Below is a guest post by author Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah, author of The Sex Lives of African Women (Astra House). Read an excerpt from the book here.
My best friend Malaka and I met when we were sixteen years old, and even though two years later she moved to the United States, and a year later I moved to the United Kingdom, we have always stayed close. In the early days, we would send each other long letters filling each other in on all the details of our lives including our latest crushes and we spared no detail of our love lives.
When we turned thirty, sensing the power of women speaking openly about intimate and sometimes taboo topics, we decided to start a blog, Adventures from the Bedrooms of African Women. Our original goal was simple, we wanted African women to have more and better orgasms. We also wanted the world to know about the incredible experiences African women have within and outside their private spaces. On the phone, Malaka and I would muse, “Can you imagine if people only knew what went down in the bedrooms of African women”? and then start cackling. We knew the world saw us in a limited way. Heck, in our own communities, our sexualities were perceived in narrow and rigid ways. We had been brought up to be “good girls”, in the hope that we would eventually become the kind of women who prized preserving respectability above all else.
I started to think more deeply about my past and present sexual experiences. I captured these in deeply personal posts on our blog. Writing about sex, and sharing those experiences with other women, challenged me to stay true to what I was now recognizing — that in order to have a great sex life I needed to be different from the person I had been before, even if it meant tossing aside others’ expectations of me. I started to put into practice relatively simple actions, like communicating my desires verbally to my partners and saying when I wasn’t ready or in the mood. I gave myself the permission to explore, discover, and enjoy what boys and men are always encouraged to do: sow my wild oats.
In the decade since I started writing about sex, I have spoken to hundreds of women about their most intimate, vulnerable sexual lives for the blog. For my book, The Sex Lives of African Women, I interviewed over 30 women about their sexual identities and lives. I spoke with women who identified as polygamous, queer, pansexual, straight, bi-curious etc. Some were healing from trauma, many were bucking their cultural or familial expectations in order to find sexual freedom, and most had never told their stories out loud before.
Through these honest, vulnerable, and liberating conversations, I have expanded my own understanding and knowledge of our diverse sexualities. Through these conversations I’ve also learned five empowering truths about sex.
The quality of your sex life improves with age
I used to be afraid of growing older, largely because I equated aging to becoming less sexually desirable. It’s this same fear that drives young women to get married (or hitched in some way) by a certain age because they fear being left on the proverbial shelf. It’s what society reiterates to us – directly and indirectly — over and over again. “As a woman you are most desirable when you are young, and you need to get partnered before it’s too late.” Too late for whom? What I have learned from the women I’ve spoken to is that our best sex lives may well still be ahead of us. As we grow older, we become more confident in who we are, we lose the insecurities of our youth, and learn to love (or at least accept) our bodies as they are. We also find that many of our fears around aging are disproven or shattered by reality. People still find older women desirable, we are approached by folks who want to have full blown relationships or casual hook ups. We still feel largely good in our bodies (minus the occasional aches and pains that are a part of the aging process). We feel desire and are desirable. One of my favorite conversations was with Alexis, a 70-year-old Afro Carribean queer woman who fell in love with her partner (also 70 years old) in her 60s. And guess what: they have an enviable, active, and fulfilling sex life.
Queer sex is the best type of sex
In my mind, queer sex has a number of characteristics. It is based on a bedrock of enthusiastic consent, which is affirmed time and time again during intercourse. You want to hear your partner say, “Yes! Yessssss! Yesssssss!” Time and again, you want to check in, “does this feel good?,” “can I touch you this way?” “can we try something new?” Queer sex is exploratory. Often, we don’t know our deepest sexual desires because we’ve never been given permission to explore. Queer sex allows you to safely color out of the boxes of what you previously thought was possible, it allows you to try new experiences, and to figure out if those are tricks you want to keep in your pleasure toolbox. This was one of the lessons affirmed by my chat with Helen Banda, a Zambian-American woman. The first time she visited a dungeon, she walked around in a state of semi-shock, thinking I could never try this, then volunteered to be part of a demonstration for a rope bondage session, and was pleasantly surprised to find out how much she enjoyed it. Staying open to new possibilities like this greatly expanded Helen’s sex life, and in time enabled her to discover her identity as a pansexual, kinky woman.
It is possible to experience pleasure after trauma
This world can be an extremely violent place, especially for women, girls and people on the margins of society. The violence we experience, especially sexual abuse, takes away from our ability to find joy in our bodies. What I’ve learned, however, is that it is possible to experience pleasure after trauma. It is possible for your body to feel like a home again, a place of safety and one that fits, one that you’re comfortable in, and can even luxuriate within. There is no one way to heal. That journey looks different for everyone. This lesson was affirmed in the time I spent with Waris, who experienced female genital mutilation—what she accurately describes as a form of child sexual abuse—as a young girl in Somalia. Part of what helped her heal from the experience was MDMA therapy, and from her I learned that with the appropriate treatment, women and girls who have experienced the worst violations can find pleasure in their bodies again.
Sometimes you need to walk away from a relationship to find yourself
My Mum has this expression she often says to me in Twi (one of several languages spoken in Ghana). It translates roughly as, “people who are scared of getting divorced never have good marriages.” It reminds me not to be fearful when a relationship comes to an end. Sometimes even good relationships need to end so you can have space and time to figure out who you really are. I have had readers tell me how upset they were to read that Estelle, a British-Ghanaian woman I interviewed was leaving what she described as a really good marriage because she wanted to explore her pansexual identity. Personally, I don’t think it’s a tragedy when a relationship comes to an end. Endings can often birth beautiful new beginnings.
Sensuality and spirituality are two sides of the same coin
“Sensuality and spirituality are two sides of the same coin”. These words from Nura, a Kenyan woman I interviewed, have stayed with me. Most of us are raised to think of sensuality as anathema to spirituality and faith. A lot of women I have had conversations with shared how traumatized they were by the sex negative views thrust on them by monotheistic religions. This doesn’t have to be the case. For some, tapping into their sexuality can be an intensely spiritual experience, and the ultimate form of communion.
The conversations I’ve had with African, Black and Afro-descendant women all over the world about the most intimate parts of our lives have nourished, inspired and challenged me. There is a magic that happens when women come together to talk openly about the subjects that we are told are taboo. There is a magic that happens when we put ourselves first, listen to our bodies, and allow ourselves to discover the power of pleasure.
About the author: Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah is a feminist activist, writer, and blogger. She is the author of The Sex Lives of African Women and cofounder of Adventures from the Bedrooms of African Women, an award-winning blog that focuses on African women, sex, and sexualities. She works with the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) as director of communications and tactics. She lives in Accra, Ghana. Find her at: darkoathewriter.com/
Hear Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah speak on Saturday, February 11, 2023 at the Residence 11 Desire Summit on Sex and Relationships in Los Angeles and livestreaming worldwide. Get tickets here.