3 
3 Sexuality is one of the ways that we become enlightened, actually, because it leads us to self-knowledge.
—Alice Walker
When I was young, my parents and grandparents and other adult relatives used to refer to me as a “wild child.” I didn’t know what that meant at the time, but I knew it somehow alluded to my sense of open expression and independent opinions as a female. I didn’t think about it like this at the time, but I understand that their feelings about me being “wild,” although said jokingly, stemmed from their own experiences about what could happen to a passionate female with a big personality.
Ultimately, reality is relative to each person, and whatever your family has experienced can be passed on to the next generation. In my family, my earliest opinions on female sexuality were based on a fear that started with my grandma Davis.
So let me take you back a bit . . .
I think you know by now that Grandma Davis and I were pretty tight. My mom thinks that is why some people call me an “old soul.” I hung out with my grandmother so much as a little kid. Mildred Davis was everything. I loved spending time with her, even on long, long, long Sunday (sometimes weekday 
) services at her Baptist church.
Before I moved to California, every so often I’d attend church with her, and I hated it because the service lasted three hours. Yoooooooo. . . . I said THREE HOURS! It was so long, they even had an intermission, I swear!!! Lol.
That is a long time to sit as a little girl, especially for a little girl as active as me! On the flip side, there was part of me that also loved going to church with my grandmother because she was fly. I loved watching her get ready, because she put so much time and effort into it. She never left the house without looking together, and going to church was always a “moment.” #DRAMATIC. Lolol.
Picture my grandmother with her hair done so neatly, dressed to the nines with the bifocals she always wore and a hat—always a hat! I was so proud to sit next to her. She was known to hook her friends up too. In her younger years she was a hairstylist, and as she got older she would still have some neighborhood clients who came by the house. This provided great entertainment for my sister and me as we watched all the many different characters who would come in and out of her care. She had this one client who she worked with for years, Ms. Wright. Ms. Wright lived right down the street. She would come over and get her hair styled from time to time. The gag was she had this one cup that she would spit in all day as my grandma styled her hair in her kitchen. It was for chewing tobacco, which doesn’t sound so obscure as an adult, but as a kid, it was horrific. 
My sister and I would try to avoid that cup like the plague! Hahahahahahhahahhaha.
I often wished I could have seen my grandmother back in her heyday. It always seemed like she had such a great rapport with the women who came by. Even now I wish I could go back in time and see what her life was like, before my mom and aunts and uncles, outside of her own perception of her life.
Still, despite her love of fashion, beauty, and friends, my grandma had to deal with a lot of disturbing experiences in her life, and there was one experience that hung over her and all of us. This dark moment in her past affected our view of sexuality and men for many years. It was always said that nothing my grandmother faced was more challenging than what happened to her as a child.
When my grandmother was a little girl living in Mississippi, her mother, my great-grandmother, was working for a white attorney in Memphis, kinda like Viola Davis’s character in The Help. Because she was working so hard in Tennessee, she left my grandmother and her brother with their grandmother in Mississippi.
Since my great-grandmother’s job was so far away she’d come down to visit maybe once a month. When my grandma turned five, she had to go to school, and that was too hard on her grandmother, who was elderly, so her mama sent her and her brother to their aunt’s house, her mama’s sister. My grandma would have loved living with her aunt, except for the fact that her uncle was a very sick man.
There was one story she would always tell, and this was one of the only stories she could share with her family about what happened to her as a child. As a little girl, while my grandmother was living with her aunt and uncle, she ended up spending a lot of odd time with her uncle. One time while they were alone, she told him that she was cold and as he put out a cigarette on her hand, he said, “This should keep you warm.” I heard that story once, but every time my grandmother would look at her hand, she would talk about her arthritis, and then show me the cigarette scar on her hand and say, “You see this? This is a burn on Grandma’s hand, now don’t you let anybody touch your private parts.” That was her way of trying to keep the unspeakable things that my great-great uncle did to her from happening to us.
