Pleasure & Protection Series — Issue 1
WHY THIS CONVERSATION MATTERS NOW
I love to talk about pleasure — desire, sensuality, freedom, connection. But pleasure cannot exist without safety.
Our ability to trust, to relax into intimacy, to feel our bodies as our own — all of that depends on a foundation that too many of us never received: protection.
For Black communities especially, silence has been a survival strategy. We keep family business inside the family. We protect the people we love from systems that were never built to protect us. We bury the truth so deep that sometimes we even forget it happened.
But silence has a cost. It protects the wrong people. It leaves harm unchecked. And it teaches generations that betrayal is something you must learn to endure.
We don’t talk enough about the adults who deliberately cross boundaries — the ones who exploit youth, trust, and vulnerability. We tiptoe around the uncle who “gets too friendly,” the coach who lingers too long, the older boyfriend who preys on insecurity. We defend them as “family” or “just being supportive.” Meanwhile, children and the young are left to protect themselves.
I want this article — this entire series — to rewrite that story.
This is not about fear. This is not about shame. This is about community responsibility.
Helping the people who harm — or who feel the impulse to harm — is not protection from accountability. It is protection against future victims.
Because if we know someone in our family is drawn to teens or children — and we do nothing — we become part of the harm. If we pretend it’s a “phase” or a “mistake,” we allow it to continue. And if we shame people who struggle with these desires into secrecy, they will never seek help until it’s too late, until someone is hurt.
We deserve better. Our children deserve better. Our pleasure deserves better.
CONSENT & POWER: WHAT I WAS NEVER TAUGHT (MY TRUTH)
I didn’t know my body would grow up before the rest of me did. Breasts, butt, hips, attention — arriving early like uninvited guests.
And adults noticed. Not all of them responded with protection.
Some were people my family loved. People I trusted — who crossed boundaries I didn’t even know existed. Foster homes…where those older used bedtime as their playtime session with my body.
But others were people who were supposed to protect me by profession: teachers who let their hands linger too long, who stared at my growing body instead of seeing my growing mind.
And then there was church — the place that was supposed to be safe for my soul — As a child, I remember vividly an instance where a grown man asked me to sit on his lap and I learned, far too young, what it felt like when a male body has an erection and reacts to a child in a way it never should.
These were the moments that taught me the truth before I had language for it: a community is only as safe as the people we refuse to question.
I didn’t learn consent at home. Not at school. Not in church. Nowhere. My body was expected to behave like a child while the world treated it like an opportunity.
I never learned how to say “no” because no one taught me I was allowed to or supposed to. I didn’t know I had the right to leave a room or report a teacher or question an elder. So I stayed silent — like most Black children do — trying to shrink inside a body that refused to disappear.
Only now, with hindsight and healing, do I see what was missing:
Consent isn’t just about what happens in the moment — it's the education and empowerment that should come long before.
If we want Black children to grow into adults who experience pleasure with freedom, dignity, and joy — then they deserve a childhood where their boundaries are honored, their voices are trained to speak, and the gaze and actions of adults is held accountable.
SHAME, SECRECY & THE SILENCE THAT PROTECTS HARM
There are a few phrases whispered in too many Black households:
“What happens in this house stays in this house!”
“Keep your mouth shut”
“Don’t go talking ‘bout family business.”
It comes dressed as love. As protection. As family business. But beneath that soft covering is a sharp truth:
Silence does not protect the child.
It protects the harm.
It protects the person who caused the harm.
It protects the illusion of a family that has already been broken.
Predators do not thrive because they are powerful. They thrive because we are silent.
We hold secrets like they’re heirlooms. We pass down quiet suffering like property. We treat survival like tradition. Even now, as grown women and men, we are still told not to talk about it. We are told to move on. To forgive. To leave the past the past. But when the “past” is still happening to someone else’s child today — then silence becomes participation.
We cannot heal what we refuse to name. We cannot stop harm we pretend does not exist. We cannot protect innocence while we shelter the people who break it. Healing begins when truth crosses the threshold of our lips.
WHEN HELP COULD PREVENT HARM: EDUCATION, INTERVENTION & COMMUNITY RESPONSIBILITY
Some people in our communities are sexually attracted to children and we know who they are.
Pedophilia: a psychosexual disorder generally affecting adults who have sexual feelings directed toward children age 10 or younger.
Hebephilia: Adults who have a sexual preference for individuals in early adolescence, typically between ages 11 and 14.
Child molestation or abuse: the behavior — the harm, touching offenses and non-touch offenses.
Attraction alone is not the crime — the crime is acting on it. The crime is violating a body that cannot consent. The crime is stealing childhood.
“If someone is struggling with these attractions and has no safe place to seek help, the risk of harm only increases.”
We can demand accountability and build prevention. We can insist on protection and offer intervention.
If we create systems where:
- People can seek counseling confidentially
- Families can report boundary violations early
- Mandatory therapy becomes a condition of continued access to children
- Accountability is framed as protection, not punishment
…we move from a culture of silence to a culture of prevention.
