A Qualitative Exploration of Jezebel Stereotype Endorsement and Sexual Behaviors Among Black College Women

2021 ◽  
pp. 009579842199721
Author(s):  
Seanna Leath ◽  
Morgan C. Jerald ◽  
Tiani Perkins ◽  
Martinque K. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Sexual Behaviors ◽  
Black College ◽  
Consensual Qualitative Research ◽  
Women's Sexuality ◽  
Women’S Sexuality ◽  
Sexual Beliefs ◽  
Semistructured Interviews ◽  
Qualitative Exploration ◽  
Sexual Exploration

Researchers suggest that the Jezebel stereotype exerts a significant influence on Black women’s sexual decision making. The current qualitative study drew upon narrative data from individual, semistructured interviews with 50 Black women (ages 18-24 years) to explore how the Jezebel stereotype influenced their sexual beliefs and behaviors. Using consensual qualitative research methods, the following four themes emerged from the data: (a) how the Jezebel plays a role in their sexual exploration, (b) how the Jezebel contributes to sexual violence against Black women, (c) how the Jezebel is a hypersexual media representation of Black women’s sexuality, and (d) how the Jezebel is a negative sexual stereotype within family contexts. Our findings contextualize the enduring role of the Jezebel stereotype as a sexual script for Black women, as we found that many participants chose to adapt their clothing choices or sexual behaviors in light of their awareness and endorsement of the stereotype. The authors discuss the implications of study findings for Black women and girls’ sexual socialization and deconstructing deficit-based ideologies of Black women’s sexuality.

scholarly journals Postfeminist construction of women's sexuality in The village bike by Penelope Skinner

2014 ◽  
Vol 47 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 41-54
Author(s):  
Melita Novak
Keyword(s):  
Women's Sexuality ◽  
Women Playwrights ◽  
Sexual Liberation ◽  
Women’S Sexuality ◽  
British Drama ◽  
Critical Insight ◽  
Sexual Exploration ◽  
The Village ◽  
The Way ◽  
Woman's Body

Penelope Skinner's drama The Village Bike deals with issues ranging from pregnancy to sexuality, pornography and sexual exploration. In this article I focus on the way these issues are presented and explain why pornography and sexual exploration belong to the postfeminist ideology. Namely, the author uncritically deals with these issues, objectifies a woman's body and favours gender constructs. Contemporary British drama by women playwrights is not marked by its engagement with feminism even though it might declare itself as pro-feminist or feminist. Penelope Skinner is one of the contemporary playwrights. I try to present that even though her drama seems to appear provocative at first sight this is not really the case. The provocation does not offer a critical insight and distance. I argue that this drama is postfeminist because it mainstreams pornography and presents a peculiar view on the part of sexual liberation, which is very limited.

Steeped in Shame: An Exploration of Family Sexual Socialization Among Black College Women

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 450-467
Author(s):  
Seanna Leath ◽  
Jami C. Pittman ◽  
Petal Grower ◽  
L. Monique Ward
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
College Women ◽  
Sexual Development ◽  
Religious Orientation ◽  
Black Girls ◽  
Black College ◽  
Sexual Socialization ◽  
Young Black Women ◽  
Negative Messages ◽  
Sexual Exploration

Most research on Black girls’ sexuality emphasizes reducing risk behaviors, with less attention to dimensions of healthy and normative sexual development, such as body positivity. To address this gap, we sought to explore the diversity of sexual messaging young Black women received during their formative years. Using consensual qualitative research methods, we explored how 50 Black college women (ages 18–24 years) described their sexual socialization within family contexts in relation to their current sexual beliefs and behaviors. The following themes emerged from the data: messages of discretion, negative messages about physical appearance, messages of deference, messages of abstinence, absence of sexual messages, messages of body positivity, messages of egalitarianism, messages of sex positivity, and messages of sexual distrust and dismissiveness. Black families’ sexual socialization processes were also influenced by ethnicity, social class, and religious orientation. Our findings situate Black women’s family sexual socialization practices within a sociohistorical framework and highlight the need to support Black girls’ healthy sexual development by eliminating fear, shame, or taboo around sexual exploration. Education and advocacy efforts should focus on communicating openly with youth to help them make more positive decisions about sex and bodily autonomy.

Introduction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ariane Cruz
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Black Female ◽  
Women's Sexuality ◽  
Women Subjects ◽  
Women’S Sexuality ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Visual Artist

In many cases, desire lies like a bodily boundary between the everyday and the unspeakable. —Samuel R. Delany1 Black female visual artist crystal am nelson’s Building Me a Home (2009), an eight-minute, three channel video, engages the unspeakable pleasures of black female sexuality that anchor this book, an exploration of black women, BDSM, and pornography that presents BDSM as a stage for analyzing black women’s sexuality and its representation in order to unveil the complex desires and self-making practices of black women subjects....

Jefferson’s Paradox, or a Very Brief History of Black Women’s Sexuality, Hip-Hop, and American Culture

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Rap Music ◽  
Women's Sexuality ◽  
Hip Hop Culture ◽  
The Public ◽  
Gangsta Rap ◽  
Women’S Sexuality ◽  
History Of

American representations of black women’s sexuality extend from the political culture of the eighteenth century to the public and popular culture of the twenty-first. Hip-hop culture may now be at the center of the phenomenon, and antiblack misogyny seems to emanate from gangsta rap music. However, Thomas Jefferson’s racial theses on blacks, and black women in particular, from his Notes on the State of Virginia helped form this perspective. Jefferson’s tradition of flattened-out, uncomplicated, and sexually and racially violent representations and understandings of black women and their sexuality continue in our contemporary moment, as does his biased aesthetic evaluations of them based on ideas of white superiority.

Girl Wonder: Nathalia Crane, Poetic Prodigy of the 1920s

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
PAUL BRADLEY BELLEW
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
Women's Sexuality ◽  
Young Girls ◽  
Women’S Sexuality ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The Us

Largely forgotten today, from approximately the late 1910s through the 1930s, at least a dozen young girls brought out numerous books in the US. But there was one girl who was particularly talented and successful: Nathalia Crane, who published her first collection of poetry when she was just eleven years old in 1924. This article analyzes both her work and her reception from her first success through the subsequent controversy over her authorship instigated by a local Brooklyn newspaper. In the process, the article demonstrates the complicated connections between perceptions of girlhood and women's sexuality as they relate to political agency in the early twentieth-century United States.

Studies on Women's Sexuality in China since 1980: A Critical Review

2007 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pei Yuxin ◽  
Sik-ying Ho Petula ◽  
Ng Man Lun
Keyword(s):  
Critical Review ◽  
Women's Sexuality ◽  
Women’S Sexuality

Shaping Women's Sexuality

1992 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 61-90
Author(s):  
Carol Anderson Darling ◽  
J. Kenneth Davidson ◽  
Colleen Conway-Welch
Keyword(s):  
Women's Sexuality ◽  
Women’S Sexuality
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