13 Search results for "asexuality"

I don’t know for sure if my family knows I’m not straight, and yet I suspect they somehow knew before I did. My family, who policed my lack of femininity growing up, and punished me for being a Tomboy. Who teased me for being a “Plain Jane.” Who asked for years when I was going […]

Editor’s Note: June is LGBTQ Pride Month. At BYP, we will be exploring gender, sexuality, transgender issues and queer theory, and we are interested in publishing works that address these topics and the things surrounding them. We want to hear from you! Send us your pitches at info@blackyouthproject.com By Latonya Pennington I knew that I […]

“Sex is what makes us human.”  This, of course, is an absurd claim. And yet, it’s a lie that many believe. A lie that I have heard many times, in one form or another. I continually find myself having to argue that sex and sexuality are not and never will be factors in whether or […]

It’s Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week and, as per usual, the miserable trolls have crawled out of their pitiful caves to smear their shit on any and everything that might make people feel happy, accepted, and seen. Trolls, of course, typically believe in nothing. They simply enjoy a perpetually contrarian existence, and actively seek to make […]

by Maya Williams  This essay mentions r/pe.  One day, in the fifth grade, I was playing outside and fell on my crotch. I ran inside crying to my mom, “I hurt my…my…” gesturing to my pelvic area, “bad part.” The one thing I can appreciate from my mother was how she immediately responded, “No, your […]

Valentine’s Day is tomorrow and as usual it’s got me reflecting on how utterly diabolical consumerist culture is, how it influences and perpetuates our constant need to measure who is most worthy of love, affection and gifts. And why we think it is our business to begin with. It also has me deeply bitter about […]

Tamar Braxton has issued a non-apology following some recent comments in which she declared that men who lay beside women for several nights without initiating sex are secretly gay. On Instagram, she posted the following: The text reads, “The truth is ladies that these dudes out here really do be gay!! It ain’t enough money, […]

This essay contains discussions of sexual violence as well as racist violence and fetishization  I personally know of fewer than five Black people who identify as asexual, and I’ve only met two of them in person. The others remain virtual friends for now, but I hope to meet them someday. Of course, these are just […]

This essay discusses sexual coercion and manipulation   I used to feel bad for getting “90% vanilla” whenever I took one of those online BDSM or kink tests (and answered the questions honestly), or whenever I tried to talk to a potential sex partner about my boundaries and they called me some variation of “boring.” […]

Admitting that I might want to have some form of partnership in my life is hard to do. To be more specific, admitting to this as a consciously single, intentionally childfree, marriage-averse, asexual/aromantic Black womxn approaching thirty is hard for me to do. The words themselves aren’t necessarily hard for me to say or write. […]

“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within…” — James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time Black love is important. Some call it revolutionary. There are an abundance of art projects and essays which make that argument and explain why Black love matters—be it because marriage […]

If last week’s rather desultory and occasionally poorly rendered post on The Fab Five was any indication, my love for Jalen Rose and the rest of the Fab Five is immense and endures even today.  I appreciate many of the things they symbolized.  Just like back in ’91, many do not hold this cohort of […]