“I’ve been like this my whole life and I embrace me. I love how I look. I am a full woman and I’m strong, and I’m powerful, and I’m beautiful at the same time.” These are the words of Serena Williams a black tennis player whose body appearance has constantly been the target of jokes for being "manly and unattractive." Another way to describe this is that her body is different from the many bodies we see in the media especially from the majority of her white counterparts glorified in the media. Body representation is not only important because it can really affect our self-esteem but it also plays an important role in our sexuality as humans.
For the past few decades, discussions around black sexuality have been very limited... In the article "Who's Afraid of Black Sexuality?" author Stacey Patton, discusses how a few decades ago in the early stages of movements towards embracing sexuality, "black nationalists and segments of the civil-rights movement accused black feminists of diverting attention from the urgent work of eradicating racism and restoring black manhood." This helps to explain why I think it can be very hard to have discussions around black sexuality... because we still have problems like racism going on so talking about sex in all the different forms it takes between (straight, gay, etc and the intersections) seems like a "distraction" because it all relates back to sexual ideas.
We can't look at black sexuality as a distraction or irrelevant though because it is such a powerful tool. In Audre Lorde's Uses of the Erotic, she says, "The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. For having experienced the fullness of this depth of feeling and recognizing its power, in honor and, self-respect we can require no less of ourselves." To me, this means we can draw from our sexuality as black men and women and use it as a source of strength and a way to identify with ourselves. By building our own identities and standing firm in them I think it becomes extremely hard for someone who doesn't understand you or your culture, for example, to tell you that you're worthless or that you have no significance because exploring the erotic can give you a new confidence. Audre Lorde also talks about using the erotic as a source of joy. She notes, "another important way in which the erotic connection functions is the open and fearless underlining of my capacity for joy." Additionally, she addresses how this makes the erotic very feared because of the joy that it can bring and not just sexually but through knowledge in books and dancing for example.
The best is still yet to come according to Lorde, "For once we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we begin to demand from ourselves and from our life-pursuits that they feel in accordance with that joy which we know ourselves to be capable of." I think this is critical because once we begin to demand joy I think it's easier for us to let things go and be more unapologetic about who we are as black people and be proud of where we come from and that pride that we develop and show scares some people... because we are capable of so much. Why else would so many people get offended by Beyonce's performance of formation at the Superbowl last year?
