Black Women and Sexuality

Over the past few weeks I have been wrestling over the decision to write about Black women and sexuality. I have wrestled because I feel insecure to write about this, because there are perspectives I have on this topic that I know may go against the mainstream and culture. Yet, I would like to humbly propose a different way of thinking about this topic. My perspective on this is deeply connected to the history of how Black women were treated while enslaved. My trepidation over writing about Black women and sexuality ended, however, after I watched a video of a TED Talk by Lizzo on “Twerking.” The video is a few years old, but it is still floating around and also connects to other Black female artists representation of our sexuality. In the TED Talk, Lizzo gave the history of twerking from Africa, into Black culture. She then went on to share that she twerks to express self-love and empowerment and that she twerks for the strippers, the sex workers, for the ancestors, for Black women, etc. When I listened to this, I thought of the work of dancer, choreographer and anthropologist Katherine Dunham. She spent her life researching how dance from the African diaspora teaches us more about our ancestors and their lives before and even after captivity. Her work was not meant to unveil why our bodies should be exploited. Were the dances of our African mothers for the prostitution and exploitation of our Black bodies? NO! It was an expression of freedom and art, that we used to demonstrate our value, our royalty and our matriarchy. It was a love song for our men, our culture and our human existence. It was a sister circle where we bonded through creative expression. It was a call to war that empowered our people to fight our enemies. It was a call to communal worship. Dance was a expression of joy. Dance was sacred to our culture. Dance was a way of educating the world about our heritage. Through her work, she created the dance we now see in the Alvin Ailey Dancers’ “Revelations“(which uses ballet and African/African-American dance to tell our story through the Negro Spirituals) or “Firebird” (which takes a classical piece by Igor Stravinsky and recreates the ballet from Maurice Béjart to tell a story of resurrection). We have got to stop allowing the famous artists of our time, who are using their art to exploit the Black woman’s body, to define our culture to the world. As a people, we do not know enough about African culture to know what dance means. We are still so mis-educated. Lizzo’s TED Talk also seemed to praise the sex worker and prostitute as part of Black culture, but those are things that all cultures have within them. They are not unique to Black culture. There was a time when our bodies were only used for sexual exploitation, but we are liberated from that. With all our Black women have suffered through since captivity began here, we owe them more than to reduce our culture to this. As a Black woman, I refuse to allow my cultural heritage to include the exploitation of my body.

When our ancestral mothers were brought to America, their main job was to breed for creating more Black bodies to enslave, and to be the sexual toy of the master. Because we did not own our bodies, they were used against our wishes to satisfy the animalistic and capitalistic desires of our enslavers. For example, Thomas Thistlewood kept a meticulous record of his activities as a slave owner, including his frequent sexual encounters with enslaved women. He even documented what he did to those who resisted. This diary gives witness to the sexual exploitation of Black women’s bodies. Another example is the story of Frederick Douglass’ overseer, Covey, who bought a Black woman and then bred her to a male owned by another slave owner (the enslaved man was married). He forced the two of them to mate for a year. This was a common practice, where like a farmer would breed a cow, a dog or a goat, the Black woman’s body was bred to grow the slave inventory and we had NO agency to own our bodies! Knowing this history should make every single Black woman want to honor all that our ancestors endured by protecting the body from exploitation. When women show their bodies and publicly sexualize their bodies to the world through the media, they are allowing too many people to have access to it! They are not in control of who has access to it! We must reclaim the sacredness of our bodies!

Showing our bodies so every eye can see to lust after, is not empowerment. Guarding our bodies so only those who will honor it can see it or experience it, is empowerment. This post is not a religious post to convince women to save themselves for marriage (although I really wish more women would try it). This post is simply encouraging my Black sisters to realize their bodies are so precious and something that is precious should be preserved for the person that will treat it as such. Even if the person is not your spouse, consider being more selective of who has access to it, because there was a time where we were NOT empowered to make that choice! Our mothers of the past were not allowed to have a committed relationship. In fact, those that tried to, sometimes the master would literally rape them in front of their partner, just to show her and her mate that he was the only one who owned her body. We could not enjoy even a sacred or legal marriage and children born into a slave union, were not free to claim their parents as mom or dad.