For years, and I’m sure still now, my whole family had a code word for the children in the family when it came to speaking about the female private area—we used to call it a tuti. It wasn’t until I was about seven or eight years old, after watching an episode of The Facts of Life, that I realized that tuti was not the common terminology for a vagina. I thought it was normal, but as I analyzed it when I got older, I realized that this was something my grandmother was doing in preparation for a sexual emergency.
This code word added a preventative factor so that in case something happened, we could say it without anyone knowing what we were talking about. There was always this secretive and overanxious sense of worry when it came to female sexuality. I remember her asking me often, “Did anybody touch your tuti?” or “You sure ain’t nobody touched your tuti? You can tell Grandma.” I remember that like it was yesterday. Literally anytime there was a change in my or my sister’s energy, or if I had a tummy ache (it really could be anything), her first question would be, “Did anybody touch your tuti?”
I thought it was normal for people to be hypersensitive and obsessed over female body parts. But it made me highly cautious of the male species. There were even times when my grandmother would question my mother about my father. I knew there was a boundary that was being crossed, but the way my family reacted, it was as if they didn’t blame her for it. It was obvious that they didn’t take it personally.
My grandmother went through this type of thing for a long time without anyone knowing, because her uncle threatened her and told her not to tell anyone. Back then, in the thirties, therapy wasn’t only considered taboo, but it didn’t exist for people without money, and the most popular way of dealing with traumatic issues in poor communities was to move out and move on. Typically, they would get as far away as they could from the situation, start a new life, and never speak of it again.
Molestation, or any trauma in general, was nothing that anyone dared to bring up or really acknowledge. This was true of my family and, I believe, habitual within the black community, dating all the way back to slavery. It became second nature during the slavery period to glaze over hard times without a second thought, because to think about how traumatic your experiences were could only make you feel worse. It did no good.
I believe the cultural consciousness shifted during that time period and birthed what people stereotype as the unbelievable resilience often seen within the black community. Sometimes such a resilient nature can drown out the necessary need, as a human, to acknowledge that you’ve been hurt. I believe this habit was created in the consciousness of the black people because they felt saying “you were hurt” only made their current reality of living in slavery worse.
It was natural for my grandmother to avoid talking about her feelings—therefore she never understood the importance of a tool like therapy, and she couldn’t afford it consistently anyway. So she just threw that traumatic experience and any other in the back and moved on. She never really talked about it again. Or at least not in a way that led her to be vulnerable.
As we’ve come to realize, this method rarely works. You can’t bury bad experiences that easily. Whatever we try to cover up tends to reappear because we’ve never really put it in its place, and because we’ve never put it in its place, we forget that it’s there. So when it reappears, it usually reappears in the worst ways at the worst times. #GOTCHA. In my grandma’s case, as she grew older, she lived with the constant fear that her children and grandchildren would face the same horror she lived through.
So, in many ways, we all became prisoners of her anxious nightmares and traumatic memories. That trauma really hung over our family. That’s the thing about narratives, everybody has them running through their family and their own heads. These stories shape your human life, so it’s good to be aware of them. Needless to say, that entire experience did a lot to shape my views on sex, sexuality, and femininity as I grew up, and those views weren’t always “clear.”
DESIRES AND FEARS 
My family didn’t explain sex to me so much as they warned me about it. So instead of really understanding what was going on with my body and my hormones, I grew up being afraid of the magnitude of sexual parts and sexual acts. My ideas about something so natural were a little extreme in retrospect.
I don’t fault my grandmother for that influence. She was doing what she thought was best from within her own knowledge and experience. But not all things done with great intentions affect all people “positively.” It led me to desire a sense of control in all my relationships, but especially male relationships. I took on a little bit of my grandmother’s need for control and became how she had become.
Naturally, as human beings, we learn by mimicking those around us. From the time you are a baby you watch your parents relate—that is your first lesson on how you believe humans relate to each other, and even on a deeper level, how humans who love each other relate to one another. By the time I met my grandmother, she had experienced enough trauma that she had already gotten into the habit of needing a sense of control to minimize her high level of anxiety.
