Author: Yenesis Ortega

Presentation

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1NVxmKf8p42Ua8pBXRqbTfgE0av5fuUt2KxGHMjTOH-s/edit?usp=sharing

My topic discussed the sexual objectification of Black women from the beginnings of slavery until now. This topic is very important to me because Black women’s sexual objectification contributes to the continuation of their subjugation and dehumanization. I needed to include Sarah Baartman who during the 19th century was paraded around like a circus act because of her body. I also included the Jezebel stereotype which originated during the 19th century and continues on today with different terms. And lastly, I wanted to end on a more positive note by stating how things have changed for Black women and how they are taking ownership of their sexuality.

The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House

I completely agree with Audre Lorde’s essay, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.” Unfortunately, mainstream feminism mirrors the patriarchy in a lot of ways but with White women at the top instead of White men. It gives White women the opportunity to sit at the table with the men and continue to exploit the little people as usual. In no way does it address how race, class, sexual orientation, disabilities, and many more intersect and the ways women are treated as a result of these differences. Switching from patriarchy to matriarchy does nothing to break down the real barriers specifically targeting women of color in their everyday lives. It’s been almost three decades since the publishing of The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House and women are still dealing with the same issues of inequality. As it stands right now, Audre Lorde’s essay is timeless and could have very well been written today.

Research Summary


Black people being perceived as sexually deviant predates slavery in America. Europeans’ ethnocentric eyes couldn’t believe what they were seeing when they first came across the underclothed Africans. Historically, Black women’s bodies have been sexualized and priced for what they were able to provide for others. During slavery, their sexualization provided slave children and sexual gratification to the slave owners. The forceful extraction of free labor from their physical bodies provided monetary gains for the slave owners. 

In the early 19th century Sarah Baartman, also known as “Hottentot Venus” was a prime example of the exploitation and dehumanization at work during this time. She was taken from her home in South Africa and paraded around London and Paris for the amazement, bewilderment or disgust of those that laid eyes on her body. Due to her skin hue and body shape, Sarah Baartman and female slaves in general were regarded as animalistic in nature, like a sub-human species. Slavery also gave birth to the insatiable lust of the Jezebel, White men would use this stereotype to justify sexual relations with female slaves. 

The exploitation of the Black female body is allowed in society so long as it is for the benefit of someone else. Fast forward to the 20th and 21st century, and the Jezebel stereotype endures. Black women in movies and music videos often have to parade their figures and play various forms of the seductress in order to garner any attention. In movies, they are either the jezebel or the mammy, Black women in cinema are rarely allowed to develop their acting abilities outside of these two roles unlike their white counterparts. In the music industry, the video vixen is typically directed by a man that displays her body for the world to see as she gyrates for another man. While the stereotype still remains, now more than ever before, Black women are owning their sexuality. Instead of letting others control when and where they display their sexuality, Black women in the music industry are beginning to embrace their sexuality on their own terms and in ways they are comfortable with.

This Bridge Called My Back

The poem “And when you leave, take your pictures with you” by Jo Carillo stood out to me the most. I think it demonstrates perfectly how many White people tolerate and give Black, Asian, and Latino people a pass as long as we provide services for them. They think we’re happy living a life of servitude, they like us as long as we’re complacent with our current place in society. It’s evident that once we begin to stand up for ourselves they no longer like us as much as they thought they did. The collection’s other essays relate because they all offer different variations of dehumanization at the hands of others. The lines “Our white sisters, radical friends, should think again. No one smiles, at the beginning of a day spent, digging for souvenir chunks of uranium, of cleaning up after, our white sisters, radical friends.” Although it refers to White women, it sums up how many white people as a whole genuinely think we’re happy being their subordinates, they really think we’re content with being second-class citizens. The next line goes, “And when our white sisters, radical friends see us, in the flesh, not as a picture they own. They are not quite as sure, If they like us as much.We’re not as happy as well look, on their wall” perfectly exhibiting how in order to receive decent treatment we have to constantly put on a face of happiness, we can’t ever show we’re upset because then we become everything they fear we are.

