How's Your Sexy? :: Reality Of Motherhood Series (Audiobook)

Before we’re moms, we’re womxn - womxn with a sexuality.

That makes it important, then, to include an exploration of our comfort with and reconciliation of our sexuality and spirituality in our Reality of Motherhood Series.

This TruthTalk is comprised of excerpts from rev dr candi's book, WHO TOLD YOU THAT YOU WERE NAKED? BLACK WOMEN RECLAIMING SEXUAL AND SPIRITUAL GOODNESS. It also includes excerpts from her related screenplay, DESIRE'S KISS.

May the talks and meditations in this series contribute to whatever you need and want to BE in better space, to feel better about Mother's Day.

"Motherhood is the greatest thing ... and the hardest thing." ~Unknown

Transcript

How's your sexy?

Reality of Motherhood series.

Before we're moms,

We're women.

Women with a sexuality.

Hello,

I am Reverend Dr.

Candy Dugas and I find it important then to include in our Reality of Motherhood series excerpts from my book,

Who Told You That You Were Naked?

Black Women Reclaiming Sexual and Spiritual Goodness.

This bodied by intuitive work is important given our own and inherited traumas related to our bodies and the prevalence of spirituality in African American culture.

In these excerpts,

You'll hear me reference pseudonyms of the women who generously participated in my research.

You may also hear excerpts from my award-winning screenplay that is a part of this work,

Desire is Kiss,

Inspired by the sacred text Song of Psalms.

A note from me.

Developing this work from my doctor of ministry thesis as a Judeo-Christian practical theologian,

I wanted to address the issue of Black women needing a relevant and vital response from the church regarding love,

Sex,

And romantic relationships within a Christian context.

However,

It's only a little over a decade later and I wonder if there's any remaining relevance for this work.

I've heard from devoted Christian women that their allegiance to traditional Christian doctrine continues to work for them.

I've heard from progressive Christian women that they are already liberated from those same traditions.

Additionally,

When I developed this work,

Given my interest in and connections to interfaith work,

I hoped that women of other faith traditions and belief systems could experience this book as helpful for their own lives and that they would find ways to participate in this much-needed conversation.

And so I then remember that there are women who have told me how much this book has helped them and then I glance around our world and know that women's bodies,

How we express physically,

And how our bodies and expressions are regarded by us as women identifying people as well as other identifying people can be problematic at best and oppressive at worst.

And I know once again that work like this remains relevant even if it's not exactly as it was originally developed.

Some parts of this work may contain harsh language that may be offensive.

If these words expressions offend you,

I apologize.

Yet I hope you understand that some emotions find their most potent expression in words and phrasings that we may sometimes categorize as profane.

I also hope that you will understand the purpose for the inclusion of it in this work and stay in the conversation.

That said,

It is also possible that parts of this work may prove triggering for you.

And so if you do not have triggering coping mechanisms and tools right now in place,

I suggest that you pause this audio book at this moment and find some coping mechanisms,

Some coping resources for when you are triggered and then return to it so that you can activate them if triggering occurs.

Personal reflection.

It is about freedom and justice more than it is about sex.

Really,

It is.

And it is certainly not about craving some untethered permission to have sex without any guidelines whatsoever.

It is not about being tired of waiting in singleness.

It is not about any of that.

Truly,

It is not.

Simply,

It is about freedom and justice.

For me,

Life has always been about choice and rightness no matter the topic.

In Who Told You That You Were Naked,

The liberating topic centers around women and how we can achieve full equality and agency as female human beings by reconfiguring one key area of our lives,

The integration of our sexuality and spirituality.

For all of the social progress we have made as women,

News of discriminatory and disparaging remarks continue to alert us to the fact that women are not truly considered equal regarding our bodies and how we choose to express our sexuality.

We've been alerted to our perceived inequality when the use of the word vagina was censured in public debate and when popular male pundits felt free to spew defaming,

Speculative comments about the sex life of a female U.

S.

Congressional witness.

Do you remember those things?

To approach this conversation of sexuality in a spiritual context as one concerned with women's freedom and justice connects with my internal meter of fairness,

One that I have had since childhood.

I share a bit of my story with you now to show how critical this work is to me.

Though I did not have the words to articulate this concern then,

From the youngest age I can remember restrictions on who I am and how I am never made sense to me.

