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. 

Empowerment and Respectability

In college classrooms all over the country, Black young women are being taught that anything and everything that a woman does is empowering.  They are being taught that sex work, promiscuity, vulgarity, and choosing to be degraded is a Black woman’s agency.  They are being taught that respectability is a dirty word, meant to oppress women and people of color, and make them conform to some sort of 1950s, Caucasian model of behavior.  Feminism in college classrooms all across this nation has come to mean conforming to sexist, oppressive, misogynist standards of attractiveness to men. 

I know EXACTLY the moment this new scholarship began.  I witnessed its birth.  More than a decade ago, Bill Cosby spoke out publicly saying that Black people shouldn’t buy $200 pairs of sneakers for their children when they don’t have a computer and that they shouldn’t name their children ghetto names.  He was quite detailed and went on and on about how Black people have “dropped the ball.”  White people ate it up.  White people heard their role model dissing the behaviors they found offensive from Black people and they rallied around him like he was the Moses himself delivering the Black commandments.  

The response from the Black masses, way back then before our collective consciousness became anti-intellectual and ghetto, fell in one of three camps.  The first were the “Yeah, Bill, you tell them! Those niggers! I’m not like them,” camp.  They suffer from what I call the AIC or the Assimilated Inferiority Complex.  They think whites are superior and they want to be liked, seen as good as, and respected by whites.  They needed to distance themselves from “those” Black people so they ridiculed the patterns and behaviors that habitually show up in impoverished black communities.  It should be noted, they were the loudest and most populated camp. 

The second camp was the, “Don’t air our dirty laundry in front of white people,” camp.  They were willing to admit that the things that Bill Cosby was talking about had some validity but that he couldn’t talk about it in front of white people, he could only discuss it in private in front of other Black people so a whole lot of hang-ringing, finger-pointing, and accomplishing-nothing could be done.    Apparently, it’s not okay to talk about our dysfunction in front of whites but it seems to be a greater sin to actually work to heal the collective ills that plague our society. 

The third camp roasted marshmallows and sang campfire songs about how the ghetto was some sort of Black cultural manifestation of creativity and survival that was a bastion of all things good and righteous.  It is this third camp that created this backlash against respectability.    Respectability was associated with whiteness and therefore ipso facto respectability became bad.  This group, this small faction decided that any behavior Black people collectively exhibit was deemed inherent to our blackness and thus it was all good.  Buying your three year old $200 sneakers was fine because if white people could do it, so can we. 

All three camps are misguided and wrong.  The “I’m not a nigger but those other Blacks are,” the “We might have problems but let’s not talk about them in front of white people,” and the, “Everything Black people do is justified no matter how dysfunctional it is,” philosophies are all flawed.  Perhaps the most detrimental is the third camp who feels that anything and everything that Black people do is somehow a cultural inheritance.    We don’t have to speak well because speaking well means you are trying to be white.  Noooooo, slaughtering the English language is some sort of adaptation of Gullah dialect that is passed down blah, blah, blah.  In reality, our inarticulation is because whites have denied us equal education.  There is nothing inherently Black or African about not using verbs other than Blacks have been historically denied education to keep us stupid.  But to the misguided masses, they want to believe that not being able to use the English language makes you more Black.  Only to the deluded does being intelligent, being an academic mean you are denying your Blackness, as if intellect is only the domain of whites. 

Education does not make you white.  Speaking correct English does not make you white.  More importantly, not everything that you do is empowering.  Today’s youth has no concept of what the concept of empowerment means.  To them, manipulating people is empowering.  To them, lying, cheating, stealing and using people is empowering.  Dear God, anything that gets you money is supposedly empowering, even if you must sell your soul, your humanity, your dignity and your body to get it.  If men use women, that’s supposedly empowering as long as women co-sign it.    

Then, there is poor old me.  I’m the fourth camp.  I belong to the “Yes, there are collective dysfunctional behaviors in the Black community but we have them because we have been historically, systematically, and institutionally disenfranchised for centuries, NOT because we are inherently inferior.”  I am member of the, “I’m not afraid to call out our dysfunctional behaviors because I have solutions and alternatives to the current slave mentality that continues to keep us oppressed.”  And I am the leader of the,  “Education, articulation, and respectability are NOT the domain of white people and striving for excellence is not to be as good as white people, it’s to be the absolute best you can be as a human being of African descent,” camp.    Being respectable is not a bad thing, it’s not inherent to white people.  Empowerment means gaining power, autonomy, and integrity through your actions.