That habit of needing a sense of control had no way of not being passed down to me, because that is what I saw as “normal” through my grandma and my mother. My feelings about guys were always warped by my grandma’s cynical perspective on men and their motives toward women, which was understandable based on her experiences with her uncle and her two ex-husbands.
The gag is I’ve always had an outgoing personality, and as a little girl that was often described as precocious or sassy and sometimes mischievous, lol. My grandma even got me to say an infamous phrase that followed me most of my childhood. No one ever wanted to babysit me but my grandmother because they all said I was too “bad.” Well, it hurt my feelings I’d imagine because one day my grandma told me to say, “I’m not bad, I’m just misunderstood!” and I said it, okaaay. Hahahahahaha.
As a kid, I felt that they had the wrong idea about me. Like they maybe thought I was “up to no good” or that I, in any way, intended to appear “sexual.” Maybe it was the way that I danced, or how friendly I was to the men and women who came around me. I’m sure there was just the hypersensitivity that my family had about children and possible child misconduct, but I took it very personally. As a female I felt their oppression, based on fear, even as a child, and it did stifle me at times.
Add on top of that, my family at that time subscribed to the old adage that children should be seen and not heard. I don’t really believe in that. I think children should be heard and understood! That idea really hurt me sometimes. I think in some cases this could be true. I don’t think it’s absolute, but that’s often how my parents used it.
“Stay out of grown folks’ business” was to heed your warnings, and if you didn’t listen, you knew an ass whoopin’ was coming soon after. I didn’t always follow rules that well as a child, which led me into more than enough trouble as I moved through my growing-up years because of my need for independent growth. Not hardheaded like in a “cut off your nose to spite your face” kind of sense, but I just wanted to walk on my own two feet.
My happy, free-spirited ways regularly had my family and friends of family suggesting I’d end up on Jerry Springer’s show one day. Now I didn’t see that as a bad thing completely during that time because my sister and I had a great time watching ol’ Jerry every day. His show and all its wild and brawling guests were a real time for us bonding with my grandma. But I’m not sure it was meant as a positive when they talked about me as a future Jerry Springer guest. 
In the end, my grandmother’s warnings proved true for me in a way, but the harm didn’t come from the way she thought or from who she thought. The precautions weren’t enough to protect me because my first sexual encounters weren’t from a grown male but from another child, a girl just a little older than me. Unexpected, maybe, but it still left me feeling shameful about sex. I just wanted to suppress myself after that, just as I had felt suppressed by them.
I think a lot of people have stories that they keep to themselves about unwanted sexual encounters as children. When I tell people about mine, they often say, “Me too!” Or “That happened to me, but I never told anyone!” It’s almost like they are coming out of the closet! Almost everyone has stories they are too ashamed to tell. I’m talking about my experience because these first sexual encounters really shape how you feel about yourself, your sexuality, and your expression of identity and sexuality in the world.
CHILDHOOD ENCOUNTERS CAN HAVE LASTING EFFECTS Danger lurks in both obvious and not-so-obvious places, even in the home of beloved relatives. We had this set of cousins on my mom’s side who had little supervision from adults. They didn’t live particularly close to us, but we visited them in the city whenever we had the chance.
Sometimes it was the “wild, wild west” in that house, literally (pronounced LIT-TRA-LEE 
#DRAMATIC). I’d say my cousins were definitely affected by this. For example, they were learning way too much from what they saw on television.
My dad was very strict about the things that we saw because he didn’t want them to infiltrate our minds with just anything, especially things we couldn’t intellectualize. I still would try to watch things that were too mature to me, and I wish I’d listened more, lol, but I just didn’t understand, because I was just a kid. #SOMETIMESKIDSJUSTDONTUNDERSTAND.
