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I am absolutely in love with this week’s chat with Dalychia and Rafaella from Afrosexology.
We talk about their mission to bring sexual liberation and agency to the Black community. We explore pleasure and how to center it in our lives, why masturbation is a powerful tool to finding our power, and why it’s so important to focus on pleasure in sex education, especially for the Black community and POC.
We also geek out about their spectacular Instagram account filled with beautiful bodies, genders, and erotic acts, all by Black artists.
It’s rich, deep, and powerful. Ready to hear it? Let’s go…
Follow Dawn on Instagram.
In this episode, Dalychia, Rafaella, and I talk about:
- The importance of sex education that is pleasure-based and about personal autonomy and power rather than all the scare tactics and negative focus that so much sex education actually is, especially in Black communities.
- The policing of Black sexuality and Black bodies.
- Why sex education is not about being an expert in sex (because no one can be an expert in your body or your experiences), and more about offering information and a space for everyone to be on the journey together.
- Unpacking historical trauma, white supremacy, and finding pleasure in marginalized bodies.
- The whiteness of sex positive communities and why Dalychia and Rafaella started Afrosexology.
- Pleasure and how pleasure can be celibacy or public sex and it doesn’t matter what your path to pleasure is as long as it’s from a place of power and autonomy. This is especially truth for Black folks and POC who have been denied that agency for so many generations.
- Tools for pleasure – Afrosexology loves engaging the senses. What are tastes you love? What are sounds you adore? What are smells that bring you joy?
- Masturbation being the starting point of learning your pleasure, learning your body, and figuring out what you do and don’t like. Seduce yourself!
- Radical twerking and moving your body on your own terms. Dalychia says twerking is one of the tools she’s used to find her agency and pleasure, similar to masturbation.
- Afrosexology’s AMAZING Instagram. CHECK IT OUT. Also, Black artists, Afrosexology is looking for you. Tag them online in your art!
- The importance of seeing yourself in images and movements, and why Black art work is so important to Afrosexology’s social media and work in general.
- What Dalychia and Rafaella wish they could find out in the porn-verse. Because the racist tropes that are so common are tired and need to go away.
About Afrosexology:
Afrosexology provides comprehensive pleasure based education centered around the narratives and liberation of Black people. We curate community discussions, educational materials, and sex positive events that cover topics such as: masturbation, self love, enhancing communication in relationships, radical twerking, oral sex, body agency, and much much more. We work with diverse groups including sexuality professionals, community organizations, individuals, parents, youth, spiritual communities, universities, and anyone else who wants to live a sex positive life.
Our mission is to educate, explore, and reclaim Black sexuality by promoting Black self empowerment through sexual liberation. We celebrated our second birthday this summer and are proud to have worked with over 1000 individuals. Afrosexology has created spaces where people feel free to express everything from shame to sexual desires, challenge stereotypes around sexual agency, and build an affirming community around shared experiences. We believe that there is so much to unpack and reclaim when it comes to our bodies and sexuality and we want people to live their most pleasurable lives.
Stay in touch with Afrosexology on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
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Episode Transcript
Dawn Serra: You’re listening to (You’re listening) (You’re listening) You’re listening to Sex Gets Real (Sex Get Real) (Sex Gets Real) Sex Gets Real with Dawn Serra (with Dawn Serra). Thanks, bye!
Hey you! Here we are with another episode of Sex Gets Real. I am ridiculously excited about this episode. This chat is one of my favorites in recent memory. I loved it so much. It’s with the creators and founders of Afrosexology. Their names are Dalychia and Rafaella. They are so smart and so crystal clear on what they’re doing and creating. It’s amazing.
Dawn Serra: Before I tell you all about Afrosexology, I just also want to weigh in really quickly, Playboy just announced that they were going to be having their first trans woman centerfold. Unfortunately, Jenna Jameson came out and made it pretty clear that she really disagrees with that decision. After saying that, of course, all kinds of people have been telling her how disappointed they are and how transphobic it is. She has really doubled down and gotten quite nasty in her replies.
I just want to say, I think that it’s amazing that trans women have an opportunity to be in a space that’s typically been not very inclusive of trans women. I want to see more trans women in porn, in modeling, in television shows portrayed as women, as themselves on their own terms. While I have big issues with Hugh Hefner, and I’m not such a fan of some of the stuff that Playboy has done over the years, I do think that if they’re going to include a trans woman centerfold, that we should absolutely support the model who’s doing that.
Dawn Serra: I just want to say Jenna Jameson has super missed the boat. I’m really disappointed that she’s doing that. I mean, it’s not that much of a surprise. She’s in the past made it clear that she really is not a very liberal person. As goes with porn, there’s a lot of conservativism in porn, a lot of racism, a lot of transphobia, so much fatphobia. You know, not that big of a surprise. But it’s in the news, and I just wanted to say, yay for trans women being more visible. There’s so many other things to say, but I don’t want to hijack the episode. I just wanted to offer that.
I also want to let you know about Afrosexology before we dive into this amazing conversation. It’s so good. Let me read you a little bit about Afrosexology, and then Dalychia, Rafaella and I are going to take it away. Afrosexology provides comprehensive pleasure-based education centered around the narratives and liberation of black people. We curate community discussions, educational materials, and sex positive events that cover topics such as masturbation, self-love, enhancing communication and relationships, radical twerking – which we totally talk about – oral sex, body agency, and much, much more. We work with diverse groups, including sexuality professionals, community organizations, individuals, parents, youth, spiritual communities, universities, and anyone else who wants to live a sex positive life.