In the depths of my being,

I never got it.

Oh,

Eventually I caved and tried to live out my femininity by the way of traditions rules,

But that approach did not work either.

If I had articulated my words back then,

Perhaps they would have read something like this.

I am just a little girl,

But I have a deep sense of who I am and who I am not.

I disagree with the person they teach me I ought to be socially and how I should behave simply because I am a girl.

I can go against what they say,

But I really don't want to.

Perhaps I don't want to because I have so much freedom to be me and to become whatever I want in so many other areas of my life.

They tell me that I'm well behaved and that they love my straight A report cards.

They even give me money for them.

Maybe they feel guilty or something because I am an only child.

Whatever the reasons are,

I have lots of room to do what I want,

When I want,

And how I want at home,

School,

And church.

Without thinking,

Am I deciding to keep my cushy childhood?

I don't know.

I just do.

So I cross my legs when wearing a skirt because they allow me to play on the boys teams in PE.

I mind my elders and hold my tongue when I disagree with them because they let me get away with breaking a few minor rules here and there.

I repress my preference to be assertive with boys because there is not a holiday gift for which I ask that I do not receive.

Yeah,

I just keep quiet.

Adolescence and its hormones can be a shocking thing,

However.

The charmed sweetness of my relationship with authority grinds to a halt,

Including a few standoffs,

As my urges to do the exact opposite of what I am told becomes irresistible.

Then as a young adult,

I look back over the messes I made in my quest for independence,

Doing things my way.

The wreckage is so great,

So greatly graphic in some areas that I wave my white flag,

Surrendering to tradition and a sense of the proper that I have fought so hard to keep out of my life.

My full-time work at a Christian church reinforces my surrender,

But it does not last.

The fairy tale land which that tradition and its sense of the proper had built comes to an end about a decade or so after adolescence ends.

The myths disintegrate all around me.

I hold what is left,

What turns out to be empty promises for my life and broken ones for others.

I do not know what are worse,

Empty pledges or broken ones.

What makes this discovery of reality even more disconcerting for me is the fairy tale's roots in Christianity,

The westernized kind that informs the traditions which shape what is good and proper for a woman to be in good standing with her family,

Faith,

And society in general.

Practical Theological Reflection When we Christians involve our faith in our choices,

We must first consider how we initially come to understand ourselves,

God,

And our connection to God.

For most of us,

Our introduction to our beings includes an emphasis on an inherent sinful nature.

This introduction leads to indoctrination that our bodies are filthy flesh which unrelentingly wreaks havoc on our distressed souls.

Tradition uses Genesis 3 to support this notion with the story of the first sin of disobedience committed by the first humans and God's subsequent punishment which reaches to all generations of humans after Eve and Adam.

Such lessons generally end by proclaiming that we need a savior to rescue us from an eternal damnation that is inescapable because our humanity is so severely flawed that we will never please God enough who created us as we are in the first place.

We also need a messiah to authorize our return to an enhanced Eden,

An enchanted Eden I wanted to say,

Namely heaven.

Do we ever take the time to consider who our teachers are and the origins of their information?

Who told you that you were naked?

This question comes from Genesis 3.

11.

It is one that Reverend Dr.

Willie F.

Godman interviewed for this book and member of the Candy to God Collective frequently uses in his counseling practice to initiate understanding of inner conflict that may result from differences between what we want and what others have told us in God's name,

Of course.

Black Christian women miraculously find a sense of salvation and healing.

Somehow this happens in a faith that is riddled with hierarchical dualism,

Patriarchy,

And racism.

What do we say for these humans that are known as women when this happens,

As Black women that is,

As Black Christian women?

Underneath this sense is an incessant rumbling that some of us ignore but others of us humans pursue.

The rumbling reminds us that we are not completely free women in this liberating faith tradition.

We know somewhere inside that we lack the agency,

Autonomy,

And authority in conservative interpretations of the Christian faith to satisfy sexual urges in singleness,

To pursue a man whom we find attractive,

And this is in a heterosexual context,

And to express our attraction as we desire.

In this belief system,

Our bodies are demeaned rather than celebrated.

We are held responsible for men's ability to maintain a holy countenance,

To keep themselves together in our presence,

And we accept as well as perpetrate these circumstances for us,

Excuse me,

Because we believe it is God's will.

