As a sex educator, it’s my responsibility to help people realize the importance of a healthy sexual existence. Neglecting your sexual health can affect you and the people around you in some pretty negative ways.
Although my clientele is about 95 percent Black, it can be difficult to get Black folk to care about their sexual health. My clients are majority Black women, which means the emotional, physical, and community burdens run deep.
There was a point in history when all women were denied access to their bodies and pleasure, but it definitely did not end the same way for all women. I started digging to see if I could find the split.
Most Black people don’t know which country in Africa their ancestors came from. I can’t explain how difficult that is to type.
That means most of our recorded history starts in the most disgusting moral period for this country: American slavery.
How would you cope if your body wasn’t yours? If someone owned you and could violate you whenever they saw fit?
An enslaved woman had no right to her body, or the offspring of her body. She could be raped and beaten in the morning and watch her children sold on the auction block that same afternoon.
Women weren’t the only ones subjected to this forcible violation. Men and children oftentimes shared the same fate from male and female enslavers.
It has been recorded that Black women were frequently punished by the wives and families of enslavers for being “desirable” to the man of the house. Here it begins; her beauty becomes her curse.
It’s the intersectionality of being Black and considered subhuman, but somehow still human enough to penetrate and procreate with, that I will never understand. The mental gymnastics Black women had to endure to survive will never be fully understood.
Imagine watching the child planted inside your womb from your captor being sold at auction in your presence, and you had no say in the matter?
I can’t fathom the shame and disgust these women unjustly directed upon themselves and their bodies in the wake of such torment.
How can I love this body when it isn’t even mine?
We do know that a common coping mechanism for sexual trauma is disassociation. This technique allows you to remove yourself emotionally from the things you can’t control.
An enslaved woman had to learn that sex is something that happens to her, and there isn’t anything she can do about it.
Is it possible to love a child that can be snatched at any moment? As a mother, is it possible to love the spawn of your oppressor?
There wasn’t much of a choice. The child had to be nurtured and cared for until it became a viable source of income for the enslavers.
Black women had to give themselves to the children who were forced on them, even though they would likely be sold.
The only way to survive that kind of pain is to detach from your own body and sexuality. It was a survival skill many women unfortunately passed down to their daughters in an effort to prepare them for what was to come.
The 1960s birthed the “free love” movement, one of the biggest sexual revolutions of America’s time. This social movement was introduced by women like Victoria Woodhull and Emma Goldman in the early 19th century.
American society has always been deeply religious, and free love went against everything this nation stood for.
The movement was based on the foundation that the government had no right to determine how you conducted your private sexual life. Your sexual pleasure was yours and yours alone — a radical concept during a time when wives were considered property.
As the Vietnam War raged, the free love movement merged with the hippies to push love, not war.
The footage from that time is beautiful. Photos of bare-breasted, flower-toting white women twirling in a field of sunflowers and fairy dust seems almost surreal.
But as I comb through the images, I notice a lack of Black faces, particularly Black women.
Where are the chocolate-breasted women with perfectly quaffed Afros in this movement? Does Black women’s sexuality have a place here?
If I was looking for representation of Black women’s sexual freedom, it wasn’t to be found here, in any of these photos.
Women who look like me had a very different movement on their hands.
While some were fighting for their right to love, others were fighting for their right to live.
History has pitted sex against color since the dawn of America. Because of this, Black women experience a unique intersectionality that often leaves us excluded.
When white women sought voting rights in the early 1900s, for example, they needed Black women’s bodies to help reach the goal.
Black women were pivotal in ratifying the 19th Amendment. Thanks to the work of women like Sojourner Truth and Nannie Helen-Burroughs, suffragists were able to secure voting rights for all women.
Despite this, Black women continued to be discriminated against by the white suffragists who used them to get the job done.
They weren’t allowed to attend the women’s conventions and were often made to march separately, or in the rear, during protests.
Still, Black women saw the overall picture and lent their bodies to the cause.
Does the Black woman not have a right to pleasure?
It’s difficult to care about sexual pleasure and “free love” when people are threatening your livelihood, loved ones, and overall existence because of your desire to have basic civil rights.
Although both Black women and men were now legally allowed to vote, Jim Crow laws effectively barred them from doing so.
Black women once again threw their bodies on the front line. This footage is vastly different than that of their white counterparts fighting for free love.
The perfectly quaffed Afros were dripping with mustard and other condiments from white patrons who didn’t want to eat in the same establishment as People of Color.
Black breasts are seen in a shroud of chaos cradling the barrel of a shotgun.
In my research, I started noticing a trend. Mixed deep within each time period is the one thing Black folk were never denied: religion.
