Pleasure Without Permission

Your body, your desire, your birthright — no apologies.

Black women have always been policed when it comes to pleasure.

Our hips, our lips, our thighs, our curves they were never seen as ours. They were commodified, hypersexualized, demonized. We were told our bodies were either too much or not enough. Desired in secret. Discarded in public.

And so many of us learned early that pleasure was dangerous.

We were told:

Keep your legs closed.

Don’t tempt the boys.

Don’t be too fast.

Don’t be too loud.

Don’t be too much.

And yet, in the same breath, we were also expected to perform. To be sexy but not slutty. To please him but not want too much for ourselves. To be desired, but never to desire.

But here’s the thing: pleasure is not a sin. Pleasure is not shameful. Pleasure is not permission someone else gets to grant you.

Sis, your pleasure is holy.

Your body is not a battlefield of shame it is a sanctuary of sensation.

Your desire is not too much it is a compass.

Your orgasm is not dirty it is a portal to power.

Audre Lorde said, “The erotic has often been …