Quirky Black Girls: How Talking to Your Homegirls Can ‘Liberate’ Your Sex Life

Sent to you by moya via Google Reader:

How Talking to Your Homegirls Can ‘Liberate’ Your Sex Life

via The Crunk Feminist Collective by crunktastic on 11/9/11

Over the summer, while I was visiting Crunkadelic, she and I ended up brainstorming methods for positioning oneself at an optimum angle for penetration in the missionary position. Yes, that means what you think it means. #selfcareisnotagame

For professional Black and Latino women (source) who are often dogged by long periods of forced celibacy, "getting it in" cannot be merely a declaration. Sometimes there needs to be a pragmatic conversation about how to, um, get it in and keep it in.

At some point, we thought that perhaps a pillow under the bottom could provide that extra lift, and since nothing is new under the sun, we figured that some sex guru had already invented such a pillow.

A Google search confirmed our suspicions.

So I thank/blame Crunkadelic for putting me on to the Liberator wedge and ramp and all the other goodies that they boast at their website.

You can imagine then that it was a pleasant surprise to discover via my FB newsfeed (which is how I find out most things worth knowing these days) that three of the cast members of the Real Housewives of Atlanta visited the newly opened Liberator Store in Atlanta on the premiere episode.

Now I was busy watching #BlackGirlsRock, on BET.

And we do rock, in case anyone was wondering. S/N: I was pleasantly surprised to see the embedded layers of social critique within the program—discussion of the prison industrial complex (from the venerable Angela Davis), discussions of sex trafficking of Black girls and women, and of course, a range of challenges to the paucity of representations of Black female subjectivity in media.

Back on FaceBook, one of my male friends remarked on the alleged contradiction of having Black Girls Rock on at the same time as RHOA. In my estimation it was a failed analogy, unless, the argument is that Black women should only be center stage on one channel at a time, or that we can't be both fabulously fly and outrageously over-the-top at the same time. Now I agree that if there is a such thing as authentic representation, it is probably somewhere in between the hyper-positivity of BGR and the hyper-negativity of RHOA.

And while I stopped watching RHOA for all the obvious reasons after season 1, I found Sheree, Kandi's, and Phaedra's trip to the sex store important for a couple of reasons.

1.) Black women are pro-sex, notwithstanding the bad reps we get as denizens of respectability. And as others have said, since Black feminist sex is the best sex ever, I need Kandi to make it happen with her sex toy line. Every grown woman needs sex toys.

2.) If you want to have better sex, you should discuss it with your homegirls. I'm serious! Frankly, I would venture to say that the good sex I have had is as much a result of "consultations" with my homegirls as it is a result of the skills sets of my chosen partners. It is my girls who have encouraged me to be bold in asking for what I want and to try new things, disabused me of my investment in being a good girl in the bedroom, helped me to know what is "normal" (namely anything that I and my partner willingly desire and consent to do) and what is not acceptable (e.g. being used as a partner's masturbation machine, being pressured, and being in pain [BDSM isn't my thing]).

Me and my girls routinely have intense conversations about our intimate lives, what it looks like to have the kind of sex we want to be having in our 20s, 30s, and 40s, and the nuts and bolts of the acts, when necessary. I have helped homegirls plan whole seduction schemes from the lingerie to the breakfast menu, and they have reciprocated. When it comes to getting it in, my motto is be intentional.

So of course, I was slightly offended when one of my FB friends had the nerve to question why anyone would need a pillow during sex. It reminded me that in a culture which privileges smaller body types, it rarely enters into the purview of the slim (and the able-bodied), that all bodies can't and don't and don't want to have sex in the same ways. Because fat people aren't seen as sexy, most folks think that fat people aren't having sex, or at least not good sex. Lie Number One. Truth: The Overweight Lovers are in the house! (Much love and RIP to the Original Overweight Lover Heavy D.)

And Lie Number Two comes from big girls who are fronting and faking like sex happens for us in the same ways as our skinny counterparts. Yes, there are some big girls who are flexible and acrobatic, and they are my sheroes. But it's not a leap to recognize that physical acts work differently on bodies that are 120 or 150 pounds versus bodies that are 250 or 300 pounds. Can we be real about that? Extra weight requires extra creativity about most things, from fashion to sex. And ain't no shame in admitting that.

So if the Liberator pillow (or any other similar product or strategy) can offer support for F.A.T. (fabulous and thick) girls or people with disabilities who may be less flexible or need additional support for the elbows or the posterior, then I say get free! Trust I will be getting free as soon as freedom is in the budget. This weekend when I head to Atlanta for NWSA, I got two words for y'all: field trip!

And let me say it one more time: #blackgirlsrock!