BLACK THIGHS

I am from a generation of “opportuned” individuals, and when I say “opportuned”, I mean young Africans with ideas of freedom roaming the corridors of their minds. We are obsessed with the freedom to create, the opportunity to show and show off, to learn and re-create! How not? We are the generation of the internet, the generation of live feed and real time virtual applications. We can see and say anything! That’s our freedom.

About one year and a half ago, I was tasked to write out a proposal for my Masters year, beginning in 2016. This just so happened to be the same time that the #feesmustfall movement gained a voice at the University of the Western Cape campus. This coincidence then made way for me to set out to research the performance of protest movements, trying to find linguistic differences and similarities between the female leaders in this #feesmustmovement and the #antiaprtheid movement. Which would have been a rather frustrating task as I am still uncertain as to what end I wanted to explore this to. But necessary to say, in this process I found that the new generation of black male and female leaders incorporated the speeches and movements of leaders that came before them; particularly from the apartheid era. I was intrigued by this, particularly since most of our leaders were born 2 years prior to the democratic vote. But then I realized; digital media!

It hit me then that we are a generation of virtual entertainment and information consumers, we learn not from human experience anymore, but from books and the ever loved internet. We are surrounded by shows that show us how to live; where to eat and how to shop, and what we love the most; who has lived before! This is not a bad thing (if you don’t want it to be) because we learn from the experiences of others, we have learned how to communicate and how to speak life into the hearts of people, to get them ignited and reacting. This is beautiful.

However, it started to seem like instead of incorporating, we started performing history, and that our plights were mere representations of reenacted realities. Unfortunately, with all that beauty in that learning of our history and history of our people, we found ourselves lost to our own voices. We re-enacted speeches and demands that I think were neither moving us forward or backward. We were stuck and we are stuck, we are sitting ducks as we continue to wait for another speech from MHE Blade so that we can react, reenact and ‘burn’ for our black government to correct something from the past, and to change something for the future. You doubt? Ask yourself, where is #feesmustfall on your campus today?

My guess for a possible solution is; Perhaps if we spent more time thinking about how we could best improve our lives in this present moment, in this reality then we would stand a better chance at saving the future of future black children. Could we possibly give ourselves the chance to know who we are as “black young thangs!” in academic and corporate spaces today? Could we change the narrative of the black child by actually being active in the participation of our black lives? Could we give ourselves and each other the opportunity to exist as ourselves? Can we change the status quo, not through narratives from and by those who have come before (though important), but by living that change in our own voices? In our own words?

My friend Sandi says she doesn’t masturbate. It shocked me when I first heard it, because for me as an empowered woman, she should be able to masturbate. This is now my empowered self dictating how empowered women “must” be. But anyway, my ex-boyfriend Steve told me once that he had never touched his dick in his life. He too has never masturbated before! Which shocked the shit out of me, because as a man, he too should be able to masturbate.

It appears that I am under the impression that everyone should be able to masturbate. Except, it was definitely easier to accept that Sandi doesn’t masturbate than it was to accept that Steve has never masturbated. I can’t tell if my perceptions were governed by the multitude of information about men and women and their roles in society or if it was because I thought that Steve is just a little bit more promiscuous than Sandi as a person. You see, I am so empowered with information that I cannot tell the difference between a person and a construct. I am so empowered that both Sandi and Steve became constructs before they were people, bearing the burden of social analysis by hyper critical mindsets determined to see the ‘sameness’ of men and women and ironically their difference at the same time.

But, back to masturbation. I asked Sandi “why?” my face disgruntled by judgment. She told me that she doesn’t see the need to be doing THAT to herself. This completely baffled me because I couldn’t understand why you would let someone else from God knows where insert their penis, their fingers and I don’t know what else into your vagina, but not yourself?? As I said, I am judgmental, so to proceed past this stage of ignorance, I just really wanna know; Why do you not trust yourself with your own vagina? This is your vagina, your only vagina, your magic cave!

Sandi is not the only one who speaks this way about her genitalia by the way, Steve and many other of my female friends that I asked about this tell me they don’t touch THAT! They say THAT when speaking of their private parts.