No wonder Janie's grandmother calls us the mule of the world from their eyes were watching God.

Who tells us these things?

We owe it to ourselves,

Our daughters,

Mothers,

Sisters,

Nieces,

Cousins,

And friends to understand fully who these teachers are and where they get their 411,

Right?

Who told you that you were naked?

Privileged men whom we tend to label as white-bodied and who lived thousands of years ago in another land are the primary influencers of western platonized,

Westernized Christianity.

From their translations and interpretations,

Some privileged African brothers,

Augustine and Origen,

Further the development of doctrines like original sin that still significantly guide our faith today.

Human understanding of sexuality is limited to the knowledge of the time in which we ponder and study.

We cannot separate this reality from our considerations of historical teachings.

Augustine,

Origen,

And others suffered with incredible guilt over their probably normative physical desires.

Their neuroses passed to us as doctrine.

Their neuroses passed to us as doctrine.

Their neuroses passed to us as doctrine.

Understanding this history and this whole concept of how their neuroses passed to us as doctrine,

This phenomenon,

This dynamic,

I am not inclined to accept their doctrine without inquiry or question.

I write this book because I do not believe others should accept it either.

Who told you that you were naked?

Introducing the whispered exclamation,

The Black woman's cry.

Their frustration is almost palpable.

For more than the declining membership numbers in mainline denominations,

I sense the restlessness among God's people for a more relevant and vital spirituality to reside in their houses of worship.

This sense inspires my exploration of the church's relevancy and vitality in the 21st century.

I hear a particular cry for relevancy from single African-American women regarding their sexuality.

These faithful women adore God and are loyal to their churches.

Their high levels of faithfulness and loyalty make the lack of practical applicable guidance from the church concerning sexuality quite problematic.

The absence of relevant teaching from the Black church is even more difficult to understand as this is the place,

If there is no other place,

To which African-Americans turn for liberative inspiration and self-affirmation.

This difficulty rises to levels of almost unbearable strain when we consider that these women are not likely to transfer their faith or their loyalty to other social organizations,

Even though these resources may provide the answers they seek.

For them to continue to find a dry well each time they attend worship or Bible study is simply unacceptable.

Does the church,

Especially the Black church,

Realize the agony these women endure regularly resulting from the inability to live with sustained peace in the goodness and fullness of themselves,

Constantly struggling between their natural physical desires and the church's traditional requirements for salvation and holiness?

If the Black church desires to be a relevant and vital resource for God's answers to humanity's questions rather than an ossified institution,

Single Black women must discover their authority and create the space necessary for them to reclaim their goodness as sexual and spiritual beings.

First,

The problem.

Missing in action.

It's completely MIA.

Sex 101 in the Black church.

Just don't do it.

This admonishment,

Spoken directly or implied,

Pretty much sums up the teachings on sex and sexuality from the Black church for unmarried people.

Again,

For this to be the limits of lessons on sexuality from the Black church is particularly problematic.

These houses of faith for historically oppressed people continue to represent a resource of the physically liberating salvific aspects of the gospel of Christ.

We read in the book of John that Yeshua said,

If you continue in my word,

You are really my disciples and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.

So if the son makes you free,

You will be free indeed.

These limited lessons do not tangibly contribute to or result in full liberation for Black women.

Freedom implies a sense of justice and for African-American disciples of Yeshua,

This justice begins on earth.

If this justice begins on earth,

It includes liberation for the body.

Somehow though,

The Black church stops advocating for the body's deliverance at legal,

Political,

And societal issues.

Dr.

Anthony Penn,

A humanities and religious studies professor,

Argues that Black religious scholars must wrestle with sex and sexuality and the erotic if they are actually to present liberation as a mode of existence that frees the body and fully appreciates the body.

The necessity of wrestling with sex and sexuality extends beyond the official boundaries of academia.

Any student of Black religion,

Including pastors and Christian education instructors,

Facilitators,

Must wrestle with this issue as well.

Rain,

A health care professional,

Remembers,

I don't recall a church speaking about sexuality,

Except this New Methodist church that had a series on it last summer,

Unless they're talking about the dangers of a woman seducing a man.

Subliminally,

We can pick up that we shouldn't be sexy,

We should be demure.

When they preach about Bathsheba and Vashti,

We are told that they were wrong.

These are the little pieces that can stick in your head.