My cousins’ home was nothing like our home, where there were rules and regulations to follow all the time, and it didn’t take long before we realized why those rules and regulations were necessary. When I was five years old, just like always, my cousins would initiate a game of playing house and everyone would get their designated roles. But later on one evening after playing house, one of them, just a bit older than me, took me off to another area. I couldn’t label it then but I came to realize that what was being done to me was sex play, immature sex play, but encounters that in the years to come, and especially with my grandmother’s warnings always echoing in my ears, felt like acts of molestation.
What I remember is that it always started with this guise of the game house, and then it would end in something sexual sometime later. As I got older there wasn’t even always mention of the house game, instead it was referred to as “playing” and I became very okay with it. You could even say I liked it or looked forward to it, which was very confusing to me for a long time.
As an adult now I realize my cousin was only regurgitating the things she’d seen. We were children who had seen too much and were trying to live out the things we saw without any concept of what they meant. My grandmother did not think to warn me against this kind of play, but I do think her warning ensured that when I thought back on what happened, I felt that I had suffered a molestation.
It was not like the adult/child “pedophile” relationship I’d been warned about. Looking back, I have been able to accept that no one was wrong in this situation. My heart, once filled with judgment, was refilled with compassion as I learned to observe the situations outside of myself. Neither she nor I understood what was happening or how it would impact us later. How could we?
CARRYING THE BURDEN OF SHAME, GUILT, ANGER, AND FEAR I was angry at the circumstances and didn’t know how to digest the reality. Confusion mixed with the natural oversexualization that comes with such acts encouraged the hereditary habit of anxiousness. Things felt so out of control and I didn’t know how to feel like a normal “girl,” or “little girl” at that, knowing all that I’d done. I would often wonder if my tough nature was really me or a result of what had happened to me. #SELFJUDGMENT?
I felt ruined or damaged, tainted by my “situation.” I was confused on the inside about what all this meant. I felt there was something wrong with me. It’s common after being sexually abused to blame oneself and end up carrying all this guilt as well as anger and confusion. That certainly was the case with me. I had so many questions.
One of them was, what did this mean about my sexual identity, that my first experience was with a female cousin? It was easy to understand and forgive my cousin, but forgiving myself was another story. It would be years before I realized the depth of all that had happened to me in those moments and how that abuse, though inflicted by another child, led to certain kinds of thoughts and beliefs and behaviors on my part that were simply cause and effect. I can look at her now and know that it was not her fault or my fault, that it was simply the outcome of the situation that I wouldn’t identify until later.
Sometimes it led to me giving the appearance of being “fast.” One reason they called me a wild child was because I danced provocatively. But when you look back to African culture and dance style you see that is how women often moved and it was the black female’s voluptuous figure that made it seem sexual, when it is only cultural.
It was no different from how Shakira moves, as hip shaking is a part of the culture in Colombia. Even little girls move like that in many cultures and, yes, it can seem sexy and arousing, but it is cultural. Twerking is a thing now, but when I was doing the same thing at the age of five, it was just some shit we did—and I was very good at it. I was a black American child doing something that is of the black American culture.
Still, there was a moment when I was thirteen years old that is one of the most traumatic moments of my life. 
I was going to a birthday party for my friend Malcolm David Kelley. We met during the filming of Knights of the South Bronx, and unlike me, Malcolm had many friends. He especially had friends outside of the industry, which I thought was so awesome. I was excited for his party because I very much desired that non-Hollywood existence. There was going to be dancing, or what they call “grinding” in LA and “juking” in Chicago, but most recently “twerking.” Lol. 
My mom, however, was very worried that if I was too friendly with anyone, even other kids, I’d get warped or poisoned (like literally 
) like the child actors she’d heard about. #ANXIETYMUCH. The entertainment industry validated her extreme anxiety. While there are certainly many child actors who turned out to be normal, productive adults, there were others who drew a lot of media attention with their “wild ways” or tragic lives. Anyhow, my sister, Loreal, had gone to some teenage parties back in Chicago. In preparation for my first teenage party she taught me how to grind, and I was so excited to go and show off my moves!
