white man’s whip, those practices include beating, whipping, spanking, and punching to control people.  Black men are particularly affected because they are socialized and raised to be emotionally immature.  They are not given an outlet to express their emotions.  They are raised and socialized to be super macho, super manly, super emotionally retarded.  They don’t know how to even identify their emotions, let alone express them in a healthy way.  There are millions of Ray Rice’s and millions upon millions of men exactly like the other dude. 

Human beings, more specifically the human brain, has a need to justify and rationalize that its experiences, the factors that contributed to the influences that shaped them and BELIEIVE that were right.  It’s the mind’s defense mechanism.  It works to make people feel safe, to rationalize and soothe their feelings of insecurity and fear of judgment.  Slaves were beaten, BRUTALLY beaten, abused, and tortured for white people’s perverse pleasure, entertainment, and ego.  Slaves learned that abuse is the way to control people.  They passed those messages down generation from generation.  They beat their children because that’s all they had to control.  They beat their children because that’s all they knew how to do. 

My grandfather beat my mother and my uncle the way white slave masters beat slaves, with the same force and brutality.  He didn’t do it because he was a mean person, he was a very gentle soul.  He beat them brutally, BRUTALLY because he believed that was the way to make his children behave, conform, and stay in line like mindless slaves.  He was brutally beaten as a child.  He never thought that it was wrong or bad because his father was brutally beaten by his father, who was born a slave.  My mother beat me.  Daily.  She beat me when things went wrong at work.  She beat me when she was frustrated with the married men in her life.  She beat me to beat my individuality and uniqueness out of me, to make me be just like me.  She denies it now.  She claims she never even spanked me.  She swears she was a perfect mother.  Her mind is in conflict because some part of her understands that it’s wrong to beat your child that severely but there is also a part of her that tells her that what she did was right because it was done to her. 

My uncle probably got the most severe beatings from my grandfather.  He is an alcoholic now with EXTREME rage and anger boiled up in him.  He has severely beaten and abused all the women in his life.  He beat and abused his sons repeatedly.  His sons have perpetuated the same violence in their lives.  My uncle has been dangerously quiet about Ray Rice and the other dude because he is guilty of the things they did and worse.  It has to be causing emotional conflict.  He knows that he should say that what they did was terrible and wrong but he knows in his heart that he has done far worse than what they did.  What we do to Black boys by telling them not to cry, by telling them to be a man, by telling them that they can’t show emotion or they will be sissies is we create the inner rage and frustration that makes Black men rationalize and justify that punching a woman is okay because they desperately want to control something in their lives.  They want to be this one-dimensional and stereotypical “head of the household” and king of the castle that society tells them that they should be by virtue of their penis but they feel frustration and they lash out at the things that they are told that they should be able to control, the women and children in their lives.  It’s a pathology born in slavery. 

I cannot, will not, and do not condone what these men have done but I understand how their behaviors have evolved.  I get how Black men who are abusers are among their friends saying, “Yeah, I would never hit a woman, I would never hit my child like that,” when in fact they’ve done that and worse.  I understand how Black men feel that punching, beating, and whipping is all they have in their arsenal to control the rage that they feel.  I totally understand how Black mothers who feel angry, alone, frustrated, and who need to justify the abuse inflicted upon them repeat the patterns. 

Let us pray that the cycle can be broken.  Let us pray that there is within each and every descendant of slaves a tiny spirit of liberation that whispers that abuse and violence is wrong and it must end.  Beating your children doesn’t keep them out of jail, LOVE does that.  Nurturing does that.  Discipline does that but discipline doesn’t have to mean abuse.  What we suffered, we being you, me, and the collective Black race, was abuse.  Rather than saying, “Well, I was raised that way and I turned out fine,” let us now say, “What happened to me was wrong and I will not perpetuate the same thing on my children.  I will break the cycle of abuse.” 

Team Natural: A Vlogumentary