Dawn Serra: Our mission is to educate, explore, and reclaim black sexuality by promoting black self-empowerment through sexual liberation. We celebrated our second birthday this summer and are proud to have worked with over 1000 individuals. Afrosexology has created spaces where people feel free to express everything from shame to sexual desires, challenge stereotypes around sexual agency, and build an affirming community around shared experiences. We believe that there is so much to unpack and reclaim when it comes to our bodies and sexuality. We want people to live their most pleasurable lives.
There is a lot to dig into in this chat, and it is so beautiful and amazing. I hope you’ll check out their Instagram because I gush over it several times in our interview. So here we are. The two folks behind Afrosexology, Dalychia and Rafaella, and myself.
Dawn Serra: Welcome to Sex Gets Real to both of you, Dalychia and Rafaella. I’m so excited you’re here.
Dalychia Saah: Hi!
Rafaella Fiallo: Thank you. Hey!
Dalychia Saah: We’re excited to be doing this.
Dawn Serra: Oh, my god. If nothing else, my hope is that every person that listens to this just goes and checks out the super rad stuff that you do because I am completely in love with it. I hope everyone falls in love with you while we’re talking today because you’re doing some rad stuff and have such a beautiful Instagram and beautiful mission. So let’s see where we end up.
Dalychia Saah: Well, thank you so much for that affirmation. The love and feeling is mutual. Your conference is so dope and your work is great. We love it. This is a great match.
Dawn Serra: Perfect. We are a little like circlejerk of joy. Here’s where I want to start. I know that the two of you are behind Afrosexology. That is all about creating a black, liberated, sexually-free, accepting, loving, curious community. I’d love for you to just tell us a little bit more about what you saw as the need and why these conversations are so important to you.
Rafaella Fiallo: Dalychia and I both have very long but different, but also very similar experiences when it comes to sexual education, sexual health, and working in our own communities. I’ll let you share, Dalychia. But when we were in graduate school studying social work, we were on different paths and more so clinical. But we kept coming back to these conversations and wanting to work with the community around the things that were going on in terms of lack of sexual education that was empowering, that was pleasure based, that wasn’t full of talking about the negative statistics and making us feel like we didn’t have anything really to look forward to in our sexual lives and our sexual journeys. Because it’s full of trauma in different aspects.
We just got together and wanted to talk about the ways that you can reclaim power, the ways that you can insert pleasure in your life, and in turn, decrease the likelihood of those negative statistics being part of your life. Instead of harping on, “Oh. Well, this is what STIs look like. This what happens if you don’t use that.” Well, let’s talk about how you can be powerful, how you can say what you like, what you don’t like, how you can demand that from other people. When you have that voice, you are also saying, “Well, this is how I want you to engage in this type of act.” If you’re saying, “Well, an STI, to me, is not pleasurable to experience, then I’m going to ensure that I’m protecting myself so I can decrease my likelihood of that happening.”
Rafaella Fiallo: It’s like using a different approach as opposed of using the fear tactics that we’re always hearing about. Going in hand with that and just talking about the black community who have just experienced and been subjected to to so much sexual shame and policing, generation over generation, over our bodies, over our actions. It’s just using this tool of pleasure and power in identity to reclaim our bodies and move towards the field of sexual liberation.
I don’t know. That’s basically where it comes from, what we do, what we try to practice, and how we basically just want to invite people on this journey with us. We very frequently talk about, “Yes, we’re the ones doing this work. We’re researching.” We want to bring this information to you, but we’re not the experts on your body or your experiences. We want it to be truly a journey for everybody to learn from one another and share with one another.
Dalychia Saah: Yeah. The only thing I want to add on is that, for me, Afrosexology has increasingly become a way for me to nurture my inner teen.. Providing the information, having the conversations, creating the spaces that I wish I had growing up, and that there’s just so much silence around sexuality and so much shame around our bodies and what our bodies should experience, could experience.
I found, for me, just so much power and pleasure and joy, and getting to know myself, and knowing how great I’m able to make myself feel. And wanting to encourage black people, people of color to unpack a lot of the shame that we carry around from white supremacy and historical trauma and current trauma. Just really know that our lives are worth more than just surviving. We’re here to do more than to just survive, and we deserve to thrive and to live. And a major part of that is pleasure.
Dalychia Saah: I, for me, looking at the sex positive community, it was really white. It was, again, feeling like we were being left behind and that we were still getting the older conversations around risk and trauma and trying to avoid pregnancies. We were being left out of this amazing conversation that was extremely sex positive, that was liberating. That was actually, in my opinionm started by black women who rejected a lot of white stereotypes during the blues era, and after blues era and after slavery, to reclaim and to hold on to the sexual audience and not to fit into that norm.
To see something that rings true to our culture and to be left out of it was really disheartening for me, So Rafaella and I were just like, “What do we want? What do we wish we had? What do we want to do?” For us, it wasn’t really sitting around and lecturing people, it was more so just creating spaces for us to have the conversations that we’ve very seldom get to have.
Dawn Serra: I love so much of what you’re saying. And I totally agree. One of the things I’ve started coming to is that I think sex positivity is really well-meaning. But it’s so deeply rooted in so many oppressive frameworks. It’s super white, and it’s just all about colonialist ideals.
Also, I found that so much sex positivity in trying to be super free and liberated still continues to be very prescriptivist. It’s like telling people how to be experiencing their sexual freedom and telling people how to experience the best, most, whatever types of orgasms which might not be available to people. I really like how you’re talking about, “This isn’t about telling people what their experiences are. It’s about having conversations and being on a journey together.” And how, you’re so right, none of us are experts on anybody else’s body or experiences, especially once we start considering the different ways we experience life and culture. I just think there’s so much power in, “Let’s talk about what’s happening to us. Let’s talk about pleasure and what that looks like for you on your terms versus me telling you how you should be experiencing it.”