Annotated Bibliography

  • Story, K. (2010). 1: Racing Sex—Sexing Race: The Invention of the Black Feminine Body. In 1291953595 951871114 C. E. Henderson (Ed.), Imagining the black female body: Reconciling image in print and visual culture (pp. 23-43). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Chapter 1: Racing Sex—Sexing Race: The Invention of the Black Feminine Body, discusses the importance placed on physical bodies in the western world. Throughout history, there have been repercussions that came with being embodied differently than the “norm” which in this case would be the European white male body. White European men considered themselves to be the ultimate form, Black bodies-because of their physicality, were the complete opposite. Throughout history, They have been probed and dissected in ways only animals were previously subjected to. 

  • Gilman, S. (2010). 1: The Hottentot and the Prostitute: Toward an Iconography of Female Sexuality. In 1291930614 951856694 D. Willis (Ed.), Black Venus 2010: They called her “Hottentot” (pp. 15-31). Philadelphia, PA: Temple Univ. Press.
  • Magubane, Z. (2010). 3: Which Bodies Matter? Feminism, Post-Structuralism, Race, and the Curious Theoretical Odyssey of the “Hottentot Venus”. In 1291911591 951844584 D. Willis (Ed.), Black Venus 2010: They called her “Hottentot” (pp. 47-61). Philadelphia, PA: Temple Univ. Press.
  • Mitchell, R. (2010). 2: Another Means of Understanding the Gaze: Sarah Bartmann in the Development of Nineteenth-Century French National Identity. In 1291930614 951856694 D. Willis (Ed.), Black Venus 2010: They called her “Hottentot” (pp. 32-46). Philadelphia, PA: Temple Univ. Press.

Black Venus 2010: They called her “Hottentot” is a book authored and edited by Deborah Willis. The book focuses on one of the most prominent accounts of Black female exploitation in western culture with Sarah Baartman. The chapters I selected do an amazing job of detailing the dehumanization of Black girls like Sarah Baartman by Europeans in the 19th century. The chapters discuss how Black bodies-both male and female have been “othered” and commodified while being simultaneously demeaned. 

David Pilgrim is the founder and Director of The Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia in Big Rapids, Michigan. It features anti-black caricatures and segregationist memorabilia. In his essay, Pilgrim discusses “The Jezebel Stereotype” in the 20th and 21th century. The essay discusses the various ways Black women have been and are still portrayed as sexually deviant. While white women are consistently portrayed as models of self-respect, control, and modesty, and even when they deviate from that, they are often allowed to reclaim those labels once again. Black women on the other hand are depicted as the Jezebel, and not much else. 

  • Feminisms, B. (2021b, March 9). What the WAP: Part 2 – The Sexualization of Black Girls and Women. Retrieved from https://blackfeminisms.com/wap-part-two/

Blackfeminisms.com is a website run by Black women for Black women. It’s essentially a cluster of blogs that acts as a gateway to the lives of black women through their own eyes. Being that my project focuses on Black female sexualization throughout western history until now, What the WAP parts one through three provides useful information because it offers first hand experience by Black women. It is a series in which two Black feminist scholars, Dr. Jennifer Turner and Dr. Melissa Brown, share their perspective on contemporary Black sexual politics. They discuss how church, family, and popular culture play a part in the sovereignty over Black female bodies, and how these structures dictate controlling images of Black women.

