TheAfrican-centered community is steeped in sexual dysfunction. For all of our efforts to rid ourselves of European cultural, social, and spiritual norms, we have denied our sexual growth by blanketing everything under the assumption that anything other than heterosexual vaginal/penal intercourse is European and thus deemed “not African”. When the African-centered community discusses sexuality, they are most often satisfied with making uninformed references to ancient sacred sexual texts from the East and asserting that those texts were stolen from Africa. We are far from healthy when it comes to our perceptions of sexuality and we hold on to divisive, patriarchal, immature mindsets and defend them without seeking to expand our definitions, to redefine ourselves, to truly come to a place where we relinquish the shame and unhealthy belief systems we have been conditioned to accept.

I stand alone in my efforts to create an African-centered sexual paradigm whereby we transcend our repressive beliefs and are able to truly see ourselves as sexual beings without the fear, shame, or adherence to “rules” that are made up to feed fragile male egos. There is no true African-centered sexual theory. There are quite a few Afrocentric, homophobic, patriarchal men whose egos are so fragile that they have deemed that any discussion of sexuality is a threat to the Black community. There are scores of African-centered women who are taking back the power of their vaginas, who are coming to accept that their bodies are sacred temples and nurturing themselves, loving our menses, but that’s not addressing the issue of sexuality, that’s addressing the issue of gender. To address African-centered sexuality is to assert that our genitals give us pleasure, that we experience bliss in the throws of orgasm, that we have a sexual body just as we do mental, physical, spiritual, and etheric bodies as well.

First and foremost, the discussion of sexuality, merely talking about sex, intimacy and acts of pleasure is essential for our growth.  We must discuss how our sexual identities were formed, we must discuss openly how we were raped, molested, abused, both men and women. We must be able to talk openly about our desires, fantasies, and what gives us pleasure. To asset that conversations of sexuality can’t be had in public forums, or that certain subject are off-limits is to assert that sexuality is something shameful and that is Eurocentric and unhealthy. Until we truly accept that our sexuality is a Divine gift, until we truly see our sexuality as something as natural and beautiful and not something to be compartmentalized or shrouded in secrecy, we will be tied to dysfunction.  We’ve been socialized to believe that sex is something that happens behind closed doors and even then it shouldn’t be discussed.

The tenants of African-centered sexuality stipulate that:

African-centered sexuality is based on Love. Not romantic love as is seen in Hollywood, not based on lust or what the other person can bring to you, but a true genuine affection, concern, and caring for one’s partner. The process of loving someone creates a spiritual bond with them.  Loving is the essence of our true nature as human beings.  Loving someone not only raises our vibration, but it also raises the vibration of the person we are with.  Because many of us raised in Western society have become so jaded by the concept of love, so hurt by someone we trusted with our hearths, we rally against it, claiming love has no role or purpose in the African-centered practices.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  To love someone is to care about their pleasure more than your own, to become aroused by their unique scent, to crave intimacy and connection with them.  Descendents of slaves are fragmented and disconnected from our emotional selves so the concept of loving someone arouses fear: fear of getting hurt, fear of being vulnerable, fears of abandonment and the fear of not being loved equally in return. The opposite of love is not hate, it is fear.  So, to form a bond with someone so intimately that you know them better than you know yourself is the primary goal of African-centered sexuality.  Love yourself, love your partner(s); make choices, conversations, and commitments based on the emotional and spiritual connection with the person(s) with whom you choose to share your sacred and sexual body.

Know yourself. African-centered sexuality is based on accepting one’s own desires, not condemning anyone else’s.  Every person is unique, what fits for one person is not going to be appropriate for all.  The African-centered individual can be comfortable and confident in knowing that they are secure in their own sexuality and that they are honoring their own natural drives and desires without having to diminish anyone else’s expression of sexuality.  The African-centered individual can respect that not everyone is at the same level of enlightenment and not feel the need to degrade, condemn, or criticize anyone else for where they are.  Know what arouses you, know what makes you orgasm, know how your body reacts to certain triggers.