Dalychia Saah: Right. I mean, we have so many people who engage with our work who identifies asexual, who are celibate. We emphasize all the time that especially for people of color, black people who have been seen as hypersexual, choosing to be celibate is an act of liberation. For us to say that you be practicing celibacy or you choosing to not engage in sex is now you’re doing sex positivity wrong. That really rubs me the wrong way. For us it’s like, “I don’t care what pleasure looks like for you. I don’t care if it’s you wanting to live a life of celibacy. I don’t care if it’s you wanting to have have sex on stage in front of 500 people. We just want you to feel empowered, and that you have the resources and the tools to get you there, and to live your most pleasurable life however you define it.”
Dawn Serra: Oh, my god. Just like love, all of that. It’s so amazing. When you’re thinking about pleasure is liberation and giving people these tools and resources so that they can find their way towards what that means for them, what are some of your favorite tools that you love talking about or teaching or inviting people to even just consider on their own journeys of like, “Well, what does pleasure look like for me?”
Rafaella Fiallo: For me it’s… Ok. I’ll just tell you about something really fun that we like to do is really going through our senses with other people in terms of what are the smells that really brings you to a certain spot that you really enjoy? Which happy memories come from those when you smell it? Are there certain foods that you especially enjoy eating, that brings you pleasure? Music, sounds, things like that. I remember meeting someone who had, during a period of their life, they played a lot of pool and they enjoyed it. Due to the injury with their wrist or something, they didn’t play it as much. But they still received a lot of good memories and simulation if they heard the sound of two pool balls hitting one another. They created in their repertoire of music, incorporated that sound so they can hear from time to time. It’s like the little things that we don’t really think about. When we think about pleasure, a lot of times it is about sex.
But going back to inserting more pleasure in our lives, I think that’s always been a really fun activity. Because it gets people to think outside of the box of, “Oh. I’d like to see this type of body that’s all oiled up.” Or, “I want to think about strawberries and whipped cream.” But just getting a little deeper and really thinking about what do you contact or come in contact with every single day that brings you pleasure? If it’s something that you can come in contact with and you’re not, how can you make sure that it happens more often?
Dalychia Saah: Yeah, I love that. So I’ll go along with that. For me, it’s like, when I wake up, what smells do I want to smell in the day? Just making sure that I have a lot more candles around. I love sandalwoods, so sandalwood candles. Just being more intentional about the clothes I put on my body. And just making sure that outside of my sexual experiences, I’m also incorporating pleasure in my life all around. Yeah, that has been, I think, a really good starting point. Because if you’re not comfortable allowing yourself to experience pleasure in non-sexual aspects of your life, it is, in my opinion, really challenging to allow yourself to experience pleasure in the sexual aspect and a more intimate setting. So just making sure that you’re surrounding yourself with things that make you feel good, and not attaching a judgment to it.
Dawn Serra: I’m so glad you said that because I have so many people who write into me, and who I’ve even worked with just coaching, they have so much shame that when it comes to sex, they don’t really know what they want. They don’t really understand their bodies. They don’t know how to get started. They don’t know what feels good. When we talk about pleasure outside of sex, it’s a similar story.
I think it’s so interesting that we’re all conditioned to think that we can just move through our lives disconnected, and then all of a sudden, we’re in a sexual situation. We’re supposed to know what pleasure looks like and how it feels and what we want and how to ask for it, when we don’t ever practice it in other situations. So I love this everyday invitation of like–
Dawn Serra: We were talking before the call too, how when you orient towards pleasure, it requires you to be much more present every day, which can also be such a challenge. But you can’t really understand if you’re loving something or hating something or we’re just enjoying something a little bit, unless you’re actually very present and in that experience.
Dalychia Saah: Then like when it does come to sex, the thing that, I mean, I love talking about, and I think Rafaella also loves talking about is masturbation. Just that being the starting point of getting to learn those things about yourself and to explore your body and to slow things down into really – I like to say – love yourself, romance yourself, fuck yourself, and really spend the time just doing yourself. And figuring out what you like and what you don’t like, and try new things and being adventurous and being curious, and adding in sound and adding in smell, and adding all of that stuff to an experience just for yourself. And really worshiping, loving on, catering to your own needs first to where you can even figure out what you want to bring into a sexual experience with a partner, how you want to continue your solo sexual experiences.
I think masturbation is the thing that I love to talk about and preach about the most. I just think everyone should be masturbating all the time. It’s just such a great way to just get attuned with yourself.
Dawn Serra: Naming too, that masturbation or solo sex doesn’t have to involve genitals, I think is so important. It can involve touching your skin erotically or touching other parts of your body or leaving all your clothes on, but just sitting on something that’s maybe vibrating. I mean, there’s so many ways for us to just erotically and pleasurably enjoy our bodies from head to toe. I love that invitation of, just try all the sounds and the smells and the feelings. That sounds like fun homework to me. But I know for a lot of people, that shame makes them just cringe of the thought.
Rafaella Fiallo: I really love how you mentioned how there are different ways to love on yourself because it can be very intimidating when people talk about masturbation, and what should they be doing to their genitals, if they should be doing anything, and what should they be using. But if we start talking about other parts of our bodies, then you can ease your way into it. And that’s really what this is all about. Just like you should ease in with the partner, if you choose to do so, ease in with yourself, so you can get the full experience. If that is taking a feather or – I don’t know – some clips or something, and seeing how different pressure points feel in your body, to using warm water or whatever the case is. Just taking baby steps and just touching all over your body, as opposed to going straight to, “How do I finger myself? What is that? Well, I don’t want to do that. That sounds really weird.” Which is, we get people asking questions about that too. Like, “Well, what am I supposed to do?”