Black Feminism and Intersectionality

Sources: 

  1. Kimberlé Crenshaw TED talk:  https://www.ted.com/talks/kimberle_crenshaw_the_urgency_of_intersectionality
  2. Audre Lorde Poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42587/who-said-it-was-simple

I think that Kimberlé Crenshaw’s TED talk and Audre Lorde’s poem related to one another in how they scrutinized mainstream feminism without explicitly stating so. In her TED talk, Crenshaw asks the crowd to stand up and listen out for names they had heard before and when they listen to one they’d never heard, to sit. Halfway through calling out the names of Black men that have been killed by police, Crenshaw begins to state the names of Black women that have also been killed by police and it becomes painfully obvious that the mainly White crowd had no idea who those women were. The crowd at the TED talk was made up of mostly White women and it just highlighted the hypocrisy of mainstream feminism even more. The fact that only about four people in the crowd knew of some of the Black women that have been murdered by police was heartbreaking to watch. It was especially disheartening because there have been black girls as young as seven years old and elderly women killed by police. Children and the elderly are two totally defenseless groups who’s killings should cause uproar in any community, but there was no such reaction. 

Furthermore, Audre Lorde’s poem “Who Said It Was Simple” has a line that perfectly exemplifies mainstream feminism, “the women rally before they march, discussing the problematic girls, they hire to make them free.” In this line Lorde points out how the white women get ready to march for their rights while simultaneously talking down on “problematic girls” which are the women of color they hire to do the work they consider to be beneath them. This shows how mainstream feminism is not inclusive of all women and is mostly there for self serving purposes. The poem goes on to say, “An almost white counterman passes, a waiting brother to serve them first, and the ladies neither notice nor reject, the slighter pleasures of their slavery.” With these lines the poem shines a light on how the white women that are waiting to be served are either truly unaware or choose to ignore that fact that someone else, presumably a black man, was waiting to be served before them. Either way it screams privilege. The privilege to not have to be aware of your surroundings and how your actions affect others because you have always come first. The poem follows with, “But I who am bound by my mirror, as well as my bed, see causes in colour, as well as sex.” Lorde who in this poem is the observer, is very aware of all the limitations she faces as a Black queer woman. Mainstream feminism has no place for her as there are too many factors that play into her womanhood outside of just being a woman. Mainstream feminism is mostly appealing for white middle to upper class women that want to be able to decide whether to be stay at home moms on their own accord. Whereas Black feminism takes into account intersectionality and the ways race, gender, class, sexual orientation and other social aspects influence individual women’s lives and how they are perceived and treated by society.

Bibliography

  • Feminisms, B. (2021b, March 9). What the WAP: Part 2 – The Sexualization of Black Girls and Women. Retrieved from https://blackfeminisms.com/wap-part-two/

Blackfeminisms.com is a website run by Black women for Black women. It’s essentially a cluster of blogs that acts as a gateway to the lives of black women through their own eyes. It is run by Dr. Melissa Brown, who was a PhD in sociology and she currently works as a postdoctoral fellow at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University.

  • Gilman, S. (2010). 1: The Hottentot and the Prostitute: Toward an Iconography of Female Sexuality. In 1291930614 951856694 D. Willis (Ed.), Black Venus 2010: They called her “Hottentot” (pp. 15-31). Philadelphia, PA: Temple Univ. Press.
  • Magubane, Z. (2010). 3: Which Bodies Matter? Feminism, Post-Structuralism, Race, and the Curious Theoretical Odyssey of the “Hottentot Venus”. In 1291911591 951844584 D. Willis (Ed.), Black Venus 2010: They called her “Hottentot” (pp. 47-61). Philadelphia, PA: Temple Univ. Press.
  • Mitchell, R. (2010). 2: Another Means of Understanding the Gaze: Sarah Bartmann in the Development of Nineteenth-Century French National Identity. In 1291930614 951856694 D. Willis (Ed.), Black Venus 2010: They called her “Hottentot” (pp. 32-46). Philadelphia, PA: Temple Univ. Press.

Deborah Willis is the author and editor of Black Venus 2010: They called her “Hottentot.” Deborah Willis is a University Professor and chair of the Photography and Imaging Department in the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. Willis is a photographer and curator of African American culture. Her works include Obama: The Historic Campaign in Photographs, The Black Female Body: A Photographic History with Carla Williams; and Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present.

