Adulting - #26 Sobriety, Sex & Sexuality with Africa Brooke

Episode Date: February 17, 2019

This week's guest is the incredible Africa Brooke, founder of The Cherry Revolution - 'A movement that aims to break societal norms surrounding women, identity, and sexuality by making shameless pleasure a priority'. I hope you enjoy it! Oenone xx Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly. Hi guys, welcome back to Adulting. Today I am joined by Afrika Brooke. Hello. And we are going to be talking about sobriety, sexuality and feminism. Yes. So, I think we'll dive straight in and start with sobriety because I'm currently doing Dry January. Yeah. Which I'm actually really

enjoying um but prior to having done but I did so over October but before that I don't think I'd ever had like a prolonged stretch of not drinking and especially in the UK it's kind of hard to avoid yeah what can you tell me about your sobriety journey how you've ended up here so mine kind of wasn't trying dry jan or sober october or anything like that i was actually forced to get sober because of the way that i was drinking so i was a blackout drinker for nearly a decade i started drinking when i was 14 wow and from the very first time that i drunk, it was to get drunk. It wasn't because I was hanging out with friends and the intention was to get drunk, but then that created a passion for how I drank for a decade. And I thought everyone blacked out. I thought

that was common. I thought it was just a part of drinking. And in the beginning it was fun, as it always starts. It's always fun in in the beginning but then you get older and then the situations you put yourself in start to get even more dangerous you start to exactly you start to lose people there is more to lose jobs I've lost so many jobs I've lost friends I've lost partners my family it came to a point where they wanted to move themselves from me so I was forced I was forced to get sober I tried to moderate but it just never worked I was never like a one drink sort of person I once I had one I just couldn't stop how often were you going out drinking uh not that often I was also not a uh solo drinker so it was very hard to identify that there was an issue because I was a social drinker.

And what tends to happen is that we keep people around us that make it easier to carry on with this way of living. And it's normalized because when you're in your teens or early 20s, people tell you that it's a rite of passage. Right. Right. And yeah, so it was very difficult, but I was a social drinker. It's really scary hearing you say this because I don't think I sound that far away from this, to be honest. Like, when I go out, especially on New Year's Eve, I actually woke up with the worst anxiety because I couldn't remember between, like, three and four.

And my sister always tells me off when I get really drunk, and she was there. And she didn't say anything to me, I was like I can't have done anything or said anything that bad because I haven't been told off but that really freaked me out and I actually I think at school I used to get really drunk

I had my stomach pumped when I was 14 at a party that my parents were at awful yeah so I was always getting in trouble with alcohol and then as I got older

and I went to uni I did teach myself to not get I got scared basically of getting drunk so I would go out and get drunk but uni, I did teach myself to not get, I got scared basically of getting drunk. So I would go out and get drunk, but I wouldn't ever let myself get to the point where I was out of control drunk. And then when I've moved to London now, I think I've got back into being very relaxed

with alcohol to the point where I, before I know it, go from zero to a hundred and I'm like, shit, I don't want to be this drunk. Whereas like my boyfriend loves being drunk. I don't like not knowing. The minute, if I suddenly become aware that I'm very drunk, it really, I don't like to be this drunk whereas like my boyfriend loves being drunk I don't like not knowing the minute if I suddenly become aware that I'm very drunk it really I don't like it yeah and it's really funny because that is problematic but as you say it's also so normal 100% 100% I think you're made to feel more abnormal if you're not drunk for sure if you're not drinking either people think you're pregnant or there's something wrong with you or they they think you're just not being fun because that's a big thing for everyone. No one wants their

fun to be disrupted even if it's at the expense of your mental well-being. So it's very normalised, it's very difficult and I think depending on what kind of industry you even work in, alcohol is the social lubricant. It's the way most people have sex for the first time. it's the first thing that someone says when they want to get to know you better do you want to go for a drink it's um yeah it's been so normalized and I think I always say that if heroin had the same marketing and PR as alcohol we would normalize that as well well my boyfriend actually said this to me the other day because we were having a conversation about decriminalizing drugs we both think that's something that should happen and like in the movement towards like fighting drug culture some of the scandinavian countries got it really good yeah and then he said but you know that and

i was like what about making it legal he was like no even if if alcohol was created today it would be illegal and i was like you're so right of course it would be of course but we don't look at it like that and you're completely right about saying I've got a really good girlfriend who never really drinks and I used to literally be like why won't you drink I'd almost force it would make me feel so annoyed that she wouldn't drink with me and I remember apologizing to her like two years ago being I'm so sorry that I used to get annoyed at you that's completely your property because as you say I would assimilate friends around me I wouldn't even speak to unless I was going out and I would call on them to let me have my reckless behavior yes what kind of situations were you getting into

oh my goodness yeah of course I can um the reason why I'm also really comfortable with kind of discussing the lengths that I got to is because I just need people to know that some of the things we've come to just accept it's really not the way maybe you even want to live but an example that I always talk about is when I went to lunch with a friend I think it was a Monday we went to lunch it was just like a normal supposed to be a normal lunch I hadn't drunk for a month because towards the end, I knew that if I have this one drink, I'm going to go off. I knew that something would happen.

But this one time, I was like, yes, it's the afternoon. It's a Monday. Nothing is going to happen. But I blacked out and I lost about 12 to 15 hours. And I woke up in Surrey the following day late afternoon with these two guys apparently I'd had sex with one of them I had no idea how I'd got there and my phone was dead and I remember charging my phone they somehow they ended up getting me a taxi back home uh all the way back to London from Surrey um I plugged my phone in my phone charged and I had all these angry texts from my friend apparently I'd ended up getting drunk I started speaking to these guys at the next table um ended up leaving

her and went with them don't remember any of of that. And I think the most shocking thing that kind of gives me chills when I talk about this, these patterns weren't new. These patterns weren't new. It was just a different story, a different location, a different person, but those patterns weren't new. And because from the first time that I drank, I truly believed that everyone blacked out.