Dawn Serra: That, to me, is such a… It’s such a symptom of a world that isn’t giving people what they need to even just be able to enjoy their bodies on their terms. You’re talking about pleasure as a radical act and as a tool of liberation. I think that’s such a powerful link to make of, when you have just total autonomy and sovereignty over your body. But then everyone around you is telling you you shouldn’t be touching yourself or looking at yourself or experiencing yourself in certain ways. That control continues. That conformity continues, that we’re swimming in. This invitation of, “No, this is your body.” You haven’t been given these tools, so it’s not that there’s something wrong with you. It’s that there’s something wrong with everything around us that doesn’t tell us, “Celebrate yourselves in however feels good.”
Rafaella Fiallo: All the people telling us not to. I mean, if you really think about it, picturing a parent slapping a kid’s hand away when their hands are in their pants or something like that. Or, even self-soothing – forcing your kids to not suck their thumb or anything that they’re doing that’s bringing them calm, and we’re like, “Nope. You can’t do it that way. You need to learn a new way to calm yourself.” We’re like, “OK.” We’re like, at a very early age taught that our body is not ours, there’s certain things that we can or cannot do to our bodies, certain things are shameful. And it takes us so long to get those thoughts and those ideas out of our heads. That takes a lot of work.
Dalychia Saah: Yeah. I think, for me, that’s what makes our work so exciting is that, especially for the black experience, so much of our existence has been around surviving whiteness, and limiting our movement to where we don’t offend white people, and just protecting ourselves and trying to make it and trying to survive it. We’re constantly getting messages that black isn’t beautiful enough. That black women are the least likely to get married. That we’re hypersexual. Just all this negative stuff that is coming at us. Then also, the very physical stuff around police brutality. And really feeling like we don’t own our bodies. We don’t have agency over ourselves, and we’re not able to protect ourselves. To have all of that going on, and for us to be able to say, ”Let’s work on.”
As we’re working on what it means to have economic, social, and political agency and liberation, let’s start with the first thing that was violated or were brought here to this country. They took away our agency over our bodies and put our– Well — But exploited our bodies, and dehumanize our bodies, and really just took away any agency that we had over what happened to us and how we use it and how we moved, and let’s start there. Really, let’s start reshifting what it means to be in tune with our bodies, and to reclaim that agency, and to reclaim that power, and to move that we want to move, and to not just moving away that feels like we’re rejecting white people, but in a way that it’s like, “I want you to experience pleasure like joy, love, happiness – all of this positive stuff. The stuff that was never intended for us to experience because we were never intended to survive in the first place.
Dalychia Saah: So, to me, that’s what makes it feel radical. They were sitting around in this space, with bodies of color, talking about the things that we’re not supposed to be talking about. We’re supposed to come together when we’re talking about trauma. We’re supposed to come together when there’s something really fearful happening in our community. But we don’t get to come together when we’re talking about love and joy and happiness, and things that make us feel good. That, to me, feels like an act of resistance to the system that never wanted us to be here and didn’t intend for us to be here this long.
And I love it. I love it. I love seeing people who come to our stuff in the beginning and say how they don’t even know where to start. There’s all this fear around their bodies and how could there not be fear around your bodies. All the stuff we’ve talked about, of course, is fear. Then on top of that, you’re black, and then maybe you’re a woman and maybe you’re queer, maybe you’re trans. Of course, there’s so much fear around your body. When we begin to start peeling back those layers, we have seen the difference in people who now are like, “I can actually twerk for fun. Now, I masturbate and I bought sex toys. Now, I can tell my partner what I want in bed. You see them reclaim that power, and to also know that if we can reclaim the power of there, why can’t we reclaim it when it comes to economics and politics and social agency? So that is why, to me, this workbook is so powerful and meaningful.
Dawn Serra: It’s so amazing. Oh, my god. I love this so much. I also really love what you said about it’s not about rejecting whiteness because that’s almost like continuing to center whiteness, just like the negative of… It’s like when you say don’t think about an elephant, all you think about is an elephant. So if you’re like, “We’re rejecting whiteness,” it’s still whiteness that’s at the forefront. I love how you’re like, “No. What does love and joy and happiness look like on our own terms outside of this paradigm. This is ours.” And there is so much power in that.
Dalychia Saah: Yeah. Taking that white supremacy one orgasm at a time.
Dawn Serra: Hell, yeah! I mean, who doesn’t… I don’t want to say you have to be sexual to be a part of this journey. You don’t. But who wouldn’t want pleasure to be a tool of liberation. I mean, you might not be a person who experiences sexual desire towards others or who even wants to be in a sexual relationship with others. But even in our own bodies to just be able to say, “This is my body and these are my edges. These are the things that feel really good for me in this moment. And these are my terms.” That is power.
Rafaella Fiallo: Yeah, yeah.
Dawn Serra: OK. You mentioned twerking. I know that you teach a class all about radical twerking, and this very somatic, embodied, moving our bodies on our own terms, and I so want you to tell us about those.
Dalychia Saah: OK. Yeah, so twerking is definitely, for me, has been one of the, other than masturbating, has been one of the practical tools to reclaim my body and my agency. We, in that workshop, we really do a lot of education around the history of dance and cultures of color and how it was essential. It was spiritual. It was celebratory. It was powerful. And all of this stuff and what it meant to us and how during colonization, that message got distorted.