When I see artists like Lizzo, Beyonce, Megan the Stallion or Nikki Minaj and others giving the illusion that monetizing our sexuality is a good example of Black female empowerment, all I can see is that they are still under the same captivity as their ancestors. They are unable to feel the freedom to create music that inspires our women to think, learn, build, invent, and be queens that honor their body, because the demand of our society (and oftentimes White music executives) calls for them to prostitute themselves in the music industry, under the illusion of “Black female empowerment.” In fact, they have created such a strong culture around this that those of us who believe in guarding our ebony bodies from the wrong eyes and hands, are seen as the weak ones. Yet, I feel completely empowered, because my body is not being used to fill my bank account. I do not fear losing fans or record or distribution deals. I do not fear jeopardizing a partnership with Sony. Me, along with my sistas who share my sentiments, feel completely in control of our bodies and our sexuality, because WE decide who gains access to it. THIS is empowerment, an empowerment Black women have struggled to have since 1619.

Black women’s identity in America was first established by our sexuality and the exploitation of our bodies. Every single part of America that we see, is as a direct and indirect result of the rape and sexual exploitation of a Black woman’s body. Why do I say that? Because the same body that was forced to sleep with the master, helped to feed our enslavers, farm for them and build for them. Our ancestors had to use sex just to stay alive. Some even used sex to keep the master from selling their children (even though they often sold them anyway) and those same children grew up to help build the country and its economy. These same bodies birthed more Black bodies from the master’s seed to help build the country. We should want to do everything we can to distance ourselves from that identity. When I think of Black women like Mary McLeod Bethune, Anna Julia Cooper, Mary Church Terrell, the Fisk Jubilee Singers, and so many others who tried to teach Black women to carry themselves with grace, elegance and consecration, I now understand why. We are all too far removed from the captivity of the Black woman’s body, that we have forgotten the pain of not owning our bodies. Anna Julia Cooper was the daughter of her master and her mother experienced the exploitation of her body. She saw first hand how demoralizing it was. Anna Julia Cooper chose a path that distanced herself from that identity and mentored other Black women to do the same.

Coretta Scott King and Betty Shabazz understood the importance of taking on an identity that was different from their ancestors, by choosing to love one man and joining these men to fight for our equality instead of our exploitation. When I think of Angela Davis, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, or Nannie Helen Burroughs, I wonder how Black women instead see someone who sings about the prostitution of our bodies as an example of liberation? There is more work for Black women to do, than proving why showing our bodies is a form of liberation. You are not liberated if you are doing the same thing with your bodies that our enslaved mothers were forced to do. We have been set free from that. We do NOT have to make money by using and showing our bodies. We do NOT have to create a name for ourselves by allowing our bodies and our sexuality to be exploited. We do NOT have to prove how powerful we are by how many lovers we have, when there was a time where the Black women’s body was forced to have the slave master as her “lover” and then he’d turn around and breed her to several enslaved men!! We are so much more than this. We were created to know a love that honors our bodies and will protect it. Our hearts yearn for this type of love and our ancestors craved it as their partners were sold away from them never to be seen again, and they were left alone with the master to be raped over and over again, while their minds dreamed of the love they wished they were free to have! We can choose another way of liberation, through education, creating meaningful businesses, social justice, and finding a love that is healthy and truly empowering so that we can show the next generation that this is possible (Ever wonder why Beyonce who actually has one love, one baby dady, etc. does not sing about this???? My GOD! How many young girls would be inspired if she made more music that celebrated this!).

The misuse of Black women’s bodies is something passed on from generation to generation, until someone steps up and says, “Let’s change this narrative.” Here is a personal example. My grandmother was 12 years old when she had her first child. She did not know about honoring her body, because no one ever changed that narrative for her. Slavery hadn’t ended that long ago when she was born. Her mother died when she was 2 and there was no one to really teach her another way (ladies, we have got to teacher the next generation another way). When she had my mom, she told my mom her story and of others in her family and then said, “You are not going to live this way.” She wasn’t teaching my mother to not have sex or not to love her body, but she was teaching her to wait for someone who would love her and honor her body right. From that point on, my mom only had healthy relationships, until she met my dad and I have watched him love her and honor her body for almost 60 years. She then taught me the same lesson and I did the same thing. We changed the narrative of our enslaved mothers. My grandmother stopped that generational curse of the exploitation of the Black woman’s body in our family line. So we must teach a counter narrative to the one our ancestors lived and the one Lizzo and others are trying to glorify. For anyone who was confused by Lizzo’s TED Talk about twerking being part of Black culture, she does not speak for me. Her performances are not an embodiment of Black women’s liberation. Her TED Talk was not a history lesson on Black culture or self-love or the liberation of the Black women. We are not free to twerk, but we are free to WORK for the continued empowerment and progress of Black women without the exploitation of our bodies and our sexuality.