The sexual contradiction in American culture is both pervasive
and powerful.

While doing research on Latina teen pregnancy last week, I came
across a narrative where a young woman said, “I heard that, If my
boyfriend smoked weed before we had sex, then I wouldn’t get pregnant.”

I thought, wow, she is really serious. We have very little healthy, teen based
sex ed, yet our pop culture land is dominated by songs about sex.

I Wanna Fuck Every Girl in the World
Birthday Sex
Lol Smiley Face

The contradiction is interesting and dangerous.

It’s dangerous because, the combination of little teen sex ed,
pervasive pop songs about sex, and abstinence ONLY funded
sex ed in the schools systems leaves our young men and women
with limited information. Limited informed people make awful choices.
(<<<-- I sound like a sex ed expert, no?)
Which brings me to my Black Sexual Politics class. On Monday some students
did a presentation on Pat Hill Collins’ book of the same title.

For the class we also read Audre Lorde’s The Uses of the Erotic.

The student presenters also played a Lil Kim video for the song
How Many Licks.

In the video, Kim is pussy, dick, female orgasms etc.

My professor pointed out that in comparison to little Kim’s
video, Beyonce’s Single Ladies video looks tame. So I checked
out her VMA performance, and it was confirmed.

3 women, dancing in a leotard, not that risque. The most provocative aspect
of her performance is the costume. Tight and sprayed on. It looks like
she is doing Black Broadway Showgirls routine, which I imagine is
what she intended.

Historically, Black women were not allowed to BE Ladies. Jezebels,
Mammies, Men, Welfare Queens, yes, but ladies. No. So given
that this is a part of the title of the song isn’t lost on me.

Lets take the Ciara video posted above. This video moved me largley
because of the element of female desire that is present.

The whole time I was watching it I thought, what is this woman
going to do next?

Ciara licks Justin’s ear, 30 seconds in. Kamagra 100mg engages in hard erection to men who are not as satisfied with their sex lives generic viagra without prescriptions like they were in the past. You’ll get backlash and that’s not what they’re sildenafil online no prescription there for, it’s engaging. Buyers have the opportunity of accessing devensec.com on line levitra quality and reliable solutions. * The jelly works effectively and can make your erection last for many hours* The results will start showing 20 minutes to one hour after consuming it. Like the others, the peptides manufactured by the cells of the heart can cause levitra best price prevalent changes with in heart tissue and strengthen of heart chambers. When was the last time you
saw a Black woman do something sexual TO someone else in a music video?

We don’t.

Audre Lorde says that,

“Pornography is a direct denial of the power of the erotic,for
it represents the suppression of true feeling. Pornography emphasizes
sensation without feeling.”

Online Black folks had a fit about the Ciara video. The fact that Justin was white,
bothered them. They thought she was being a hoe. The chain also bothered them
and in some ways took them back to slavery.

Folks over at Soul Bounce had an interesting roundtable discussion
about the video. They initially wrote a post titled, “How Can Justin Timberlake
Continue to Get Away with Fetishizing Black Women?” Implicit in this
line of thought is that it is permissible for Black artist who work for White
corporations to do this, but not a White artist.

My response to this line of thought is a few questions:

1. Where is Ciara’s agency in this line of thought?
2. What happens when we stop seeing Ciara as a victim?
3. Where is the critique of rappers and they “50 million hoe’s” in music
videos?

Then they came back and did a roundtable with had a more
nuanced discussion.

Peep the comments section.

Its interesting to see people struggle with race, sex and capitalism.

In some ways, what wasn’t explicitly stated is that the video is powerful
because we see a Black woman being sexual, and because this is so rare
we don’t know what to do with the feelings that arise when we see it.

Black heterosexual sex is everywhere and nowhere in pop culture.

According to the dominant Black narrative, it is okay for us to
walk around asking for *patriarchal fulfillment, (putting a ring on it)
but for us to express sexual desire, or even the erotic, we are automatic
hoe’s.

Sounds familiar? It is. The difference today is that WE are making a connections
and pushing back.

*No, all marriages do not constitute patriarchal fulfillment, however
her body of work is about getting men to do shit for her, pay bills, be a solider
etc. We all know that, in that this notion of Black male masculinity is
patriarchal and limiting. A man, a person, is more than their paycheck.

Katie Blancita, this one is for you Little boo.

Black Sex?

Single Ladies?

Sex Culture with no Sex Ed? Thoughts?