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....

Gender, Sexuality and Violence: Permissible Violence Against Women During the Partition of India and Pakistan

Hawwa ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 4 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 396-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deepa Narasimhan-Madhavan
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Violence Against Women ◽  
Gender Relations ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Women's Sexuality ◽  
Communal Violence ◽  
Women’S Sexuality ◽  
Mass Migration ◽  
Partition Of India

AbstractAugust 15, 1947 marked the division of India and the birth of Pakistan and resulted in a mass migration of Hindus to India and Muslims to the newly formed Pakistan. This day also marked the worst communal violence in India's history. The threats to family, religion, national status and security during the partition magnified the tension over ownership and honor in female sexuality, leading to terrible violence inflicted against the women of both societies. The sexual violence that occurred during the time of the partition of India and Pakistan illustrated an extreme manifestation of the societal view of women's sexuality, namely the need to control and own her. The violence also illustrated how women's sexuality symbolically represented power in the arrangement of gender relations in both the Hindu and Islamic communities in India. This article will address these concepts of sexuality through the examination of the partition of India and Pakistan as a theatre, in which, due to the heightened emotion of the situation, sexuality and power became especially commingled.

Playin’ Race

2019 ◽  
pp. 73-86
Author(s):  
Ariane Cruz
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Black Female ◽  
Sexual Pleasure ◽  
Sexual Practices ◽  
Color Line ◽  
Sexual Performance ◽  
Racialized Violence ◽  
Power And Agency ◽  
Critical Site

This chapter examines the BDSM practice of race play. Focusing on the sexual performances of black women, Cruz reveals performances of domination and submission in BDSM as inventive modes for and of black women's pleasure, power, and agency. BDSM is a critical site from which to rethink the formative links between black female sexuality and violence; in BDSM sexual practices violence becomes not just a vehicle of pleasure but also a mode of accessing and contesting power. Reconciled by the erection of fragile yet formidable boundaries between the constructs of fantasy/reality, inside/outside, mind/body, and black/white, black women BDSMers engage in an elaborate play of race in the pursuit of not only sexual pleasure but also empowerment and sentience. Cruz examines race play as a particularly problematic yet powerful BDSM practice for black women, one that illuminates the contradictory dynamics of racialized pleasure and power via the eroticization of racism and racial sexual alterity. Race play, as Cruz argues, irradiates the fantasies and enactments of racialized violence (mytho-historically conceived) that sex and sexual performance across the color line recite, particularly within the realm of BDSM.

The Dark Side of Desire

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ariane Cruz
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Black Female ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
Power And Agency ◽  
Critical Site

This chapter examines black women’s participation in BDSM and how these performances illustrate a complex and contradictory brokering of pain, pleasure, and power for the black female performer. I reveal BDSM as a critical site for reconsidering the entanglement of black female sexuality and violence. Within BDSM, violence becomes both a mode of pleasure and a vehicle for accessing and contesting power. The chapter begins with a brief section that frames black women practitioners of BDSM in the context of still very vigorous feminist debates surrounding sexuality, violence, and BDSM. Here, I stage the unique theoretical and practical challenges of the unspeakable pleasures aroused in racial submission and domination that BDSM presents to black women specifically. I examine race play as a particularly problematic yet powerful BDSM practice for black women, one that unveils the contradictory dynamics of racialized pleasure and power via the eroticization of racism and racial-sexual alterity. In particular, I argue that race play unsettles the dichotomies of transgression/compliance, subversion/reproduction, mind/body, and fantasy/reality that buttress BDSM. This chapter unveils performances of black female sexual domination and submission in BDSM as critical modes for and of black women’s pleasure, power, and agency.

scholarly journals Re-Framing Hottentot: Liberating Black Female Sexuality from the Mammy/Hottentot Bind

Humanities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 161
Author(s):  
Nanda
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Black Female ◽  
Sexual Scripts ◽  
Visual Artists ◽  
Popular Discourse ◽  
Black Women Writers ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Cornel West