Fast-forward to the party. Parents are in the house and we kids are in the garage dancing and just being kids. I hadn’t found a dance partner because I was scared, really. Guys had asked me to dance, but it wasn’t until Malcolm’s best friend, Ronald, asked me to dance that I accepted. He seemed like a nice boy and a good first partner. As I was dancing with him, I see my mother searching through the party to find me.
Oh my Lord, calling all readers, WHY THE F*CK WOULD SHE DO THAT! 
It’s like she took lessons from How to Ruin Your Daughter’s Life 101 and How to Traumatize Your Daughter FOREVER Volume 1. It was literally the ONE party with my peers that I’d ever been to. I didn’t go to school and I didn’t work on a television show. I had very few people to relate to and going to that party meant new experiences and possibly FRIENDS! I wanted friends so bad.
She saw me and came and pulled me off the dance floor and said some things that REALLY hurt me. “You are acting like a fast ass like I always knew. That dance is nasty. Uh-huh, it looks like you are out there having sex! Come inside with me so I can watch you.” I know all mothers worry, but I think my mother was especially sensitive to it because of what I told you about our family. She had no idea I was already carrying so much sexual shame at this point, but what she said really added on top of it.
At that point I didn’t even really understand how to best interact with boys. If I wasn’t feeling awkward toward them, I was wondering if I liked them at all, and I would be halfway prudent. I tried to act the way I thought my parents wanted me to be. The reality was, I was a little lost on just how to act around boys. I tried to do my best impression of being a normal kid who hadn’t been sexually violated by a female when she was young, but when I was grinding with a boy my age, I got it “wrong” again. 
I just wish that night my mother would’ve taken me to the side and spoken to me one-on-one and really taken the time to understand where I was coming from instead of scolding me and making me feel bad in front of my peers. I wasn’t trying to be a bad kid, and I wasn’t a bad kid. I didn’t even understand at the time what I was doing. I was just trying to be a normal kid and fit in. Instead of seeing it that way, I accepted her words as the entire truth of my character because they fed into the shame I was already so used to carrying.
We do that sometimes. We shame ourselves and we allow the fears of others—even the people who love us—to then add to that shame story. That was a powerful lesson for me to learn. We don’t have to feed the shame monster! I’m sorry to myself; I love you, self; I understand you now.
A WORD OF ADVICE As I got older, I still maintained an open spirit and outgoing personality, but I did carry a lot of anxiety, especially surrounding sexuality. I had this conflict. I wanted people to be attracted to me and I wanted people to like me, but I wasn’t sure how much I liked myself. Sexual tension was something I avoided if I’d ever felt it between peers, and boundaries continued to be an unidentifiable option. This theme continued to grow, and when I was fourteen, I learned that there were levels to this shit, lololol.
When I was fourteen, I was making The Longshots with Ice Cube, and my tendency toward openness, having fun, and being friendly came into serious focus. It was just me being myself, acting naturally. I still considered myself a kid at the age of fourteen, and rightly so if you think about it! You are a kid until you’re an adult, right? And some people are never adults! 
Anyway, every day when I arrived on set I made a habit of saying hello to everyone who came across my path, and then I’d give them a big hug as we spoke. I did this with men, women, actors, directors, and the entire crew all of the time because I wanted to show how happy I was to be working with each of them and how happy I was they were working with me! I thought nothing of showing joy for the many blessings and opportunities I had been given and was still receiving.
I was living my dream, so of course I was happy beyond words and I wanted to show it. 
O’Shea Jackson, aka Cube, saw things a bit differently and decided to help me out. People know Ice Cube from his rap music, but I didn’t know him like that. I knew him as an actor and a father figure. I remember seeing his videos years later and I thought it was so funny, because I couldn’t imagine him saying those things. I was so surprised that I laughed. 
The Cube I knew was enjoying a long marriage and this very settled family life as a husband and father. 
That’s who I’ve met during my work with him. Settling down didn’t cause him to not speak up though. Cube has never been one to mince words. When he has something to say, he will say it right then and there to whoever it is.