Sexuality is fluid – Gender is flexible. The African-centered community loves to assert that heterosexuality is the only acceptable form of sexual expression.  They love to assert that homosexuality is European and that indigenous Africans never practiced homosexuality.  They falsely and rather arrogantly assert that homosexuality doesn’t occur in nature.  The oldest depiction of a same sex coupling came from ancient KMT (Egypt) of Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum.  There are at least 70 documented words in various African languages for men or women who engage in homosexual relations. There are also a variety of ways that African societies have historically tolerated or even celebrated the people who engaged in these practices.  Moreover, homosexual behavior has been documented in over 500 species of insects, vertebrae, birds, fish, and mammals including the African Elephant, Giraffe, Buffalo, Cheetah, and Zebra.  Homophobia is Eurocentric.  It is based on the fear of the men losing their masculinity, their fear of losing power over women, their fear of an equality of the sexes.  Heterosexism perpetuates a male-created myth of women being created for men to oppress.

African-centered sexuality asserts that the terms masculinity and femininity are Euro-defined concepts to perpetuate sexism and that connection between individuals, regardless of their gender, is perfectly normal and natural.  African-centered sexuality respects that couplings between a man and a woman are natural, predominant, and essential for reproduction but doesn’t negate or demonize other couplings that are not male/female.  African-centered sexuality acknowledges individuals who are transgendered, those possessing the physical, emotional, and sexual traits of both genders, are human beings equally deserving of love, passion, and pleasure and having a voice in the community just as much as those who identify as men or women.  Embrace, respect, honor, and celebrate inclusion rather than exclusion, diversity rather than uniformity, tolerance over narrow-mindedness.

Scottie Lowe is the owner and founder of AfroerotiK.com. She creates erotica, for an about people of color, that shows us in a healthy, beautiful, sensual light that represent a broader view of Black life. You can follow her current writings on her blog at afroerotik.blogspot.com

I recently read a deluded and sad “Letter to a Black Feminist” by a gentleman who blamed feminists for . . . well, basically, anything and everything he could think of. The fact that he didn’t even correctly identify what a feminist was or our real agendas didn’t seem to bother the numerous people who responded and told him how insightful and well thought out is misguided ramblings were. I am a feminist. I am an unapologetic Black feminist. I’m saddened by the lies, mistruths, and ignorance being perpetuated in my name and feel it’s my responsibility to share the truth for anyone who may be so inclined to learn and grow.

Here’s the Feminist Primer as simply as it can be explained.

Feminists work to dismantle the social, sexual, political, and economic disparity between the genders.

Feminists seek equality. Equality doesn’t mean we think we are as physically strong as men; it means we want our different strengths and abilities to have the same weight as men’s strengths and abilities have.

Feminists don’t want to be superior to men; we are not looking to replace patriarchy with matriarchy.

Feminists don’t want to emasculate men (although the concepts of masculinity and femininity are flawed, that’s besides the point). We have no agendas to make men more feminine but simply understand that there is a certain harmony and peace when masculine and feminine energies are in balance.

Feminists don’t seek to form matrilineal societies where women rule and have multiple spouses.

Feminists want to be seen as human beings, not objects, not submissives, not broken ribs or whatever fairy tales Black men want to quote to justify their insecurity with the concept that man and women should hold no power over each other.

Feminists aren’t lesbians, although we can be, but our sexual orientation has nothing whatsoever to do with our desire to fight the systems that keep women as second-class citizens.

Feminists don’t hate men although we certainly have a right to hate their privilege.

Feminists aren’t “against the family,” as so many Black men want to imply, we just don’t want the family to be based on a patriarchal model where men have the final say just because they have a Y chromosome.

Feminists simply take a stand against the oppression and tyranny of women under the false assumption of men being somehow inherently superior.

Feminists don’t want to be defined by how attractive we are to men but by our intellect, skills, talents, abilities, and our humanity.

