Sexual Identity Reflection Paper

Being an African American woman, raised in the Black church, religious and biblical teaching have shaped my identity as a woman and my sexuality. While my peers and media played a role in my sexuality, my perspective towards sexual identity, intimacy, sensuality, sexual behaviors, and sexual health are primarily based on my personal spirituality, Christian beliefs, and familial principles that were passed down to me as a child.

Sexual Identity Raised in dogmatic religious household, my earliest relocation of sexual identity and developing a sense of who I am sexually was from my father. As the granddaughter, niece, and daughter of Pastors, my family was shaped structurally based on interpretation of the Bible with strong influences from

I personally have never struggled with body image, I was what society and popular culture considers normal when it comes to body type. I still am comfortable in my own skin and while many of my Black female peers have struggled when it comes to sensuality, I have felt that my sexual freedom even though strongly influenced was never inhibited. In the text The Black Family numerous social scientist suggest from various studies that sexual freedom and expression is still limited. Being woman and Black, have impacted my view on how women and men are taught to view their bodies, how they view their autonomy, how they view pleasure, and how marriage is perceived as respectable plays into the socialization of sexuality (Staples, 49). These studies reminded me of the numerous reasons that many women, especially black women conform to societal beliefs and limit their agency and pleasure in sexuality. It was not until recently that I felt my sensuality was being judged by others. When I express my desire to be celibate. I am often viewed as abnormal or lacking sensual freedom. In the article After the Thrill is Gone: Married to the Holy Spirit but Still Sleeping Alone, Dr. Monique Moultrie argues that it is problematic for black women within dogmatic religious spaces to deny their sexual urges and to replace them with