Sarah Rubin

Dr. Judd

GWSS 300

2 March 2017

Black Female Sexuality and the Right to Exist

Our bodies do not exist in a vacuum, and as such they are imbued with the values

and constructs of society even before our birth. We are incessantly compared and

contrasted with what society considers to be “normal” bodies, both by others and by

ourselves. For women-identified people especially, there is a dizzying array of tacit rules

surrounding the concepts and manifestations of sexuality. However, some of us are

privileged with greater autonomy in ascribing meaning to our bodies, and by having these

assertions of meaning accepted by society. Women of color, and especially Black women,

occupy a space between contradictory double standards; they are painted as hypersexual

yet sexless, nurturing yet helpless, loud and angry yet passive and voiceless. They are

simultaneously invisible and scrutinized. For Black women, it is their very existence as

sexual beings, rather than any particular mode of being, that is pathologized and

problematized.

In the predominant culture of the United States, Black women are in essence defined

by the ways in which they differ from white women. As Lorrain O’Grady says in Olympia’s

Maid, “[w]hite is what woman is; not-white (and the stereotypes not-white gathers in) is

what she had better not be” (1). Just as Laura’s figure melts into the background of Édouard

Manet’s Olympia, so too are Black women melded forcibly by society into a homogenous

“other” that centers white women in the foreground. Black women are not even granted
autonomy over their physical narrative without a fight. This constant societal assault has

clear psychological consequences. Indeed, “[i]s it possible to assert the coexistence in a

single self of an expressive subject, or an autonomous self, and a constructed object, or a

self constituted and constrained by rhetorical convention and social practice?” (Hayman

and Levit, 166). Toeing this line between the autonomous self and the constraints of

societal framework requires exhaustive emotional labor that most white people cannot

comprehend. Not even Black fashion and hairstyles are exempt, but rather are penalized

when worn by their creators yet celebrated when appropriated by the same white people

who rejected them initially. Every element of a Black woman’s life is placed under the

societal microscope and subjected to harsh judgment. This scrutiny encompasses the ways

in which Black female bodies exist physically, and extends to an examination of how they

use their bodies sexually.

Black women are forced to navigate a treacherous terrain in regards to their

sexuality; in the same breath, society derides Black women as being both too sexual and

not sexual enough. On the one hand, they are “’immoral, insatiable, perverse; the initiators

in all sexual contacts – abusive or otherwise’” (O’Grady, 2). On the other, Black female

sexuality is seen as “disturbing” and unnatural, something that is not to be seen or spoken

of (O’Grady, 2). Such a tightrope is impossible to tread. One might think that the

experiences of heterosexual Black women would be significantly different than those of

Black lesbians; however, their experiences are perhaps not as discrete as those of

heterosexual white women and white lesbians. Historically, heterosexual Black women

have been conflated with lesbians due to their shared location outside “normal”

manifestations of female sexuality. Into the 1920s, “[o]ne of the most consistent medical
characterizations of the anatomy of both African-American women and lesbians was the

myth of an unusually large clitoris” (Somerville, 253). Furthermore, while lesbians are

often regarded as masculine regardless of race/ethnicity, Black women in same-gender

relationships are even more subject to this erasure of their femininity. In order to

conceptualize the existence of Black women in such relationships, in 1913 the psychologist

Margret Otis created “a simple analogy between race and gender in order to understand

their desire: black was to white as masculine was to feminine” (Somerville, 261). The

pervasiveness of this analogy so many years later suggests that Black femininity is seen as

transmutable, a commodity to be lost or gained due to one’s actions. White femininity,

meanwhile, is seen as an inherent quality that remains more or less intact regardless of

same-gender sexual activity. In these ways, Black women are simultaneously seen as

overwhelmingly sexual, hyperfeminine beings and physically anomalous, masculine

pseudo-women. The common thread in these depictions is the lack of input and autonomy

that Black women have over their creation and application, reinforcing the racist norm of

white people ascribing values and meaning to Black bodies (and especially Black female

bodies).

This discussion of the ways in which society policies Black female bodies should not

be interpreted as suggesting that Black women have capitulated to those societal demands;

on the contrary, Black women are historically (and currently) one of the most resistant and

resilient groups in the face of such oppression. That being said, it is critical that we

recognize the multiplicitous methods through which our society attempts to control Black

female bodies, and specifically Black female sexuality. Otherwise these harmful stereotypes
and practices will continue to propagate, while Black women continue to fight against

competing caricatures of their existence as sexual beings.

 Works Cited

Hayman, Robert L., and Nancy Levit. "Un-Natural Things: Constructions of Race, Gender,

and Disability." Crossroads, Directions and A New Critical Race Theory. N.p.: Temple U

Press, 2002. N. pag. Print.

O'Grady, Lorraine. "Olympia's Maid: Reclaiming Black Female Subjectivity." N.p.: n.p., 1994.

N. pag. Print.

Somerville, Siobhan. "Scientific Racism and the Emergence of the Homosexual

Body." Journal of the History of Sexuality 5.2 (1994): 243-266. Web.