Our Beautiful Gorgeous Sensual Sexual Selves

We humans have it all wrong when it comes to our sacred, beautiful, sensual, sexual selves. One of the most important things I believe we can do to create a safe just peaceful world is to create a world where sex is not an act of shame or violence or repression but a healthy, glorious, gorgeous act that we all have a right to discover and engage. Can we create a world where everyone can access their fundamental right to a healthy sexual existence?

I recognize what a privilege it is to write and speak and experience beautiful healthy sex, when sexual violence affects all of us, when sexual violence has destroyed millions upon millions of people’s lives. The statistics are staggering. And yet I believe we can nudge change forward by finding the courage to dialogue with confidence NOT shame this glorious aspect of our human selves.

I share a story of an unexpected confrontation turned dialogue. Five years ago Maya and I were returning to Grenada after a visit to Canada. The Grenada Customs Officer asked to checked our bags. ‘No problem,’I said. After a shuffling and shaking of clothing, books, Theo’s garden boots and more books the young Officer waves something thin and rectangular in the air, “You can’t bring this into the country!” I have no idea what the man is talking about. “This,” he says. On the front of a dvd cover two naked bodies in lotus position embracing. I smile. Maya doesn’t. She’s mortified. She’s thirteen.
“What do you mean?” I say.
“Pornography is not allowed in the country?”
I tell him it’s not pornography. I tell him it’s the Kama Sutra.” I tell him every human being should be introduced to the Kama Sutra, the sacredness of sex, healthy consensual sex. Maya is now hiding behind me. I am not backing down. And I get it, we live in a sexually repressed world where two naked bodies held in love and tenderness can only be seen as dirty, nasty, and prohibited. I still fight for my right to own a video about healthy reciprocal love. I tell him the video is not violent or misogynist or shameful. I tell him the video should be shared, taught, revered. Maya is getting smaller and smaller behind me and I am not giving up. The man could feel my gentle righteous energy. He gets flustered and is unable to match my passion. He has kind arching eyes and a blush now rising in his cheeks. He shoves the dvd back into my bag and hastily pushes down all the other unsettled items and tells me to go ahead. I am victorious. Maya practically running out the doors. Theo is there.
“Wait till you hear what she’s done now.” She says while he wraps her in his arms.

I adore adrienne maree brown’s intention around uplifting healthy pleasurable sexual relations by focusing on teaching consent and boundaries instead of trying to scare people away from the most common and natural activity of our speices. “By doing this,” she says, “we could make major headway in the effort to turn our collective story from #metoo and #itwasme into #not me, and even #weconsentedanditwasdelicious.”

This shit is complex. Stay tuned for more….