It didn't even scare me that I lost 15 hours believed that everyone blacked out it didn't even scare me that I lost 15 hours and I carried on for two more years after that a massive stretch of time yeah I had periods where it would be normally the last hour of the night yeah I remember coming in the door but I can't really remember how I got back yeah a bit bloggy foggy rather yeah you're saying you literally nothing yeah because for a decade I have been training my brain to be this way so I've been I knew no other way just what I couldn't have a glass of wine just one it felt like torture if I had one drink because you wanted more yeah you think there was an escape for you was there any of course but is it is it the same as alcoholism or is it an addiction to the alcohol or is it just you don't do that well with drinking?

It was alcoholism for sure. I think what I was addicted to was altering my reality because I felt that I wasn't enough in a normal state from a very young age. From around those times, 14, I started to become aware of my blackness, for example. I started to become more aware of the fact that other people didn't find me as attractive as my white counterparts because I went to school in Kent at the time. And so I had a very, very low self-esteem and I was having somewhat of an identity crisis as a Zimbabwean girl that's come to Britain. And then suddenly being so aware of my skin and, you know, people telling me that I have big lips, just all this kind of external things that I had to take on. So when I discovered alcohol for the first time, I could just make for the first time I could just make it all stop

I could just make it all go away so it became I became addicted to what it could do if that makes sense no complete sense yeah and I think that's that's what it is for most people it's what it can do for you and how kind of instantaneous that is I think it's why we're addicted to social media I think it's exactly the same thing it's an escapism it's a media you can make yourself look cooler feel cooler posting an image you get instant gratification I think going out clubbing attention all of those things are very much of a similar vein yeah you're talking about being at school in Kent did you have any black friends was it like was it a very white school did your parents talk to you about race much or No. No. I'll start with kind of home life. We didn't talk about race at all.

And I think that's mainly because I'm from Zimbabwe. And Zimbabwe was colonized by Britain. So there are, I think it can either go two ways. Because of the history, you can either grow up in a home that teaches you everything about the history and lets you know who you are pre-colonial right or you can live in a home where those conversations just don't happen and there's this idea of Britain being the promised land so certain things just don't happen you kind of just have to deal with it for yourself. And I grew up in that kind of home, the latter. So no conversations about race.

I became aware of my race, like I said, when I started school when I was nine years old. So yeah, there were a lot of things to deal with. Apart from my sister and maybe one other kid in the entire school were the only black people in the entire school. the only black people in the entire school so that was that was very difficult especially when you don't know how to kind of articulate your experience yeah and when you're so young you don't have the language for what's going on you just know that

there is something happening there's some kind of inside joke and you have no idea what it is and that was also an era where being colorblind was kind of the the progressive way of looking at things we can't see color we can't see race which as we know now and I've learned and I'm learning through people like Reni Adelodge and amazing writers that actually we need to be talking about race yeah seeing it accepting it and and realizing our differences and our assimilation and whatever else but But, like, for 100% when I was at school, like, there were probably five black people in my year, maybe, and we would never talk about...

If you said, like, oh, so-and-so's black, everyone would be like, you can't say that, which is just so redundant and stupid, because, as you say, people would also be making jokes about the size of a girl's lips or their bum or their hair. And I can remember these microaggressions and children not knowing. Because we're all picking... Children are always...

I got the piss taken out of me for certain things. But obviously when it's got a racial side to it, you might not understand the impact of that as a child. Even though I think kids are mean in general. Of course. But as you say, if you feel ostracised and you don't have anyone to talk to about that I can't imagine yeah what that feels like exactly and I think it also around that time as well when I was 14 of course color blindness was probably a thing but I think overt racism was more common for sure than kind of people saying you can't say It was, you can say whatever the fuck you want.

And that's just, that's just how it is. Did you find that, did you have that in school or did you have that outside or both? In school, in school mainly. I never really had it outside. I never really had it outside, but I was so young that when I finished school, I'm going home. You know, there's, it's not like I was going out

and all of these things. When I started drinking, it was with people from school but that would be more like at the local park sort of thing but then you go home yeah and then I would experience those things again but I think they started to take a form when I saw that the other girls were more desired you know and then if we were going to the park to have a drink I would see that I'm not kind of getting the same attention but I now I know why that's happening it's because I'm black yeah you know so you just become that friend that person but um I still saw that in those times regardless of whether uh I was being desired or not what I could hold on to was once I have a

drink I can still be so confident that it doesn't matter. So when you start to train yourself to rely on something to make you feel worthy, to make you feel desirable, to make you feel beautiful, when you strip it away, you feel the pain that you really have to deal with. That kind of pain that is underneath and just kind of crying out to be looked at. But I was too afraid to look at it. It's the worst thing as a teenage girl and interestingly like you're so consumed about what you look like like that is the main thing you're fed magazines that constantly just tell you how to look and at that

time there were no women of color on the front of magazines and actually the beautiful model was two years above me at school yeah and I never knew that she felt the way that she did and she was like to me everyone's blonde and they're white and I didn't see it like that she felt the way that she did. And she was like, to me, everyone's blonde and they're white. And I didn't see it like that. I didn't know that she felt like that. To us, to me, I looked on at her and thought she's the most beautiful girl I've ever seen. I thought she's incredible, really fashionable, really cool. You don't understand the depth of that feeling.

And I understand it because I hated not fitting in at school. But the amount, and every child does, but the amount that you not fit in when you don't realise every single beauty paradigm that you're served as a child is a blonde skinny woman who's white there is there was that was it yeah it was jennifer aniston cameron diaz whoever else yeah they were the women that you had to look like and then whilst i might felt like i don't look like them because i'm not skinny to you you're like i don't i'm not any of that woman none of i can't even assimilate with anything attainable in any in any degree so there's already like a link I guess to your your understanding of your sexual being or your attractiveness your physical being

you felt like that wasn't something that you had um capital in yeah and then how did that change when you're that you came into that relationship with alcohol do you think um so I really started to see the link of kind of desire low self-worth all of these things I really started to see the link when I was about 17 which is when I started really going out and when I say going out I'm talking about kind of parties around that time it was when um I don't know if you remember kind of squat parties and that kind of stuff I'm not sure um so more like raving kind of parties where you're now surrounded not just by white people but now you're surrounded by everyone and where were they in London in London I was living in London at this time um so I moved to London when I was about 15 so a year a year after