Now, we have this idea of twerking as this hypersexual thing that is seen as… I mean, people see it as ghetto and improper and all the stuff. My family in particular had internalized those messages, so it was growing up and being like, “Well, you can’t move that way because we’re not those type of people.” Just like a bunch of respectability politics and again, Am I centering whiteness? So to be able to say, “Forget all of that. This feels natural to me, and I want to move, and I want to dance.” I don’t want to feel like, I mean, dancing like this, I’m inviting some kind of negative behavior to happen to me or inviting people to think differently, made them think that I’m lower than whatever. Just rejecting all that and really sitting and enjoying the pleasure that we get for dancing – dancing for ourselves, dancing with other people, dancing with our friends. And it’s something that’s really rooted in black culture.
Dalychia Saah: So to feel like we can’t dance because if we do dance, we become this trope, really. It’s something that I think for me has existed in my life. When I started really twerking, I feel so foreign from my body. I was like, “I don’t even know how to move. I slowed it down into this meditative thing. It was like my form of yoga. It’s like all of these sorts of positions just really slow down and elongated, and taking my time to get into with my hips, with my ass. Those ways that my body moves is letting it move freely. It just felt so much more connected in a way that it had been intentionally disconnected for so long.
I think, here in the West, you know that we operate really a lot in our heads. So just really bringing our bodies back into this work. I think a lot of times, even when we’re talking about sex positivity. I feel like the conversation I’m having right now,a lot of it is in our heads, and it’s just like theory. Like twerking and masturbating and putting this stuff into action, putting our bodies into this work. Really not just thinking about twerking, but understanding what it means like the joy of how it feels in your body to move and to be connected, until you dance where you’re not caring who’s looking, dance where you’re not trying to get anyone’s attention, just dancing and moving for yourself. That is what we do in our workshop. I love it. It’s so much fun. Then everyone twerk. Then we go twerk party. And it’s so much fun.
Rafaella Fiallo: Yeah. I mean, that’s it. I think one thing that’s always interesting is just hearing when we’re actually doing the sex shop, and just going around and listening to everyone’s experiences with moving their bodies in public, if it’s in the home, the type of rules that they were given, if it’s in public, if they’re supposed to be moving a certain way. Or even like if you’re black and someone who’s not black is like, “Oh, do you know how to twerk? Can you teach me?” And you’re like, “No.”
Just taking into deeper account where everything is coming from and how it’s causing us to move or not move, and feel comfortable or not feel comfortable. Or, even how we’re judging other people. Maybe because we wish we had that freedom to move in that way. Or, sometimes we’re embarrassed because we know that they’re being judged, and we wish we could say, “Hey, they’re probably looking at you like, ‘Oh. She’s ratchet. Why is she twerking like that?’” You want to protect them or save them.
Rafaella Fiallo: There’s so many different, I think, experiences and viewpoints when it comes to respectability politics, and shame and guilt and envy as well, and jealousy, in terms of what we wish we could do, what we can’t do because of our parents or society in general. So it’s always really interesting to just hear people’s experiences. Then at the end, when we actually go through a few new movements, they’re really into it, like, “I’m going to twerk. I’m going to reclaim this. I’m going to figure out a way to insert more of this into my life.” It gets deep.
Dalychia Saah: Yeah. It’s crazy hearing stories from… We had a 17 year old who was like, “If I’m twerking in this space, people think I’m being young and wild.” Then you hear a grandmother who’s like, “Well, I can’t be twerking because I’m a grandma, but I love dancing. I feel like if I do this, I’m not being a good grandmother. Then there was a woman who was a dancer. When she got married, she felt like it wasn’t OK for her to dance in a certain way.
All these messages, again, that just is limiting what we can do with our own bodies, and just not responding to that. And learning how to let go of a lot of the shame and the stuff that we carry around all the time that just restricts us and stops us from experiencing pleasure and keeps us from being attuned with our bodies and expressing our bodies in the way that we want to.
Dawn Serra: I love hearing that these movement workshops are all about naming those things, and then setting them down and saying, “We don’t have to carry this anymore. This is your body. You get to use it however you want to on your terms.” Oh, my god! It gives me chills just hearing you talk about it.
Dalychia Saah: I mean, it’s also not… I mean, I feel I want to say our work is new. But the more history that I do into our ancestors, I’m like, “This isn’t new.” Post-slavery, there was definitely a group of people who wanted to fit into white norms and went down that path of adhering to the standards that are placed on white women of how to be prim and proper and ladylike and virginal and all this stuff. Then there was a group of women who, a lot of them who were musicians, who were drinking and smoking and talking about their sex life and talking about their husbands and their boyfriends and girlfriends, and just really rejecting that narrative of, “I don’t have to, again, center whiteness and limit my body.” Like, “I enjoy sex. Why would I not have more sex? Why would I not talk about it?” So when I look back into that, I’m like, “We’ve always held on.”
That’s why I’m like, “We’ve held on to sex positivity, even when white women were still figuring out how to get out of the dichotomies and the norms that were set by patriarchal systems.” Black women were just like, “No. I don’t have to do that.” So I love to feel like we’re continuing that work and making sure that that conversation stays alive. Because, again, we don’t have to. We can be free. We can do what we want with our bodies and have that agency.
Dawn Serra: OK. We’re taking a quick break because this episode is actually sponsored by RXBAR, which is food. I know food in a sex podcast might seem kind of weird, but food and sex are actually an amazing combination. I love that RXBAR is sponsoring this episode. They sent me free samples. I actually had a couple of different flavors. They were really good. My favorite was definitely the chocolate sea salt.
