I’m reading The Sex Lives of African Women, a crucial collection of intimate stories. The author Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah compiles tales from women across the globe that need a platform. And although this work thrives via the specificity of its unnamed accounts, it rings universal. It’s the kind of book that makes me rethink how “progressive” I am. That is a false game to play. I still need to invest in the sexual freedom of women, whether they’re my partners or friends. I still need to unlatch myself from any ideas of “complete” learning in the realm of feminism. I am still not a feminist. I’m a man undoing the death blows of patriarchy on my psyche. This collection embarrasses me (in a good way).
I was coming home from an STI test when I picked it up. I’d had lunch in a mall downtown. Brooklyn summer swerved in with the guilt of unprotected sex and sunny air on my neck. I hadn’t planned to get tested (which I admit wasn’t a great start). The bookstore served as a reprieve from thoughts of shame and blame for a partner who revealed a recent exposure. That information bothered me but not because I took responsibility. I left my health to her choice and rolled the dice, assuming she’d limit her sex to keep me in the clear. That problematic stance is one way sexist thinking works on me.
Like many men, I’ve gotten tested through my partner’s tests, opting not to get jabbed with needles, probed with Q-tips, or sampled with cups. I’d know when she knew, I thought. I’ve also entered the women’s rights debate through girlfriends and partners. I was disinclined to think of interlocked freedom struggles of race and gender until they visited my bedroom and kitchen. I know now that has left the Black women I’ve dated feeling alone, uncared for, and resentful. Too often, we’ve seen Black women storm the front lines for their men who are victims of state violence while those same men endorse and perpetuate interpersonal violence. Sex and intimacy are the ground floor of this escalating conflict. “The Sex Lives of African Women” roots the reader in some impenetrable truths about how Black women unduly tolerate common failures of men.
I haven’t finished the entire book because there are sections that describe assault. I’m not ready to face my own history in that way, and accounts like those can flood me. But the parts I’ve read astonish me with their verbatim echoes of worries women sound off to me. In the most private spaces. The following 9 lessons come from quoted portions of the book.
Jealousy doesn’t look good on you
One time he called me a whore for being with another man before him. He said he didn’t know if I could ever be the mother of his child. At night I would feel panicky about going to sleep. I talk in my sleep sometimes, about anything from ketchup to Harry Potter, and he started to say to me in the morning, “You were talking about your ex again.” I started to Google “how to stop sleep talking.” There is no cure for sleep talking. No tablet you can take to stop talking in your sleep. I didn’t even know if it was true that I had been talking about Paul in my sleep.
—Salma
The specter of jealousy hangs like bushy banyan trees over Black women’s desires. I have written about my own struggles with jealousy and certainly don’t feel it’s exclusive to men to feel jealous. Male jealousy, however, assumes fatal forms. The passage above spells out how unchecked jealousy veers into violence and can restrict beyond love’s counterpunch.
Leave your penis size and climax obsession at the door
He would play his guitar, carry me on his back, take me to the beach. He made me feel good about myself[…]It took a week of preparation before we both lost our virginity together. He had a perfect tiny penis. Mica and I stayed together for four years.
—Chantale
In this telling passage, Chantale describes her first pleasurable lover as having a “perfect tiny penis,” a phrase that felt unimaginable at first. “Perfect” and “tiny” do not register in the male vernacular when it comes to our bodies. But this writer wanted to set her needs apart from the stereotype that giant genitals equal satisfaction. In most cases, that isn’t true. What’s more: it’s never been true. But the pervasiveness of that idea gives birth to Chantale’s impossibly beautiful sentiment here. Mica spoke to her soul and therefore to her body. He made me feel good about myself. Isn’t that the true wish for all of our great loves? That we can make them feel good and that they will do the same for us?
Honor a woman sharing sexual memories as evidence she can trust you with them
One day we’d gone to a party together, and I was pretty drunk. Someone I had hooked up with during our breakup touched my back in a rather intimate way and later Jabu quizzed me about that. He wanted to know if I had slept with the man who had touched my back at the party. I had. The guy was someone who was in the same social circle as Jabu and so he got really upset because he considered the guy a friend. He felt I had betrayed him in some way even though we hadn’t been together when I had hooked up with the other guy.
—Naisha
The vignettes in this work roused my mind with scenes from Haiti, Nigeria, Egypt, India, and this poignant one from South Africa. Wherever women in this book are situated, they recall delicate memories of their sensual starts. But oftentimes, the men who hear their partners’ tales of a sexual past that runs deeper than their presence become paranoid about measuring up to long-gone lovers. What begins as an invitation to join the history of a beloved mate turns into another reason for the woman to hold back, burying her dearest experiences under a man’s weighty ego. I’ve been entangled in webs of past lovers, feeling the threat of memory bark down on the simple reality of the present. Every time I conjured an image of the heroic lover now gone, I narrowed the window for open expression.