Black men are so terrified of being equal to women that they raise these absurd and paranoid rants against feminists in order to deflect from their own emotional immaturity. Black men are hysterical. They yell and scream about how they want an end to the fallacy of white male supremacy but they don’t want anything to do with the end of male supremacy, ESPECIALLY if it means they might lose their historically unearned place as leader, ruler, and so-called king. As long as Black men feel they have a right to oppress, subjugate, or dominate women because some white man wrote a book that said that God deemed that anyone with a penis has special privileges to view women as inferior, then black men will be forever handicapped by their own ignorance and arrogance. Emasculating or hating men has NEVER been the agenda of feminists, that’s nothing but bullshit rhetoric from immature and insecure men who want to keep women silenced and maintain their privilege of oppression. The very men who so vehemently hate feminists, who make us out to be evil estrogen wielding castrators, are the very men who are raping women, who are committing domestic violence, who are complacent when they see women being treated like whores and objects. Misogyny is a sickness within the Black community; it is a rampant disease that threatens our very existence. Until Black men can boldly declare that they are feminists, activists who fight for the equality of women, meaning they are willing to divest themselves of their unearned penal privilege and address how dysfunctional our society is in terms of gender, they will forever be emotionally handicapped oppressors.

Black women aren’t much better. We have no clue what a feminist is other than what we hear Black men yell and scream, we are so conditioned to try to conform to Black men’s whims, fantasies, and irrational demands, that we never question anything they tell us and we go along with what they say. Black women can more easily define what a touchback in football is rather than correctly define the term feminist, even though one is meant to make them appear more attractive to men and the other benefits their status and standing as a woman in society. Of those who have a tiny clue what the word means, they inevitably say, “White women have commandeered the feminist movement for their own agenda so I consider myself a womanist.” Ask a Black woman, “What’s the difference between a feminist and a womanist?” “Well, a womanist is more concerned with Black issues.” Does that mean that we need to come up with a different name for Democrat since I’m more concerned with Black issues than white Democrats? “Well, a womanist is more concerned with the family.” Well, white women get married more than Black women so this Black womanist movement isn’t being particularly effective, is it? You lessen your position of power if you refuse to face Black men head on with their misogyny and you attempt to side step them by using a more neutral term that they don’t object to. You cannot be a warrior in the struggle if you are starting your crusade from a place of concession. If you refer to yourself as a womanist, you’ve already said to the world, “I don’t want to be equal to men because I don’t want them mad at me for being too radical.” Womanism is not the lite version of feminism, it’s not the Black version of feminism, it’s the patriarchal conformation to Black men’s insecurities.

If there was ever a platform upon which we could stand and unite, all men and women, it is the feminist one which states that we will be seen as human beings, no more, no less, that women serve a greater role in the world than doing housework and being receptacles for sperm to satisfy men’s lust. We are individuals with equal strengths to bring to the table as men. They are not the same strengths, but they are equal nonetheless. Just as left is not better than right, hot is not better than cold, up is not better than down, white is not better than black, let us all agree the man is not better than woman.

Scottie Lowe is the owner and founder of AfroerotiK.com. She creates erotica, for an about people of color, that shows us in a healthy, beautiful, sensual light that represent a broader view of Black life. You can follow her current writings on her blog at afroerotik.blogspot.com

By Scottie Lowe

Interracial pornography, and Black porn for that matter, is fundamentally racist and no one is addressing it, complaining about it, or even acknowledging it.  It’s nigger porn, right off the plantation: big, Black bucks who can’t control their lust for the supposed beautiful white women.  Interracial porn throws the N word around like it’s rice at a wedding and white men are masturbating to it as if it’s an aphrodisiac.  Black men, farmed from the underprivileged ghettos where Black porn stars are bred, are effectively emasculated in white male society so they actually think it’s a sign of power and status to be considered some sort of savage beast who can’t control his sexual desires for the elusive and desirable white woman.  Give him money to fuck, make sure there are no positive images of Black manhood in the media, and there you have the makings of the scores of Black men willing to degrade themselves and the entire African American community perpetuating stereotypes that are readily embraced by the actors and the consumers of this genre.

