How to Enjoy Your Self by Fucking Off the MasterMindSet: Sating the Desire for Self Love & Independence on the Solo Journey to the Land of O

How to Enjoy Your Self by Fucking off the MasterMindSet: Sating the Desire for Self Love & Independence on the Solo Journey to the Land of O 

I came across this little gem How I Vibrated My Way Through College posted in one of my Black Feminist Discussion Groups of Facebook (no men allowed!!) and it's a really brief and funny story of how vibrators saved her sanity and inserted (haha!!) a little pleasure in that place (lol!! I kill me!! ahaha!!) where so little joy is possible, what with all the damn stress.

Some black women never have that Talk with their mothers nor have anyone from whom to receive some kind of positive reinforcement and healthy discussion to teach them about sex. In truth, there's still a strain of puritanism and silence about sex and sexuality among in this culture which has a history that is fraught with sexual objectification, sexual violence and general physical danger. That lingering strain of Otherness that still lingers in a black woman's interaction with whites staks us all our lives. So many of the hang ups in black culture result in negative consequences and repression that is particularly deadly for the young girls in are community especially when you look at the way in which silence it's still not uncommon that a vicious silence protects the rapists and sex abusers. Naturally I'm thinking Bill Cosby and wondering how many black women he violated before he became such a super rockstar with unlimited access to white women.

Oprah Winfrey has often spoken about the two family members who sexually abused and raped her, who never went to jail and never received much censure from her family members either; hell she can't even visit some family members' homes, because even decades later these sex offenders in her family walk about socializing and generally minding their damn daily business despite her repeated requests not have to them imposed upon her during family occasions. And I can name so many similar cases among people I have known growing where sexual abusers in black families were never reported, never served a day in jail, cases where the women's sexual history is held up to "prove" that she was just a ho, that she was nothing but a slut anyway so maybe she seduced him. (I've actually heard this very discussion about an old friend of my mother's in the beauty shop) 

And everytime it comes down to the same conclusion that the sexual abusers - family men, church men, men with respected positions in society are ultimately protected by the silence of other black men and women in the community to the detriment and humiliation of the women who have suffered.

Anytime I come across  black women engaging in body-positive sexual discussion I want to cheer. In so many ways black culture lives in its own Dark Ages filled with dark tales and dark hells where black women live alone and lonely, tormented and unhappy.

So when I read Alisha Acquaye's personal account of  a black woman with the smarts and proactive instinct to take her healthy sexuality into her own hands (literally!! ahhh, I gotta stop! LOL!) I was just too happy. I thought let me share this with the Politrixiters so that they, too, can celebrate and vibrate in the joyful sound of getting off!

Personally speaking I've never gotten much use out of sex toys; methinks they're maybe more fun with a partner. But also I've only ever tried like, two, and it takes a pretty penny sometimes to try out this vibrator and that dildo to discover which one can get you off best, and really it just makes my pussy sad to spend money on sex toys when I've got two - well, dammit ten total -- ways of getting me off in a most satisfactory fashion. 

Why, all that money spent on sex toys could be more productively spent on books and yummy meals and shopping! 

Yes I understand that sex toy shopping is shopping too but for me...nah! Don't need it. Now if there is some gentleman who should wish to gift me with said toys well, I am always gracious in receiving (receiving!!:)) However I'm not hating every orgasm however it's been had is worthy of honor and glory.

But the bottom line, whatever you do, whatever you use it is so important that a woman learn her own body -- on her own time. Because there's more than one kind of sex and one key to a life of progressive and meaningful introspection, and one essential element is to spend time alone with your body learning all its quirks and works. 

Trust: if you can't get your own body off, if you can't love yourself in all the ways --physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually and sexually -- then you'll never entirely understand how to BE loved by someone else. 

Yes I am saying that masturbation is a key to learning to love yourself and to learning hot sex with yourself and others.  Absolutely. 

Alisha Acquaye describes her first sexual encounter in her essay How I Vibrated My Way Through College, and it reminded me a lot of my own underwhelming first experience at age nineteen during my Christmas break from college with my boyfriend who was about to get dumped anyway after I got laid but fine as he was he didn't know that like Carrie Bradshaw my real boyfriend was New York City. Lawd that was 19 years ago exactly. Getting old. Acquaye's account, however is so common even though many girls walk away from their first unsatisfactory sex not knowing whether the fault is in their stars, their boyfriend or themselves:

By junior year, I’d had sex with only one guy there — to whom I lost my virginity. It was a horrible experience, one of those less-than-five-minute encounters that felt impersonal and embarrassing, leaving me confused and unfulfilled. To make matters worse, we broke up a month later, and he started dating my (then) best friend right afterward. It’s safe to say that I was afraid of getting hurt again.
Afterwards, I dated guys and had some fun with them, but I didn’t have sex with anyone. I was determined to get to know my vagina before letting another guy visit it. The orgasm was my goal and self love was my means. I essentially had three majors: Journalism, Art History, and The Clit.

I wish I had been so wise!! Sistah said to herself "No I got to get off before he can get anything," which is the melody of damn good sense and sexual brilliance to me. For young women it often takes some breaking in of the pussy before she learns what an orgasm is but problem with that is that with so little knowledge at that age when we start letting some young dude start banging is that the poor man-babies take that ever so literally. 

Your pussy should sing and should not feel like you have been loved by a meat tenderizer. And you can't give great directions to well meaning man-babies when you don't even know yourself how to reach that shangri-la Land of Os aka Land of Orgasm, the Great O, OhMyGod Land.

Alisha Acquaye's account of precocious awareness may be due to the prominence of sex in American culture and the 21 century's ubiquitous interwebs, or maybe she was just damn smart and highly self-aware. It would never have occurred to me back in 1995 to purchase a vibrator and...practice. And if it had occurred to me I wouldn't have had the sexual self-possession to buy one. Back before Times Square became the New York City Disneyland there were all these dingy, dark sex shops in that area of Manhattan. Grubby, pudgy little men hunched over the magazine racks that could be seen from the street. I never even saw a shop in the Village that looked like something I'd have felt comfortable visiting. Ahhh, but the privacy of the interwebs allows everyone the freedom to experiment with no shame!! These millennials don't know how good they got it.

I'm not a parent yet but it seems to me that teaching black girls - hell, all girls -- the art of self-love

ought to include some instruction in ...well, self-love. But you don't need to gift your 16th with the bunny eared thing just yet but even just letting young girls know that it is okay touch themselves for pleasure is huge. In school kids joke about sex based on what they've heard and seen on TV (or God help us on the internet) and for a shy kid like I was I thought the jokes meant that something like masturbation was a bad thing. Didn't stop me doing it but still hearing a joke would make me feel blushed and a bit ashamed. 

In order to taking the shame out of sex and sexuality means that first there has to be a dialogue. This hush of silence and secrecy that is maintained in black culture only aids trauma and ignorance in its most literal, destructive definition. A knowledgeable young woman is a happy, healthy, bright, loving young woman. But without self-love and self awareness there can be no effective loving of others. In a culture fraught with obesity, eating disorders which aid and abet unhealthy body image it is little wonder that black women suffer in epidemic proportions from depression which becomes the ultimate  inability appreciate one's self, to love life and experience joy. 

Furthermore, such bleak self-image and uneducated understanding cloaks one of the most sure fire way to lift a bad mood -- and that, my friends and Politrixters, is  through a hell-fire earthquake beam-me up Scotty! orgasm.I'm just tryna tell you what the Lord love, honey. Acquaye continues her tales of other solo forays into the Land of O:

I started having sex again at the very end of senior year, and my partner was a friend-with-benefits whom I had unrequitedly fallen for. His penis was a different size than I was accustomed to — short and moderately thick, but unable to even brush against my G-spot. Our emotional chemistry didn’t translate into a sexual connection, leaving me again unsatisfied.
When we didn’t work out, I found myself heartbroken and hornier than ever before. Realizing I had never experienced truly falling in love or having an orgasm with someone else, I decided not to have sex again until I found love.
Which led to what I now like to call “The Drought.”

See, that's what I'm talking about! There ain't no reason to ever suffer Drought. In the long, dry spells alone with no partner you can get off  -- and there should never be any sense of shame attached to self-love, no built up reservoirs of despair, depression, and furious anger  that become so deadly and hateful when the body is desperate for release. Tell you daughters! Tell your young sisters!! Take matters into your own hands, dammit. Acquaye did just that.

I found myself masturbating once again, like an insatiable cookie monster. This time, I was masturbating with someone in mind whom I craved and adored.

Most importantly, I felt good about myself again. Masturbation became less about practice and preparation for the “real thing,” or about proving something to myself. It became a beautiful and educational activity that I partake in; a physical way of reconnecting with myself while also finding balance in other areas of my life.

While masturbation is about the body it's also about the mind and the soul. There's a gentleness and kindness that is inherently apart of self-love. It requires one to go inside the mind and disconnect from the outside world while tending your own garden. And your garden will yield finer fruits the more attentive you are to it. Same with your pussy.

We are taught that our sexuality means surrendering to someone else; this is a mistake that is passed from one generation of women to another, that your satisfaction is dependent. You are dependent. Essentially, when we learn about sex we are being fed a smorgasbord of dependency that will reverberate across a lifetime and define the way we relate to our fathers and our boyfriends, to our husbands and bosses.

Wresting that independence back to the ourselves is greater than seeking financial freedom, it is a powerful spiritual quest to reunite our souls to the Goddess within; it is the journey to mental wellness; identifying and caring for ourselves first through instinct and intuition; acknowledging that we must necessarily be guided through instinct because such disobedience  is to the detriment of our health in mind, body and soul.

And sexually, it is more than the search for the Great O, it is the lesson that teaches us about self-love  that takes us down the road of  private time  and permission for yourself to be, which is a thing that is easily forgotten when others depend so much on you while you are consumed in dependency on some other. Ultimately you cannot expect to love others fully if you have no true love for yourself.

That self love begins in proving to yourself that you are an individual who is  naturally deserving of  love and pleasure and consideration -- all things that one instinctively knows but which is denied through the unlearning taught by society, the church, the law, and even from our beloved mothers.
And you don't have to take my word for it. Ask Alisha Acquaye, she knows what's up:

These days, I see that life is like my resilient, ever-changing sexuality — something that I have to relearn and connect to everyday in order to evolve into myself and reach happiness.
Still, sometimes, I do forget to masturbate. Which reminds me…

Hmph. That ain't something I ever forget to do, personally speaking.