um everything I was just saying so I started partying and then I was kind of really in the multicultural scene of London where I saw that I was desired by people but by this time I felt that I could only access that if I was drinking or if I was drunk or if I was taking drugs because at that time I started experimenting with drugs as well but things only got worse for me in the sense that I started having a lot of disconnected casual sex casual sex was my way of kind of even just showing someone that I liked them I thought that's all that I had to offer and it my drinking got worse at that time 18 is when it started getting really bad the blackouts started getting worse and because I had this perceived freedom I was over age I had been

working so I had money I could do whatever I wanted to do which meant that everything just kind of got progressively worse um and when I was 22, I got into a relationship, which I was in for three years. We met when I was still drinking, but then I got sober in the middle of our relationship when I was 24. And that changed everything completely because everything that I had been kind of putting in a box and pretending is not there really came to the surface and right there at the top was the sexual shame that I've been holding um all these insecurities all these ideas that I had taken on from other people and um my religious conditioning as well and by that I mean the kind of teachings that pretty much slut shame and tell you that if you do this you will burn in hell good girls don't do this um this idea that your body belongs

to a man I mean it's it's never really said too explicitly but it's said in many ways that you should save yourself all this kind of language, also came to the surface. And during that time, I really, really just had to, I really had to go deep and realize that if I drink again, so I can feel better, quote unquote, I could lose my life. Because that's how bad it had got at that time. Wow. Yeah. So many things I want to unpick from that yeah

so the first thing I guess I want to ask was when you were going out with your friends I know you kind of said this earlier but were you seen as the fun time gal do you think any of your girlfriends or guy friends were looking in on you and worried about it yeah I was definitely the fun time girl I was the kind of girl that if you want to party, you can just call Africa because she doesn't call it a night at any point. She can go and go and go. I never wanted the party to end. Because if it ends, then I have to deal with my shit. And I didn't want to do that.

So I would hang on to the people that also like to party. But then there's always a time where people are like, OK, we've had enough. But it was never enough for me um so everyone that I had around me also wanted to party they were also running away from something right so it was very easy to disguise this but then I became really close to um I became really close to this girl who was my best friend for a very long time and she saw through all of that and she would in the beginning she also kind of really liked this persona this thing that people loved but because we were so close she could see when the party had to stop and I would kind of you know go back into that hole um and she tried to tell me she tried to talk to me kind of just

really lightly and tell me that she's worried and have I ever thought about trying not drinking for like a month or you know but I wouldn't listen because I think if you haven't accepted something for yourself people can tell you how worried they are. At the end of the day you won't do anything. Nothing will happen. Yeah no I completely agree. I've been there with like abusive boyfriends and my girlfriends have told me for months and it wasn't until I was ready that you won't change.

But it's so nice to know that there are people who can see it, and that are there. But it can be difficult if you're the friend as well. And the other thing that you said, because I've spoken about this in my podcast with Charlie Cox, and I think it's more common than we realise, but that idea of giving your body to men, especially when you're in your teens,

as one seal of approval. Like, oh, if they want to have sex with me, I am attractive, I'm good enough, I'm worthy. While simultaneously having that same message of slut shaming. And also the idea that when you are having casual sex with these guys, they're looking at you as a throwaway thing. But in your head, it was such validation. It was like, I must be attractive if they want to have sex with me I must be pretty much all of my girlfriends up until our 20s were not a part of a helpful sexual encounter they weren't necessarily helpful they were probably consensual but they were also very misguided and they were misguided because of this layer of slut shaming that our

generation was brought up with so no one taught girls about sex but we're also taught that the most important thing you could be is have sexual capital and be sexually desired at the same time as not having sex like what how are we supposed to navigate that it's so confusing and I think because that's why now in the present day I feel so strongly about having really candid conversations about sex about sober living just about the things that really really happen but we don't speak about yeah because there are I think there are so many people that blame themselves for things that have happened to them even abuse a lot of people blame themselves because they just don't know because there's this idea that you're either the good girl or you're

the bad girl like there's no middle ground there is no room for you to be a multi-layered human being there's just no room and I think we also kind of have taken in so much messaging that says your body does not belong to you but you should still do enough to be desirable but once that desire takes action if that action is sex it does not belong to you so it's a it's a very very confusing thing and if you throw drugs and alcohol into the mix which is what a lot of people end up doing just to feel something or to feel connected to that situation it's it's yeah it's a really tricky one and I think the way that we the like even when you're taught to have sex when you're like about sex when you're younger it's only from the male

perspective yes masturbation is only talked about when it comes to men I didn't even there's so many things I read now and they really make you feel a bit sick like the sunflowers always sharing stuff like they tell you the first time it's gonna hurt because they don't tell guys how to have sex like sex wasn't fun it wasn't good when I was younger when you first had sex like I didn't ever wasn't ever there like oh my god this is amazing I was like well I've got to do this now exactly and I think even in that conversation another thing I find very important to address is painful sex like I have this massive fascination with it because I think it's what a lot of people are having because of that idea of, OK, when you lose your virginity, it's going to hurt. Yeah. But what if people knew that losing your virginity is not supposed to hurt? No. Because penetration should not be the focus because we because in schools they don't teach these things because they would be teaching pleasure yeah so they teach us that it begins with penetration and what happens then it's painful because your body is not actually

ready to be receiving anything but we're kind of taught that once there's an erection you're ready but also we're taught that it's going to be pleasurable for the guy and painful for the woman basically saying men can enjoy the sex but you't. But you've still got to be there for it and endure it because men can't control that. I mean, sexual liberation comes up a lot and we can talk about it now, but I just can't believe

that there's still this rhetoric going, you know, when people talk about rape culture and they're like, oh, but men just can't control themselves. As if women have no sexual desire and that men, I'm sorry,

out of most guys that I know, it's the men that suffer with sexual desire out of all my girlfriends who are in long-term relationships they will always say their sex drive is higher than their boyfriends and why is that something that we've I mean I know culturally why I know that we went through things like in the Victorian times and like how we've got here but it's still just not spoken about. Yeah, and I think it's something that really does permeate our society. And, you know, we can talk about how advanced everything is. I mean, we have microwaves that speak to people,