Black porn is even more offensive.  Black women are always Ghetto Freaks, Ghetto Whores, or Ghetto Booty Bitches.  We are nothing more than our big round asses bent over with our fake blonde extensions getting the most mundane and vanilla sex from Ghetto Dogs, Ghetto Pimps, and Ghetto Playaz (always with a z).  If the only white porn available was Trailer Park Tarts or some offensive variation, the entire porn industry would come to a screeching halt with the outrage of people demanding variety.  Mainstream black people, the vast majority of Black people, those of us who have no affiliation whatsoever with the ghetto, are so terrified we are going to be associated with the base element perpetuated in porn, we stay silent, never expecting or demanding anything more than the vile and racist way we are depicted in the adult industry, never really having an outlet for our sexuality.  White people are left to believe that Black people are truly nothing more than the one-dimensional caricatures seen in porn.

If I, as a Black woman, want to see images of myself that aren’t associated with “da hood” I have no choice but to turn to interracial porn.  God forbid I am not attracted to white men or don’t find them sexually arousing (I know it’s impossible to believe that my preference could actually be Black men) I have NO outlet.  Even this new range of interracial porn that features Black women and white men is going the same route as standard nigger porn.  Ghetto Gaggers and the like sell white men on the notion that Black women are nothing more than barely literate welfare queens that can be thrown a couple of dollars and who will be willing to do anything in front of the camera.  Of course Don Imus felt free to call the Rutger’s basketball team Nappy Headed Ho’s because I’m sure he’s jerked off to dozens of porno’s of almost the exact same name.  And the nation, meaning white men, are outraged and offended that he got fired because they believe Black women are nothing more than nappy headed ho’s.  How could we be offended if what he said was accurate, right?

Any discussion of racism in porn is halted because white people say, “I’m not racist,” “Color doesn’t matter,” and, “You’re playing the race card,” and that is supposed to be the end of the subject, nothing further.  Color matters in everything, especially porn.  You cannot claim that color doesn’t matter when the entire reason white men think it’s so “taboo” and dirty for their white PTA wives to have sex with Black men is because they associate the color of Black skin as being inferior.  The reason why you don’t see an abundance of porn where white women are having sex with Asian or Latino men and having it be considered taboo is because they aren’t seen as the same sort of sexual savages as Black men.  And while there are many cultural and social differences between the races, Black men are not on a lower rung of the evolutionary ladder thereby sex with them is not to be considered a fetish.  Having sex with a child is taboo, having sex with an animal is taboo.  Having sex with a dead body is very, very taboo.  Having sex with a Black man is only taboo if you think he’s inherently beneath you and thus you are performing some wildly heathen act.   Black women are not inherently sassy, dominating, or sexual.  What we are is conditioned to believe that we have to capitalize off our sexuality in order to be seen as desirable as white women.

My work in the adult industry as a writer has been extremely frustrating because I have to battle people who refuse to accept that there is a market for Black erotica outside of the ghetto.  White publishers tell me that I don’t know what Black consumers want.  Read that again.  White publishers tell me, a Black woman, that they know better what the Black buying public wants.  Black publishers are either terrified to have anything to do with erotica because they don’t want to be seen as one of the low class ghetto freaks or they have been so mis and undereducated they are intellectually disabled when it comes to identifying quality work.  When I have the nerve to speak out to suggest that white men who capitalize off of our continued degradation drive the silence that surrounds the nigger porn industry, I’m inevitably met with the same response, “Well, Black producers are making it too.”   That’s supposed to mean it has validation.  As long as there is no variety in Black and interracial porn, as long as the only images of black people are of us being driven by our lust for white flesh and green backs, the Black and interracial adult industry is diseased and needs to be healed like the racist sore that it is.  White men make and perpetuate the images of Black sexuality that fit their unhealthy perceptions of us and those who sign on to their program are nothing more than puppets for their sick agenda.

