The Morning After
It’s Sunday. The day after Valentine’s Day 2026.
I’m standing in front of my mirror, oiling my scalp slowly because it feels good. Old R&B is playing — love songs from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s. The kind of music that reminds you that Black people have always known how to sing about love. How to long for it. How to fight for it. How to survive through it.
Yesterday was roses and reservations. Promotions and pressure. Soft launches and hard expectations. The annual performance of romance in a country that has mastered the art of commercializing love.
And this morning, I was sitting with the aftermath.
Because Valentine’s Day — as we celebrate it — didn’t start with us. Its popular form grew out of European Christian traditions and expanded through Western capitalism until love became a product category. Cards. Candy. Lingerie. Limited-time offers.
And yet, Black people — whether brought here through slavery or arriving through migration — have shaped the emotional, cultural, and economic fabric of this country in ways that rarely get named. We built industries from basements. We created innovation in underground markets. We contributed to sectors that were stigmatized, criminalized, and unregulated.
Including sexual health.
So as I was greasing my scalp and letting the music move through me, I truly wrestled with how to begin this conversation.
Pleasure without protection is incomplete.
Celebration without education is hollow.
Love — REAL LOVE — requires responsibility.
We are living in a time when immigration is politicized, weaponized, and misunderstood. Yet the very foundation of American industry — even in spaces people don’t talk about openly — has been shaped by immigrants and descendants of enslaved people who refused to be erased.
This article is about one of those people.
It is about pleasure.
It is about protection.
It is about immigration, perseverance, and underground innovation.
It is about why our communities deserve safer, higher-quality sexual health resources.
And it begins with a man named Gosnell Duncan.
There Are Many Names in Pleasure That Deserve Reverence
Gosnell Duncan is one of them.
Before luxury pleasure tools sat openly on nightstands.
Before conversations about body-safe materials entered everyday language.
Before medical-grade silicone became a standard rather than a privilege.
There was a disabled Black man asking a different question:
Why are the products we use on our most intimate parts of the body made from materials that would never be allowed anywhere else on us?
Who Gosnell Duncan Was
Gosnell Duncan—sometimes affectionately referred to as “Joy Boy”—became paraplegic after a job-related injury. His penis no longer functioned, but his desire to give pleasure, intimacy, and connection to his wife remained intact.
What he wanted was simple.
A dildo that could safely pleasure his partner—without harming her body.
Living in New York City in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Duncan encountered an underground adult novelty market filled with poorly made products. Dildos were illegal in many jurisdictions. The industry was hidden, underregulated, and largely ignored by agencies like the FDA.
Consumers were often too embarrassed to complain about irritation, odor, breakage, or harm.
Duncan refused to accept that.
Pleasure as Protection
At a time when jelly rubber and toxic plastics dominated the market—materials that:
- trapped bacteria,
- caused irritation,
- disrupted vaginal and penile health,
- leached harmful chemicals into the body—
Duncan insisted on something better.
Medical-grade silicone changed that.
- Non-porous
- Hypoallergenic
- Easy to sanitize
- Stable against heat and time
This wasn’t just innovation.
This was harm reduction.
The Dysregulation of the Sexual Health Market
Today, the pleasure product market remains largely underregulated.
Products designed for insertion, friction, vibration, and prolonged contact are often sold without the standards we demand from medicine or wellness.
In many Black and urban communities:
- Adult novelty stores are the closest option.
- Medical-grade, non-porous products are limited.
- Consumers are expected to accept low-quality goods for intimate use.
We would never accept this for food, medicine, or baby products.
So why are we asked to accept it for our genitals?
Carrying the Work Forward
This work cannot—and should not—live inside one person, one brand, or one organization.
What I am committed to documenting here is a vision:
Communities of color deserve accessible, ethical, care-centered reproductive and pleasure spaces.
Spaces rooted in care before profit.
Because what we place in and on our bodies matters.
Extinction does not always arrive dramatically.
Sometimes it comes quietly—through neglect, misinformation, and normalized harm.
Our communities deserve better than that.
Closing: Immigration, Erasure, and the Cost of Forgetting
We are living in a time—2026—when immigration laws and enforcement have grown increasingly harsh, punitive, and dehumanizing.
Yet this country has been built, sustained, and transformed by people who were not meant to be welcomed here—but who contributed anyway.
Gosnell Duncan worked in his basement.
Not a lab. Not a corporate facility. A basement.
As a disabled Black immigrant, Duncan pushed forward not for spectacle or acclaim, but for care.
Immigrants are not drains on society.
They are innovators. Caretakers. Builders of infrastructure—both visible and intimate.
Honoring Gosnell Duncan means more than honoring innovation in pleasure.
We must honor the contributions and labor of those who migrate here to the United States.
Source & Lineage Acknowledgment
Much of the historical understanding shared in this article is informed by the research and reporting of journalist and sex historian Hallie Lieberman. Her work brought visibility to the life, labor, and legacy of Gosnell Duncan—contributions that might otherwise have remained hidden or erased.
I am deeply grateful for her commitment to uncovering the stories that shape our pleasure history, particularly those that exist at the intersections of disability, innovation, and care.
This piece stands in conversation with her work, and in respect for the labor it takes to tell the truth.