As a mature woman,

Rain finds the absence of relevant guidance from the Black church misleading.

I've discovered that much of what they,

Church leaders,

Told me simply isn't true.

Prominent in Mary's memory,

A third-year seminary student,

Is an analogy from a sermon she heard in college by a nationally well-known female pastor.

When we were virgins,

We have this stickum,

Like a piece of tape,

And when we mesh that to have sex with someone else,

It's like tape is stuck to a piece of tissue and that bond is meant to be permanent.

If we break that bond,

Now we are trying to pull our stickum off this piece of tissue.

Something's going to rip.

Most likely,

It will be the tissue.

Now,

I can't stick them to somebody else because my stickum is stuck to the first person I slept with.

This stickum analogy is the same as the popular doctrine of soul ties.

This doctrine explains that sex is solely designed to tie together the souls of wives and husbands,

And the two of them to God.

Therefore,

Whenever we engage in sexual activity with whomever,

The same phenomenon happens.

Our souls are tied together.

This result,

Then,

Is an awful one when we are not under the protection of marriage.

Who wants her soul tied to a drunken one-night stand?

When such relationships end,

We have to pray fervently to God to sever the tie.

However,

Ethicist Margaret Farley offers that strong connections to others are not limited to sexual encounters.

When we open to relationship through knowledge and love,

We transcend what we already are.

To step into relation with another is to step out of a center that holds only ourselves.

We open ourselves radically,

Whether minimally or maximally,

To come into union by knowing and loving,

And sometimes also by being known and being loved.

Our center is now both beyond ourselves and within ourselves.

Here,

Too,

We enter into relation not only as spirits but as embodied spirits,

In spirited bodies,

Whether or not our relationships are physical in the ordinary sense of the word.

Farley's offering helps explain the intense grief and the lingering connections one can have when any kind of relationship ends,

Not just the ones between lovers.

It also questions women's declarations that a breakup is worse if sex is involved.

Is this amplified pain a result of a belief in a soul tie or an actual phenomenon?

If a woman sleeps with a man only after she determines that she cares enough for,

I.

E.

Loves him,

To give him her body,

I.

E.

And her soul,

Even against her preference,

I.

E.

Requirement of marriage,

What exactly is betrayed when the relationship does not end well,

That is,

End in marriage?

In this scenario,

The woman makes a significant emotional investment,

Inextricably tied to sex.

When she adds a stickum or a soul tie belief into the mix,

Who is to tell what is what?

Farley's approach provides a more reasoned balance that also levels the gender's positions in the matter than either of the popularly messaged Christian sexual tenets.

Have we Christians,

Even Christian women,

Allowed ourselves to think we are operating separate from society's ills when we are actually perpetrating its dangers?

The stickum message created by a female clergy does just that by emphasizing the woman's consequence for premarital sex,

Non-marital sex,

Which is my preferred term,

Over the man's.

Dr.

Emily M.

Towns,

Seminary professor of ethics and African-American history,

Explores this gendered part of the phenomenon.

Within the church and without,

African-American women and men are competing for life.

This competition is a cruel wager on scarce resources in a hegemonic culture and social structure.

Playing this wager means settling for an imposed hierarchy in which only one's gender's concern is addressed at a time.

To set up hierarchy of needs based on femaleness and maleness is short-sighted and discriminatory.

This lives out the model of white power structure and the white version of Christianity that condones oppression.

So why is the Black church teaching lessons that are inadequate and oppressive?

The Black church.

Perhaps it is not liberated fully from the vestiges of African-American persecution itself.

Douglas states that our history of oppression as Blacks in America has impeded the Black church and community from appropriating the meaning of God's revelation on this matter.

One of the vestiges is perpetuating the silence that was once critical to survival for African-Americans.

However,

The day has long since passed when this tactic serves the greater good of the people,

Especially women.

The late writer and activist,

Our late writer and activist,

Audre Lorde,

Proclaims,

Your silence will not protect you.

The absence,

E.

G.

Essentially silence of sexually liberative lessons,

Also could be due to the Black women's struggle over centuries to redeem Black womanhood from derogatory white social commentary,

Writes Frederick.

Even African-American female pastors tend to limit their sermons about sexuality to traditional approaches,

If they mention it at all.

Knowing that historically we are portrayed almost wanton and animal-like regarding our sexuality,

As Frederick terms,

Hypersexual Jezebels.