and fridges, you know, that open five minutes before you get home. But there are so many things embedded in our society, the most basic things that we just refuse to talk about, because it really does change the whole structure I mean even women or female sexuality now is really disrupting the structure of how things should be yes you know and I think it's a very scary time for a lot of people but we need to start just by having the uncomfortable conversations we need to start talking about painful sex when you start talking about premature penetration everyone knows what premature ejaculation is because it's about keeping the erection up but no one talks about what's on the other side of

that erection yeah painful sex for a woman and femme yeah and it's um yeah it's a it's a very very difficult thing because it would be teaching pleasure and I think a lot of systems in place and organizations just have a problem talking about pleasure but it's so weird because one of those lovely things you can do is have amazing sex yeah it's free it's like a hug it's just like it's so nice yeah it's the shame it's the you talked about religion briefly and my mum's from a catholic family and without realizing she fed so many little lines to me with catholic shame threaded into it so only now that i'm older obviously i have no idea about that as a kid i just knew that some of my friends could talk to their parents about sex and those

girls probably had very normal relationships whereas I had a very big fear of sex also fascinated by but also didn't know and a lot of those rhetorics a lot of us are second generation like my mum's my mum's parents from Ireland and you'll find a lot of those people that come from different religious backgrounds yeah you're still not that far away from having a slightly skewed understanding of things of course and even if you think your parents are more liberal or parents have been westernized or whatever there's still so much in there imbued even and that's when it's worse because it's not obvious yeah so you're kind of like why do I feel this way about stuff and it'll come up and I'll be like oh that's my Catholic

shame about really weird things and I'm like that's what it is it's funny one of the things I can't even think I don't even know like even just watching sometimes like watching sex scenes they come up on TV oh my god yeah

in front of other people and I'm just like oh this is really bad do you know I have I've got rid of it so much like even talking about this

this is probably the second time I've spoken so candidly on the podcast about sex yeah but I don't even think I've talked to my girlfriends really about my sexual pleasure I would tell them about what the guy was like, whatever.

It was never about me. So I'm overcome. I'm even going a little bit red now. But I think it's so important to talk about it. I love it. But I was saying how earlier, like my mum, I remember, actually one of the other PTs in the gym that I work at, she was talking about how her mum didn't like some actress in the 90s.

And I was like, I don't think my mum liked her. We were going through one. I was like, oh, I think it's because they were portraying like sexually liberated women yeah and my mum probably was like this is awful yeah I'm really affronted by it because she'd been taught you can't be like that yeah and then now it's come out the other side and she like loves it when I used to post the bums healthies on instagram she's like I love it I love that and like she's learned and it goes around and it's really nice. Sorry, I just completely lost my train of thought. No, no, no.

I really like that because I think it just shows that it's a process of unlearning for everyone. Oh, yeah. Because it's so deep. Because you can think you're the most empowered and liberated, but then just something small happens. And you're like, where did that come from? Because I was actually writing today about, even with all the work that I do and the journey that I've been on with my sexual exploration I still have a psychological block when it comes to penetrating myself and self-pleasure and that's because of this idea and

I know that it's very much connected to religion yes because of that idea that you don't touch yourself in that way that good girls don't do those kinds of things and I'm more than happy to explore so many other areas of my body but when it comes to that part of my body it's because of that other belief that I'm trying to unravel of your body belongs to a man that you can do all the outer core stuff, but that part, the most sacred part, or what you feel is the most sacred part of you, is not yours. And even though I'm a very, very sexually liberated woman, but that psychological block and that conditioning really just stops me. The kind of cognitive dissonance is astounding. I think 100% agree.

I don't even think I talked about female pleasure until like the last year. Yeah. Like I didn't know no one was talking about it and I completely agree. I feel a deep sense of shame and you're thinking,

I'm alone. I'm on my own. This is my body. I could literally take this anywhere with me. Yeah. No one is here and I'm like embarrassed.

Yeah. I'm like, what am I embarrassed with? Yeah. No one's going to know. Yeah. It's so deep. It's so deep.

And the other side of it is as well that like, I don't want to say poor men, but like I know that a lot of my guy friends who when we were younger also had the same upbringing so they completely

don't understand. So when they come to these conversations which sometimes get a bit heated or we as women who are trying to bring up these things get quite defensive

about the way that we've been treated by men and then they'll get hurt because they're saying that we didn't mean to they have to unlearn it too but with compassion because I do get that sometimes obviously we've got some awful people out there but I do think a lot of the guys in my generation genuinely just didn't know any better and they actually they've also got now residual guilt from realizing mistakes that they made because they weren't taught about female pleasure either so

that that sometimes can be a bit of a balancing act yeah I absolutely agree with that because you know if if we're talking about the conditioning that's happened to us and as women we're supposed to be you're supposed to be a good woman for this man that man or boy is being raised a certain way as well that women exist to serve you and that the women you end up with has to be willing to endure everything you will do yes you know and that's that's kind of I think that's how society kind of shapes everything that's the overarching idea women are supposed to endure and then the man is just supposed to be a man whatever that like there's so many things what that can mean but a woman enduring it can be sex

it can be whether you're cheated on it can be financially whatever it is we're supposed to kind of just take it because that equals to being a good woman and I think I agree and I think one of the best I just literally as you're talking I'm thinking like song lyrics in my head I'm like lady in the street and a freak in the bed and just all these things, that when we were younger, were just like, commonplace lyrics, and we were singing them, I knew all the words,

to all of these songs, and you're thinking, how, of course you're fucked, like I can't listen, they're like affirmations, yeah, because you're constantly hearing it,

like I can't listen to Kanye's song, yeah, it's such a fucking, because I'm like, it makes me feel physically sick, I'm like, and Gold feel physically sick I'm like how and how yeah how are you putting this yeah I know all the words to gold digger yeah how are you putting this music out there because also you don't know that you're learning but subconsciously

as a kid I would memorize any rap song that came on and I wasn't listening to the lyrics but they're playing out in my mind even like dressing for the male gaze is something that I've only stopped doing recently like when I want to stress sexually provocative I'm doing it but not for the male gaze yeah and I like will be like wow I put clothes on for me because I spent my whole life being like I love quirky clothes or trendy or like stuff that I was like but my body I can't wear that because of my body I could wear that if I was really skinny because I do fashion or I'd be like I'll just wear this and I used to wear shit that I was like but my body I can't wear that because of my body I could wear that if I was really skinny because I didn't do fashion or I'd be like I'll just wear this

and I used to wear shit that I I remember this boyfriend like you know much better than that so for ages I would just wear like

white t-shirts and these blue like leggings I felt like I had to put make myself yeah good on his arm kind of thing

and whereas now with my boyfriend I'll turn up and I'll just wear whatever I want yeah because it's nothing to do with him

but that was all I think that was all imbued in me from like small lyrics. And like, it's so fucked. It runs so, so deep. That's why even looking at the bigger things, you know, that are more obvious to see. I think that's always very useful. But I swear, it's always the smallest things. The smallest decisions you make. I mean, for me, it's shaving.