Not surprisingly, his words could be just as impactful as his iconic rap lyrics. One day on set, he pulled me aside and asked if he could speak to me for a moment. Of course I said yes, I was scared as a mf, hahahaha.
What he had to tell me was a bit jarring at first but I did understand in the end. He told me that it was great that I was friendly with my coworkers, but that I needed to be careful, particularly with the men. He said that while I may have seen myself as a kid, men saw me as a young woman and I needed to keep that in mind as I continued to mature and work in the industry. Especially an industry that is dominated by men.
My body was changing (translation: I got boobs), and I was becoming a woman, so being overly friendly could send the wrong message to the wrong man. Huh. 
I had to really think about that! As I mentioned earlier, my mother didn’t talk to me much about sex, or at least maybe when she talked about it, I wasn’t as impacted as when someone outside of my fam talked to me about it.
When I heard it from Cube, it was coming from a man who was also my employer. I was intimidated. I didn’t want to do the wrong thing. I wasn’t consciously trying to be “fast” toward the men and I didn’t want to be perceived that way. I just didn’t understand how it could appear like that, until Ice Cube explained it to me.
How cool was it for Ice Cube to give me my very first lesson on how much power and control women have and how important it is to be in control of that power? His message stayed with me long after we wrapped that film because it taught me that I had to keep my wits about me.
I still had to stay true to myself, but I had to be aware of the perception and message I was sending to the people around me, so I could stay conscious and be assured that no one would take advantage of my power! I find it true that as a young female, the sooner we become aware of our sensuality/sexuality the harder it is for others to exploit it.
BEING AWARE OF OUR EFFECT ON OTHERS GIVES US GREATER CONTROL That’s true of a lot of things. We can’t completely forget how our actions and behavior affects those around us and how they interact with us. Cube wasn’t telling me to change who I was. He wasn’t saying there was something wrong with me. He was simply advising me to be aware of my femininity and how that femininity comes across, and to consider how I was being perceived by others.
This was an aha! moment for me. 
I hadn’t really thought about it that way. No, I didn’t belong to their perceptions of me, but I did need to be in control of my body and to understand how men’s minds generally work. That way I will always be the one in the driver’s seat! 
Fast-forward to today and I often think about the messages people project. For instance, whenever I watch television, videos, and music videos with women as the stars or listen to the conversation surrounding sexuality, ownership, and women, there is something that drives me nuts.
From Beyoncé to Rihanna to Lady Gaga to Nicki Minaj, I see women—very visible women!—who are often scolded for looking and seeming “too sexy” or criticized for not playing the game and not being “sexy enough.”
What’s a girl to do? This is different from what Cube was saying—because yes, as an adolescent girl, I needed to become aware of my boundaries and the danger I could face if I didn’t set any.
But as an adult, that shouldn’t have to be anyone’s concern, as long as you are aware of whatever consequence there may be (because every action has a response). Our behavior is our choice.
People often try to put women in little boxes because that makes them feel safer and more in control over the world. This isn’t new either, think of Grace Jones and Annie Lennox, two women who were bold enough to brand their own type of sexuality, femininity, and ideas decades ago. I mean, Annie Lennox performed with her male bandmate for years as they both wore suits standing side by side. #TWINSIES.
GOOD GIRL VS. BAD GIRL MYTH This is where the good girl vs. bad girl myth comes into play. Despite (or maybe because of) my past and the anxiety surrounding it, I felt pressure to be a “good girl.” It’s the same pressure many of us have felt. Nobody says the bad girl is the one you want to marry, so we all want to be the good girl.
When I was fifteen, my boyfriend tried to get me to have sex with him in a movie theater. He was putting so much pressure on me, and I wanted to cry because I was so worried that if the cameras would catch what he was trying to do, True Jackson and her lost virginity would be all over the news the next day. #TMZNIGHTMARES. 
I really thought about my private feelings and public image a lot, and I struggled with how my fans saw me versus how I saw myself. Even at seventeen I thought, Who am I if I’m not Keke the Virgin anymore? #MENTALBONDAGE. When I did lose my virginity, I thought the whole world would host a block party in honor of Keke the Freeeeeeak!! 