So if you’re looking for an RXBAR for a post-sex snack or maybe a quick tasty bite that you keep in your bag, if you’re on your way to – I don’t know – one of Afrosexology’s amazing sex workshops. The cool thing is RXBArs are gluten-free, soy-free, dairy-free, have no added sugar, no artificial colors, flavors, preservatives or fillers. I’m thinking, I talk all the time about the importance of having a really good lube that’s not full of petroleum-based shit or burn-inducing sugars. RXBARs are like that, but for your tummy. So that’s a win! All the ingredients are printed right on the front of the package. You know exactly what you’re putting in your body, which I am an advocate for, whether it’s in your mouth or other places.
Dawn Serra: If you want to check out RXBAR, you can actually get 25% off your first order. Just go to rxbar.com/sgr. That’s super important so that they know you’re a Sex Gets Real listener. It helps me out a lot. Then enter promo code SGR at checkout, and that gives you 25% off. So check out RXBARs. I really, really liked the chocolate sea salt. I love all the ingredients on the outside. I wish lubes did that, too. Back to the show.
When you think about centering pleasure and the importance of a pleasure-based… I don’t even want to just say sex education. I mean, when we center our pleasure in how we’re having relationships and how we’re experiencing our body just in the day to day, I mean, there’s so much beauty there. Then talking about this movement and finding your way back to moving your body on your own terms. What are some other ways that you really like to help people find their way towards pleasure in the work that you do, the stories that you tell or the tips and the resources that you offer? Because I know so many folks have just completely closed themselves off from that.
Dalychia Saah: Yeah. When we first started, you mentioned our Instagram. Social media has been really great, I think, for us to create a space, a really intentional space that includes black people in the conversation, and that lets people feed themselves and brings other people into the conversations. We’re really intentional about posting black artwork on our Instagram, for example, because a lot of times we don’t get to see ourselves being sexual and erotic and sensual and doing all these pleasurable things. I think it really skews who we think deserves pleasure. We’re always just seeing pink pussies. Or we just think, “Oh. It’s just for that.”
For us, creating that space of work to where we can visually see ourselves reflected to me gives a lot of permission for people to say, “Well, I see that image. I, too, can also be doing this. Then I think a major part of our work is just creating space for people to have conversations and to see other people having these conversations and feel like they can join in. A lot of times, if you noticed on our social media, we’re posting mostly questions instead of necessarily like, “Here’s a fun fact,” or, “Here’s directions or advice.” It’s, “This is what I’m dealing with. This is something I’ve been thinking about. What are you all thinking about? What are you all doing? What are your thoughts on this topic.” Then the conversations that start happening underneath that, to me, is really the work.
Dalychia Saah: The work isn’t even what we’re posting. It’s the community that’s being created, where you get to see other people, specifically people of color, talking about these things that we don’t often get to talk about. Then you can hear other people’s thoughts, and then you can like it, and you can respond. The interaction that happens there, to me, is like one of the foundational spaces to begin normalizing us talking about these things, normalizing that we experience these things, and then we feel these things. And that is beautiful. I love all of those spaces that we create.
Rafaella Fiallo: Dalychia, that was beautiful. Definitely. I think that’s one of my favorite parts about Afrosexology is our Instagram, and especially the hard work that goes into it, and everything that we’ve gone through with the page. But not only just go in there, even myself when I just want to see something positive or empowering or something that’s thoughtful that I want to reflect on that we posted in the past. But also, it’s just very appealing to the eyes. I always feel really full when I’m going through the comments as well. Because, I don’t know. I don’t see everything but… Dalychia, you can chime in on this. I have never seen anything negative where someone is talking about what we should or shouldn’t be talking about. There have been things where people shared about their experiences, where they’re being open and honest, where you can consider that a negative experience. But it hasn’t been something directed towards us or the work that we’re doing, which is also very affirming to, one, that this is something that’s important, something that people want to keep seeing and participating in.
That’s one thing that I really love, and just also seeing people communicate with one another, reading each other’s posts, and feeling and knowing this is a safe space. If there is something that is out of line, we talk about how do we want to address this or keep this in the space or not.
Rafaella Fiallo: I think that, in itself, is very therapeutic. Especially in a world where you’re told that this isn’t important at all. Your body itself is not important. It doesn’t deserve to be discussed, and when it is discussed, again, going back to the beginning of the conversation, it’s, “Oh. Well, African Americans. They have high rates of XYZ. This is the type of education that they need. This is all that is important for them.”
So it’s just throwing that out because it’s trash. And just regrouping and realizing the love that we deserve. Not only that, but recognizing the love that we can give to ourselves. Because oftentimes, especially when you start looking at trauma, shame ,and silence in our families, sometimes that’s all you have, at first, is yourself and how can you give yourself love and patience and explore your own self until hopefully, you find community where someone can join in with you on that journey. Hopefully, in the meantime, we can fill some of that gap.
Dawn Serra: I just want to shout out too that your Instagram is filled with so many different sized bodies and different shaped boobs and butts and different gender expressions and sexual orientations. It is just so rich with honestly, how I wish media in general was. I mean, you have cultivated something that shows the rich diversity of the ways we experience our bodies. It’s erotic and delicious and juicy. Also, moving and thought- provoking. It’s honestly one of my favorite accounts on Instagram because it just consistently moves me and inspires me. I just want to give you props for cultivating a space that just has so much to offer all of us. Just the soft place to land for the people in your community who really need a safe place to see bodies like theirs and to have conversations like this.
