Sexual Healing: Qualitative Methods as a Radical Pleasure Intervention Against Anti-Black Sexology

More recently, Black sexologists have advanced conceptual frameworks developed by humanities scholars using empirical research to address understudied areas such as sexual pleasure, intimacy, orgasm, and desire. Frameworks such as #HotGirlScience (Hargons & Thorpe, 2022) invite qualitative methodologists to investigate these constructs with more authenticity, pleasure, joy, sex-positive discourses, and a commitment to citing Black women; this is a radical pleasure disruption to scholastic anti-Blackness. In addition to the epistemologically liberating undertaking, there may also be opportunities to facilitate sexual healing-the movement toward an optimal sexual self-through the qualitative research process. Lee et al. (2023) noted healing research methodologies include six petals: maintains social justice ethics, adopts liberation methodologies, implements healing methods, embraces interdisciplinary approaches, catalyzes action, and promotes community accessibility. This qualitative (i.e., collaborative autoethnography and thematic analysis) study used the healing methods framework to examine how researchers and participants in the Big Sex Study articulated the healing and liberatory benefits of engaging in the qualitative phases of a #HotGirlScience, community-based participatory action research project. Results of this study showed that Black participants and research team members felt liberated, heard, valued, reassured, and experienced heightened curiosity and shifts in their sexual perspectives. Throughout the interviews, participants reported four of five petals in the healing methodologies framework, with Petal 3 being the most frequently reported. Implications for the use of healing methodologies in Black sexology are discussed.