But after wrestling with all my experiences, I have accepted them as they were and moved forward. My being glad or not glad they happened didn’t make it any less a reality nor did it make it good or bad. Only I could really decide if a situation was good to me or bad to me.
Why did I beat myself up so much? That didn’t make it any better! And there aren’t just two ways of being a woman, aka you’re either a good girl or a bad girl, a prude or a sluuuut, gay or straight, and on and on . . . Sexuality, personality, and even identity fall on a spectrum, and you are who you are in the MOMENT and nothing more. #MENTALBONDAGEREMOVED. 
As human beings we should always be growing and changing and expanding, and after really giving serious consideration to that thought, I can honestly say I don’t think either the good girl or the bad girl really exists, not in the way I used to think anyway.
We can all be different versions of ourselves at different points of our lives. #YAASSS. And this “good/bad” discussion isn’t just limited to women. Guys face a lot of pressure to behave a certain way, particularly when it comes to sex and sexual identity as well! Yes, I think the media can seem more critical of women because I feel that on a more personal level, but guys are often forced to live up to certain expectations as well. #KEEPINITAHUNNID!
SEXUAL EXPECTATIONS AND EXPERIENCES The thought of sex has been intense and confusing for me at times because of my conflicted feelings due to what I experienced with my female cousin and the anxiety that my mother and grandmother passed on to me about bad men who were controlling and abusive.
When I first started having sexual encounters, old feelings that I had buried came to the surface. The act of sex causes the female to be in a more vulnerable position, and mentally I could not adapt to that. Often I would become angry at the guy and almost feel mad at the idea of losing control of myself. It would almost make me feel defeated in a way.
I discovered that I was using sex to play off the emotional unavailability in myself and my partners in my first sexual relationships with boyfriends. Not only that but once I’d realized that I could have sex without vulnerability, I realized that I could remove my anxiety with sex by just enjoying the physical, stress-relieving aspect and dumping all the emotion behind.
I was trading sex for intimacy, and when in a relationship, I would confuse the two. I would have sex with a boyfriend when I couldn’t get any emotion from him, and that isn’t what sex is meant to be for.
Sex is meant to be enjoyed, and it can be in the right mutual situation, but when the individual is not clear on why they want to do it, it could be exploited as opposed to cherished. When we use sex as a substitute for feelings and intimacy we create habits that keep us right where we are. That’s not a suitable environment for growth in romantic relationships. That’s something I learned later. For a while, I wasn’t understanding the true purpose behind sex, but now I am conscious of my actions, what is driving them, and what I am using it for each time. I am awake. I’m just enjoying it physically or connecting if I’m in love with the person. It is not a reaction, habitual or compulsive, and I think that’s the important part. I don’t want to be reactionary, and as long as I am conscious in my choices I can respect them.
You know how you’ll hear someone say (especially guys) they don’t know why they had sex and can’t control it? That is compulsive behavior that you aren’t controlling. If you are not acting consciously, then you are not awake, only following behavior patterns, urges, and habits. I think that guys often say that because they are made to believe that they aren’t normal unless they have a ridiculous sex drive. That idea is often encouraged by society. So many dudes will act or talk about sex compulsively because that is the way they feel they are supposed to act, when in reality it is an adverse reaction to the media’s social influences.
When we find ourselves being obviously affected by GROUP THINK, that is when we have to take a second look: If it is not fun or not enjoyable or you are obsessive about it or doing it just because, that’s not good enough. Our choices, no matter how small, deserve to have reason.
WOMAN POWER I’ve learned some pretty amazing things from the women who raised me and the women who inspire me. I embrace the fact that ultimately no one has to like my story or understand my story, because it’s mine alone. They taught me that my life is full of contradictions and so is everyone else’s. The human/female experience can be extremely contradictory, which is why watching women embrace their beauty and their bodies is feminism on another level.
