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.
