Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape (11 page)
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Authors: Friedman,Jaclyn Friedman,Jessica Valenti
BOOK: Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape
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6
Queering Black Female Heterosexuality
BY KIMBERLY SPRINGER
HOW CAN BLACK WOMEN say yes to sex when our religious institutions, public policy, home lives, media, musical forms, schools, and parents discuss black women’s sexuality only as a set of negative consequences? When mentioned at all, the words I recall most associated with black female sexuality were edicts against being “too fast.” “Oooh, that girl know she fas’!” my aunty would tut as the neighborhood “bad girl” switched on by. Just looking too long at a boy could provoke the reprimand “Girl, stop being so fas’.” Notably, it was only us girls who were in danger of being labeled “fast.” Women in church, passing through the hairdressers, and riding by in cars with known playas were simply dismissed. They were already gone; “respectable” women uttered “jezebel” in their wake. The culture that’s embedded in these subtle and not-so-subtle passing judgments tries to take away my right to say yes to sex by making me feel like if I do, I’m giving in to centuries of stereotypes of the sexually lascivious black woman.
Public assumptions about black female sexuality mirror the contradiction we deal with daily: hypersexual or asexual. We use silence as a strategy to combat negative talk. Perhaps if we do not speak about black women and sex, the whole issue will go away? After all, for centuries black women tried to escape sexual scrutiny by passing unnoticed through white America as nurturing mammies. It’s the nasty jezebels who give black people a bad name, and it’s Mammy’s duty to keep those fast women in check. The mammy and jezebel caricatures were forged in the complex and perverse race relations of the post-Civil War South. One foundational text for the mammy and jezebel icons is the white supremacist film
Birth of a Nation
(1915). Based on segregationist Thomas Dixon’s novel
The Clansman,
the film portrays the loyal mammy as defender of the white family and home she claims as her own.
Birth of a Nation
(1915). Based on segregationist Thomas Dixon’s novel
The Clansman,
the film portrays the loyal mammy as defender of the white family and home she claims as her own.
At the other end of the sexual spectrum in
Birth of a Nation,
Lydia Brown, a conniving mulatto character, uses her sexuality to bring about the fall of a white man. European explorers and English colonists accused black women of sexual promiscuity and labeled them jezebels. In the Bible’s Old Testament, Jezebel was the wife of Ahab. Her reputation was that of a manipulator, but her name became synonymous with sexual deviousness and promiscuity. During slavery, white slave owners indiscriminately raped black women. White men, their wives, churches, and communities considered black women morally loose. What better way to excuse the abuse of white male power than by claiming sexual weakness when tempted by black devil women?
Birth of a Nation,
Lydia Brown, a conniving mulatto character, uses her sexuality to bring about the fall of a white man. European explorers and English colonists accused black women of sexual promiscuity and labeled them jezebels. In the Bible’s Old Testament, Jezebel was the wife of Ahab. Her reputation was that of a manipulator, but her name became synonymous with sexual deviousness and promiscuity. During slavery, white slave owners indiscriminately raped black women. White men, their wives, churches, and communities considered black women morally loose. What better way to excuse the abuse of white male power than by claiming sexual weakness when tempted by black devil women?
After slavery, though black women were no longer needed to supply offspring for sale, persistent racial and economic segregation required the jezebel image. Perpetuating the myth of black women as hypersexual served to set white women on a pedestal and excuse white men’s rape of black women. If black women were always ready and willing sexual partners, it was impossible to have sex with them against their will. Rutgers University historian Deborah Gray White, in her history of enslaved black women, “
Ar’n’t I a Woman”: Female Slaves in the Plantation South,
observes that from the Civil War to the mid-1960s the Southern legal system failed to convict white men of rape or attempted rape of black women, though instances were widespread.
Ar’n’t I a Woman”: Female Slaves in the Plantation South,
observes that from the Civil War to the mid-1960s the Southern legal system failed to convict white men of rape or attempted rape of black women, though instances were widespread.
