When talking about sex and relationships, my friends and I have a good ol’ time laughing about the ways that our parents did (or did not) have “The Talk” with us. Some of us sat awkwardly in our chairs and just prayed and prayed that the moment would be over.
For others, the talk was just a sentence.
“Don’t have sex.”
I was just watching Yvonne Orji’s HBO comedy special where she said that her mother told her that she would put “pepper in her anus” if she found out if she was dating a boy.
Needless to say, across the Diaspora, “The Talk” is complicated.
According to some data from the Center for Disease Control, the Black community as a whole is getting played. In 2014, the rate of gonorrhea, chlamydia, and syphilis among our community members far surpassed our White counterparts. Education about sexual health for Black adolescents is still a topic of public health research.
So, here we are. A bunch of Black millennials skipping into adulthood and maybe some of us are realizing that we actually don’t know as much about sex and relationships as we thought.
Here are a few tips (definitely not an exhaustive list!) of ways to recreate “The Talk” for yourself if you feel like “Don’t have sex” isn’t quite cutting it.
Write down some questions, rumors, statements, + biases that you’ve acquired along the way about sex and relationships.
Maybe you grew up in a more conservative household and sex before marriage seemed out of the question. Maybe your family never wanted to talk about the topic.
Maybe you never felt comfortable bringing it up.
But, it’s still an important conversation to have even if you are just having the conversation with yourself. You should write down anything and everything you’ve thought about sex and relationships and organize them into categories.
Are they health concerns?
Relationship questions you would never dare to ask out loud?
Situations you heard happen to someone else but aren’t quite sure are true?
Try to organize them the best you can.
Start to look for some answers. Go ask your doctor or trusted health information on the internet.
Always listen and then verify. That’s one of my mother’s favorite phrases and it’s perfect for this conversation. If it’s a health question, it’s definitely better to ask a physician those questions in advance than to sit and wonder.
If you need help combing through the inter webs, the National Institute for Health has a poppin’ guideline on how to decipher health information on the internet.
Listen to new perspectives from folks that look like us.
If you grew up in a lily-White high school like me and then went to a lily-White college like me, conversation about sex and relationships may not have included your voice (whether we are talking about race or sexual orientation). But, there are sex-positive discussions from the Diaspora and this number is ever growing. Shannon Boodram is an extremely educated sexologist who talks candidly about relationships and sex. Work Bae had an excellent podcast with Penda N’Diaye who’s goal is to “eradicate stigma and taboos associated with POC and sex, and create a space for sex positivity.” Around The Ways Curls worked through the book Pleasure Activism on their podcast.
The inner anthropologist in me was very happy to read and listen to all of these works.
Also, quick disclaimer before you go! This list is definitely not all that’s out there.
Sex means a lot of different things to many different identities and I’m just scratching the surface…
So, share the love and share some resources down below that you have found and have adored!
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