Scottie Lowe is the owner and founder of AfroerotiK.com. She creates erotica, for an about people of color, that shows us in a healthy, beautiful, sensual light that represent a broader view of Black life. You can follow her current writings on her blog atafroerotik.blogspot.com

By Scottie Lowe

Sometimes, the best erotic expression is short and sweet and to the point, like your favorite song on the radio that moves you and is over almost as soon as it begins.  The words and the music all come together and wrap themselves like a memorable lover wraps themselves around your mind, arousing you and satisfying you in a multitude of ways.  It’s the steady pounding of the Afro-Cuban rhythm that is genetically encoded in our DNA.  It’s the sexy salsa song that gets the blood pumping in your veins.  It’s that jazzy, funky, R&B that Black people all over the world can relate to.  That soulful rhythm that soothes and moves you to a place where you can say, “I’m happy to be nappy, I’m black and I’m proud, that I have been chosen to wear the conscious cloud, And I’m fine under Cloud 9.”

And you sho do feel like you are on Cloud 9 when your lover is touching you in your hot spot, caressing it, manipulating it to get you so turned on you can’t see straight.  You ever notice how your favorite song can take you back and you can remember the exact place and time you and your lover were the first time you made love?  You can recall exactly what they smelled like, what their kisses felt like.  You were so nervous when you first met, afraid to even let them know you liked them, let alone that you wanted to go out.  But somehow, you got up the nerve.  You rehearsed exactly what you were going to say before you picked up the phone and said, “Let’s take a long walk, around the park,  find a spot for us to spark conversation, verbal elation, stimulation Share our situations, temptation, education, relaxation, elevation, or maybe we can talk about Surah 31:18”

It was all about spending time together and getting to know each other.  It was all about that thrill you got when the phone rang and you saw their name on your caller ID and your heart would skip a beat.  Isn’t that the best feeling?  If I could bottle it up and sell it I would be a millionaire.  It seems like you have that feeling in abundance when you are a kid and you are infatuated with a new person every week.  As we get older, that feeling doesn’t happen as much so we try to hold on to that sensation whenever we feel it.  Our thoughts get clouded and all we can think about is that person and what they are doing and when the next time you can see them and if they are thinking about you in the same way.  You get all nervous that they don’t feel the same way about you until you get that voicemail that you play over and over again.  You know the one that says, “I’m not trying to pressure you, just can’t stop thinking bout you, you don’t even really have to be my girlfriend.  I just want to know your name and maybe sometime we could hook up, hang out, and just chill.”

Those were the days.  You hear that song and you say, “Oohhh shit, that was my jam.”  You wonder how someone else could have put into words exactly what you were thinking and feeling so well.  You know good and god damn well that you would stand in front of the bathroom mirror and sing into your toothbrush and fantasize that you were singing to that special person in your life.  You could envision everything in your mind, the candles, the Cool Whip, actually it was Ready Whip cause you needed the nozzle to aim and fire. Maxwell was in the background telling you, “It happened the moment, when you were revealed ‘Cause you were a dream that you should not have been A fantasy real. You gave me this beating baby, this rhythm inside, and you made me feel good and feel nice and feel loved, give me paradise.”

Oh damn, now that was some hot shit.  That first night you made love was the stuff they write erotic stories about.  The anticipation, the tension, the foreplay, all of it had your juices flowing and your body tingling.  Tender skin and erect nipples, soft moans of pleasure serenading your ears.  It’s all about making love and feeling that body crushed against you, sweating, grinding, driving you to the edge of ecstasy and beyond.  It’s the moment of penetration for the first time when you are overwhelmed by the sensation and you feel like you can’t catch your breath.  It’s that wet, hard, sticky, hot Black love when you look in your lover’s eyes and say, “All you gotta do is say yes, Don’t deny what you feel let me undress you baby, Open up your mind and just rest, I’m about to let you know you make me so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so”