Dalychia Saah: Thank you so much that I’m like… No, that was beautiful. Thank you for saying that. All the affirmation and praise is received, and I really appreciate it. But on that note, any artists who are listening who want to tag us in their work, because representation, as much as we try, it is really hard to find artwork of people who are black and trans or black and gay men. Even when we work with queer male artists, they’ve created artwork for us that was lesbian women. I think so many people are so comfortable seeing women’s bodies naked, and a specific type of woman’s body naked, to where that’s what the majority of the artwork ends up being. We’re in this weird place of, we want to be representative of all black people. We also want the art to be black. There’s so many times when you find our work of like, “Oh. This is a trans person who’s been sexually erotic. I love this,” it’s not a black body.
So if there’s any artists out there who are listening, I really want our page to feel more inclusive and to feel that everyone’s represented. I want people with disabilities who are black and be experiencing their sexuality on our page. It’s just really hard to find the artwork. Neither of us are artists. Otherwise there would be so much more of it. But we’re artists in a different way. Let me not speak that over. Constantly, constantly looking for other artists to feature.
Dawn Serra: I just want to talk for a second. I I love getting up on my soapbox talking about this. But one of the pivotal moments in my life, when I started finally letting go of the terrible ways that I talked to myself, and the just abusive conversations I would have with my body, was when I started specifically seeking out imagery of people who were in bodies like mine. It wasn’t like on a scale with a measuring tape looking sad. Seeing people in bodies who were wearing bikinis and had big bellies and rolls and stretch marks. And seeing people in sexual situations, specifically seeking out porn that had bigger bodies in it and fat folks. That really was one of the most pivotal moments of my life, of just realizing, “I can actually maybe be worthy. Maybe I can be kind to myself.
Representation and seeing images like ourselves is so important. What’s it been like for you to be seeking out these sexual, erotic, beautiful images of black and brown bodies engaged in all different types of pleasure and display. What has that been like for you?
Dalychia Saah: Yeah, I love it. I think I’m still searching for porn that does that. A lot of people ask us about that. Majority of porn still holds on to these tropes around hypersexuality. A lot of feminists or women subject porn isn’t inclusive of black and brown bodies. So still looking on that tip. But as far as artwork, it has just been really amazing. I wish, if we had a place, if we had a location or building, I can just imagine all the artwork we would have up there. Because it is so amazing to walk into a space, enter a space even if it’s online, virtual whatever, and to see yourself. You feel like you’re home. You feel like you belong. You feel like this is also speaking to you. We’re not used to that. So many places that we walk into, and stuff that I look at online that looks beautiful, aesthetically beautiful, I’m not represented there. It’s like, “Can I live a minimalist life?” I don’t ever see black people who are practicing minimalism. Like, “Can I be a vegan?” I don’t ever see black people want to be a vegan. You know it’s always these like spaces where I don’t feel included. So to see ourselves.
We have actually this black-owned vegan restaurant out here. The husband’s an artist, a painter, and the wife’s a chef. Every time I walk into their space to see all of his black artwork up, to see that I can speak as mee I feel so different. I hope people feel that way when they come to our Instagram page. For me, I love seeing myself reflected. I think it’s a feeling of home and of belonging that I don’t get to feel a lot of times just walking around and navigating the body that I’m in in this country.
Rafaella Fiallo: Yeah. Even just having this conversation, it just highlights how much there is in terms of a lack of recognition in terms of representation, and how some people don’t recognize it because they are the stock image. It’s just like, “Oh. What do you mean you say you feel at home or you feel like this is something that you can do?” Because they’re so used to seeing themselves in that photo or in that commercial. So it just seems like a really foreign conversation. Even just talking about it now, it’s kind of emotional because it’s like common sense. When you see yourself in something, then it feels powerful. We let you know that this is attainable to you. But just to know that the people who have the positions, who were doing the marketing and things like that, don’t look like you, is not even a second thought. It’s not even a thought at all. Then when they do do it, I don’t know who is sitting in the boardroom. Because the things that get passed with the check mark, and then it’s played on TV, I’m like, “Are you kidding me?” Then they have to send a little apology – “Oh, I’m sorry. We missed the bar on this. This was not meant to be racist.” It’s just like, “What the fuck y’all? Are you serious?”
Dawn Serra: Dove we’re looking at you.
Rafaella Fiallo: You hear me. You know what I was talking about exactly. These types of things, and time and time again, you’re just like, “By now, don’t you know?” But it’s like, every single time, we’re like, “You still don’t understand why this is important?” It’s just really sad.
Dalychia Saah: Something I want to say about your question that just came to my mind about what is our favorite tools and things to give to people, I honestly really feel like the more and more I’m doing this work, that I am convinced that everyone has the tools that they need. I literally feel like most of our work is just giving people permission, and creating space where people can say, “Oh, so and so’s doing that. I can do that, too.”
There’s so many people who just say, “You gave me permission. You started my journey.” It’s just them seeing themselves reflected, feeling like this is here for them too. They have the tools, and they have the resources. They know what they want to work on. They know what they want to explore. And they do it, they do the work.
Dalychia Saah: So I really do feel like… I mean, our space, our role as educators is just to… I don’t know. Like, night people’s journeys. It’s not like I don’t feel like we’re doing all of this work constantly with people that we have to spoon feed people. People want this. They want it, and they just want to know that they can have it.
