On Being Sex-Positive

"If you don't watch her, she's going to be hot in the pants"

my maternal grandmother said, talking with my mom one day about me. I had wandered over near my grandmother's kitchen door after running around with my cousins. Always the slowest runner because of being knock-kneed and having breathing issues due to allergies, I was easily winded and quickly out of breath. So I went to rest. Kneeling on the ground, I started picking at an anthill with a stick when I felt an itch between my legs. So I scratched it, and continued messing with the ants while half-way listening to my mama and grandma talk. That's when she said it. I remember looking up and seeing the look of shame cross my mother's face, and the scornful look on my grandmother's face. I had no idea what she meant, but by both looks I knew that it was bad and I knew they were talking about me. I was all of 8 years old.

My grandmother came over to me and gave me a talk about not scratching my 'business' in public, especially not to never, ever reach down my shorts to scratch again. I said Yes Ma'am but I still had no idea what she was talking about. Later I asked my mom, What's hot in the pants? She told me We'll talk about it later. Later turned out to be 8 years later, when I was 16 and pregnant. My mother was right about you, my mom said in a fit of anger and grief over my pregnancy, you turned out exactly like she said you would. Hot in the pants

I felt then and feel now that is something to be proud of, being happy and at ease and comfortable with enjoying my sexuality. With enjoying sex, and not feeling ashamed of loving sex. My grandmother grew up in a small southern town where the rape of black women by white men was commonplace, there were people in her town who were the product of such rapes. My mother grew up in the same small town, only marginally improved. When I think on them, I am amazed and astonished at what a leap my own sexual expression must mean. and I am a heterosexual monogamously married born-female woman in case you're wondering. While for many being sex-positive means you are anything but hetero or monogamous or mono-sexed, to me it means you choose your mode of sexual expression and deeply enjoy it. Thus heterosexual monogamy is just as valid an expression of sex-positivity as bisexual polyamory. It's all about enjoying who you are, your body, and enjoying who you choose to be with.

I am a sex-positive, hot in the pants, on-fire woman. That the focus of my flame sears just one man does not lessen it. On the contrary, that focus intensifies the depth of my sexual feeling.

Though I don't recall ever discussing that particular incident again, my grandmother did talk more with me about sex and men over the years before she died when I was a young teen. Although she never got over her divorce from my grandfather (which happened when my mother was a small child) she had, given the context of her age, upbringing, and surroundings, a somewhat comfortable attitude about sex. While she was indeed fearful of sex (seeing me scratch at myself when I was 8 triggered all those feelings in her; the shame and disgust that black women of her time lived under, plus feeling that someone would see me scratching and assume it was indicative of my supposed future looseness) and what it might mean in my life as a black woman, she also gave me the sense that sex was something sacred and powerful, full of mystery and wonder. At some level I always knew that what my grandmother feared was rape and other forms of sexual assault, not sex itself. She was trying to protect me in the only way that she knew how. Unfortunately that knowledge did not protect me from assault but it did help me to heal from my own rapes and assaults as a young woman, and to again feel joy and sexual excitement when joining my body with a man's.