The fact that I stopped shaving my underarms, I think now it's been a year. And I swear to you, before that, you would have never seen me with a hair on my body. Apart from I had long hair as well. So I was smoothly shaving everywhere else and I had long hair because that equals desire. That's all you see. A hairy woman. What is that? And especially as a black woman, it equals being a savage, you know, being from a tribe.

I mean, even though I'm from a tribe, it's that whole idea that, you know, you don't have anything. You come from the jungle sort of thing. But making that decision to stop shaving which is something that makes me so so happy because before how it used to be if a guy says to me that he's coming over I'll run and shave if I know that I'm going to be seeing someone and there's a potential of being intimate whether it's sexual or just even kissing, I am shaving. The shame that I felt when the hair on my body would grow and someone would see it was just, and I dressed it up as in, but I just, I just like it. It's my preference, but is it? No, I love it. I've actually wanted

to do an episode on pubes for like ages. So I do shave. I actually very rarely shave my legs, but that's laziness yeah if I have to I will but also they're blonde so I'm just it's I'm fully aware it's my conditioning yeah but I can't quite undo it yet so there's loads of things that I'm aware of exactly um and I know why I do shave but I'm just like I'll I'll get to it it's a slow process yeah it's a slow process because it is a very difficult thing I think whether you like being smooth or not as long as it's your choice and even if you know that it's not really your choice be gentle with yourself because come on the billboards are everywhere yeah you know in the tube station you'll see a massive advert saying you know

book that wax in today but it's it's taught you that like being clean shaven clean shaven is clean and i remember talking about this because some instagram i did a photo where she was wearing underwear and it was lacy it looked like pubes and all these guys were going mad so i was just doing stories like even if it is pubic hair why does it matter like you are broad it was i think it was gillette or it was another brand yeah so they wanted to make more money yeah because they were selling razors for men's faces and then they thought oh I know we can tap into a new market if we start selling them to women yeah and their marketing campaigns literally said you'll be cleaner if you shave if you shave this is in like the 20s or whatever it was and prior to that women

weren't shaving yeah but it was because they were like great capitalism obviously it's all down to capitalism but like we can make more money and tap into a new market so we'll teach you to shave and we just think that's the norm it's not it's not the norm I think having like it stresses me out loads of my fans have got Hollywood laser yeah they've got no hair and for a time I was like maybe I'll do it my bikini lines was a bikini but I've always felt like if I have a child I want to be able to grow a full fat bush so that when she's growing up, she can be like, oh, mommy has hair and not be like, why have I got hair? I love that.

I always think about how it would impact my daughter. So like surgery, like I don't judge anything that's got hair, but I always think like that just won't help my daughter. I don't even know if I'll have kids, but for some reason, that's always my first thought. FanDuel Casino's exclusive live dealer studio has your chance at the number one feeling winning which beats even the 27th

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please play responsibly get that and um as for when you were saying the laser I remember when I was frantically booking appointments just trying I was like okay I'm just gonna get laser done and I'll be happy I'll never have to shave again but I don't know what kind of changed for me around that time actually I think it's when the chair revolution had just started and I was doing a lot of digging into who I am as a person who I'm doing things for I because I journal quite a lot I was actually writing down questions when you shave who is it for and then when I write an answer I go back into it and I'm like is it really for that reason and just kind of expand and then I saw that I wasn't doing it for me so I stopped um but everyone not

everyone most people use the whole hygiene rhetoric and it's usually men that use that but I say to them are you clean shaven you know for hygiene reasons do you tell the men in your life that they need to shave you know for hygiene reasons if a man shaved especially like around them I would just be like why have you done this and the and the thing is I had to think about that as well because I was I was thinking of how if a man was to shave people would find that very odd yeah a lot of people attach that to sexuality they'll say okay he must be gay if his shaved there's this idea that a man heterosexual there we go yeah and it's just it's really really weird I think the really good thing was shaving which is how I came to the thought because I was like

do I do it for myself or not yeah and I'm I don't think I really good thing was shaving, which is how I came to the thought, because I was like, do I do it for myself or not? Yeah. And I don't think I do, because I was like, if I was on a desert island, I wouldn't be scrambling around to find something to get rid of my hair with. You might use a rock, sharpen a rock. I think I'd just be like, fuck it, I'm hairy. And I don't think I'd give a shit. I think if you're on, if you genuinely, I have to say, as your armpit hair is growing out, it can be a bit like, like when it first starts growing, because it gets itchy. And I think because we never let it grow longer than that yeah we're like oh it's uncomfortable but actually if it was like fine like my boyfriend's armpit hair is really soft

I've stroked it it's lovely like mine I brush it I moisturize it I've actually I sweat much much less really much like significantly less isn't it people it's there for a reason honestly it's absolutely you have evolved quite a lot but I think it's a it's a mindset thing honestly it's a mindset thing and I know that when the summertime comes because the conditioning has been so deep uh you know I've been shaving since I was maybe 11 or 12 um and then stopped when I was 25 so I know that when the summertime comes and let's say I'm on a train and I have to hold the rail in me I'm gonna be like oh my god are people but then I just have to sit really sit in myself and be like Africa this is the hair on your body anyone that has a problem that's nothing to do with me it's funny you say that because I was on the tube

the other day and there was a woman of colour with the most amazing outfit and she was really big actually. She was a fat woman of colour, so already pretty intersectional and cool. And then she had, not that that makes you cool, but she was intersectional and different things. And she had really fucking hairy legs. And I had to stop myself. I just wanted to be like, I love that your legs are hairy.

