Putting it all Together

Please forgive the length (I sparred alot).

Female sexuality is defined by male dominance. In a nutshell I think that is what Catharine MacKinnon was talking about in her article “Sexuality”. On page 476 MacKinnon addresses the negligence of women‘s sexuality in a long paragraph of “if’s”. She concludes that paragraph by saying that only when these “ifs” become a reality will “sexuality itself be regarded as unimplicated”. What I took from this powerful paragraph is that women’s sexuality is non-existent; it’s obviously present but not acknowledged. This point correlates with Hammonds’ article “Toward a Genealogy of Black Female Sexuality: The Problematic of Silence” where she states “White [black] men have increasingly been the focus of debates about sexuality in the academy and in the media, the specific ways in which [black] women figure in these discourses has remained largely unanalyzed and untheorized”(170).

Another aspect discussed n MacKinnon’s article can serve as a sort of catalyst to a point talked about in Hammonds’ article. “The fact that male power has power means that the interests of male sexuality construct what sexuality as such means in life, including the standard way it is allowed and recognized to be felt and expressed and experienced , in a way that determines women’s biographies, including sexual ones”(477). It is by the standards constructed by the dominant force in our society (white men), that women’s sexuality was created and presently is defined by. The Hammonds article takes the next step in showing how these constructs of sexuality have influenced the black community. Hammonds first uses the Hottentot Venus as a historical reference point. Sarah Bartmann and the characteristics of her body were used to create not only a racial hierarchy but a sexual hierarchy as well. It is because of this and things of this magnitude that “the construction of black female sexuality [is seen as] inherently immoral and uncontrollable” (Hammonds 172). Since that time there has been a fight to redefine black female sexuality. “Although some of the strategies use by these black women reformers might have initially be characterized as resistance to dominant and increasingly hegemonic constructions of their sexuality, by the early twentieth century, they had begun to promote a public silence about sexuality”(175). While attempting to combat the negatives associated with black female sexuality, black women have resorted be keeping quiet as a way to not bring attention to the definition of black female sexuality already set in place (Politics of silence). In doing so “black women have also lost the ability to articulate any conception of their sexuality” (175). This silence within the black community reminds me of a chapter in Gender Talk that argues that the black community’s desire to keep black issues silent and out of the public’s eye is actually doing more harm than good.

My blog is already getting lengthy so I’m going to end it now. In closing, these two articles really play on each other even though one caters more towards the black community and the other is more general. They both see the creation of female sexuality as a result of male dominance and they both acknowledge that changes need to take place if any progress is to be made.