Ethicist Katie Cannon further explains the silence.

So in a collective struggle to counter more than 400 years of dehumanizing racist stereotypes of the Black body as ugly,

While simultaneously being an object of sexual desire,

The Black church tends to confine sexual ethics to abstract puritanical condemnations.

Furthermore,

Douglas argues white racist culture has significantly contributed to Black people's attitudes towards sexuality,

Especially toward their own sexuality.

And then Farley supports Douglas's argument as she explores the dynamics of sexuality and colonization.

The more distant and different peoples appeared to their visitors and colonizers,

The more were their native bodies sexualized,

Eroticized,

In racially charged fields.

Early visitors and colonizers of the South Seas,

Africa,

And Latin America interpreted Indigenous sexual practices as permissive,

Licentious,

Savage,

And affront to Western sensibilities.

Yet these same critically offended men took Indigenous women as their concubines.

So in other words,

Without discussion of how to counter this racist paradox,

While maintaining a healthy self-loving sense of our bodies,

The Black church continues to oppress its own people by reducing embodiment to sexuality.

The Black church tells its people,

Just don't do it.

With the overall emphasis on condemnation comes a covertly oppressive message of grace.

Mary recalls,

The leader of my women's Bible study is an ordained clergywoman.

She told us that no one's going to hell for having sex before marriage.

If we fall off the wagon,

Just repent.

While this kind of message seems to help balance the puritanical influence,

It falls short of affirming sexual desire and its satisfaction for the single woman.

The need to repent still declares that her participation in sexual activity is sinful without exception.

This declaration is proving to be false and oppressive,

Sending the single African-American woman on an endless sin repent merry-go-round of wondering if God is pleased with her.

This woman's sexual desire is normative and unrelenting.

What does God think of her acts of satisfaction,

Whether alone or with a partner?

Perhaps a church can help by preaching and teaching a message of holistic human goodness.

Honey,

A women's college alumna,

Logistics coordinator and bookkeeper and freelance editor asserts,

Most churches don't teach the concept of spirituality and sexuality being connected.

It's treated as two separate things.

Not only are they two separate things,

The church doesn't look at sexuality as a holistic concept.

For the church,

It's all about sex,

Intercourse,

While there is so much more.

Honey's statement highlights the Black church's following of what Canon terms puritanical condemnations,

Lifting the purity of the soul and spirit while lowering the uncleanliness of the body.

This embraced dualistic tradition forgets that God declared all creation good.

God declared all creation good.

God declared all creation good and Yeshua redeemed creation from the law which can condemn all creation that is bad.

Overlooking these biblical truths covertly oppresses all who do not embrace and live by these truths.

Furthermore,

Perpetuating this dualistic tradition hinders the Black church from being a fully liberative resource,

Causing its lessons to be absent and impotent for its Black women.

Effects of oppression and liberation.

At some point,

Persistent experiences of lack by one group of people cease to be simply frustrating,

Hypocritical,

Or unfair and become unjust and oppressive,

Therefore perilous to that group's well-being.

As the women have noted,

When sex is mentioned in church,

Sermon,

Or Bible study,

It tends to focus on the potential dangers of sex rather than its potential beauty.

Its beauty rather than its potential beauty.

This focus creates an unjust sexual effect on single heterosexual Protestant African-American women.

From these dangers,

The women tend to walk away with a sense of sole moral responsibility to prevent non-marital sex for themselves and for the men around them.

And for the men around them.

And for the men around them.

In one of Rain's interviews,

As a woman who enjoys dressing with cleavage,

She expresses that not only do the Black church's teachings influence her to abstain as a single woman,

But also to present herself as less seductive so that she does not turn anyone on in church.

Even if she marries,

Rain seems to accept sole responsibility for the health of her sexual relationship with her husband at the expense of her emotional status.

For sex to happen,

I have to be emotionally stable.

Even if I'm married,

I expect I would need this stability as well,

Though I realize that it's not always going to be stable.

But if I abstain from sex too much as his wife,

He's going to be gone.

The lack of focus on building an independent sexual ethic with women of faith is also oppressive.

By teaching that in order for women to be holy and good,

They have to submit to men,

Wait for them to initiate relationships,

Sexual activity,

Etc.

The church robs us of full and healthy personhood.

