“He Sleeps Around But He Gives Me A Lot”

While reading Ayana Byrd’s essay “Claiming Jezebel: Back Female Subjectivity and Sexual Expression in Hip Hop,” while preparing for my lecture on women’s bodies and rap videos I came across an interesting quote by and about Foxy Brown? on the “Ain’t No Nigga” era. Byrd writes quoting Foxy,

“At sixteen I was just so happy to have a nice car and a nice home that I didn’t complain about my image,” Foxy said in Essence Magazine. “I had all the influences around me, and I wasn’t always strong enough to come back like no, I don’t want to do that.”

I was tripping off the fact that she was 17 when this joint dropped, and we didn’t blink.

Honestly though, it doesn’t matter if she was 17 or 35, because you know what blood, many of us subscribe to this policy.

“He sleeps around but he gives me a lot” is problematic for two reasons.

First it reduces human relationships to financial transactions.

Second, if he sleeps around and he gives us a lot, then what does that mean to our HIV and various other STD statuses? What if you getting “a lot” means not wearing a condom? Black peoples STD’s statuses are high. This of course has to do with both our choices and access to health care. According to the CDC,

Racial disparities in HIV diagnoses are particularly severe among young people. Overall, blacks made up half (51%) of all new HIV diagnoses between 2001 and 2005. But among youth aged 13 ?24, blacks accounted for 61 percent of diagnoses.

Genital ulcers (e.g., syphilis syphilis, , herpes herpes, or , chancroid chancroid) ) result in breaks in the genital tract lining or skin which create a portal of entry for HIV.

Individuals who are infected with STDs are at least two to five times two times more likely than uninfected more individuals to acquire HIV.

On Black women and sexual mixing patterns.

You and I both no that I don’t do puritanical. A ‘tall. There is enough of that in the world all ready. See Tyler Perry. However these questions needs to be asked and the statistics need to be reflected on.

I write this because I am concerned about how we make choices about our bodies and pleasure.

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There is a scene in For Colored Girls where Jo (Janet Jackson) learns that she has HIV because her husband, who apparently is a Black man who has sex with men, but doesn’t call himself gay.

Jo knew/suspected, yet chose to stay. In many ways she turned herself into an object.

This gay = AID’s is the bane of my existance because it normalizes the idea that Black women get HIV because of Black men who have sex with men who don’t share this information with us.

Raw dog feels good. Pleasure feels good. I wager that many of us take part in high risk sexual activities, ie having consistent or even sporadic sex with someone without consistently wearing protection and this is how many of us contract STD’s.

This summer Latoya was telling me of a researcher (I forget her name, but will add when I find out) who says that we participate in concurrent sexual networks. I like that idea. Because it shows how people are related.

Raw Dog has consequences. We ain’t gotta lie. I know sexuality is hella taboo, for Black women, but we grown and the girls and boys coming up after us are watching how we handle everything.

Our lives lightweight are depending on it.

Does it matter that Foxy was 17?

Blaming Gay men or Men who have sex with me, because some of us like and engage in raw dog?

Did you know the stats were that high for Black youth?