Consent is an ongoing conversation that should be reignited each time you give or receive touch
At the workshop we discussed consent, safety, and the importance of knowing who you are playing with, as well as the different types of play. There were also different stations set up where you could check out different demonstrations and experiences if you felt so inclined.
—Helen Banda
The first pleasurable sexual experience I had was when he went down on me. Then another time we had penetrative sex. It lasted about a minute. I said, “That’s it?” and he said, “When it’s your first time you don’t really cum.” He never said, “It’s your first time, let me teach you.” Our sex life didn’t get better. He seemed content with how things were. We would do missionary or doggy style, he would orgasm and that would be the end of sex. I never came from penetrative sex.
—Mariam Gebre
Men’s rush of conquesting lust can overpower the lovely exploration of touch. In the long-term relationships women described in TSLAW, husbands and fiancés disavowed asking and learning in favor of grabbing and poking. The rough, inattentive approach frustrates the slow build of pleasure that the narrators longed for. In the tale that Helen Banda recalls, where an open, polyamorous marriage with her husband sprouts from her browsing sex parties and the BDSM community, there’s a potent reminder that nothing is a given in sexual union. Attraction may rumble and percolate but how bodies’ desires transform into physical acts is an immemorial mystery. Some scenes in TSLAW read like the women were jostled and cajoled into sex, moved like freight into cargo holds. We must ask our partners how they feel and want to be touched, and be just as willing to reveal our preferences and limits, too. Consent has become a buzzword, which, at least for our current culture, is a step forward. But consent is a study, a lifestyle, a continuum, a language. It would help men to verse ourselves in every aspect of it.
Women and men both want the space to indulge their fantasies. That can happen with or without you
What I have learned is that you don’t discover yourself by sticking to well-trodden paths. You discover yourself by embarking on your own personal odyssey, which is experienced differently by everyone. The journey towards self discovery may be long and winding, but it is also one filled with infinite possibilities that come with adventure.
— Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah
The women and couples who engage in their fantasy life—any life beyond the physical realm or two people—were eminently happier and more fulfilled. Love and sex are a playground, ideally. To bring the ideal self closer to real self, we must encourage, endorse, and enable our lovers’ fantasies to the best of our ability. Fantasies can turn into safe, clear visions for sexual awakening with helpful partners ready to support their fruition.
Marriage benefits the patriarchy, and polyamory frees women
My personal experience of marriage, including the hundreds of marriages that I have witnessed, is that overwhelmingly it is restrictive for women.
—Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah
When my husband and I started exploring the lifestyle we would try to do activities that centered around couple play, but that didn’t really work out […] So we decided to explore individually, which was also much better for our childcare arrangement. This individual exploration also helped me realize that I am more polyamorous than I am a swinger. I’m not opposed to swinging at all. I just prefer to have more consistent play partners.
—Helen Banda
That marriage oppresses women is likely a tough admission for men raised to believe that it’s women’s ultimate goal. To be fair, we still operate that way as a society even though the marriage rites reinforce the deal as an exchange of romantic relationships for property value. The Helen Banda story was one I returned to many times in my reading because she loved her husband but felt just as loyal to her desire and her sexual discovery as she did to her marriage bond. That’s usually anathema to monogamous marriage structures. Instead of adhering to those traditions, Helen struck out to find partners and scenarios that suited her without incinerating her home. That was reassuring to take in, especially since most people's impression of polyamory is either a closeted “swap” community or a hippie free-for-all. Both, I’ve been told, end in disaster. Not for Helen, though. She enjoys the perusal of new love while cherishing her connections. It reminded me of the life I’ve adopted and how much it’s shown me the full scope of my partners’ inner makeup.
Celebrate queer love because it expands your and your partner’s horizons
My love for women is not only sexual, but also political, and in that process I’ve stopped feeling attracted to men altogether. My relationships with women have been intellectually, emotionally, and sexually more fulfilling than the relationships I had with men. I found heterosexual relationships to be constructed in very limited ways, and my relationships with women have allowed me to understand myself in different ways when it comes to pleasure.
—Gabriela
It has taken me a while to understand that the adjective queer means “the other side.” On the other side of typical sex and predictable love is the queer way. Women like Gabriela choose queer love because it fits better. Queerness doesn’t demand you be anything else but your desires and the kisses, glances, and flirts you share with other humans. That can be intimidating for men and boys who were taught that sex and love: 1. Assume an order; 2. Denote a power structure; or, 3. Must be contained. Queer love is as much at the center of this anthology as erotic signals and releasing climaxes. In fact, they are one and the same. Men need to embrace queer love and the queer consequences it produces. There can be no pleasure or freedom without it.
This post originally appeared on Substack and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of Andrew Ricketts' work on Substack.