And then I was like, you can't just go up to a woman on the tube and be like, I love that you're... But something about her was so strong. I was like, you can't just go up to a woman on the tube and be like, I love that you're, but she just, something about her was so strong. I was like, you are making a statement. Just everything about it was fucking cool. And I generally, for three stops, was like, no, you can't, you can't. No, you really can't.

You can't do that. And I was trying to do it with my eyes, like smile, and then she just probably thought I was a freak. But it does, like, I find it really exciting now, because I think women, we are getting our time.

Of course, of course. And it's squashing all these, it's like smashing all these patriarchy ideas. It's so funny, because it does make guys really unsettled. Really uncomfortable. And I can't wait for the summer to just make more men uncomfortable. Because one last thing on that is that last summer, when I was kind of trialing the whole not shaving my legs thing, I remember I'd be on the train and it happened plenty of times actually. And I'd kind of be sitting opposite a guy and he'll start scanning my face

and kind of giving me the look and then going down to my legs and then just having this look of shock because I've just disrupted his entire idea of femininity. But yeah, that's something I look forward to. Yeah, I think that's so great I think it's just it's just so when you break it down it is so so ridiculous honestly yeah on my tombstone they're not going to be saying oh Africa the girl with hairy legs it's like think about what you want people to remember you for they're not going to remember me for the hair under my arms no there's bigger things to worry like there's really bigger things and this is i did a post as well because i got

eyelash extensions yeah and i did a post about how i'm a feminist but i understand my conditioning but i fucking love yeah sticking little bits of hair to my eyelashes whilst removing everything below my eyes because that is what the patriarchy tells you to do and then I had lots of comments from women being like being a feminist doing whatever you can do it's not guilty I'm like no no what I mean is I completely I think it's good if you know I think you have to come from a place of knowledge so there we go you might be like I want to get a really big bum I want to get a really big small waist but I'm fine but why do you want to do that do you want to do it because it's better for you or do you want to do it because you're being told that that's what's attractive if you still want to do it with the knowledge because I think knowledge is power the minute you know I then take that

decision I'm like not everything you do has to be a feminist act yeah it doesn't always have to be in line with doing something which is smashing the patriarchy or going against convention but do it with being informed when you do it because then you know that you've made that choice for you because not everyone is going to make the decision which is anti the system you might just happen to like something that can be oppressive in some ways yeah but you like it like everyone's got different tastes there will be crossover in places where something we like is actually really anti-feminist in some ways i agree i agree because i i really don't believe in the idea of like the perfect feminist. You don't get a certificate every time you go up a level.

It just, that's not how it works. So I think it's just about questioning, asking yourself, what do I want? What's good for me right now? Because we do live in a world where it's impossible to be perfect. It's, there's so much that we have to unlearn that's why um I think I was saying to you before I don't think there ever comes a point where you're like okay now I know enough this is it you know it just never stops because every single day is an opportunity to learn something new about yourself but I completely agree with you about um

finding out where things come from I think it's so important to just say hmm I wonder yeah but it's uncomfortable so no one wants to no one wants to really go there you know but I think there's so many more gifts in just getting a bit uncomfortable just kind of feeling the really gross stuff about yourself it can free you on so many levels for sure and like every time I learn something about feminists so mine starts off very white feminist yeah it was all about it starts off actually being about sexual liberation and female liberation and why can't I shove my body in men can that it's very basic every time I turn a stone over I find a another black hole and you're like oh my god and you're

like then you're like oh my god we need to talk about women of color too okay and you're like there is mountains of work. And every single time you get through another day, you just get deeper and deeper. But it's amazing. Yeah. Because it gives your life so much purpose. Yeah. Because I have so many other things.

It actually makes your problems pale in comparison as well. Yeah. It really gives you like perspective about stuff. Yeah. Like it makes you so much more of an interesting person if you can try and empathize with as many different people from different scenarios or whatever but I agree you never ever stop learning not a day goes by when I'm confronted with something I've said that was wrong or funnily enough this is how we met so someone I did a podcast with Fair Ridings and she said repeatedly as this slogan it kind of became was finding my tribe so I called the

episode that and someone tagged me to say that um this girl that I follow called Africa has done a post about tribes and I was like oh fab I'll read it let me have a look because she was like you shouldn't use this word it's like an appropriation of a word so I read it and I was like oh my god you're completely right but I called the podcast up so I didn't really say anything and then it went into this I'm really good I think one of my strong points is that I will always take someone telling me I'm wrong

and I don't I'm not offended I don't find that offensive I find it really helpful because I'd rather you tell me and then I can learn from it because I find it more embarrassing if no one told me

I'd actually find that really embarrassing because I'd rather you be like actually don't say that and this is what you should do and then I can be like great thanks so much you've taught me something

amazing but unfortunately other people didn't have this reaction and because you replied some women were white women were getting offended because equality to the privilege feels like oppression and they wanted to be able to use tribe as well even if it's a word it's just really important to look at where words come from especially in the context of cultural appropriation because cultural appropriation isn't just about wearing braids and dressing a certain way or using what some people might say is black language or slang it goes much much deeper and the reason I was talking about tribes specifically because my work is mainly in the self-development

spirituality kind of space and there's a lot of white middle-class women that's just that's just how it is because as well spirituality right now is a very marketable thing you know it's a very brandable thing but what that means is that it's becoming a very exclusive space you know when you type in yoga into you into google images it's all white bodies white thin blonde bodies you have to go deep deep deep into those pages to actually see a brown face even though yoga is from india there we go a lot of people are in their classes in the very very expensive classes there we go saying you know um speaking sacred language that they don't even know where it comes from and now there's this whole thing with kind of tribe you see it on t-shirts mummy tribes

etc but in this conversation people are ignoring indigenous voices people are not listening when indigenous people are saying please can you not use that word because that was a word that was used to oppress them but now it's been reclaimed by the white spirituality space and it's spilled over it's not just spirituality it's um your vibe attacks your tribe there we go you have all of that kind of thing uh people say things like spirit animal no one really knows where that comes from but that is also a very sacred thing that is native exactly so there are all these things and I just think it's very important you can use other words to refer to your community community is a good start you can use that one you know there are so many so many options but I think people just refuse because there is this idea there's this entitlement to everything

because when you've been raised in a society that tells you everything is yours nothing is off limits when it comes to a word you feel some friction you know especially if you love that word you've built a brand on that word so many people now have built a brand on um the whole tribe thing but I don't it's not my job to kind of teach everyone what's wrong or right. And I won't go into full detail to explain anything. If I've written about it, I can refer you back to it. But a lot of people are just not willing to let go.

