The Weaponization of Femininity to Black Womanhood
Within our society, femininity is conceptualized from an Eurocentric and androcentric vantage point. While white and black women experience some same feminine expectations, black women have a distinct racial and gender socialized experience. Both “positive” and “negative” feminine norms are weaponized and assist with the dehumanization of black womanhood. Traits such as sexuality, submissiveness and emotional sensitivity in addition to race specific traits like independence, strength and perseverance developed into two major caricatures of black women; the “jezebel” and the “superwoman”. These caricatures are used as tools to show that white women gain within the constraints of hegemonic femininity, while black women are not recognized and subsequently demonized.
The Jezebel trope portrays black women as seductive and oversexualized. This stereotype was used during slavery to justify the (forced) sexual relations between black women and white men and till now continually excuses the sexual exploitation of black women. It pushes the idea that “a virtuous woman either cannot get raped or does not get into situations that leave her open to assault.” (Miller,14). And with black women being “non virtuous”, unwarrantedsexualizations of their bodies are something they bring to themselves.
This trope has taken new names in modern media, often depicting black women as “the hoe” “the stripper” ‘the babymama” which all have the underlying similarities of sex and submissiveness. Black women are seen as sexually willing characters whose bodies are just notas protected as white female bodies. The over-sexualization of black femme bodies strips them of innocence and are made to seem as just “things”. “No other group in America has so had their identity socialized out of existence as have black women.. (Hooks, 7) and with the narrow lens this stereotype offers, black women are often forced to play a role in respectability politics or victim blaming.
This dehumanization and commodification of black women that assigns them with such negative traits of disgrace, attributes the idealized aspects of “true womanhood” to white women. White women were and still are seen as clean, passionless and domestic, which allows them the privilege of being worthy of respect. While this is not to say white women aren’t also victims of sexualization. “We live in a culture where to an extent, White women—especially white middle- class women—are able to define, ‘‘play with,’’ and explore their sexuality in ways women of color are not (e.g., the ‘‘Slutwalk’’ movement) and Black women are defined by their sexuality and as their sexuality.” (Bernard,13)
As a result of this, Black women who report sexual assault or violence are less likely to be believed than their white woman counterparts, and the perpetuators of rape and abuse of black women receive shorter sentences than that of white women.
Black women’s femininity is inextricably tied with slavery, They were subjected to doing more masculine work in the fields with enslaved men as well as maintaining feminine roles in the home such as such as cooking, cleaning, and giving birth. This system viewed black women as genderless since they were merely chattels who happened to be able to reproduce. And when the idea of “woman” became synonymous with mothering, housewife and other aspects ofinferiority black women did not fit into these androcentric ideals. This dehumanization whereblack womanhood doesn’t fit into ideal definitions of femininity has been passed down through generations; “It was those women who passed on to their nominally free female descendants a legacy of hard work, perseverance and self-reliance, a legacy of tenacity, resistance and insistence on sexual equality - in short, a legacy spelling out standards for a new womanhood.’’ (Davis, 38) This new standard of womanhood, specifically black womanhood, sparks the stereotypes of the strong black woman, which has since then restricted black women as invulnerable and as some sort of “superwoman”. These stereotypes refuse to see black women as human and unworthy or above the need for society’s respect or attention. Modern media then perpetuates these ideals and portrays black women as adversarial, confrontational and unattractive. These inaccurate descriptions force black women to be emotionally contained and competent without giving them the space to explore their femininity.
These stereotypes also reinforce the idea that white femininity is the norm and the standard for which to operate. In this case white women gain from the independent black women trope as they’re always seen as feminine, no matter how far out they go to explore androgyny or masculinity. White femininity also pushes an ideal of purity that black woman tend to strive for as a way to assimilate into a white society.
Many of the instruments used to determine or conceptualize the idea of femininity cannot be used to define it within black woman hood. These tools rather are used by black women and the rest of society to measure how they conform through a white patriarchal lens rather than how they simply exist. To establish a proper structure of what black femininity is without dehumanizing black women in the process, it is important to determine what the norms are by black women, these would include some aspects of white femininity and more.
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Works Cited
Susan Brown Miller, Against our Will: Men, Women and Rape,London: Penguin Books, 1975.
Hooks, Bell. Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism. Pluto Press, 1982.
Tillman, Shaquita, et al. “Shattering Silence: Exploring Barriers to Disclosure for African American Sexual Assault Survivors.” Trauma, Violence & Abuse, vol. 11, no. 2, 2010, pp. 59– 70. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26638071. Accessed 22 Sept. 2020.
Davis, Angela. Women, Race and Class. Penguin, 2019.
Benard, Akeia A. F. “Colonizing Black Female Bodies Within Patriarchal Capitalism: Feminist and Human Rights Perspectives - Akeia A. F. Benard, 2016.”SAGE Journals, journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2374623816680622.