What Color is Your Orgasm? Sex-Positive Advice in Black and White
In many ways, learning to break sex-negativity down is linked to working to end other prejudices. Sex-negativity is used to enforce sexism every time a woman is insulted by being called a slut. The myth that people of African descent are hypersexual and are therefore less developed than those of European descent clearly depends on the idea that sex is bad. Every time we’re shocked that our elders are sexual beings, sex-negativity reinforces ageism and it’s certainly one of the roots of homophobia, which is based on some peoples’ sexuality not being within the allowed norms. While these examples are certainly over-simplified, it’s easy to see that sex-negativity is braided into all of our prejudices and conversely, our other prejudices inform and help define our sex-negativity, so it’s not surprising that working towards ending one requires working towards ending the others. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that not working towards ending all of them limits how far we can work towards ending any of them.
~~”The Language of Sex Positivity,” The Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality, 7/6/2000
In the spirit of inclusion and identity–and, for publishing houses, the aura of diversity and, by extension, profit–authors of color, like Jewelle Gomez, Chrystos, Samuel Delaney, and David Mura, wrote erotica and joined in erotic-lit anthologies as well.
A wide choice of erotica exists for almost every race/ethnicity (the classics On a Bed of Rice, Under the Pomegranate Tree: the Best New Latino Erotica, Caliente: The Best Erotic Writing in Latin American Fiction, and Erotique Noir/Black Erotica come to mind) and sexual orientation, gender, and proclivity. Norma Alarcon, Ana Castillo, and Cherrie Moraga edited The Sexuality of Latinas. Good Vibrations’ film company, Sexpositive Productions, released Please Don’t Stop: Lesbian Tips for Givin’ & Gettin’ It with cast of women of color.
Off the top of my head, I know of two African American women who are running sex-toy businesses and received regional and national press: Tami Brooks, owner of Huneypot Parties, and well, Zane.
When it comes to publishing advice for the sexually curious, however, for every Tristan Taormino and Dan Savage and ex-Nerve.com advice writers Em and Lo, there’s….
Okay, well, beyond Zane, there’s Dr. Hilda Hutcherson, a gynocologist and columnist for Essence and Glamour, who wrote Pleasure: A Woman’s Guide to Getting the Sex You Want, Need, and Deserve. And then there’s….
Exactly.
Why aren’t there more sex-positive sex advice columnists of color on the wider-syndicated and/or book-deal getting scale of Taormino, Savage, and Em and Lo?
I’m not just talking about the dime-a-dozen, dating-and-relationship advice columnists, the ones who tell a female reader to buy flowers or get some of the above-mentioned erotica for that Special Someone she’s interested in order to keep his attention. With few exceptions –and depending on the publication — dating-and-relationship advice is very hetero-centric and geared at women. I am looking for a columnist who provides all that, but one who also, say, gives advice on safer-sex practices for a stiletto-heel fetishist like Taormino. Or like Savage, who advised a newbie to anal sex struggling with how to tell her boyfriend she finds the act painful even though lubrication is used and he “takes his time” with her, to give the man a “consciousness-raising session that involves” her “doing the boyfriend’s ass with a dildo that’s roughly the same size as his dick.”
My first answer I have received in response to my questions is that the advice is applicable to everyone because we’re all sexual beings and, at some point, someone’s going to cover the question I’ve been dying to ask—or introduce me to a practice or another nugget of sexual information–in one of the major columns. The columnist’s race shouldn’t matter, right?
I saw that answer as naively colorblind.
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