But what I think is important is that it's already been planted into your consciousness or unconscious, whatever. But it's there. Yes. You know, it's there. And I think sometimes that is more important. And a lot of that resistance comes from the anger that needs to be shed before understanding. I think that little seed actually does work because for me, it's happened with vegan.

I'm not vegan. Yeah. But I find it very hard to buy yogurt. It sounds so stupid. But over the time of just reading more and more and being quite resistant to it, it's just starting to my brain's like

no I can't I feel bad now and with race for me I think for some people have a very like are very interested in like veganism

and they get very interested I tend to be more interested in the human side it's not because I don't find animals and ethics and the environment important but I just find

human interaction anthropology and all those things much more so when I read René Adéloges's blog I think in like 2014 I remember sitting there and being like oh my god I was so annoyed I was like I am not racist I'm not racist I read it again I was like I'm not racist I was so pissed off about it I remember like walking around my room and I was like no this isn't and then I was like oh and then and then that's where it all

started but I was so angry at first and even now I come at loggerheads with my girlfriend who I try and say stuff and they just clamp up and they go no I've seen reverse racism I've seen this and this and this and I'm going but I'm I'm saying I'm white too so if I'm saying it and I'm not offended you have to recognize that you need to take it away from the personal and make it recognize it as like a it's not a personal attack and a tribe isn't your personal word to take like not everything is I think basically we've lost a sense of community funnily enough which is maybe why people love the word tribe so much yeah because it sounds there's this kind of closeness but you know how about taking

the effort to there are so many words but this is the, there are so many words, but this is the thing, there are so many words. Especially in the English language. Exactly. I think it can be a bit of a different conversation when it comes to the N word and how some people justify saying that in songs, et cetera. But with the word tribe, the way people are trying to use it, when you're referring to your mummy book club, or you're referring to, you know, your yoga class or your um sound uh your sound healing session you can find something else like I said community is a very good start you can look at other synonyms for community but I think it's that feeling of you're taking something from us which is what these people have felt from the very first day they graced this planet you know um yeah so I think with those with those

conversations they really do exhaust me but for me once it's out there and that writing that I did has really gone gone far a lot of people have seen it and that's that's all that has to happen it's amazing and that's the only unfortunate thing with people like you who write incredible things is that people as you say then want you to do their emotional labor I'll get it sometimes and they'll go where have you found this information can you send me a link can you send me men going can you explain to me why and I'm thinking no obviously not Google is at your disposal go to a library like how is it so difficult I don't know where people get this dependency from they have a real lack of like ability to just go out on their own and just find out information I was getting men when I did

this not all men post going first of all explain to me why they were um not the men in which makes them the men in my caption and then going and now can you tell me why like can you basically validate me and I'm thinking no babe I've got thousands of men in my dms you are not some special flower that I'm suddenly going to be like you David you're a good egg do you know what I mean it's so funny and I think the minute you put out something that's remotely kind of like emotive or you put quite a lot and it caption doesn't look long but if you put emotional labor into it which I do sometimes sometimes i definitely know you do when you've researched it you've been so careful about how you worded it you've caveated to the nth degree so that you don't offend anyone and you're like oh my god well done i've fit that

into how many characters you're like put it out into the world and immediately you just get but why and you're like oh my god i've done my work here referred to paragraph two i've mentioned it yeah so you brought up quickly the cherry revolution we'll touch on it because we've been talking forever I feel um can you explain what that is yes so um when I got sober at 24 um my relationship came to an end my relationship of three years and another big reason why that came to an end is because I realized that I was never actually attracted to him and that most of the sex that we had had in that relationship, I had been drinking or needed some kind of drink. I wasn't kind of blind drunk the entire time, but maybe we'd have a glass of wine and then it would lead to sex. Um, so when

I stopped drinking, we just, I, I just couldn't be intimate anymore because that sexual shame also started flooding in. And then I started reading, exploring Tantra. I started reading into sexual shame and that relationship ended. For many other reasons, it just ended up ending. But I then had what I call a sexual awakening which made me realize that I had to reconnect with my sex energy and not the sex energy kind of like penetration just me as a feminine divine being I had to reconnect with that and then I found tantra tantric sex which for anyone that doesn't know tantric sex is kind of going against conventional sex it's sex that doesn't aim for an orgasm it's about the process of it it's about the slowness it's about actually

waking up the feminine energy and really immersing yourself in the experience not the goal which is what conventional sex is and so because I love to read I bought so many books listened to so many talks just started going on a journey by myself to kind of reconnect with that part of me that I thought was lost and I thought could only be ignited by drinking or taking drugs. And then I would take all these little nuggets of knowledge to my girlfriends and we would just have massive conversations about it. And one day, it was on November the 19th, 2017 2017 we were having lunch in King's Cross and then I was like you know what instead of just having these conversations here why don't we do something that

kind of takes it out so the conversation doesn't just stay in a restaurant so we can take it further and then the chair revolution was born and I thought initially that it was going to be just t-shirts because we decided slogan t-shirts would be the best way to start. And I came up with a statement, which is now the house mantra, death to faking it. It was about faking orgasms, not doing that anymore, because that was a big thing that I used to do as well. Oh, for sure. Big thing. Yeah. Big thing.

I think all my girlfriends did. Yeah. Big thing. I think all my girlfriends did. Yeah. I had never actually experienced an orgasm with a partner until early 2018. I still have friends who can't. Yeah. With guys. Yeah. Do you know what I was going to say? Because it's really interesting.

