What does pro-sex mean anyway?

Pro-sex is a belief that sexuality is spiritual and human beings are naturally, sexual beings so women do not have to fit into the box prude vs. whore; there is definitely an in between. For example, Janet Jackson’s lyrics are just as provocative as Lil Kim’s but just more subtle. Janet is just as sexual as Lil Kim but in a different way. Thus, there are more ways to live a pro-sex life without being a “whore” or “slut”

It’s all about balance. One can be pro-sex yet practice abstinence/celibacy at certain point in one’s life in order to create/maintain sexual health and balance.

Pro-sex means looking at sex holistically; that sex is more than just a physical act and one must be sexually healthy and aware


Pro-sex does not mean sexually promiscuous, it actually means just the opposite that as sexual beings we are obligated to be sexually responsible.

Being pro-sex does not mean that you’re a nymphomaniac or currently sexually active. Being pro-sex is having the outlook that sex is just as important as nutrition and just as we teach people to have balanced eating habits, we must teach people to have balanced sex lives as well.

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My Contraceptive Journey

Part of Latina Week of Action for Reproductive Justice

I have been aware of contraception since before I was sexually active. Before any of us had even kissed anyone, my friends and I knew about condoms, birth control pills, diaphragms and other contraception. We attended a progressive Catholic school in New York City, where our sex education classes went into great detail about birth control methods. It was also the late 80s, and AIDS was ravaging our communities, despite President Reagan’s persistent and immoral denial of the disease and its toll. Just as important in shaping my ideas around sexuality was the fact that by my freshman year in high school, I had several friends who became pregnant and struggled with their decisions about whether to parent, place for adoption or terminate the pregnancy. I knew then that preventing pregnancy and STDs would be an important part of my life for a long time.

I became sexually active in my teens, much earlier than my mother would have wanted, and if I am honest, earlier than I was emotionally ready for. I was in love for the first time, and my boyfriend and I were pretty inexperienced (read: virgins). At that point, condoms were my contraceptive of choice. They were cheap, accessible and my mother did not need to know about them. (Let’s not even discuss my father’s knowing anything about my sex life.) Condoms also meant that my boyfriend could and would share in the responsibility of keeping us both free from disease and pregnancy. The latter was still a more real and terrifying thought to me than the former, even at the height of the AIDS pandemic. Condoms continued to be my go-to birth control method until college.

As an undergraduate, I continued using condoms, this time with spermicide. It took me a while to realize that I the irritation I was experiencing was an allergic to nonoxynol-9 , the spermicide used in several brands of condoms. On to the next method. Like my friend, Bianca I tried withdrawal. I even tried the sponge – yes that sponge made famous by the character Elaine on Seinfeld. I felt clumsy inserting it and wasn’t confident that I had done it correctly. Not a good starting point for a relationship with a contraceptive.

Finally, I made an appointment with my campus health services to get a prescription for birth control pills. It seemed like the right birth control method for the relationship I was in. They were only $5 a month through University Health Services, and I didn’t have to worry about my mother finding them. I suffered few side effects and overwhelming relief that I’d found a birth control that worked for me. Sometime after college, I got tired of taking the pill. I wanted to share the burden of preventing STDS and pregnancy with my partner, not carry the whole responsibility myself. I was also a little concerned about putting hormones in my body. So the pills went on hiatus, and I went back to condoms. This time it was an eye-opening experience. Had I forgotten what condoms were like? Or had my body changed? Or was my current relationship different from the last time I used condoms? I wasn’t sure which it was, but now condoms were yucky, uncomfortable, and a complete turn-off. How had this happened? Condoms had been my go-to birth control method before, but I realized that they weren’t right for me in the relationship I was in. The hiatus was a short one. While I still wanted a more equitable sharing of the responsibility for birth control, I was not willing to sacrifice a happy sex life for it.

Things went along like this until my 30s. My husband and I were thinking of having children, and we stopped using birth control altogether. We didn’t get pregnant, and we were okay with that (and still are). Since we hadn’t gotten pregnant, we figured we wouldn’t get pregnant and kept using nothing. Then I went in for my annual check-up with my OB/GYN. I love my doctor, who I have been seeing for more than 10 years. Like me he’s a cyclist, and he admires the work I do. He also appreciates seeing my husband in the waiting room during my visits to him. Many of his patients come by themselves, even well into their pregnancies. Doc was aware that my husband and I had tried to have children and weren’t successful. He very gently suggested that it just might not happen for us. When he asked me about birth control, I was confused. Hadn’t he just said that “it just might not happen for us”? Then he asked me if I was prepared for an unexpected pregnancy at this stage of my life. “NO!” I almost screamed.

That question and the subsequent conversation I had with my doctor convinced me to consider yet another contraceptive method – the IUD. I had my initial misgivings about it – political, medical and social. Doc talked over my options with me and made clear that I should take time to think and talk with my husband. I went home with the brochures and did some research on my own. Once I had spoken to friends about their experiences with the IUD and sufficiently answered my own questions, I realized that the IUD was the right choice for me. My doctor’s office also made it easier by looking into what my insurance would cover. Luckily for me, my insurance paid for all the costs.

That was a year-and-a-half ago. I feel really good about my decision to get the IUD. My goal at this stage of my reproductive life is less to prevent STDS than to prevent pregnancy. That doesn’t mean my contraceptive journey is over. I’m only 37, and who knows how many more years I might be able to get pregnant (and not want to). I look back on my sexual and reproductive life and see that I made some really good decisions about what was right for me at any given time. I had access to good information, financial resources and support from my partners, family and friends. Shouldn’t everybody have the same?

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How would you promote safe sex?

Have we become numb to the messages of safe sex (use a condom, protect yourself, get tested)? We all know about HIV/AIDS and STIs, it's become a part of our sexual lives but are people really taking their sexual health seriously?

Women in Entertainment Empowerment Network just announced their SAFE SEX PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT CONTEST. Their goal is to promote safe sex and empowerment through education at the upcoming 2010 Women's Empowerment Expo in Raleigh, NC, at the end of the month. Get all the contest details here before the contest ends on March 12.

Candidates will submit their video and the NYC WEEN Planning Committee will vote on 3 finalists. The finalists' videos will be placed on weenonline.org and WEEN members will have 48 hrs to vote on the video of their choice. The winner will be eligible for two round trip tickets to NYC, two tickets to attend the 2nd Annual WEEN Awards, and walk the Pink Carpet.

If you're in Raleigh and want to attend the expo, check the flyer below:

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Breast Cancer Awareness…#FAIL

Did you know about that amazing viral campaign that raised awareness about breast cancer? Of course you did. If you are a Facebook user, then you probably noticed a curious phenomenon last week. Rather mysteriously, women were updating their status with colors. There was beige, lots of black, red, some purple and pink, even stripes. Nothing else, just colors. The point of this was to raise awareness about breast cancer. Now let that sink in. The point of this exercise was to raise awareness about breast cancer by women sharing what color bra they were wearing that day. What? You didn’t know that was actually about something serious? Yeah, well, join the fucking club.

This was such an obvious educational campaign FAILURE, let me count the ways An educational campaign can’t lay claim to raising awareness if no one knows what the campaign was about or even that a campaign was underway. Most people I know thought this was a joke. And to a certain extent it was. The message that I got on Facebook was this, “Some fun is going on.... just write the color of your bra in your status. Just the color, nothing else. And send this on to ONLY girls no men... It will be neat to see if this will spread the wings of cancer awareness. See how long it takes before the men will wonder why all the girls have a color in their status.” The problem was, is and remains that most people were not in on the joke. Women were changing their status and friends were reading them without necessarily making the connection to breast cancer. The “campaign” (I use that term loosely here) didn’t provide enough context for people to make that leap from beige (or pink or purple) to breast cancer awareness.

I ‘m not criticizing the campaign for trying to be different, fun or flirty. Or that even guys got into the act. I wasn’t concerned about women objectifying themselves by sharing the color of their bra. My issue was with the lack of any genuine awareness-raising or educating about breast cancer. As a next step, the campaign could have asked women to post statistics about the prevalence of breast cancer or steps on how to conduct a self-breast examination. Organizers of the campaign, whoever they were, could have suggested that women follow-up with blog posts explaining risk factors for breast cancer or first–person narratives from breast cancer fighters and survivors. In fact, among all these status updates the words “breast cancer” didn’t appear. Not once. And so we lost a major opportunity to educate millions of people, especially young women, about a disease that will strike 1 in 8 women over the course of her lifetime, including my best friend’s mom who died from complications due to breast cancer in 2008.

Another major failure of the campaign was raised in this post, by WHYMOMMY. How many people stopped to think about the fact that many women could not participate because they longer wore a bra, because of breast cancer? In trying to raise awareness about breast cancer the campaign managed to isolate and silence the very people who are MOST impacted by this disease. The campaign cannot claim to stand in solidarity with breast cancer fighters and survivors, if the effect was to do so at their expense, further marginalizing them and adding to the tremendous stigma that still surrounds the disease.

I spend a lot of time thinking about cancer. Since my Mom was diagnosed fourteen months ago, not a day goes by that I don’t think about cancer, the 12 million people around the world that will be diagnosed with it this year or what I can do to fight it. But if we are going to really educate people about breast cancer, this bra campaign isn’t going to get us there. We need information, resources, and services. Otherwise, it’s just a joke that most of us aren’t in on.

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Killing Us (Not So) Softly

Today I attended a panel presented by Iced Media and TheLoop21.com as part of Internet Week NY discussing how to best utilize the power of the Internet for HIV/AIDS prevention and education in the African-American community. "Stop Black AIDS" is the theme of their new campaign to bring awareness to the vast disparities among African-Americans and the rest of the country, and to help eliminate the stigma attached to this disease.

