In a chapter of her book Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest, Anne McClintock argues that race, gender, and sexuality cannot be understood as isolated categories. Racial concepts are often articulated in gendered or sexualized terms. This explains the sexual exploitation of Black women over the course of history and till this day.
McClintock speaks about how European colonizers turned countries they would take over into “porno-tropics” onto which they could freely project their violent and dominating sexual fantasies. They popularized the notion that African people, especially African women, were inherently overly sexual. She cites well-established beliefs from 19th century Europe that declared Africans to be “hot and addicted to all kinds of lusts,” and “so promiscuous as to border on the bestial.” This over-sexualization of black women created a one-dimensional character archetype, namely the Jezebel Stereotype, that men molded all black women with. This stereotype then migrated to the Americas and was used as a justification for white men having sexual relations with- read: abusing their power and raping- the black women they had enslaved, claimed that these women freely desired sexual relations with white men; therefore, white men did not have to rape black women.
Although slavery and colonization supposedly came to an end in the 20th century, the harm had already been done. The Jezebel image that defamed African women Orientalized them in two ways: as the pathetic others or the exotic others. The Pathetic Others depiction portrayed African women as unattractive, unintelligent, and uncivilized, but still very much a sexual being, thus aiding the image that they were not desirable to white men and instead they were the ones who desired the white men. The Jezebel image also sexually objectified female black children by drawing them with exaggerated sexualized body parts and almost always nude or scantily dressed despite their age and even showing them pregnant. These depictions were heavily present in household objects such as ashtrays, postcards, fishing lures, drinking glasses, and nutcrackers and later in mainstream Hollywood. To this day, the obligatory “black whore” is added to “urban” movies, to apparently make the movie more realistic or to legitimize the street credentials of the male lead.
All this historical context is not just that; it has real life- deadly if I might add- consequences for black women till this day. Research conducted by Georgetown Law on the erasure of black girls’ childhoods found that adults view black girls as less innocent and more adult-like than their peers. The Jezebel presumption has left black women hyper-vulnerable to abuse and less likely to be believed and supported by legal systems if they come forward with their stories. When perpetrators do get charged, however, it is found that men found guilty of raping black women received shorter sentences than men who were found guilty of raping white women. In light of all these injustices, according to the Washington Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs, for every 15 black women who are raped, only one reports her assault, due to the fear of being gaslighted by authorities and dismissed by the law.
Sources:
http://www.wcsap.org/african-american-community
I loved this blog post! it was so eye-opening. I completely agree with Sarah, I have also seen how black women are not considered ‘feminine enough’ simply because they do not fit in the beauty standards, made by society, for women
Such an insightful take on the topic. I feel like the hypersexualization of black women is not talked about enough. Also, I have read up a little bit about the masculinization of black women where their femininity is invalidated in juxtaposition with that of white women. I wonder how these two phenomena interact with each other from an identity politics perspective.