This doctrine also creates these awful traps of insecurity that make women tentative to assert any kind of expression of their desires and irrationally subjective in assessing the outcomes of their expressions.

Instead of the church's lessons helping women to participate in loving mutual relationships,

They perpetuate singleness and unfulfilled partnerships because the men in our lives desire confident women who are able to play with the possibilities of sexual engagement.

The following scene from Desire's Kiss depicts a confident woman ready to play.

This is the setup of the scene.

Desire and Moze are in his studio enjoying a picnic set up among the floral arrangements.

Moze is reclined against Desire.

They're sensuous sensuously feeding each other grapes,

Chocolates,

Olives,

And drinking wine.

Desire smiling after she suspends foreplay for a bit.

So then expect that I love you and expect that I am your most loyal friend.

Expect that you can tell me anything.

I won't flinch.

Moze,

Never.

Desire,

Never ever.

As long as our being together is right.

They kiss.

I trust you.

And she pauses and asks,

What?

Moze,

You wondered why I never married.

It's also because I never met a woman I could trust.

I feel so comfortable with you.

They kiss again.

She pulls away a bit when he doesn't try foreplay again.

Moze continues.

Now you,

What?

Desire,

You're not trying again.

Moze,

That?

For you to say no again?

Desire,

Come on.

You're more resilient than that,

Aren't you?

Moze,

I know I'm special.

Baby no man likes to hear no,

Not ever.

Desire smiles coyly.

It's just a two-letter word.

Moze,

I don't have to try again.

You know I want to make love to you.

You also know that I want you to want it like I want it.

Desire,

I want it.

Moze,

Like I want it?

Desire,

Not sure about that.

I'm sure about this though.

She touches him seductively.

I want it like this.

Moze,

Is that all?

Desire,

No.

I want it like this too.

Moze,

Uh-huh.

Is that all?

Desire,

No.

I don't want it like that.

Moze,

I didn't bring my condoms.

I didn't think we were,

Desire,

No worries.

I have mine.

Keep going.

She pauses and groans in response to his touches.

Yes,

Moze,

I want it just like that.

Lights out as they make love.

End of scene.

Rain's concern about sex's role in keeping a husband committed to a marriage demonstrates the unjust and oppressive results of traditional sexual theology.

Conversely,

Her concern also helps dismantle one of the church's most potent arguments against sex prior to marriage.

This argument contends that sex without commitment will certainly lead to a man leaving the relationship and a woman feeling used.

Consideration of this premise sparks the most visceral responses from my peer group,

My research group.

After this scene from Desire's kiss,

We consider whether Desire delaying his advances until marriage would have made a difference.

Desire's kiss would have made a difference.

The peer group is the second research group in the process of developing my dissertation.

Scene set up.

After work hours,

Desire breaks into Moze's studio after he abruptly left town,

Patterned after the male lover's elusiveness in the Song of Psalms.

After Moze has left town with a rumored former girlfriend and without notice or explanation following their first time making love,

Desire hopes to find information about where he is since he did not contact her upon his return.

As she snoops,

Moze enters and watches her from the shadows.

He makes his presence known and they hash it out.

Desire.

You must not get how much you hurt me.

Moze.

Yes,

I think I,

Desire.

Tears streaming.

At some point during his short speech,

Moze moves close to Desire and she feels helpless to move away,

But she continues to rant.

Shut up.

You don't.

You don't get it because you never called me,

Never emailed me,

Never even sent me a message through someone else.

You're a grown ass man.

You had to have known that what you did was fucked up and you come here with all this melodramatic,

Poetic,

Poetic bullshit and expect me to,

Moze,

Lifting her chin gently with his hands.

Kissing her tears.

To curse me out,

Hit me,

Throw things at me because I abandoned you and our love because I was scared.

He steps away a bit.

Desire.

Please don't look for a reason where there is none.

I'm telling you the truth the best way I know how.

I was scared,

Baby,

And I ran for my life.

He pauses.

Being with you is like nothing I've ever known.

Yeah,

I've been with a lot of women in my life,

So many that I thought I would never find any one woman I could feel so comfortable with that I would spend the rest of my life with her.

Pause.

Until I met you.

I wasn't prepared to meet you.

Desire.

You kissed my tears.

She pauses.

Why do you still want me if I scare you?

Moze.

