A Narrative Case Study of Pleasure Activism and Black Women’s Sexual and Intimate Journeys

More scholars are drawing upon sex-positive frameworks to examine Black women’s sexual health and development. However, Black women’s personal constructions of their sexual and intimate relationships have yet to be fully explored, particularly within the sociocultural context of framing sexual pleasure as a form of healing and liberation. In the present study, we used adrienne maree brown’s pleasure activism as a sex-positive and pleasure-focused framework to examine semistructured interview data from 29 Black women (18–50 years) across the United States. We identified five themes relating to Black women’s sexual pleasure along a continuum of unlearning and self-discovery: (a) recognizing intimate triggers, (b) embracing themselves as sexual beings, (c) coming to voice, (d) setting generative boundaries, and (e) liberating their fantasies. We present case studies from five women in the sample whose narratives offer in-depth and temporal understandings of their past, current, and future sexual lives, with a particular focus on how their sexual pleasure corresponds to embodied forms of wellness and personal liberation. The findings have significant implications for understanding how Black women make sense of their intimate and sexual journeys, which may help scholars and practitioners employ more intersectional and sex-positive approaches in research and clinical contexts.