You also taught that sex, I mean, I haven't heard anything Tamjik. Yeah. We'll go home now and buy some books. Please do. But it's all about like the physical. Whereas I've learned recently, it's all in your head it's not about what i thought sex was which is like the pornified waxed and shiny and muscly and whatever else performance yeah it's not that it's so psychological and it's so like it should be really immersive and really emotional and i think the

funny thing about sex is we shame it so much but we're shaming a version of sex that isn't really real anyway this whole slut shaming and this weird porn if i think isn't what sex should be we should be celebrating the beauty of like real human connection so it's funny because they're almost two opposing ideas anyway but you're not taught about the other parts of it no because that's teaching pleasure and you know so yeah tell me about this so what you're doing now so t-shirts now so that's kind of how it started so death to faking it was about not faking orgasms just really connecting to your sexual power and I remember thinking that it was just going to be t-shirts I knew in the back of my mind that it was much much bigger than that but I just didn't know what it was um so from just sharing my story and just talking about my sexual journey it was amazing to see how many people felt exactly the same way

you know because no one talks about sex to that degree um especially as a black woman you know I think that's another layer that's added to it because of the kind of shaming in our community even though we're the most sexualized we're also the most repressed oh yeah sexually repressed um so the mission now a year later it's really evolved it's about making space for people to feel shameless about their pleasure to really explore their body without judgment and as something that started as just for women you know it's evolved to it's evolved to a level that I can't even explain it's for everyone and my goal is to just let people be in touch with their bodies to not feel ashamed when you talk about sex to not feel like penetration is the be-all end-all of sex there are

so many ways to experience sexual pleasure and yeah that's just my goal to elevate that I think it's such a important thing to be talking about because we talk about health and we talk about mental health and everyone's so happy to talk about how they go to the gym and they train their bodies and now we're talking about how we train our minds but you have another part of you I think yes I think there's so many parts like your physical your mental your sexual being is another part of you and then you've got like a spiritual soul or whatever you think that is like your personality and same thing but just different names yeah but your sexual being is something that we don't train and we don't awaken and we don't we just expect it to be

yeah set ready go at 16 like that doesn't make sense nothing else it doesn't we don't have any but and that is a cultural thing um and it's definitely like there's certain friends of mine i remember being so jealous they'd always just spoken about sex. Yeah. And you could see they have such a healthy relationship with them. 100%. And it's so important, like, when I have children, I stress about this now because I think, oh, my God, I'm going to talk to my kids about sex and have kids, and then they're just going to think of me if they have sex

because I've spoken about it to them so many times. They'll just see, like, my head pop up. It's the most, honestly, it's the most normal thing. It's not an accident that there's eight billion of us sitting on this planet you know so we're not allowed to talk about how that came about and I think it's really harmful when it comes to things like sex and money there is so much shame and hush but they are if not the most important things to navigate this world to some degree so yeah for me it's about changing that because it also, you know, ultimately the goal is to end sexual violence. And I think

sexual violence takes form in so many ways. Sexual violence more commonly happens in long time relationships because when you're with someone for a long time, you feel like you owe them your body. You feel like, you know, rolling over and your boyfriend your boyfriend saying oh but we haven't had sex for such a long time so you roll over and you you say something to the degree of just get it over and done with or you don't want to have the sex but you feel the pressure coercion is a very very big thing you know and that is sexual violence and um because people have this idea that complete rape is the only form of sexual violence. But there's so many.

It's in the language. It's in what we say. It's in what we expect people to do with their bodies. But having the awareness from a very young age about how your body works, about how to say no. You know, if that uncle is always like, come on, sit on my lap. Your little girl or boy should know that you don't have to sit on anyone's lap and that is that comes under sex positivity yeah you know that kids don't have to eat beyond full because you're teaching them about owning their own bodies not being forced to eat and to there we go and you know so when people hear um when I kind of talk about having a sex

positive company and talking about sexual empowerment, sexual wellness, people think it's all about penetration, but it's not. That's a part of it, but it's much bigger. People see the erotic side of sex all the time rather than the titillating secret, which is all for the male gaze as well, which is why it's so redundant even shaming women for that because it's not how it works. And also what you were saying, I mean, rape in marriage only became illegal very recently and I think that's completely a thing I think that we if we were more well there's that whole thing as well even for the environment if we educate women about sex and we educate them and teach them it will be so much better because they'll know about contraception they won't be having as much sex it's like the best thing you can do for the planet is to educate young women and girls around the world about all of these issues yeah and to be teaching

and to be talking to boys as well in terms of kind of because I think boys are the ones that kind of reach for porn the quickest because they're told that to be a man you have to yes you have to you know do all of these things so there's just a lack of awareness and no one's talking about it and it's it's making room for even more sexual violence ultimately so I could do a whole podcast on porn because I just have so many conflicting ideas about what I think about it and yeah but I absolutely love talking to you I think I could literally have been here all night I think we could um but I absolutely love. I feel like I've learned so much. Thank you so much.

Thank you. And thank you for sharing your time with me. Thank you for having me. If people want to find you, follow you, learn from you, where do they find you? So I have three spaces that you can find me. If you want to know about sex positivity and kind of sexual exploration, you can find me on Instagram at Cherry Revolution. And if you want to find me on my personal page where I talk more about holistic self-development and sober living, it's just my name, Africa Brooke.

And lastly, on Instagram as well, if you just want to know about workshops happening, and I also do one-on-one accountability for self-development, it's Discovery Dive, which is the name of my holistic self-development it's Discovery Dive which is the name of my holistic self-development company but on Africa Brook you'll be able to find me anywhere and I'm more than happy to just kind of speak to anyone about it because I know how lonely you can feel when you either want to get sober or you're holding sexual shame we live in a world that tells you

you have to be fine all the time and I don't believe that and so I'm always willing to just kind of answer anything amazing and I do recommend following you because it's really changed my view on so much stuff since I have so thanks so much for listening guys and I will see you next week bye We'll be right back. seventh best feeling saying I do. Who wants this last parachute? I do. Enjoy the number one feeling. Winning in an exciting live dealer studio exclusively on FanDuel Casino where winning is undefeated. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem?

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