I have my own admitted "conspiracy theories" about HIV/AIDS because of political, economic and social implications and payoffs (for some) of this as a worldwide epidemic. I will refrain from ranting about my distrust of Big Pharma and their role in the spread and "maintenance" of the disease because the issue for me is more about injustice than anything else.

With that said, much of the discussion turned to issues of stigma and silence within the Black community. We don't like to talk about sex. More often than not, young African-Americans aren't receiving information from their parents, schools or churches about sexual health at all, except "don't do it." When it comes to AIDS, we are even more silent. "Why?" is the $64,000 question.

Part of the stigma around AIDS in particular is that it's a gay disease and unfortunately, Black folks are good for being homophobic. Just think about the popular saying, "pause". "Pause" is used when someone makes a comment that has homosexual undertones, or if a man says another man is attractive, or basically when any remotely homosexual situation occurs. I don't know the origins but here and now, it's a proclamation of heterosexuality, an assertion that one doesn't want to be associated with anything gay. With that mentality and language (which creates our reality), how can we candidly talk about this sexually transmitted disease that conjures up images of homosexuality? Have we not gotten the memo that HIV/AIDS is NOT a gay disease?

Listening to this discussion helped me realize that if we are to tackle this, we need to address our rampant homophobia. Think about the "down low" categorization (also known as MSM, men who have sex with men). My first job was at an HIV/AIDS facility in Harlem and it was hard for me to wrap my head around this concept. "Aren't they just gay?" I asked. However, these men don't consider themselves gay...they just have sexual relations with men. Get it? Semantics, right? Not quite. Many of these men also engage in heterosexual relationships and don't disclose their same-sex activities to their female partners. Now before you blame MSM, us women aren't creating safe spaces for these men to be honest about their sexuality. Most women would be appalled if their man told them that they have been with a man before. So if that's the case, how can we expect honesty when talking about sexual health in the context of HIV/AIDs and STIs in general?

This issue also came up in reference to the church, a trusted resource in the Black community. There you have a conflict of Bible-ordained abstinence vs. the reality that we are sexual beings. A bit of a mindfuck? One undeniable result is high STI and HIV/AIDS rates among African-Americans. Terrence Dean quoted T.D. Jakes's observation, "The churches don't know what to say because there's no verse in the Bible that addresses AIDS." More progressive Black churches have stepped into the 21st century and are responding to the epidemic because they can no longer ignore the direct effects in their communities. Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice is at the forefront of this movement with their National Black Church initiative, supporting African-American clergy who want to bring sexual and reproductive health issues to their congregations. Hopefully there will be a domino effect and religious leaders will make the linkages between scripture and reality.

Another question is how do we mobilize offline? Part of the ongoing debate about the Internet is if we are really being politically active. We've seen President Obama win the election largely because of his web-savvy, but we also have an endless universe of Internet petitions and sounding boards. But is that translating into change and concrete action? Chuck Creekmur made a key point about how the White gay community was able to unite and organize and deflect HIV/AIDS as a gay disease. He points out that we need to study their movement and draw from their successes and learn from their challenges. This hits the nail on the head; we must learn from other social and cultural movements, and our own history of resistance, to flip the script and change the dialogue.

On this note, Dr. K. Aletha Maybank emphasized the importance of us being politically active and pushing for policy change. I believe this election has shown that African-Americans are a viable voting bloc. Politicians are going to serve the voters; that's how they keep their job. We can't expect our demands to be heard if we aren't showing up at at the ballet box, or writing letters, or making phone calls. But now that we have an ally and a brother in the White House, the time is ripe for us to speak up for housing, health care and civil rights for Blacks, and everyone, with HIV/AIDS. We also need to take our local leaders to task when we see injustices in our own neighborhoods.

In (not so) short, there seems to be a consensus that there is power in discussion. For us, talking openly about this issue is a big step. Discussions of sex, sexuality, and sexual health must take place on all fronts. I believe this is how we heal. Within our families, to our children, online, in the media, in churches and social organizations...wherever we have a platform, we should use it. Just breaking the silence can save lives and ourselves.

Watch the panel and make your own conclusions...but most of all, use your voice, and your fingers (by typing, dirty minds), to keep this discussion alive in our on- and offline communities.

An added bonus:
Listen to Esther Armah, hostess of WBAI 99.5 FM's Wake Up Call, interview Darrell Williams, Founder of TheLoop21.com, and Sony Lockett, BET's VP of Public Affairs and director of the Rap It Up campaign.

Moderator: Mike Muse, CEO Muse Recordings, and amazing Obama fundraiser
Panelists:
Kenya Byrd (Essence)
Terrance Dean (Speaker, Author, and Educator)
Angela Yee (Lip Service/Shade 45)
K. Aletha Maybank MD MPH (Asst/ Commissioner, NYC Dept of Health and Mental Hygiene)
Sonya Lockett (BET Rap it Up)
Chuck Creekmur (AllHipHop.com)
Blogxilla (Blogxilla.com/Global Grind)

Thanks to Sherry Biting for inviting me to this event!

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