by Maisha Z. Johnson
What does it mean to veer from the way of the good girl and embrace my whole sexual self?
I can’t articulate who I am without also considering what society at large would think of me, but when it comes to the respectability politics of my sexuality, no voice is more challenging than my own. I can still hear the troubled thoughts of my childhood self, striving to be a good girl.
Anyone who’s come out or been in community with someone in the coming out process knows there can be many layers to this closet beast. I’ve had to come out repeatedly to friends who’ve “forgotten” that I told them I was queer, or who believe, based on the gender presentation of the person I’m dating, I’ve moved past the queer “phase.” I’ve come out countless times in work and social situations, usually only when I felt safe to do so, where heteronormativity was assumed. And coming out to my parents was a long, awkward process of treating their selective amnesia with regular reminders that my queerness wouldn’t fade with silence. Throughout all this, I’ve learned it can take a while for some people to understand. But it’s my own understanding that’s been the most complicated to break through.
For most of my life, my understanding of what a good girl should be came through external forces. My parents’ version of the birds and the bees talk was a vague explanation that there are some mysterious things adults do in their bedrooms, but I shouldn’t think about those things – I should be busy focusing on schoolwork and keeping my legs closed until marriage. The church they raised me in delivered weekly sermons about the value of virginity and the idea that sex was only good for making babies. Even in risqué media like Cosmopolitan Magazine, the articles I read focused not on my pleasure, but on the pleasure of the men who touched me. They all had the same message: good girls don’t enjoy sex. And they certainly don’t like it wild and rough. I guess that puts me out of the good girl running.
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My sexual expression took many forms before I came to kink. As a teenager, I vowed virginity until marriage, then tossed that promise out the window at sixteen. In my late teens and early twenties, my own sexual expression was nonexistent, as my body was under the control of an abusive partner who considered my choices irrelevant. And from that trauma grew a fear of sex, which I rarely addressed with myself or with partners. Until I stumbled upon kink. I found it accidentally, enjoying moments like bites from lovers and craving more, more pain and more bondage, before I knew what it was called.
The internet gave me a name for it, and I was shocked to find myself among the descriptions of kink. What was wrong with me? I wondered on more than one occasion. But I’d opened a window I couldn’t shut again. By exploring my kinky desires, I found a way to push through my fears and regain control of my own sense of sexuality, long after I’d swallowed the message that my sexuality wasn’t mine to own.
I used to think I wouldn’t come out to my parents unless I absolutely had to, because I knew from our birds and the bees talks that they’d never accept me as queer. If it did happen, I thought, it’d only be in the case of falling hopelessly in love with a person who happened to be a woman, perhaps on the way to our very hetero-esque wedding, when I’d break down and realize I couldn’t go through with it without my parents’ blessing. But I was completely single when I told them I was queer, so what I was admitting was not just one exceptional case of love, but an endless well of desire for women. My mom had numerous uncomfortable questions for me, and many revolved around hypothetical sex – “You could really see yourself being intimate with a woman? How does that work?” Underneath all her questions, I heard her ask, “Are you really a pervert?”
Similarly, I believe society would have an easier time accepting my queerness if it came with as little sexually deviant behavior as possible. If I could declare that all I want is the right to assimilate into as traditional a life as a good straight girl, with marriage and children and vanilla bedroom habits, even if my partner happened to be a woman, then maybe I wouldn’t be dangerous.
But that’s not all I want. I also want sex, kinky sex that includes those perverse acts that strike fear into those afraid of deviant sexual behavior. And I want to read about sex, and write about sex, and express the fullness of my sexuality, without shame.
So what does that make me? Here’s what I once understood to be the difference between a good girl and a kinky girl: A good girl is smart and sensible, while a kinky girl is foolish and reckless. A good girl’s body is a temple, while a kinky girl’s body is disposable. A good girl may be a victim of sexual violence, but a kinky girl is asking for it. And a good girl can uphold the values of our society and add strength to the black community, while a kinky girl threatens our foundation.
Now that I’ve lived as both a kinky girl and a girl trying to be good, I can say what I know to be true: While striving to be a good girl, I was numb to my own feelings, afraid of what I couldn’t control, and unaware of my own power. It’s taken an ongoing process of healing to regain my sense of feeling and control. As a woman giving myself permission to pursue even my most deviant desires, I grow more and more confident of my body’s wisdom every day.
As the closet door creaks open, my understanding of my sexuality grows deeper — I’m under no obligation to represent my community’s traditional values of sex and respectability. I define my own sexuality and, these days, I am queer and I am kinky, in every sense.
As the closet door creaks open, my understanding of my sexuality grows deeper — I’m under no obligation to represent my community’s traditional values of sex and respectability. I define my own sexuality and, these days, I am queer and I am kinky, in every sense.
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Maisha Z. Johnson is a healer, a troublemaker, and author of two poetry chapbooks, Split Ears and Uprooted. She breathes her Trinidadian roots and experiences as a queer black woman and survivor of violence into her art, working to amplify the voices of those often silenced. She blogs at www.maishazjohnson.com.