You make me so so hot for your special kind of love.  That fast and furious kind of fucking in public when I don’t give a damn if people see us, all I know is that if I don’t cum soon I will explode.  It’s that special kind of love when we start fucking on a Friday evening and don’t stop until Saturday afternoon when we have to open the door for the take out delivery guy because we are both too exhausted to move.  We aren’t too exhausted to take a shower together though, soaping up our bodies and getting hot and wet.  Then after the shower you oil up my body with the Kemi Oil and my body responds to your touch and I’m desperate to have you inside me again, in my mouth, in my pussy, even in my ass.  By Saturday night, your neighbors are pounding on the walls trying to get some sleep because our passion is loud and primal with no apologies.  They can hear me calling out your name.  But it’s all good because, “There’s nowhere to hide when the love is callin’ your name, yeah From the dark, babe, nowhere to hide, baby There’s nowhere to hide, so let love have it’s way with your heart When love calls, love calls, love calls your name.”

Scottie Lowe is the owner and founder of AfroerotiK.com. She creates erotica, for an about people of color, that shows us in a healthy, beautiful, sensual light that represent a broader view of Black life. You can follow her current writings on her blog atafroerotik.blogspot.com

By Scottie Lowe

I AM my hair.  I am my naps.  I am my African wooly hair.  I am every African woman who was beaten and told that she had to cover her hair or lose her life.  I AM every slave woman who loved her nappy hair and who had to see white women and mulatto slaves get preferential treatment for having straight hair.  I will NEVER as long as I live let straight hair define my beauty.

If you ever watch that show “Yo Mama” on MTV, every show, they crack on someone for having nappy hair and everyone in the audience rolls with laughter.  Anyone who finds nappy headed momma jokes funny are functioning as nothing more than slaves on the plantation.  Nothing’s changed from 200 years ago.  It certainly isn’t debatable that any time you tell a child that there is something inherently wrong with them, they are going to compensate for that with low self esteem.  Women with relaxed hair think that because they believe themselves to be beautiful, because society tells them that they are beautiful with straight hair, that means that they don’t have issues of self-hatred.  If I offered women $50,000 to give up straightening their hair, I wouldn’t get two women to take my offer.  If I said, I’ll buy you a house and you can live there mortgage free for the rest of your life, all you have to do is wear your hair in a nappy style, women wouldn’t do it.  They are terrified of their natural hair, they hate it.  They’d rather be in debt and wearing a weave than natural and financially secure.

The hair issue is unique to Black women because we are the only race of women who was kidnapped from our homeland and enslaved by a different race of people who used our color and our physical features to ridicule us.  Slavery in Africa wasn’t based on race.  It’s impossible to denigrate someone for their nose, their lips, for their hair, if they have the exact same features as you do.  White people used their diseased sense of superiority to tell enslaved Africans that everything about them was ugly.  There is no other race of women who has had to endure such psychological torture.

Black hair care is a multi billion dollar business.  I’ve always said that if white people wanted to effectively disable the black community, all they would have to do is stockpile all the relaxers, straightening combs, fake hair, etc.  Within six weeks, Black women would be selling their souls for a fix, a hair fix that is.

Think about who we consider beautiful.  Beyonce has a blonde weave.  Every time I see her on a magazine cover, I say, “Who is that white woman?”  We don’t love our Black skin, we don’t love our thick full lips, we don’t love our wide noses, and we sure as hell don’t love our natural nappy hair.  Is there any wonder why the state of Black relationships is so poor?  We have Black men trying to get women who look as white as possible and Black women denying that changing their hair to look white has anything to do with jumping through hoops to distance themselves from their natural blackness.

If Black women woke up tomorrow, and they all said, “No more chemicals,” I love myself the way God intended me to be, white people would be terrified.  They would be terrified that we don’t ascribe to be like them.  They would be terrified that we are defining our own standards of beauty.  They would try to enslave us again, they would lose their fucking minds.  They wouldn’t be able to deal with an empowered people that didn’t think the world revolved around them.  They need to feel superior and they do as long as we are frying our natural hair, trying to mimic them.  That gives them their power.  If we were to stand up in mass and say, “I don’t think long blonde hair and blue eyes are attractive, I think that big thick lips and wide noses and nappy hair is gorgeous white people would start a war against us.  (Black people can’t even think like that we’ve been so brainwashed but it’s a nice thought)