Taking up Michele Wallace’s call to interrogate popular cultural forms and unravel their relationship with the political discourse of the time, this paper begins by examining the popular discourse about Black female sexuality in the USA. White, cis-hetero-patriarchal cultural and visual imagination still represents Black women either as asexual and maternal mammies or as the deviant ‘Other’ that is as Venus Hottentots or ‘hypersexual’ Jezebels. Maternal and sexual scripts were first naturalized by popular and scientific discourse(s), and then covertly deployed by the dominant white hetero-patriarchal set up to mask the exploitation of Black women, and constrict the opportunities of growth that were available to them even after the emancipation. This paper analyzes how Black women writers like Elizabeth Alexander and Alice Walker, and visual artists such as Renee Cox develop an oppositional gaze, to use Hooks’s phrase, and ‘re-frame’ the Venus Hottentot from their radical and subversive points of view. Building on theoretical insights of Gina Dent, Cornel West, and Audre Lorde, this paper engages with the oft-neglected relationship between pleasure, desire, identity, and Black female sexuality. Thus, Black female sexuality that has been expunged and/or termed ‘deviant’ actually becomes a source of empowerment for Black women.

scholarly journals PEREMPUAN DI LUAR JALUR: SEKSUALITAS PEREMPUAN DALAM DUA CERPEN KARYA SUWARSIH DJOJOPUSPITO (Women Out of the Line: Women’s Sexuality in Two Short Stories by Suwarsih Djojopuspito)

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 143
Author(s):  
Aquarini Priyatna, M.A., M.Hum., Ph.D.
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Marital Relationships ◽  
Woman Writer ◽  
Personal Relationships ◽  
Feminist Studies ◽  
Women's Sexuality ◽  
Men I ◽  
Women’S Sexuality ◽  
Patriarchal Ideology

Tulisan ini mendiskusikan isu seksualitas dalam dua cerpen karya Suwarsih Djojopuspito, yakni Seruling di Malam Hari dan Artinah. Penelitian ini meletakan isu seksualitas dalam kedua cerpen tersebut dalam kerangka kajian gender dan feminis. Suwarsih adalah  salah  satu penulis perempuan pionir di Indonesia yang karyanya secara lugas mengambil posisi yang resisten terhadap ideologi patriarki. Dalam kedua cerpen yang dibahas, Suwarsih menunjukkan timpangnya praktik-praktik keseharian dalam relasi inti antara perempuan dan laki-laki, terutama dalam perkawinan. Melalui narasi dan penggambaran tokoh, ditunjukkan bahwa ideologi patriarki yang termanifestasi dalam nilai-nilai heteronormativitas telah menempatkan seksualitas laki-laki sebagai normatif dan berterima, sementara seksualitas perempuan sebagai peripheral saja terhadap seksualitas laki-laki. Juga diperlihatkan, bagaimana nilai-nilai patriarki yang diwujudkan dalam relasi personal menempatkan perempuan dalam posisi yang lebih lemah. Meskipun demikian, kedua cerpen mengambil posisi yang tidak memihak posisi laki-laki, melainkan memberikan perempuan agensi yang menyuarakan tubuh dan seksualitas perempuan sebagai bagian dari subjektivitas perempuan sebagaimana seksualitas adalah bagian dari laki-laki.Abstract: This writing examines the issues of sexuality in two short stories by Suwarsih Djojopuspito’s “Seruling di Malam Hari” and “Artinah”. This research locates sexuality in the two short stories in the framework of gender and feminist studies. Suwarsih is among the pioneering woman writer in Ind onesi a. Her wor ks ha ve been recogni zed a s a form of resista nce t oward  the domin ant patriarchal ideology. In the two short stories discussed in this article, Suwarsih elaborates the bias ag ai ns t wo men  i n th e everyda y pr actices  o f in ti mat e rela ti ons  b et ween  women an d men, particularly in marital relationships. Through the narrative and the portrayal of the characters, the short stories show that the ideology of patriarchy as manifested in the heteronormative values have established men’s sexuality as normative and acceptable, while female sexuality is  only as peripheral to men’s sexuality. Likewise, the two short stories also show that patriarchal values apparent in personal relationships have put women in the inferior position. However, the two short stories articulate feminist by giving the women’s characters the agency to articulate their bodies and sexuality as important parts of their subjectivity as a woman just like they are the important part of men’s.

