Sex and its relationship to a meaningful spiritual life is a topic largely ignored, greatly disparaged by organized religion, and largely misrepresented in the media and society. Nonetheless, this disconnection is a burning issue that exists just below the surface of our consciousness, confronting us all, whether religious, spiritual, or unbeliever.

We live in a society where we are bombarded by sex and, unfortunately, religion has failed to put sexuality in any useful context (outside of marriage and procreation), while our communities and societies are ravaged by AIDS, unwanted pregnancies and widespread sexual abuse and dysfunction. The media has taken the sexual disconnect created by religion and has made it a psychologically loaded abstraction and absurdity. Sexuality has been reduced to body parts and sexual acts.

The tragedy of this is that many apply these media induced frames of reference to their lives and relationships which has resulted in the sexual pathology that surrounds us. We are living in the eye of a storm! Can we talk about it? As quiet as it's kept, sex fails to drive relationships, it is the meaning that we bring to the sex and sexuality that does not affirm and honor our highest selves that currently dominate our relationships.

NAVIGATE THE RELATIONSHIP LANDSCAPE!

Check out The FLOW in Point of View. A monthly relationship column on the QBR website (WWW.QBR.COM), a new and timeless approach to looking at love and relationships. QBR is the creators and organizers of the Harlem Book Fair, now in its tenth year. As in our live events, the intent is to provide a different conversation regarding love and relationships. We will provide the GPS, not hype, to navigate through today's perplexing relationship terrain. Please join The FLOW in Point of View

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How much of a woman’s relationship choices are influenced by their fathers? How do father’s impact daughter’s definitions of womanhood, self esteem and intimacy. How many women are trying to make up for the neglect, absence, or abuse of their fathers in their romantic relationships risking their own authenticity and relationship success?

The FLOW has asked these questions at the 2008 Harlem Book Fair with the panel discussion Sins of the Father: How Fathers Impact Daughters Relationships and by popular demand, we repeated this panel at A Good Book bookstore in Baltimore, Maryland in January of 2009. Ray Williams, producer and filmmaker of the documentary film Where Was Daddy was a panelist at both these events.

In Where Was Daddy, Ray explores this generally unrecognized, but significant, universal issue in the lives of women. On his website, www.wherewasdaddy.com Ray notes,

Volumes have been written about the intergenerational degradation of the black father/son relationship and how it has affected the black family structure in America. But it is the relationship a daughter has with her father that cements her perceptions of men and provides the template for which she will use to attract a partner.

Through compelling personal stories, Where Was Daddy paints a picture of women grappling with the issues of self-esteem, acceptance, intimacy, and even the possibility of ever attaining a meaningful relationship, based upon their relationship with their fathers. One woman, poignantly states that “… if my father left me that means that any man can leave me…” “…why am I even worth a man loving me for me, if my father, the man who is supposed to love, left me…”

In the book, When the Past is Present, author David Richo says “…How sad it is that what shaped us became a burden and a secret too.” Ray Williams states that the testimonies of the women in his film become inquiry. The inquiry Intertwined in the stories of these women is how men are the victims of a culture that denies them healthy expressions of love in their relationships with pathological consequences.

Author and social critic Bell Hooks puts it aptly when she says of women, “We learn to love men more because they will not love us. If they dared to love us, in patriarchal culture they would cease to be real men.” Where Was Daddy begins the much needed dialogue that is not so much an indictment of fathers, but a vivid testimony of how their unresolved pain flows through the generations.

Share your comments with The FLOW community or send an email to flow4theworld@comcast.net. For more information regarding Where Was Daddy go to www.wherewasdaddy.com

Does our sexuality define us, proscribe a frame of reference, a role, inform our character, or is it just part of the continuum of being human? Does religion, tradition, upbringing define our sexuality or does it just evolve? Can it be confined within the context of marriage, a committed relationship, or a physical act? Is sexuality sex?

We are sexual beings! Human Sexuality is the way we experience and express ourselves as sexual beings. Our awarness of our gender orienatation (male, female, bi/homo/trans sexual), as is our capacity for erotic experiences and responses are ways of sexual expression. Our sexuality is an essential part of ourselves whether or not we engage in any sexual activity, physical or fantasy.