The emptiness of being without you is worse than my fear.

I know that now.

I'm going to be here through it all with you if you let me,

Desire.

Please don't say no.

Long pause as the lights dim completely.

That's a negative,

Emphatically proclaims peer group discussion member Kimberly Scott.

The consideration of taking him back at this moment,

A negative.

And this comment sparks several impassioned remarks.

Jack Ingram shares her assessment.

It sounds like he wants to have his cake and eat it too.

That's not a relationship.

Alejandro Lopez engages with Desire's character,

Questioning her motives.

One of the things that is going through my mind is that if she is not interested in continuing this relationship,

Why does she stay in the conversation?

Then considering Moze's feelings,

Lopez shares his experience of being in relationship with a woman,

Implying that it can be overwhelming in understanding a man's need to leave.

There is such energy from a woman.

After listening to her needs,

I have to make sure,

Am I the right man?

Reverend Dr.

Anika Jones,

An Atlanta pastor,

Also has questions as the story unfolds.

Total commitment is something I began thinking about at the beginning of the story.

It is pretty clear that Moze never says or even implies that he is totally committed to her forever.

This is often a conflict between men and women.

The man will say just as clearly,

But the woman will think,

Well,

If he's with me and if we have this thing going,

We just tend to think of it differently.

So far,

The group focuses its discussion on the woman's responsibility for the status of the relationship,

One that is primarily caused by the man's actions.

Dr.

Miranda Pillay,

A visiting professor of ethics from South Africa's University of the Western Cape,

Changes the group's direction.

To the scene and the initial comments,

She responds.

It really is this grand narrative of putting the ball into the court of the woman.

The woman is responsible for the morality of the relationship,

For her morality,

And even for his morality.

What we're really talking about here is sensuality.

A woman's sensuality has been held captive by this notion of shameful woman.

While this book focuses on the cry of the African-American woman,

Pillay's comment alerts us that this issue affects Christian women globally.

Another male identifying audience member also adds another perspective.

The scene before this one was beautiful.

She was aggressive.

He was submissive.

She was submissive.

He was aggressive.

That worked out great.

We're talking about women being sexually open and having faith.

Even with her sexual freedom,

If she is just now finding complete fulfillment in it with this man,

Someone who accepts her being aggressive and sexually open and being able to touch her spirituality,

It doesn't matter if it doesn't work out.

In the long run,

To have been in a relationship that is so refreshing,

If you've been living in a box for so long,

I'll take that.

I think this is the beginning of something good,

Even if it doesn't look that good right now.

No matter where on the globe it occurs,

This unbalanced sense of moral responsibility for women and resistance to our enjoying relationships that do not end in marriage is oppressive.

However,

In the face of injustice,

There is something about surviving despite being oppressed that produces a persistent quest for full liberation.

As African Americans and as women,

We know this something quite well.

For some Black women,

When exposed to scholars' research on sexuality,

The effect of the church's teachings is one that impels them to dig deeper,

To dig deeper,

Seeking to make sense of it all.

Rain explains with a bit of excitement,

Since talking about sex with my girlfriend who is in seminary,

I've begun to question more and broaden my thinking,

Mary admits.

When I first came in here,

It was about this what the good minister would say.

And I actually believed all of that.

But now as I've had to question why I believe it,

It has opened up some dialogue within myself.

During one of my conversations with Nell,

She shares what life could be like for her if Christianity appreciates the goodness of the body as much as it does the spirit soul.

She is initially conflicted about this consideration,

But later in the conversation,

Nell offers,

I would be more me.

When I grew up in the church of God in Christ,

Fear was used,

Fire and brimstone.

The goal was to scare us into doing what was right.

When I came to the realization that actually God wants us to love him so much that we'll do what's right,

I experienced a peace and a breath.

So it's not this constant fight between body and spirit soul.

Then it's the same thing that makes me okay.

It's all right.

All effects of the Black church's lessons on Black women's understandings of themselves as sexual beings,

From the restless to the liberative,

Can teach the entire African American community that when we open our mouths about sexuality,

Ceasing the oppressive silence,

We are the better for it.

Not only do we increase and clarify our knowledge,

But we more fully liberate our bodies and grow in our spirituality as well.

The long lasting effect can be one that deepens our sense of self and our relationships with God and each other.

Now,

The solutions.