David Pilgrim is the founder and Director of The Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia in Big Rapids, Michigan. He was a former sociology professor at Ferris State, and is also its vice president for diversity and inclusion. The museum has the largest public collection of artifacts spanning the segregation era, until the civil rights movement, and beyond. It features anti-black caricatures and segregationist memorabilia. In an essay, Pilgrim discusses “The Jezebel Stereotype” in the 20th and 21th century. 

  • Story, K. (2010). 1: Racing Sex—Sexing Race: The Invention of the Black Feminine Body. In 1291953595 951871114 C. E. Henderson (Ed.), Imagining the black female body: Reconciling image in print and visual culture (pp. 23-43). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Carol E. Henderson is the author and editor of 4 books, including Imagining the black female body: Reconciling image in print and visual culture. She joined Emory University in 2019 as vice provost for diversity and inclusion, chief diversity officer, and adviser to the president. Prior to joining Emory, she was Associate Director of Black American Studies and Associate Professor of English and Black American Studies at the University of Delaware.

Independent Project Work Plan

For my independent project I want to analyze and take a deep dive into the history of the sexualization of Black women and girls and the dehuminization that results from being hypersexualuzed for so long. Throughout history, Black women’s bodies have been sexualized and exploited for men’s sexual gratification or monetary gains, and this is still going on in the 21st century. I want to examine and shine a light on the responses Black women receive when they are sexualized by and for men and the contrast in reactions and treatments when Black women choose to take their sexualization into their own hands and not let it be controlled by men and media such as music, television, and social media. 

My project is related to History, race, gender, and sexuality, as those are all facets of Black women that are constantly trying to be controlled by others. I will be focusing on the history of it, as well as the current ways Black women and girls are hypersexualized today. In order to present a well informed project, I need to look into the sexualization of Black women during slavery (one example would be Sarah Baartman), the Black jezebel of the jim crow era, and the various ways Black women and girls are sexaulized today. I would like to end my project on a more positive note and discuss the ways in which Black women and girls are taking ownership of their own sexuality regardless of how little things have changed throughout time.

Doja Cat

Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini better known for her stage name “Doja Cat” is a singer and rapper out of California. She is biracial, with a South African father and White Jewish mother. Due to her light complexion and racial ambiguity, Doja Cat is granted privileges brown/dark skin female rappers are not. She can flaunt her sexuality without always being sexualized by the public. She can distance herself from her songs because people know her racy lyrics are not all she has to offer. Her complexion grants her that duality that is so often denied to brown/dark skin female rappers. While at the same time, because she is biracial-she may not fully be able to connect with Black women’s struggles or White womens privileges. Doja cat has a light complexion so she reaps the benefits associated with it, yet she is not light enough to pass as a white woman-so some privileges granted to white women are denied to her. Doja Cat is a woman in a mans world, Rap/Hip-Hop has been a male dominated genre but that began to change in 2018 with the likes of Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion and Doja Cat herself. Although she has gained a lot of popularity, she still has to find a way to differentiate herself from the other female rappers in a genre that likes to sort women into categories and not allow them to expand their artistry.

Our Identity

Identity is something that is chosen for us from when we are in the womb. From the moment we are conceived, society puts us into a labeled box telling us exactly who we are. My parents were the ones that chose my identity as a girl and since then they tailored their way of nurturing to fit the “girl” mold. Society assists in making sure we know our roles by constantly affirming gender roles in the media and public policy. I think that rich white male politicians are typically the ones that get to set the norms for the rest of society to follow. Whether we like it or not, norms tend to be set by those powerful enough to turn them into policy. Being that men are the most powerful in terms of money and influence, they feel the most equipped to manage womens bodies and behaviors. Femininity and everything it entails is often micromanaged by society and women’s bodies are under constant scrutiny by the patriarchy. It is not until we get much older and begin to educate ourselves that we begin to unlearn society’s teachings on gender and create our own identity free from misconceptions.