When I was working all of this out for myself, I found women every day, like my mother, who encouraged me to keep going and to work through the pain and hurt, and to reject the labels inflicted on me by others as I continued to grow on my journey. I’ve also found so much strength by watching the lives of my heroes, who have embraced and showcased the many wonderful contradictions of being so fully human.
They’ve proven that being human and being a woman mean many things: being vulnerable, sexual, in control sometimes, and honest about admitting to being controlled at other times. It also means being playful and strong. It’s A LOT of things, and that’s okay. 
It’s a journey for all for us, but here’s a few thoughts that might aid you in becoming a lot more comfortable with your own sexuality, which in turn will make you more comfortable with yourself. 
The first thing to know is that sexuality can refer both to what gender you’re attracted to and to how happy you are in your own body. 
One of the most important lessons I have learned is to pay no real mind to stereotypes and/or labels. Boys can wear pink and girls can be tomboys and that means absolutely nothing. The world is ever changing, so ignore what others say, and do what YOU love. 
I found this out myself when I released my video for “I Don’t Belong to You.” That video ends with me going home to a female. After I released it, the Internet exploded with people wondering if I was “coming out.” They missed the whole point. I put that video out to represent the young women of today—it’s not the traditional women of the fifties anymore—and it’s not the specifics of “Am I gay? Am I straight? Am I bi?” #SEEYAHETERONORMATIVITY.
LIVE YOUR TRUTH We’re making the rules for ourselves, and we don’t have to be stuck or defined by one label. I don’t feel the need to define anything to anybody, because I’m always changing and I’m sure you are too. Who’s to say that I’m this or I’m that, when I might not want to be that or this tomorrow? I’m gonna follow my own feelings and my own heart. And that’s what I am praying for you. Living your truth is the only perfection there is! #STRAIGHTLIKEDAT.
I am also learning that it’s okay to switch it up and to try new things whenever you can. What I mean by that is if you’re a man, and you want to get manicures and go to the spa every once in a while—do it!
If you’re a woman who can get under the hood of a car and fix it—get it, girl! The sooner activities done traditionally by men and women change, the sooner we can get past the whole gender difference thing overall. 
Finally, if we judge or ridicule others and their ideas of love and sexuality, and their opinions period, we are ultimately judging and ridiculing ourselves. We all have parts of us that we may or may not recognize as outside the “norm.” We’re all weirdos in our own way. People often work so hard to fit into society, but no matter what you do, you’re never going to be what society depicts as “normal” or “perfect” because that’s not real!
The only point that you have to make is that you’re being you. That’s being a beacon of light, that’s being an inspiration—it has nothing to do with followers or popularity level. Just do you, go with the flow of your life, because that’s you experiencing life #FUCKYEADUDE. 
If you’re being yourself, then you are following your purpose. The more we get out of the mind-set of thinking there’s a certain way to go about things, the more free and creative we become. Not to mention that life becomes easier when you are living authentically, because you’re not forcing everything to fit your perspective but you’re allowing what is new to expand your perspective. #PARADIGMSHIFT.
It’s all about encouraging one another to follow our own desires in how we think, dress, like, and love by accepting one another. Giving others freedom to be themselves, in turn, sets you free. 
#THATSTHEGAG. If you look at everyone with more kindness in your heart and understanding, you will watch as you transform in the process.
I wish my grandma Davis was around to hear that message and take it into her heart. She wasn’t defined by what that man did to her. She was defined by what she did for the world. I want to be defined that way too, and I wish that for you as well.
That’s what I finally told seventeen-year-old Keke who lost her virginity: “Girl, that doesn’t make you good or bad. That just makes you a young girl having an experience. And if you didn’t feel great about it, that’s okay, we’ll pick ourselves up and try something different tomorrow.”
I gotta tell you, as this journey continues to unfold, I’ve learned to be kinder and to speak nicer to myself. We treat everyone else who we love well, but too often we are down to beat on ourselves. We need to speak to ourselves nicely and treat ourselves with that same nurturing love. I want to nurture myself, because I enjoy just being Keke. You take care of yourself too! Fr fr. 