Re-ing,

The way and the answer.

Goodness in sexuality appears to be achieved only when women develop their views on sexuality beyond the traditional teachings of the Black church.

This further development is a process I am coining as re-ing.

The prefix of re,

As defined by dictionary.

Com,

Means again or again again and again to indicate repetition or with the meaning back or backward to indicate withdrawal or backward motion.

Re-ing characterizes all the representations we can name to describe the theological work women must do to answer their own cries for faith-based and relevant guidance regarding their sexuality.

Single,

Heterosexual,

Protestant,

African American women must go back to the most original sources of our faith and do so regularly to determine for ourselves what interpretations of these sources best shepherd our lives in contemporary contexts.

Until we arrive at an individual piece from our own determinations,

We need to reconsider,

Redefine,

And reframe these theologies.

You call it reframing,

I call it reconfiguring.

Pillay contributes to my peer group discussion.

From her statement,

I have changed my reference to become reconfiguring.

Reframing implies a change in how something is viewed.

Reconfiguring implies a change to the actual construction of a thing,

Which is a more radical but meaningful and lasting change,

The kind we women need to realize goodness in sexuality.

Sex a good thing.

Sexual goodness is rooted in concerns for freedom and justice.

With Dr.

Miguel de la Torre,

Professor of sexual ethics calls ortho eros,

Which is defined as correct erotic sex.

Ortho eros is great sex and aptly describes the goodness Black women seek in their understandings as sexual beings.

De la Torre pursues the creation of a liberative methodology that resulted at ortho eros.

This liberation is from a conservative theology like that espoused by the Black church.

De la Torre considers this kind of theology dangerous regarding its presentation of sexuality.

He also finds his approach to be an alternative to liberal and conservative extremes of ethically handling sex and sexuality extremes,

Which he deems inadequate.

His creation of this liberative methodology develops frameworks for healthy models that foster intimacy and vulnerability for a disjointed and at times oppressive society.

The Black woman's cry,

Whether she realizes it or not,

Is more about holistic and complete freedom and justice than it is only about her sexuality.

Farley's concern with justice leads her to develop an adequate contemporary sexual ethic that both individuals and social institutions can use by re-ing the meaning of sexuality for humans and ways it can be incorporated into a moral view of human and Christian life.

Farley terms this re-ing just sex.

Justice,

She contends,

Must be present if human sexuality is to be creative rather than destructive.

Prior to creating just sex,

A just sex however,

She advises it is necessary first to introduce the notion of a just love.

We learn in the previous section that Mary and Rain consider feelings,

Love,

To be a prerequisite for legitimate sexual activity.

In reality,

While all romance generally includes a sexual love,

There may be a sexual love without romance.

Farley warns further that it is erroneous to suppose that love is the sufficient answer to all of our sexual ethical questions.

It will not do as some wish to end all ethical discernment by simply saying that sexual relations and activities are good when they express love.

For love is the problem in ethics,

Not the solution.

Our experiences of love and our loves take multiple forms.

Some thinkers prefer to reserve the name love for a love that has normative content.

That is,

For loves that they consider to be good loves.

Yet we know that not all of our loves are good,

Though they are loves.

There are wise loves and foolish good loves and bad true loves and mistaken loves.

The question ultimately is,

What is a right love?

A good,

Just,

And true love?

This reflection is particularly helpful for women who feel compelled to limit sexual activity to men whom they love.

Requiring the presence of a love with normative content as Farley terms for sexual intimacy genuinely seems only to exist for women.

If a woman's thinking is broadened to these varying considerations of love,

This is another aspect of reeing that can lead to ortho eros,

Of which mutuality is a characteristic.

Actually,

It is with mutuality,

De la Torre clarifies,

Rather than the requirements of a covenant like marriage that we gain full security.

Only by giving fully of oneself can there be hope of fully possessing another.

Mutual giving rather than taking presupposes autonomy.

Total surrender,

Each to the other,

Cannot be achieved as long as one of the two parties is holding onto power over the partner.

Christian marriage tends to cultivate power of men over women.

Yet with mutuality in place,

Just sex and just love can occur in the absence of gendered hierarchy,

A social construct adopted by religion,

Not created by spirituality.

And here we are at the conclusion of this excerpt.

I hope that you've experienced something from it that is beneficial.

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Thank you for listening.