I think, for us, being really authentic about the fact that we don’t say liberation is an arrival place, it’s a state of being. We’re never like, “We have the answers.” We’re always constantly learning new things about ourselves. I love being in spaces with people because people teach us stuff, and I’ve never heard of that role, sex position or technique – thank you so much. Just constantly being aware that we all have so much to learn, so much to teach one another, so much to heal from, so much to explore. And that we can do it.
Dawn Serra: God, that’s so important. I so want– Because there’s a lot of budding sex educators and seasoned sex educators, and also therapists and counselors who listen to this show, I just so want everyone to hear what you just said of, “Your role as educators is to ignite people’s journeys.” It’s not to tell them how to do the journey or to tell them what they should be doing. It’s this invitation and this permission, and then people can figure it out on their own, if they just have that support and that safe space to land.
Dalychia Saah: Yeah, yeah. That’s what I find most of our work is. People are doing their own work. They’re healing themselves. They’re exploring their bodies. They’re doing it. And we’re just your cheerleader.
Dawn Serra: OK. I want to go back to one thing that you said which is people are always asking you for porn, and that’s a place where you just have a hard time offering them resources. Listeners are like, “Oh, shut up and just do it already.” But I’m slowly priming the pump to start filming some erotic films. So I love an opportunity to just ask people, if you could just see porn that felt like such a beautiful expression of what you want to see and to be able to say, “OK, folks. This is what you should be seeing.” For me, my first thought is, “Well, I would love to bring just your entire Instagram to life.” But what kind of porn do you want to be seeing that’s not out there that would just set you on fire?
Dalychia Saah: This is a really hard question for me because this is – which is sad because this is the work that Afrosexology is doing. But I feel like we’re just so starving for representation that I just want to see myself and not be called a hoe, which is so sad. I’m not even at the point of like, “What do I like envisioning sexual fantasies?” I just want to see myself in a porn and not feel like I have to skip over this part because it’s going to kill my sex drive.” And I want to see black bodies. But I think I want to see black people doing some kinky stuff. I want to see black people on the moon and doing weird sexual fantasies. I shouldn’t say weird, but just exploring all sexual fantasies. I want to see intimate, loving, women-centered sex with people of color that isn’t based on this feisty Latina or this submissive Asian or this hypersexual black thought. I just wanted to be… I just want to normal shit sometimes. I just want to see people enjoying each other and no one’s slapping my ass and being like, “Yeah, big booty hoe.” It’s so weird. This is very simple. Who still says these things? Why is this still happening? Yeah, so basics.
Rafaella Fiallo: That’s exactly what I was going to say. I just want to see a representation of what people are actually doing. Kill all of the script writing in terms of like “Handyman walks in,” or “Handyman asking for payment or something like that.” Or someone’s break into a house. I saw one like that, and I was like, “Stop.”
So just see people loving one another, and just going back to Dalychia said around being centered around the pleasure of women, people who identify as women, especially with people who have vulvas. Because, as we know, porn is so focused on penetration. That’s the viewpoint that you always have. It’s always about someone groping on a woman’s body, and it doesn’t even look like it feels good. So just taking a step back from all the gimmicks and just showing real people enjoying one another.
Dawn Serra: That sounds amazing and delicious.
Dalychia Saah: I can’t wait to that day. We’ve been looking for people, we’ve been encouraging small people, “Really. Come on, just start doing porn. Just start doing porn.”
Dawn Serra: Yeah. I have so many ideas and things I want to do. I’m like, specifically to that last point, I mentioned this when I was chatting with Erica Lust. One of the things I would so love to do is to create erotic content that’s really sexy and really hot and super filled with all kinds of amazing touching, and the person with a penis isn’t hard. It’s not about the penis, and it doesn’t have to be hard for the sex to be really good and really frickin hot. I want to just undo a little bit of that hard pack needed for the sex to happen. Just decenter that and show that it’s still super hot for everyone. I love what you’re saying too around, “Can we just kill the tropes and kill some of those really terrible porn categories that folks fall into, and just have beautiful films with beautiful people in a variety of bodies doing delicious looking things?”
Rafaella Fiallo: Yeah, yeah. Is that too much as for?
Dawn Serra: Not on my watch. Well, I would love it so much if you would share with everybody listening how they can stay in touch and follow along with all your adventures online.
Dalychia Saah: Yeah, so we’re pretty easy to find. Our website is afrosexology.com – AFROSEXOLOGY. We’re Afrosexology on Twitter, on Facebook and on Instagram.
Dawn Serra: Wow. One stop shopping. That’s really easy.
Dalychia Saah: No one has the name. Who would have thought?
Dawn Serra: Do you have any workshops or projects coming up that you want to plug or share?
Dalychia Saah: Everything we do is kind of private. We could take people booking us and stuff, so not really public.
Dawn Serra: People can book you?
Dalychia Saah: People can book us on our website to bring us to your group, your community or your city. We travel anywhere.
Rafaella Fiallo: Literally, we’re ready. Let’s go.
Dawn Serra: Afrosexology on the move again. Well, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show and for just, I don’t know, filling my heart and my soul up with everything that you shared. It felt so good to just hear what you’re focused on and what you’re creating out in the world. It’s so important.
Dalychia Saah: Thank you for having us.
Rafaella Fiallo: This is really fun.
Dawn Serra: Well, to all of the listeners, I will, of course, have all of the links to Afrosexology’s goodness on dawnserra.com for this episode, so please check them out. At a minimum, follow their Instagram. It is one of my favorite things. If you have any comments or questions you know I love hearing from you and fielding questions, so you can use the contact form at dawnserra.com. I will field your questions on a future episode. Until next time. I will talk to you soon. This is Dawn Serra. Bye.