I’ve heard a many a brotha tell me that he refused to have his daughter get her hair cut.  Little black girls don’t have a chance if their mothers and grandmothers are telling us how nappy and unruly our natural hair is and our fathers (absentee most of the time) are telling us we are only lovable if we have long hair.  Is there any wonder we are fucked up?  Black men HATE nappy hair more than Black women.  That’s why they go after the Latina, White, and Asian woman.  Those women will give them children with “good hair” and light skin.  Let’s not be naive.  Black women have to have straight hair or they are afraid Black men will never look at them.  Add to the fact that slavery told us to be submissive to our men and you have women terrified to show their blackness.

The fear of being seen as gay is sooooooo pervasive in Black women.  They might not mind being seen as bisexual but they sure as hell don’t want to be seen as masculine.  And everyone knows that short nappy hair means you are a butch, right?  Once again, we are allowing other people to define us.  I tell little children who ask me why I don’t have any hair that there are a beautiful people in Kenya that all wear their hair like mine and that short hair is a sign of beauty.  They look at me like I’m crazy and their mothers usually tell them that I’m gay when they think I can’t hear.

Scottie Lowe is the owner and founder of AfroerotiK.com. She creates erotica, for an about people of color, that shows us in a healthy, beautiful, sensual light that represent a broader view of Black life. You can follow her current writings on her blog at afroerotik.blogspot.com

By Scottie Lowe
Photography courtesy of Afroerotik

For all too long Black sexuality has been defined by extremes. We have been defined as hypersexual, untamed savages who are ruled by our lust and far too many of us have embraced that misrepresentation without the presence of a healthier alternative example to model. Others of us have adopted a role of sexual conservatism in order to conform to a standard that tells us that the only sex that isn’t dirty . . . is boring. Somewhere between the freak and the frigid lies AfroerotiK sexuality.

Where do intelligent, middle class Black people turn to find sexual expression? What outlets do we have to be aroused without offensive, degrading, vulgar pornographic images? My work is providing such an outlet yet I’m continually and repeatedly told that my work is offensive. What’s offensive is a nation of Black people who can’t form healthy relationships because they don’t know how to be open and honest with their partners about their needs, desires, and fantasies. What’s offensive is that as an educated successful Black woman, I’m told that I’m a freak if I even make reference to sex, however academic the discussion. If my work glorified sex in exchange for money, cheating, or manipulation, that would be a perversion of sex. My work glorifies couples being intimate, communicating, sharing their secrets with one another and validating that adults, and young adults should be having sex based on intimacy first and foremost.

The African American community is diseased in our perceptions of sexuality. The middle class can’t even have a conversation about sex; we can’t even have a discussion about the subject of sex before someone is trying to censor it. The rest of us are out having unprotected, irresponsible sex like it’s recreation. There’s a vast difference between saying, “I’m a big booty ho looking to swallow seven loads of cum,” and “I long to feel the sensation of your tongue licking me until I explode in your mouth.” Until we as a people can discern the difference, until we as a people can stop relegating anything to do with sex as being dirty and unmentionable, we are doomed to be dysfunctional and sexually immature. We should be able to have discussions about sex in all forums, with relative boundaries in mind, and not be so quick to feign false indignation as if sex is dirty and unmentionable.

I don’t even think we can get to a discussion of making love vs. having sex (or God forbid making love vs. fucking) if we can’t even mention sex without the morality police stepping up and deeming that sex can’t be discussed, mentioned, or debated.
Black Enterprise Magazine approached me, approached ME, about doing an article on my work as a Black female entrepreneur. I was excited as I was about to get the national exposure I have so long been seeking to combat that wretched Zane and her horribly offensive and degrading crap she calls erotica. Finally, I was going to get a national platform to talk about healthy Black sexuality. They told me that I would be getting a list of interview questions in an email and that I was to fill them out and send them back. I waited for that email, and waited, and waited. Finally, I contacted the young lady again and I told her that I hadn’t received the interview questions and that I was anxious to get them. She then told me that Black Enterprise readers weren’t interested in “my topic” and that they had a much more conservative readership. At which point I asked her if Black Enterprise readers had sex and she promptly hung up on me.