Resources:
EnoughAbuse.org
StopItNow.org
WHEN SPEAKING TRUTH BECOMES ITS OWN BATTLE
The harm doesn’t end when the abuse stops. There is a second wound — sharper, deeper — and it comes from the mouths of the people we hope will protect us.
“You lying.”
“Stop seeking attention.”
“Don’t bring that up again.”
“If he did that to you why are you still around him?”
“You must’ve liked it, you’ve always were a fast ass.”
It’s wild how the victim becomes the villain just for telling the truth about what happened.
When violation happens repeatedly, especially at a young age, the body adapts to survive it. The nervous system stops fighting. The pleasure centers respond. Not because it felt good — but because the body was doing anything it could to make the terror more bearable.
“When someone speaks up, they are not breaking the family. The harm already did that. They are trying to heal the fracture.”
Sometimes the body responds in ways the mind cannot make sense of — especially when that first introduction to intimacy comes from someone who takes it without permission.
When the only kind of attention you receive feels like control, when the only version of closeness you know is tied to secrecy, when touch is the only currency someone uses to show they “care” — the body learns a dangerous lesson:
- That harm is connectedness.
- That pleasure doesn’t mean permission.
- That survival looks like surrender.
And here’s the part that is hard to admit out loud: Sometimes you become attached to the person who violated you.
Not because you wanted it. Not because you liked it. Not because your young mind understood any of it… but because your nervous system was desperate for any sense of belonging.
There was a time — and I’m saying this with my whole chest now — when I thought I was in love with the person who harmed me. I waited for their attention. I believed their affection. I confused manipulation for maturity.
My body recognized pleasure before my mind understood harm. Pleasure became my coping mechanism. Touch became my proof that I mattered. Connection — the only way I knew how to feel safe. I didn’t pursue him because I wanted him. I chased the feeling of being chosen. I chased the attention that made me feel grown, powerful, desired — even if it was a lie. When abuse is your first teacher, desire becomes distorted. And sometimes, that distortion follows you into adulthood — leading you back to the very same danger dressed in different names.
TRAUMA BONDS ARE REAL
Trauma bonds are chemical. They are coded into the nervous system like survival homework.
Your brain says: “Anyone who touches you must care.”
Your body says: “This is the only way we get love.”
It happens when:
- The person who causes the pain is also the person who gives comfort
- The nervous system interprets attention as affection
- The body conflates sexual touch with worthiness
- Survival depends on staying close to the one who has power
- You simply return to the source of the wound hoping one day it might feel like healing
But it never does. It only deepens the confusion: “How can something that felt like connection also be devastation?”
When pleasure becomes associated with violation, desire becomes distorted — and that distortion can follow us into adulthood, shaping who we choose, who we trust, and what we think we deserve.
Breaking that bond requires more than distance. It requires re-teaching the body that love does not have to hurt and that intimacy is not something stolen — but something offered, chosen, wanted, and safe.
“Pleasure is not supposed to steal from your spirit. Attraction should not feel like fear dressed up as closeness. Love does not begin with harm.”
RECLAIMING PLEASURE, RECLAIMING POWER
Even as I speak this truth — that my body learned to love the one who hurt me — I refuse to carry shame for physical responses that were taught to me through harm. That was not consent. That was survival.
To every survivor who has ever been questioned, disbelieved, or blamed: I see you. Your body did what it had to do to keep you alive. You are not responsible for the ways your nervous system learned to seek safety, even if safety came wrapped in trauma.
As I stand here today — in my voice, in my power — I advocate for us. And I also hold space for a truth many fear to acknowledge:
People who harm children do not magically become better by being ignored, denied, or only punished after the fact. There must be resources, accountability, and professional support accessible before another child is hurt.
Offering help to those who are dangerous does not diminish the harm done. It prevents the next version of me.
My hope — my prayer — is that we build a world where:
- Survivors are believed, protected, and embraced
- Children are shielded from the people who need help before they offend
- Healing is available for every human impacted by this cycle of violence
I release what happened to my child body with compassion for myself — and with the conviction that healing and responsibility must coexist.
I advocate because harm should end with me. I speak because silence is where abuse survives. And I write this for every survivor still trying to make sense of love that never should have been attached to pain.
ACCOUNTABILITY + EMPOWERMENT
Healing from these harms isn’t just a personal journey — it’s a community responsibility.
We cannot keep turning our faces away while children try to navigate danger alone. We cannot keep protecting the people who harm and abandoning the ones who were harmed.
We have to be braver than the silence we inherited.
So this is my call:
- Believe us when we speak.
- Protect us before we’re hurt.
- Intervene when you notice the signs.
- Get help for the ones causing harm before the harm spreads.
- Teach consent like you teach manners — early, daily, consistently.
Predators don’t thrive because they are brilliant. They thrive because we are quiet.
Every Black child deserves to know: their pleasure belongs to them. Their body belongs to them. Their “no” is a complete sentence. Their voice is holy.
And for those of us still healing… your body is allowed to feel good again. You are not broken. You are transforming.
My work — The Pleasure Digest — exists because I believe in us. I believe in futures where our intimacy is safe, where our boundaries are respected, where our joy isn’t interrupted by memories of survival.
Pleasure is our birthright. And we will reclaim it — together, loudly, and without apology.
