What Is Expected Of You: Gender and Sexuality

Abstract

Thinking back on the lessons she learned from her family a bout how girls should behave, Mississippi resident Mandie Moore Johnson recalled, “A young girl, she can do right if she wants. She can stand up on her principles if she wants.” For African American girls who grew up in the Jim Crow South, learning to “do right” involved embracing the imperatives of respectability. Enacted as good manners and high morals, respectability regulated explicitly the ways that young black women could and could not express sexuality, demanding mindfulness as well as chastity and sobriety, resourcefulness, and common sense. “My grandmother didn’t allow me to run out with [other] women’s husbands. I learned that on my grandmother’s porch,” Johnson noted.