we owe you an apology
We owe you an apology. We needed a break from this relationship but instead of communicating that to you we just sort of ghosted. And for that we truly are sorry.
I know this sounds cliche, but it’s not you, it’s us. And let’s be real, it’s capitalism.
Lately, we’ve been feeling disconnected from the impact of our work.
When we first started Afrosexology, our workshops were intimate. We’d sit in a circle with a bunch of strangers who soon would become community. We’d take turns being teacher and student as we all vulnerably shared what we had learned and still struggled with on our sexuality journeys. We would laugh, cry, and cheer each other on as we talked about our hurt, our desires, our liberation.
As facilitators, we’d witness how this message of pleasure, of body agency, of erotic power was transforming us all. People would go from swearing they’d never masturbate to three workshops later smiling as they shared how solo sex gave them their first orgasm. Folks would go from not knowing about non-monogamy to happily and ethically exploring open relationships. People would stop us on the street to tell us how our work increased their confidence to talk to their friends and lovers about their bodies and boundaries.
And we learned so much from this community. Folks shared their lessons, their suggestions, their words of affirmation that encouraged us to keep going deeper down the path of pleasure. And we felt inspired to keep inviting folks to learn with us, explore with us, and reclaim their sexual selves with us. Now, in our work, we often feel like we’re talking at you and not with you. We don’t get to know you or your journey. We don’t know if or how our work is impacting you. And in turn, we aren’t getting to grow, explore, and learn with you and from you.
Social media isn’t pleasurable for us anymore.
Social media was never meant to be our primary way of doing sex education. Don’t get us wrong, it’s been a beautiful unexpected turn of events to grow the online community we have. And yall seriously are one of the best online communities around. We rarely have folks being sex-negative, shameful, or combative in the comments. Consistently yall have been open, vulnerable, supportive and affirming of one another, and really display some of the best parts of what an online community could be. Thank you for that.
But social media is not what it used to be. The algorithms, the ads, the sheer amount of content vying for all of our attention. The need to do video, to make the information as concise, as catchy, as entertaining as possible. Not to mention that these platforms are increasingly sex negative. We’re shadowbanned, restricted from doing ads, and often it feels like our content goes into a void that never reaches the folks who want it.
And increasingly it is clear that the way folks sustain and motivate themselves to create all this free content is by working with corporations. No shade to anyone because we get it. We’ve been trying to make a business model work selling directly to people and it’s very very very hard. But doing business and commercials for corporations is not why we signed up to do this work.
We, like most of you, are burnt out.
We started Afrosexology about a decade ago. A decade ago we had a lot more free time to pour into passion projects. We didn’t have full-time careers. We didn’t have as many financial responsibilities. We weren’t as jaded by the world.
Today, most of us are exhaustingly overworked but too overwhelmed to slow down. We cannot continue living like this. And while I wish something external would change, I am clear that this current capitalist system is built on the exploitation of us. That leaves us to figure out where we have choice, agency, power to make a change.
So we are choosing to do less, to slow down, to take what we can off our plates. We know there will be unpredictable consequences. But we know the path we are currently on is not one we want to continue going down.
We need a break and we hope that you’ll be here when we get back, but understand if you need to move on.
If you’d like to tell us how our work has impacted you or help us figure out what’s next for us, please fill out this brief survey.
It’s also always a struggle to talk about sex when the world, our species is so actively choosing to hurt each other. What can we say that makes the genocide on Palestinians less heartbreaking? How does pleasure make the imminent global economic crisis easier to endure? This work often feels like it’s not the right time, yet weirdly timely, because we seem to always be fighting for agency, love, and liberation.
A new world has to be possible because this one cannot be the best we can do. And we hope that what we’re building is a world that has not just an absence of genocide, mass murders, extreme poverty, and oppression but also, an abundance of pleasure.
We’re going back to the drawing board to figure out what is next for us and how we want to contribute to our collective evolution.
With love,
Dalychia & Rafaella