Black female sexuality in pop culture has not moved very far from these stereotypes. What better place to see this continued history of the asexual mammy than in the films of Queen Latifah? Whether she’s
Bringin’ Down the House
or having a
Last Holiday,
she’s the queen of teaching white people how to be more human at the expense of her own sexuality, save the improbably chaste and deferred romance with a hottie like LL Cool J.
Bringin’ Down the House
or having a
Last Holiday,
she’s the queen of teaching white people how to be more human at the expense of her own sexuality, save the improbably chaste and deferred romance with a hottie like LL Cool J.
Though Halle Berry received an Academy Award in 2002 for her role as poor, working-class mother Leticia in
Monster’s Ball,
her role in this film merely updates the jezebel. Leticia provides a vivid example of black female sexuality that is needy and bankrupt, as she pulls at her clothing and mewls to her white lover, Hank, “Can you make me feel good?” Leticia cannot satisfy herself economically, emotionally, or sexually, but neither will Hank. The jezebel is insatiable. For mammy and jezebel, black female sexuality is defined in relation to white maleness, and as such serves as a cautionary tale about black women’s sexuality unbound. What we face is a huge, but not insurmountable, obstacle in getting to “yes.”
Monster’s Ball,
her role in this film merely updates the jezebel. Leticia provides a vivid example of black female sexuality that is needy and bankrupt, as she pulls at her clothing and mewls to her white lover, Hank, “Can you make me feel good?” Leticia cannot satisfy herself economically, emotionally, or sexually, but neither will Hank. The jezebel is insatiable. For mammy and jezebel, black female sexuality is defined in relation to white maleness, and as such serves as a cautionary tale about black women’s sexuality unbound. What we face is a huge, but not insurmountable, obstacle in getting to “yes.”
As sociologist Patricia Hill Collins points out in her book
Black Sexual Politics,
the more things change, the more they remain the same. Collins describes the continuous link between the mammy and a contemporary image of the “black lady.” Stereotypes about black women’s sexuality have met with resistance, particularly among middle-class blacks in the nineteenth century who advocated racial uplift and self-determination. Proving that blacks could be good citizens required silence about sexuality and sexual pleasure. Between respectability and silence, black women found little space to determine who they were as sexual beings. Black women might never be “true ladies” capable of withdrawing from the workplace and into the home and motherhood. The realities of racism and sexism in terms of wages and employment meant that black families needed two incomes long before white Americans needed or wanted double paychecks. Still, though most black women had to work, they could endeavor to be respectable and asexual. Respectable black women were professionals, good mothers, dutiful daughters, and loyal wives. Each role depended on their being traditionally married and in a nuclear family. Most certainly, one was not a loose woman.
Black Sexual Politics,
the more things change, the more they remain the same. Collins describes the continuous link between the mammy and a contemporary image of the “black lady.” Stereotypes about black women’s sexuality have met with resistance, particularly among middle-class blacks in the nineteenth century who advocated racial uplift and self-determination. Proving that blacks could be good citizens required silence about sexuality and sexual pleasure. Between respectability and silence, black women found little space to determine who they were as sexual beings. Black women might never be “true ladies” capable of withdrawing from the workplace and into the home and motherhood. The realities of racism and sexism in terms of wages and employment meant that black families needed two incomes long before white Americans needed or wanted double paychecks. Still, though most black women had to work, they could endeavor to be respectable and asexual. Respectable black women were professionals, good mothers, dutiful daughters, and loyal wives. Each role depended on their being traditionally married and in a nuclear family. Most certainly, one was not a loose woman.
Just as nineteenth-century black leaders advocated respectability, modern-day public policies that belittle black women as “welfare queens,” “hoochie mamas,” and “black bitches” work to control and define the parameters of black women’s sexuality. If black women’s sexuality—particularly poor and working-class black women’s sexuality—is routinely described as the root of social ills, then once again black women are left with little room to maneuver if they want respect in America’s classrooms, boardrooms, and religious sanctuaries. Collins claims that the ideal of the “black lady” is what black women have to achieve if they want to avoid undesirable labels like “bitchy,” “promiscuous,” and “overly fertile.”
