Jacqueline Rudet (Re)Writing Sexual Deviancy

Abstract

Sexuality and sexual politics are central to notions of black women’s identity because ideas about beauty, sexual desire and sexual practices have historically been used to denigrate black women. Controlling images such as the jezebel, sapphire or welfare mother have been inferred to underscore ideas of black women’s sexuality as deviant, aggressively depraved and uncontrollable, in opposition to the gentility of white female sexual mores. As the deviant half of the binary equation, black womanhood is prone to being stigmatised (silenced, disempowered and pathologised) as abnormal (irrational, immoral and insane) to justify her devaluation, continued mistreatment and subordination. Black women writers have paid special attention to the domain of sexuality, responding to centuries of misrepresentation with their own versions of black female identity.