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Pressley
Emmanuel D. Pressley
United States capitalism and provided a template from which the racial and
economic oppression of African-Americans have continued to be subjected to
(Hancock, 2008). Beyond racial oppression, chattel slavery depended on gender
oppression. Black women and men were both expected to perform hard laborious
duties, but womens reproductive capacity meant that Black womens sexuality was
another form of sexual exploitation.
The commodification of a Black woman in slavery meant that every part of an
enslaved African woman were his (the owners) to do with as he pleased (Nedhari,
2009). In addition to the animalistic depictions of being capable of back-breaking
work, these included the image of the jezebel, breeder woman or sexually
malevolent Black woman. This redefined Black womens bodies as sites of wild,
unrestrained sexuality that could be tamed, but never completely subdued (Nedhari,
2009). Black womens bodies were a site for conquering and a site for a system of
profit. Economic and racial oppression for Black men was also gendered, in that
their bodies were constructed as big, strong, and stupid, and naturally violent
(Nedhari, 2009). They were framed as intellectually inferior, and this also reinforced
the political status of African men as chattel. The taming of black men was in this
logic necessary, as Black men supposedly had an inherent nature for violence, and
it could be channeled into productive manual labor. Black men were reduced to
their bodies and identified their muscles and penises as sites of power in need of
constraint.
Emmanuel D. Pressley
Emmanuel D. Pressley
Emmanuel D. Pressley
by the history of slavery and the understanding of what might be the consequences
of said decision. If Black men does not conform they suffer being socially ostracized,
having emotional and psychological pain and discomfort. Some even go on living a
lie. But not conforming or going against the cult of respectability can offer what some
adds as sexual healing. Such healing happens every time the culture of resistance
where black male bodies and being are no longer captive (Hooks, 2005). A free
black man, at home in his body, is able to feel his sexual desire and to act with lifeaffirming agency. When black men choose a healthy sexuality, he celebrate sexual
healing, self-expression and liberated sexual agency.
Emmanuel D. Pressley
References:
Hooks, Bell (2004).We Are Cool: Black Men and Masculinity. New York. Routledge.
Collins, Patricia. (2005). Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and
the New Racism. New York. Routledge.
Hooks, Bell. (2004). The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love. New
York: Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Pulse,1(11).
Retrieved
from
The Migration of Enslaved Women: 'Fancy Girls' and Sexual Exploitation in the
Domestic Slave Trade https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrInk4Yt6d0