Religion is the babbling brook that feeds the torrential river of racism, and no one has suffered more at the hands of religion than Black bodies.
It is so sneaky and diabolical that Black folk read what the Bible said Jesus looked like with their own eyes and still put that picture of white Jesus on every vacation bible school fan they can find.
Even now, the Black church has made it common practice to use their LBGTQIA+ members for their talents, all while reminding them that they will *not* be invited to the great after-party in the sky.
The Black church is also very critical of women and girls. Faith has overpoliced women to the point that not wearing stockings to Sunday service could make you the highlight of Wednesday’s bible study.
A Black girl in a two-piece swimsuit is a “fast tail girl” in the church’s eyes. Most Black girls didn’t grow up wearing two-piece swimsuits for that very reason.
How do you love a body others have taught you to be ashamed of? Who teaches you how to love your body anyway?
The Black church is life in the Black community. It’s the place the enslaved found hope and, ironically, how a lot of Black women helped fuel these social movements.
Their work in the church was imperative to spreading voter education to obtain rights for African Americans and women during every movement.
Even now, Black women continue to lead the way forward. In August 2021, Rep. Cori Bush slept on the steps of the Capitol to protest her House colleagues allowing the eviction moratorium to expire during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Johnetta Elzie was on the ground during the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, furiously challenging police policies even as the people around her began dying in very mysterious ways.
Stacey Abrams took a fresh twist-out to all 152 counties in Georgia and helped get 95 percent of the state’s eligible constituents registered to vote. The efforts of Abrams and her organization placed Georgia among the highest for registered voters in the United States.
In case it still isn’t clear: Black women deserve a damn break!
We’re in a mind-blowing state of sexuality right now. Society is finally starting to grasp the importance of sexual education and the failure of abstinence-only sex ed.
A 2018 poll conducted by Planned Parenthood found that, among its participants, 98 percent of likely voters support sex education in high school.
Any positive changes that occur because of this will be great for future adolescents and adults.
But where do Black bodies go to thrive sexually?
Black women are largely fighting the same battles from 100 years ago. That means, for the most part, Black women are still not centering their bodies or their sexual pleasure.
How do we ensure equity moving forward?
I want Black women to reap the benefits of the revolution this go around. We deserve to enjoy the spoils of another movement for once, without having to throw our bodies on the front line.
Civil rights, slavery, patriarchy, and religion have hardwired Black women’s sexuality to exist only when it’s profitable.
It all leads to the same result: gatekeeping our sexual pleasure by making us hate our bodies when they desired them, and never giving us the chance to heal when they stopped.
There wasn’t a split. There has never been a point in American history that encouraged sexual awareness in Black women.
Our bodies are often oversexualized without ever having access to that power.
I want Black girls to not feel ashamed when their legs are showing. I want Black women’s sexuality welcomed into spaces like BDSM dungeons, just like that of their white counterparts.
We need the space to examine our own sexuality, discover what we like, fumble through sh*t that we don’t, and understand our own body and its proximity to pleasure, without the pressure of society.
This has been kept from us for far too long.
Sexual health is just as important as physical, mental, and emotional health. It’s more than just knowing your STI status.
Do you have a healthy sexual existence?
You deserve to enjoy sexual freedom at no moral cost. Find you a field of flowers, take off your bra and your stockings, and twirl, sis. You deserve.
There’s a whole kinky Black world out there. Here are some of my favorite books that may help spark your sexual revolution:
- If you’ve had it pretty rough and don’t think others can relate, pick up “Longing to Tell: Black Women Talk About Sexuality and Intimacy” by Tricia Rose.
- If you want to better understand the unique intersectionality Black women face, check out “This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color” by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa.
- In “AfroYoni: An Exalted Solitary Twerk,” Candace Liger invites you on her journey of discovering eroticism through celibacy. Yeah, you read that right.
- I’m not even going to lie, “The Color of Kink: Black Women, BDSM, and Pornography” by Ariane Cruz is pretty dense. But it’s AMAZING! It’s one of the best Black kink reference books to own!
If you want more individual guidance to help get you or your organization out of a rut, I recommend reaching out to Advantage Public Institute (API).
API is run by Tamika J. Carter, a licensed alcohol, drug, and mental health counselor. Her passion for supporting women and girls of color has been the driving force throughout her 20-year career.
API services multiples states, so please, don’t be afraid to reach out.
Catasha Gordon is a certified sexuality educator from Spencer, Oklahoma. She’s the owner and founder of Expression Over Repression, a company built around sexual expression and knowledge. You can typically find her creating sex education materials or building some kinky hardware in a fresh set of coffin nails. She enjoys catfish (tail on), gardening, eating off her husband’s plate, and Beyoncé. Follow her everywhere.