The nonsexual black lady has become a staple in television and film. She wears judicial robes (Judges Mablean Ephriam and Lynn Toler of
Divorce Court
), litigates with stern looks (district attorney Renee Radick in
Ally McBeal
), is a supermom who seems to rarely go to the office (Claire Huxtable on
The Cosby Show
), delegates homicides (Lieutenant Anita Van Buren in
Law and Order
), and ministers to a predominantly white, middle-class female audience (Oprah Winfrey). It seems contrary to protest an image that is
not
slutty. Surely, television producers responded to demands from civil rights organizations that black women be portrayed in a different light. The black lady would appear to reflect well on black women as proper, middle-class, professional, and even-tempered. She appears as progress in the American workplace, politics, and the entertainment industry. However, the black lady image is retrograde.
Divorce Court
), litigates with stern looks (district attorney Renee Radick in
Ally McBeal
), is a supermom who seems to rarely go to the office (Claire Huxtable on
The Cosby Show
), delegates homicides (Lieutenant Anita Van Buren in
Law and Order
), and ministers to a predominantly white, middle-class female audience (Oprah Winfrey). It seems contrary to protest an image that is
not
slutty. Surely, television producers responded to demands from civil rights organizations that black women be portrayed in a different light. The black lady would appear to reflect well on black women as proper, middle-class, professional, and even-tempered. She appears as progress in the American workplace, politics, and the entertainment industry. However, the black lady image is retrograde.
If a black woman is a lady and not dismissed as a ho, there will inevitably be speculation that she is a closet lesbian. This accusation is particularly the case with very successful black women. The wild gossip about powerful black women always casts suspicion on the nature of their relationships with their close childhood confidantes. Oprah Winfrey, Queen Latifah, Whitney Houston, Condoleezza Rice, Alicia Keys—each of them has had to refute accusations from straights and gays that they are lesbians. Their strategies have ranged from good-naturedly “outing” themselves as unapologetic best friends to making homophobic denials. Both tactics miss the opportunity to assert anything positive about black female sexuality beyond the childish rejoinder “I am strictly dickly.”
Today in black communities, women’s communities, the hip-hop community, and popular culture, the main way of viewing black female sexuality is as victimized or deviant. No one could have anticipated the proliferation of the black woman-as-whore image in a new mass-media age that is increasingly the product of black decision makers. Fans and detractors these days uncritically call women who perform in music videos “hoes,” “ho’s,” or “hoez.” No matter how it’s spelled, the intent is still the same: to malign black women who use their bodies in sexual ways. An equal-opportunity sexist might claim, “Video hoes aren’t only black—there are Asian hoes, white hoes, Latin hoes, all kinds of hoes!” How very exciting and magnanimous—an age of racial equality when little girls of any race can be called hoes.
They wear very little clothing (it might be generous to call a thong “clothing”). The camera shots are either from above, (for the best view of silicone breasts) or zoomed in (for a close-up on butts). And the butts! They jiggle! They quake! They make the beat go
boom
, papi! As Karrine Steffans tells us in
Confessions of a Video Vixen,
these black women are pliable and willing to serve as props in music videos. So respected was Steffans for her willingness to do anything to be in a rap video or a rapper’s limo, she earned and trademarked the nickname Superhead. Jezebel has become a video ho, video honey, or video vixen—depending on your consumer relationship to the women who participate in making music videos.
boom
, papi! As Karrine Steffans tells us in
Confessions of a Video Vixen,
these black women are pliable and willing to serve as props in music videos. So respected was Steffans for her willingness to do anything to be in a rap video or a rapper’s limo, she earned and trademarked the nickname Superhead. Jezebel has become a video ho, video honey, or video vixen—depending on your consumer relationship to the women who participate in making music videos.
There are also female rappers willing to play the jezebel role to get ahead in the game. As Collins and others observe, they have added another stereotype to the mix: the Sapphire. Sapphire is loud and bitchy. She is abusive to black men and authority figures, especially her employer. Embodied in raunchy rappers like Lil’ Kim, Trina, and Foxy Brown, this combination Jezebel/Sapphire is hot and always ready for sex . . . but she just might rip your dick off in the process. Is this empowerment?
