International Women’s Day Spotlight on Rukiat: Challenging Our Interactions with Sexual Wellbeing
Lifestyle & Culture Sub-Editor Cheyenne Eugene speaks with sex educator, Rukiat about challenging the way we interact with our sexual wellbeing and the importance of dismantling shame around sex.
Rukiat is an award-winning sex educator, writer, and speaker. Focusing mainly on sexual health, female pleasure and consent, she challenges and dismantles harmful stereotypes through leading by example. Growing up, Rukiat felt that she, nor her friends, were handed the tools to guide and encourage them to have healthy and empowered relationships with sex and sexual health. So she decided to take matters into her own hands and lay the foundations for a sexually liberated platform. Rukiat is well-versed in sexual well being through her active work of creating spaces where she can educate and empower people on sexual topics. Unafraid to challenge harmful narratives, Rukiat is dedicated to helping galvanise healthier relationships with our sexual well being.
You’ve previously mentioned two harmful stereotypes associated with Black women and sex: hypersexualisation and desexualisation. Your online presence has such a great balance of being informative and educational. It’s also fun and sexy. How do you achieve that balance?
I try to cultivate a blend of education and my own liberation. I’ve found that as an educator or when you’re in a role where you're helping others, people tend to strip you of your sexuality without your permission.
What I like about my work as a sex-positive educator is that I can be informative and take on that role of helping others while still maintaining and exploring my own sexuality. I'm really exploring my femininity these days.
Whilst I’m on this journey of liberation, I have the joy of sharing what I’m learning with others and passing on that empowerment.
Do you own and deliberately perpetuate any stereotypes, or, instead, do you aim to dismantle them?
I try to stay away and be something other than a stereotype, but I also respect people reclaiming stereotypes—it can be very clever.
In the UK, sex-positivity, education and activism, are all very heavily white-dominated space. A lot of the stigma around sex and sexual health for Black people can be rooted in colonial history. For example, a build-up of mistrust prevents people from accessing appropriate healthcare and advice. What would you say are the barriers to reaching those marginalised groups, and how do we decolonise sex and reach disenfranchised groups?
When I speak with other Black sex educators, this is always a topic we end up on. It can be so difficult reaching out to marginalised groups about sexual wellbeing, especially in a way that is informative. For many Black communities in the UK, sex is still really taboo. Particularly within African communities, there can be a lot of conservatism, which prohibits a lot of needed discussions.
Perhaps it's a lack of visibility of Black sex educators. So one thing I’m working on is reaching out to and collaborating with other Black content creators on different platforms who have mainly a Black audience. Sometimes unhelpful messages are sent out on those platforms. For example, you go on Black Twitter, and people are talking about body counts. It's disappointing because the conversations need to be taken further than that and evolve. There’s so much more to discuss and unpack. We need to lead by example.
Mistrust within Black communities towards healthcare comes from a history of mistreatment and also needs to be addressed. Being apprehensive about going to the clinic for a checkup has undeniable real-life implications. When you look at the statistics, the Black-British African population has the highest rates of HIV in the UK. We also have the highest rates of late diagnosis. The main reason for that is because we're not speaking about our health and because there is a culture of distrust. ‘Health care—I don't really want to go there.’ If these kinds of sexual health topics reached mainstream conversations among the marginalised communities, it would make a tangible difference.
Within sexual health outreach, a lot of emphasis is placed on the absence of disease or the extremes of abuse. As vital as these areas are, general sexual wellbeing can be excluded from the conversation. Where is the place for sexual wellbeing in the future of mainstream sexual health conversations?
I would like to see the phrase ‘sexual well being’ used more. I know that we have the new RSE (Relationships and Sex Education) curriculum that is a step up, but it doesn’t end there. When I was going to schools and teaching about sexual health, our organisation just wanted us to speak about STIs and very generic sexual health topics, including consent and the law (which is, of course, crucial). However, the team always felt like there was so much more that we could discuss.
I remember going to one school, where the majority of students were Black, and when we asked, ‘any questions?’, they wouldn’t stop coming. The students had questions upon questions. ‘Is it bad to masturbate?’, ‘Is it bad to watch porn?’, ‘What is normal vaginal discharge like?’ It highlighted the complexity and importance of nuance within these discussions and the way that we teach sex ed. It shouldn't just be the typical sexual health and consent. There needs to be more to it because clearly, young people are extremely curious.
The questions that they were asking suggested that they needed more guidance. If my questions had been answered at that age, it would have helped me so much when it came to navigating sex as an adult.
Also, I think we need to see more sex education in the media. There’s a demand for it. Look at how well Netflix’s series, Sex Education did. The media will touch on topics around sex, but then schools won’t teach it. You aren’t given the tools and resources in an education setting that you need to understand sexual wellbeing. Education and what is shown throughout the media need to align. I think education needs to catch up.
When you were teaching sex ed in schools, you said pupils asked tons of questions, such as ‘is masturbating bad?’ Those kinds of questions seem to be founded in shame. What would you say are the recurring areas that seem to cause shame around the topic of sex within Black communities?
What I’ve found within the Black community is that there are a lot of misconceptions around STIs. Better conversations need to be introduced. There can also be a lot of shame and suppression around female sexuality. Even performing oral sex on a woman has been demonised. Derogatory colloquial terms, like ‘Bowcat,’ creates stigma around something that is so basic (and I'm sorry, but that is really the bare minimum).
I’ve found that there is often a lack of awareness and knowledge around queer identities and the trans community. Stigma can be rife around trans people and gay men in particular because, in the Black community, straight men are treated as the patriarchs. Everything revolves around them and their gaze. So anything that deviates from that is just something that people don’t want to talk about. These are the kinds of things that we need to overcome. The other day I saw a Black man who is a YouTuber inviting a Black trans woman onto his channel. That was really good to see because it's something that you rarely see in our community. So that was ‘wow’.
What advice would you share to help us learn how to prioritise and familiarise ourselves with our sexual wellbeing and liberation?
Following sex educators on Instagram is a great place to start. You can start to gain some tools and resources—a lot of sex educators have published books. I always recommend Becoming Cliterate by Dr Laurie Mintz to every single person, no matter your gender, please read it. Educating yourself is liberating yourself.
Start having conversations with friends, surround yourself with more like-minded people, and just begin exploring—whatever that means to you. There are no rules. Your sexual liberation is subjective and very much unique to you. Take baby steps, you could even start by just being naked in bed and familiarising yourself with how your body looks and feels. It’s your journey to carve out at your own pace and comfort.
For many of us, education failed to nurture healthy narratives around sex. Spaces, like the one Rukiat has curated, exist to unravel the shame that conversations around sex are bandaged in and put wellbeing at the centre. By challenging tropes and internalised biases, Rukiat helps to pave the way for education, conversation and liberation.
This interview is part of Onyx Magazine’s series for International Women’s Day 2021, view other features here: