Naima B. Robert – What Are The Traditional Ways in Which Sexuality Was Taught
AI: Summary ©
The speaker discusses the traditional ways in which sexuality was taught in American culture, including conservative religious practices and "ironic writing." They emphasize the importance of finding "ironic community" in American culture to avoid confusion and misunderstandings. The speaker also discusses how people of their generation are often afraid of sex because they don't know what to do, but they are afraid to ask for advice. They are afraid to ask because they don't know what to do.
AI: Summary ©
What are the traditional ways in which sexuality was was taught to
young people, the next generation within families? What have you
seen in cultures around the world?
So I'll start with with my own culture with African American
culture, I think, so I wasn't born and raised Muslim, I accepted
Islam at the age of 23. And what I've noticed, and African American
Muslim,
you know, general culture, is that we tend to be very conservative in
terms of how we teach about *. And that's because we have
received a filtered down and colonized version of Islam.
That has been delivered to us, not from European colonialism, but
from Arab colonialism. And from South Asian influence, because
when these people came into America, they were coming, they
were shielding their Islam. And so they had to really sort of almost
hide it in some cases, right. And then they're delivering it.
They're filtering it to these African American people in a way
to say you can't talk about this, you can't talk about that, because
we don't want to, we don't want anybody to really look at us or
notice that. So this is haram. This is haram this, these things
are not haram, but we just don't want to draw attention. So you
have at some African American communities that are extremely
conservative, ultra conservative, we don't want to talk about it,
babies just come, we don't need to, we don't need to say anything,
we don't need to prepare our children for it for marriage.
Conversely, in West Africa, you have a completely different
approach a completely different approach. So you have learning
about womanhood and femininity starting from a very young age.
You have young girls and young boys learning about their role
within the family, but also learning how to nurture those
innate gifts that they have physically, and innate roles that
they will take on within the culture. So you have the concept
of John Gay, for example, which comes from Senegal, which is the
Senegalese art of elegance, and seductive confidence, right? Men
can be young gay men and women can be John Gay, if a woman is gay,
they call her drunk mama. So you'll have women who are very
full bodied, I will be considered younger, my right a woman who in
America would be considered plus size or fat, right? rolls on her
neck sick risks. She is a woman who is almost like the embodiment
of sexiness, the embodiment of womanhood, she can be a very
spiritual woman, and also be the assemble of sexiness at the same
time. It's like a cognitive dissonance when you're raised in a
very conservative household. You have in West Africa, where young
girls are given specific instruction on how to prepare for
marriage long before they get married. This is this is a part of
the culture and these are Islamic culture. So in Senegal, where my
spiritual community is, is 99% Muslim, but you have people who
talk openly about *, who talk openly about the importance of
pleasing your partner who speak openly about the importance of
fulfilling the rights of your spouse, not just the right of the
husband, but the right of the wife also. So when people say, well,
Muslims don't like to talk about *, I always say but which
Muslims, right? Which Muslims don't like to talk about *. So
when it comes to African Americans, I always say we need to
look for where our culture comes from. Because even if you talk
about let's talk about India, right, India has a rich history, a
rich history of era tautology, erotic literature, research into
pleasure. But what happened? The Victorian era, you had the
colonial empire, right? Arabs, same thing. Arabs invented
iridology. But all of these things have been watered down through
colonial influence. So I think it's important for us to to take
our Islam with us, but go back and look at how to how to our
ancestors, how do they traditionally learn about what to
do when you get married? Because you know, now you have Muslims who
get married, and they'll reach out and they'll say, auntie, I've been
married for six months, my husband and I have not been able to have
*. I don't have imagined listeners, there's no problem. We
just don't know what to do. Oh, wow. And we're afraid to ask. Hmm,
so it's, it's it's troubling because like you said, That's not
from our deen. But traditionally, we've got I think we've gotten so
far away from our traditional cultures, feeling that the more
Muslims the more religious we are, the further we have to get away
from our cultures. And that's just not true.
It's panela I think that that is such an interesting we've had
another guest as well who spoke about you know, the the influence
of the Victorians and just the colonial influence on our
attitudes towards you know, what really is * positive approach in
Islam, right, where * is not bad. It's not dirty. It's not
shameful. It's encouraged encouraged to have lots of it, and
have lots of women as well.
A lot of wives have even more and more children. And you know, it's
like it's all good, right?
So it's interesting for those of us now, because we were going into
the next generation, because we've had the, you know, the boomers did
their thing. We've got, you know, Gen X, like me, maybe you that are
millennials, I think that they are no longer connected to whatever
culture their parents came from. And what they would have taken is
whatever their parents didn't tell them, but they went out and
research for themselves. So the millennials, and then the Gen z's,
their influences our pop culture, what's happening out in the world,
which is almost a shame, because if they decide to start
practicing, and cutting out those influences, now there's a void,
because you know what I'm saying, like there isn't an Islamic
version of what they would have received out there in the world.
So hopefully, conversations like this will, will spark, you know,
more conversations, you know, more work out there in the world work
like that, you know, what you're doing and what Brother Habiba kind
is doing and you know, what everybody who we're talking to on
this series is doing, so that we have,
we have our own way of approaching almost everything in life. And all
we want is to be able to access it so that we can live that
holistically Islamic lifestyle, including in the bedroom.
And that's I think that's why I focus, I focus very heavily on Gen
Z, and my work, I'm Gen X, I'm 46. So the majority of the people who
follow me are young enough to be my my children, like I could be
their mother. But I realized that there's a void, because I know
what my friends who have children in their 20s having told them, I
don't have children in my 20s my children are young, but I know
what my nieces and nephews don't know. So I want to be I want to
stand in to fill in that gap. Because you're right. Once they
once they say, okay, you know, I really want to lean into my Deen
more. But I still need to know all of these things about life. I want
to be able to show them. Well listen, I'm Muslim. And let me
tell you what you can do. Let me let me help you to fill those
voids that you have because which what you said is absolutely
correct. We've gotten so far away, which is why I focus a lot on
reclaiming those cultures and taking what's good from our past
and merging it with the President.