Listening to people debate black women’s sexualized participation in rap music videos, but seeing asexual black women only on film and television, what’s a girl to do? Young black girls and teenagers are aspiring to be well-paid pole dancers. Black women, such as Melanie in the CW’s sitcom
The Game,
think that the only way to attract and keep their man is to adopt a position of “stripper chic,” which means clinging comically to a newly installed pole in the living room. Black female heterosexuality seems to move deeper and deeper into unhealthy territory that is less about personal satisfaction and more about
men’s satisfaction.
The Game,
think that the only way to attract and keep their man is to adopt a position of “stripper chic,” which means clinging comically to a newly installed pole in the living room. Black female heterosexuality seems to move deeper and deeper into unhealthy territory that is less about personal satisfaction and more about
men’s satisfaction.
This acquiescence is akin to a nationwide black don’t ask/ don’t tell policy. In her documentary film
Silence: In Search of Black Female Sexuality in America
(2004), director Mya B asks young black women how they learned about sex. They all give a similar, familiar answer:
not
in my parents’ house. Their parents’ silence, of course, does not stop them from thinking about, having, and enjoying sex, but one wonders what they will (or won’t) say to their younger sisters or children about sex. Particularly noticeable about Mya B’s film is that we are never told the names of the women speaking about their sexuality. The only people whose interviews are captioned are medical, religious, and spiritual experts. The young and older women speaking to their own diverse sexual experiences remain unnamed—in the closet, as it were.
Silence: In Search of Black Female Sexuality in America
(2004), director Mya B asks young black women how they learned about sex. They all give a similar, familiar answer:
not
in my parents’ house. Their parents’ silence, of course, does not stop them from thinking about, having, and enjoying sex, but one wonders what they will (or won’t) say to their younger sisters or children about sex. Particularly noticeable about Mya B’s film is that we are never told the names of the women speaking about their sexuality. The only people whose interviews are captioned are medical, religious, and spiritual experts. The young and older women speaking to their own diverse sexual experiences remain unnamed—in the closet, as it were.
There is, of course, an intergenerational aspect to silence around discussions of sexuality that cuts across race and ethnicity. Puritanical views on sexuality are not confined by race. In the case of the black community, however, our silence is further enforced by traumatic intersections of race, sexuality, and often violence. In other words, there are nuances to silence that will take more than merely urging openness in dialogue between mothers and daughters to address. Ending this silence around sexuality needs to be more than telling girls how not to get pregnant or catch STDs. Speaking about black women’s sexuality today should be as much about pleasure as it is about resistance to denigration.
This “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” approach to black women’s sexuality is a
crisis situation.
It might not have Beyoncé ringin’ the alarm, but until black women find a way to talk openly and honestly about our private sexual practices, the terms of black female sexuality will always be determined by everyone but black women. The women in the videos are merely the emissaries delivering a skewed message.
crisis situation.
It might not have Beyoncé ringin’ the alarm, but until black women find a way to talk openly and honestly about our private sexual practices, the terms of black female sexuality will always be determined by everyone but black women. The women in the videos are merely the emissaries delivering a skewed message.
Also of urgent concern is black women’s acceptance of negative representations of our sexuality. Is the disavowal that we are not like the video hoes on our screens any better than silence? Is even accepting the term “video ho” resignation that the insult is here to stay? Postmodern sexuality theorist Michel Foucault wrote about how people will serve as their own surveillance by policing their own thoughts and actions. Our silence about our sexuality becomes the border that we must not cross if we too want to assume the role of the black lady. Racism, sexism, classism, and heterosexism are the sentinels on that border, but there is very little for these guardians to do when we keep ourselves within the designated zone with our own silence or condemnation of other women. There are women, increasingly young women, who believe that if they do not behave in sexually promiscuous ways, they will be exempt from public scorn. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Just as we can all take a bit of pride in Oprah’s achievements, we also are all implicated in the mockery and contempt heaped upon Janet Jackson. Clearly, the strategies we’ve used since the end of slavery have not worked. What have we been doing? Being silent in an effort to resist the normalization of deviant representations of black female sexuality is a failed tactic.
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