There is a knee jerk reaction in the Black middle class community that kicks in every time there is mention of sex. We can’t even have academic discussions of sex without someone deeming that “those sorts of conversations aren’t appropriate for this forum.” The more we compartmentalize our sex, the more we allow our sexuality to be defined as dirty. Sure, not every conversation is appropriate for every venue but not every one is inappropriate either. The very same people who are sooooo quick to try to silence me at the mere mention of the word erotic are the very same people masturbating to images of pornography that degrade, demean, and objectify us as a people because they refuse to allow any other avenue of sexual expression to be acceptable.

People ask me all the time why I started writing erotica. My response is and has always been, that I am a single, highly-educated, African-centered, Black woman who is not aroused by dogs, thugs, pimps, drug dealers, basketball players, or rappers and I’m not a ghetto hoochie, ghetto whore, nor am I a ghetto big booty freak. Where do I turn for sexual arousal? I started writing erotica because there was nothing that spoke to me. I started writing erotica because I don’t find interracial images of black men fucking white women to be arousing and I’m not represented by Black women with weaves, fake nails, and stripper shoes who have no clue what it is to be sensual, only sexual. I’m a 42 year old woman who hasn’t been in a relationship in so long that it boggles the mind and I’m tired of men approaching me and thinking that just because I have a big booty and they have a big SUV, that I’m going to have sex with them. That’s why I started writing erotica. I wanted to have something that spoke to men, that represented the types of relationships that I was looking for, that get me wet, that allowed me to masturbate to something that represented my view of Black life. I can’t be the only woman, the only Black person, who wants or needs to find a sexual outlet that isn’t sanitized and sterile but that isn’t degrading and cliche either.

There is always this “what you are doing is corrupting children” backlash that I get. I had sex when I was 16 years old. I was far from the first girl of my peers to have sex, in fact, losing one’s virginity at around that age was pretty average among my very middle class, suburban peers. That was LONG before BET made Black women out to be freaks, bitches, and ho’s. That was long before Zane’s books, portraying Black women as nymphomaniac adulterous gold digging, superficial whores, were passed around like a virus. That was LONG before children had access to the internet where every vile, disgusting, perverse sexual act is available to view for free with the click of a mouse. To assert that children, young teens, are going to be warped by my discussions of sexuality is laughable. I’m the only voice that is speaking out and saying that sex should be about love, intimacy, openness, communication, freedom, and responsibility. If anything, young teens need to be exposed to my brand of erotica in order to counter the negative images they see at every turn and to combat the oblivious parents who think that if they don’t talk about sex, that their children will somehow escape being exposed to it.

Of course, there’s always the, “Blacks aren’t the only one’s who are victims of the same behavior” argument. My concern is not other communities. My concern is the fact that 7 out of 10 Black children are being born out of wedlock. My concern is that a Black woman in her mid 30s is more likely to be struck by lightning than to get married. My concern is that African Americans are dying of AIDS at a disproportionate rate than any other race. So while other races, creeds, and whathaveyou may very well be steeped in sexual dysfunction, it is affecting US more detrimentally. There are scores of Black men who are impregnating white women to feed the sexual fetish of white couples to have their wives “bred black.” There are scores of Black men going into white couples bedrooms every night of the week to feed white couple’s racist Nigger Buck Mandingo fantasies. There are young Black women who have never had sex unless it involves some sort of exchange of money or services. Those things are the perils that will destroy our race if we continue to censor our conversations about sex and let some absurd religious/pious sanctimony dictate that sex can’t be discussed.

Scottie Lowe is the owner and founder of AfroerotiK.com. She creates erotica, for an about people of color, that shows us in a healthy, beautiful, sensual light that represent a broader view of Black life. You can follow her current writings on her blog at afroerotik.blogspot.com