Image via Complex Original
Sex allows us to express desires that are difficult to name or even put into words—so sometimes, what gets us off isn't always politically correct.
Columnist Dan Savage has long been a proponent of being GGG—that is, "good, giving, and game”—the last of which means you should be down to explore your partner's desires, and try to fulfill their fantasies. But what if your partner’s request enters offensive, or even racist, territory?
It's interesting to consider where these urges come from. Pornography undoubtedly plays into such racially charged fantasies. By categorizing videos by race (think: Ebony, Asian, Latina), and having actors refer to body parts by color (think: black dick, Spanish ass), porn can reduce people to color-coded extremities, spread false ideas of what others find arousing, and reinforce destructive stereotypes.
In this NTRSCTN video, watch people share stories of their racially charged sexual encounters—some awkwardly misguided, and others just downright offensive (then scroll down to read more stories).
Anonymous man, 31
"1) I 'dated' a white girl during my freshman year at college who—during sex, hookups, etc.—would almost always use the adjective 'black' when describing, uh, my dick. Any and all dirty talk that included the word 'dick' would include 'black' as a descriptor. At the time, I didn't really care, though, 'cause she was hot, and a little mid-sex racial awkwardness was a small price to pay as a nerdy 18-year-old, but I def thought it was weird. She's now married to a black guy and has two kids.
2) Again during my freshman year, I visited UConn during their Spring Weekend. This dates me a bit, but the concert was 50 Cent and Busta Rhymes, like the moment before 50 got REALLY big. He was still pretty popular, though, and after the show while all the students were drunkenly stumbling around campus, one chubby drunk white girl rolled up on me, rubbed her hand down my chest, and said something like, 'Hey brotha, you gonna give me your Magic Stick?' LOL. So racist, but I guess she was still pretty hot from shirtless 50 Cent rapping about guns and sex for an hour straight."
K.C., 30
"I met this guy through a mutual friend at a bar, so we got drunk, started flirting over a game of Jenga, and then ended up sleeping together that night. He seemed vaguely promising, so we kept texting and trying to meet up. So the next time I saw him, we met up again at a bar, this time near my place. Things already felt kinda off when we first met up again (I forgot he was a comedian, so already a bad sign). He kept talking to me about how he didn't expect how [loud] I was in bed, which felt really uncomfortable, and was kinda like groping me (which I wasn't mad at).
When we got back to my place, we immediately went at it. So, in the middle of things, he's talking dirty, which [is] fine. But then he says, 'You want my big black cock, don't you' And it totally startled me out of the moment because it made me feel incredibly uncomfortable. I started questioning the whole thing: Did he think I was fetishizing him? Did he want me to? Since it was in the moment, it was pretty easy to, um, avoid, and I never saw him after that."
Anonymous woman, 25
"I ... dated a Pakistani guy once who had a weird-ass fetish with 'thick black girls.' He was really fine, but I couldn't get past that preference. To make matters weirder, he was definitely into burka porn. AS IN PORN WITH GIRLS WEARING BURKAS. I had to dead him with the quickness. Unfortunately, a lot of the dating scene is filled with people like this who are really into me for sad reasons. Rarely do I meet genuine guys who find me funny and sh*t. But I guess the penalty for these guys to be f*cking with me is they won't get any. I'm still a virgin and plan on staying one until n*ggas come correct toward me!"
L. Woo, 36
"An ex-boyfriend used to use 'eating Chinese food' as a reference to oral sex. Gross. This was a time when my analysis and politics were not as strong as they are now. They weren't words I yearned to hear or turned me on, but I didn't say anything against it, either. Something in me was disgusted and offended by it, but it was also something I just rolled my eyes at as a bad joke."
Lux A., 33
"I've definitely had my race fetishized at points in my life, which colors my experience, and I’m a sex writer who is phased by little (not the least because I ran Fleshbot for a number of years).
Anyway, that said: I would never bring race up in the context of dirty talk on my own. However, a few years back, I had a brief dalliance with a black man who asked me to call him the n-word during sex, which I went along with. I can only guess at his motivation. He was very into pushing boundaries and taboo stuff, so I’m sure that was part of it; he might also have enjoyed sexually dominating someone spouting racial slurs. On my end, the experience was pretty neutral (I wasn’t particularly turned on by or into it, but I was happy to do something that enhanced the pleasure of the person I was with).
I think it can be challenging to talk about this kind of thing because we tend to act as though there is one right way to approach sex and dating—that whatever the majority opinion on racially charged dirty talk is, that’s how we all have to behave—when the truth is that we all have our own individual experiences, needs, and desires that need to be respected. I don’t think that whipping out racial talk—even something as seemingly innocuous as a request to see someone’s 'big black cock'—should ever be done without a partner’s express consent and interest; but at the same time, if someone is greatly turned on by racially charged talk, and their partner is willing to engage in it, I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with exploring it in the privacy of the bedroom, no matter how vulgar or vile it gets."
Sara D., 27
"There was ... a guy I dated for a few weeks who put Asian porn on in the middle of sex. (He's white.) Watching porn during sex is not weird if you're both into it, but we'd never discussed it, and never done it at that point. He picked a video featuring an Asian girl who sounded whiny, like I couldn't tell whether or not she was enjoying sex. It didn't really matter what his intent was at that point. I don't know if he just wanted to watch porn with me, or if he was enacting this racist porn fantasy on me the way I feared. I felt so reduced, I asked him to turn it off. He did, and we never talked about it again."