I am of the LOVELIFE and PPASA generation. I sang songs with lyrics like “did you know that AIDS is a killer and condom is your protector” and wore free t-shirts with big red HIV ribbons spread out across my chest. I was energetic, dutiful and a nurse’s child. As such, I handed out packets of condoms and learned the ABC’s of HIV/AIDS off by heart: A for Abstain, B for be faithful and C for condomise. I knew about all this before I had sex with anyone.

Fast forward twelve years and it seems that I have gotten less knowledgeable about how to protect myself. As I said in the blog posted over a week ago; I had three year long relationships with cheating niggas and was not smart enough to wear or to encourage the use of condoms in my relationships. I went bare, not for myself, but for the prospect of maintaining a relationship. And I am no exception.

A week ago, I was introduced to the lovely doctor Mathobela Matjekane of medi-clinic who gave me the ins and outs of HIV/AIDS research to date, as well as the ins and outs of conversations she has had with parents of sexually active kids, and sexually active young women themselves. In this conversation, I came to the daunting realization that we, young black women, for THE longest time have chosen to be ignorant about HIV/AIDS, even as we know that we carry the leading numbers of HIV/AIDS infections. In this conversation with the great doctor I learned that young black heterosexual women, between the ages 15 and 24 have the highest HIV/AIDS infected rates, more than four times greater than males their age. I also found that while these numbers do not correspond with the rates of their male heterosexual peers, they instead, correspond with older males from the age 30 and up. Lol, we are so juicy shem!.

but anyway I am not here to question, advocate for, or crucify heterosexual women for their choices in sexual partners. What I am here for though is to find out, when, between the time that we first heard of HIV/AIDS, and were scared out of our minds that we sang songs towards its eradication or elimination, did we become okay with the notion of contracting the virus and disease?

I suppose that as time has lapsed and we have seen many small evolutions and revolutions, and further have managed to change the narrative of HIV/AIDS to ‘no longer a death sentence’ we became very lax with it, almost complacent. Are we really okay with this?

After my conversation with the doctor, I had a talk with my ‘woke’ friend Miranda, who I knew was dating a male in the 30 to 55 age group. I told her what the doctor highlighted about the corresponding rates, to which she replied “that is not the truth. AIDS and those numbers, are not real” I was like “babes? What do you mean?” to which she told me that white people have us focusing on the wrong things. I was so shocked that I was shook. So, does this mean that in the real world black people are not suffering from HIV? Are black people not standing in long lines at under resourced clinics waiting for pap to take alongside their nauseating ARV’s? How is HIV/AIDS not a reality for black women, for black people?

But Miranda was right in a way. HIV/AIDS is not a real thing to black women my age. It is understood as a construct and that is why it is treated by Miranda and other ‘woke’ black folk who share her thinking as unreal. We refuse to engage with it. Aside from Miranda, there are more “knowledgeable” women, who enter relationships or have sexual encounters with very minimal protection. Like me, women who walk around with the notion that we will not get “it”, that our partners don’t have “it” and so that must mean that we are safe. We are not. That is just the truth of it.

And I get it, nobody has the time to chill and wait when their already dripping wet in their seat. Nobody has the time to go and grab a packet of condoms from the garage or tuck shop when the veins on his dick are popping and standing hard. These are beautiful sights and sensations and who would want to ruin that?

But you see, just as quickly as you get wet, your throat will turn dry when the nurse with your test results in hand asks you ‘how many sexual partners have you had?’ and ‘how often do you use protection?’. Your eyes will dry when she helps you imagine conversations with your family and past lovers. You would not be able to distinguish hot from cold when she explains ARV treatments to you and asks you if you understand the virus/disease. At this point there is no turning back and the only comforting prayer in your head is; “God if you can release me from this cubicle with a negative result, I will go to church and never sleep with an untested nigga again!’ except that you will and you do sleep with him, and the next time you get tested, you may not be so lucky sis.

We are black, we are smart and whiteness has done many damaging things to us, but what remains, what is right now, is that black women are living with HIV/AIDS, some, if not more black women are dying from HIV/AIDS, so how are we okay with this? How are we ignoring this?