A fat Black femme explores the relationship with her body and shares how strapping became part of her sexual liberation.

Can two switches have sex? I think so, and I think there is something beautifully different about having sex with someone with whom sexual options are truly abundant.

There’s a difference between domination as a way to take control or claim power over another person — the way certain lovers have done with me — versus domination as a way to provide comfort and care, and to grow one’s power without harming anyone else.

The thing is: sometimes I like feeling disposable, like I’m just a bunch of holes that someone else is using for their pleasure. I know I’m fucking powerful, so sometimes I like to release control, let someone else do the work and have the power. That only works, though, when my boundaries are respected.

When I teach Rachel how to tie me up and fist me, when I ask her to tell me what to do, when I teach her exactly how I want to submit, I give her permission to go on a journey with me and dive into an expanding world of pleasure.

Because of the positive affirmation I received during sex, I began to believe it was all I was good for. When people wanted me, I assumed it was my job to provide joy for other people. I gave myself to a lot of people in that way. I had to remember that I had a right to pleasure as well.

My acceptance of my own pain allows me to have the kind of sex that is rooted in the specificity of my body. I don’t love the idea that I’ll never fist, but I do love the idea that every act of sex I engage with is collaborative. Queerness reminds me that there is no standard way to fuck or live.

There is a different level of intimacy and affirmation that I have found when having sex with other fat people. Thin people approach the fat body like a series of insecurities. They see the swell of a stomach or rolls of fat on the back and assume that you hate those parts of your body. When another fat person touches me, it is to be made whole.

That’s what’s tricky about disabled sexuality: most people, disabled or not or anyplace in between, have no idea how to discuss it. So fear of “saying the wrong thing” takes over instead and the problem feeds itself. We never talk about it because we don’t know how to start.

The joke was that we had to have sex before the election, because if Donald Trump won, I never wanted to be touched again. It was a joke. A joke.

“For me, as a Black Trans Woman, to find her body not only as something worthy and magnificent (as it is), but to find someone to share that magick with, may very well be one of the only moments she has to enjoy a trying and very taxing life — one that’s always trying to kill her.”