Pub Date : 2019-08-15DOI: 10.5622/ILLINOIS/9780252042645.003.0009
S. Redmond
Gender has been under-theorized within studies of people of African descent. This problem has led to the misunderstanding, suppression, and exclusion of transgendered and gender non-conforming people's experiences and identities within research on black sexuality, including black queer sexuality. This problem has been especially egregious in the burgeoning scholarship on black masculinity that has ignored black female and transmale masculinities that challenge the very ontological conceptions of black manhood upon which this scholarship is based. Black transgender and gender non-conforming people have created and continue to fashion a myriad of strategies to construct their identities in various positional relationships to binary gender and sexual categories. Performance has been a means through which these strategies are enacted. Bailey and Richardson interrogate African American gender common sense as demonstrated in dominant institutions of the black mega church and historically black colleges and universities, impact our understanding of trans- or non-conforming masculinities. They also examine how Ballroom and drag culture (and other gender queer communities) allow for and facilitate the construction of both hegemonic and alternative embodiments of masculinities.
{"title":"Gospel Drag","authors":"S. Redmond","doi":"10.5622/ILLINOIS/9780252042645.003.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5622/ILLINOIS/9780252042645.003.0009","url":null,"abstract":"Gender has been under-theorized within studies of people of African descent. This problem has led to the misunderstanding, suppression, and exclusion of transgendered and gender non-conforming people's experiences and identities within research on black sexuality, including black queer sexuality. This problem has been especially egregious in the burgeoning scholarship on black masculinity that has ignored black female and transmale masculinities that challenge the very ontological conceptions of black manhood upon which this scholarship is based. Black transgender and gender non-conforming people have created and continue to fashion a myriad of strategies to construct their identities in various positional relationships to binary gender and sexual categories. Performance has been a means through which these strategies are enacted. Bailey and Richardson interrogate African American gender common sense as demonstrated in dominant institutions of the black mega church and historically black colleges and universities, impact our understanding of trans- or non-conforming masculinities. They also examine how Ballroom and drag culture (and other gender queer communities) allow for and facilitate the construction of both hegemonic and alternative embodiments of masculinities.","PeriodicalId":309440,"journal":{"name":"Black Sexual Economies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-08-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133608407","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-08-15DOI: 10.5622/ILLINOIS/9780252042645.003.0005
Ariane Cruz
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.
{"title":"Playin’ Race","authors":"Ariane Cruz","doi":"10.5622/ILLINOIS/9780252042645.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5622/ILLINOIS/9780252042645.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"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.","PeriodicalId":309440,"journal":{"name":"Black Sexual Economies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-08-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117323730","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-08-15DOI: 10.5622/ILLINOIS/9780252042645.003.0015
A. Nixon
This chapter provides a critical reading of Cheryl Clarke's second volume of poetry, Living as a Lesbian. Situating this text within the larger context of black women's poetry, Green argues that its erotic aesthetic works to critique the historic erasure of the black lesbian body in the discourse of African American life as it simultaneously pushes toward and away from theories of sexuality that limit and thus reduce black women’s linguistic economies to metaphors of sexual desire.
{"title":"On Being a Black Sexual Intellectual","authors":"A. Nixon","doi":"10.5622/ILLINOIS/9780252042645.003.0015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5622/ILLINOIS/9780252042645.003.0015","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter provides a critical reading of Cheryl Clarke's second volume of poetry, Living as a Lesbian. Situating this text within the larger context of black women's poetry, Green argues that its erotic aesthetic works to critique the historic erasure of the black lesbian body in the discourse of African American life as it simultaneously pushes toward and away from theories of sexuality that limit and thus reduce black women’s linguistic economies to metaphors of sexual desire.","PeriodicalId":309440,"journal":{"name":"Black Sexual Economies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-08-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131627653","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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