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 Rosana Paulino and the Art of Refazimento: Reconfigurations of the Black Female Body in the Land of Racial Democracy

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 63-90
Author(s):  
Flavia Santos de Araújo
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Female Body ◽  
Black Female ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Digital Printing ◽  
Historical Interpretation ◽  
Racial Democracy ◽  
Historical Archives ◽  
Visual Artist

This essay analyzes the historical and aesthetic significance of the visual art project Assentamento(s) (2012-2013) by Rosana Paulino. Her work re- inscribes the black female body into the historical narrative of Brazil, complicating long-established notions of “Brazilianness”. By using art techniques and materials that combine lithography, digital printing, drawing, sewing, video, and sculpting, Paulino develops a multi-layered artistic assembly that she describes as a process of refazimento (“remaking”). Paulino pushes the boundaries of the historical archives, highlighting both the struggles and agency of black women within Brazilian society. I argue that, as a contemporary black woman visual artist, Paulino engages in a method of historical interpretation that Saidiya Hartman defines as “critical fabulation”. My study explores how Paulino’s refazimento represents a method of inquiry that confronts the legacies of Brazil’s racial democracy and its ideology of mestiçagem. Paulino’s visuality reclaims Afro-Brazilian ancestral memory and black female complex subjectivities.

City Girls, hot girls and the re-imagining of Black women in hip hop and digital spaces

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyesha Jennings
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Black Feminism ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Black Girls ◽  
Black Female ◽  
Gender Performance ◽  
Participatory Culture ◽  
Digital Spaces

Through a hip hop feminist lens, how are we to interpret black girls’ and women’s self-identification in digital spaces that visibly resonate with new/remixed images? And more importantly, what happens when black female rap artists and their fan base disrupt, subvert or challenge dominant gender scripts in hip hop in order to navigate broader discourses on black female sexuality? Drawing on the work of Joan Morgan and hip hop feminist scholarship in general, this essay aims to offer a critical reading of ‘hot girl summer’. Inspired by Houston rapper Megan Thee Stallion’s lyrics on ‘Cash Shit’, where she raps about ‘real hot girl shit’, the phrase has morphed into a larger-than-life persona not only for Megan’s rap superstar profile, but also for a number of black girls. According to Megan, a hot girl summer is ‘about women and men being unapologetically them[selves] […] having a good-ass time, hyping up their friends, doing [them]’. What does ‘hot girl summer’ tell us about significant changes in the ways that black women cultivate community in digital spaces, how they construct their identities within systems of controlling images and grapple with respectability politics? In order to address these questions with a critical lens, using an interdisciplinary approach grounded in black feminism and hip hop feminism, this essay offers a theoretical approach to a digital hip hop feminist sensibility (DHHFS). Too little has been said about black women’s representation in digital spaces where they imagine alternative gender performance, disrupt hegemonic tropes and engage in participatory culture.

The Color of Kink

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ariane Cruz
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Black Female ◽  
Unique Contribution ◽  
Black Sexuality ◽  
Racialized Sexuality ◽  
Sexual Cultures

The Color of Kink explores black women's representations and performances within American pornography and BDSM (bondage and discipline, domination and submission, and sadism and masochism) from the 1930s to the present, revealing the ways in which they illustrate a complex and contradictory negotiation of pain, pleasure, and power for black women. Based on personal interviews conducted with pornography performers, producers, and professional dominatrices, visual and textual analysis, and extensive archival research, Ariane Cruz reveals BDSM and pornography as critical sites from which to rethink the formative links between Black female sexuality and violence. She explores how violence becomes not just a vehicle of pleasure but also a mode of accessing and contesting power. Drawing on feminist and queer theory, critical race theory, and media studies, Cruz argues that BDSM is a productive space from which to consider the complexity and diverseness of black women's sexual practice and the mutability of black female sexuality. Illuminating the cross-pollination of black sexuality and BDSM, The Color of Kink makes a unique contribution to the growing scholarship on racialized sexuality, pornography, and sexual cultures.

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.

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