Not Your Personal Fantasy: Fetishizing Women of Color
Some may not be familiar with the concept of fetishizing people of color. So first let me explain what fetishizing a persons is by my own definition. Fetishizing is to make someone/something or in this case a group a sexual object based on their race. I am passionate about this subject because it is often pushed aside or not talked about. Not many people know or recognize that they themselves are being viewed as as a sexual object though various outlets. Like social media, the entertainment industry and by people themselves. Specifically I want to focus on women especially women of color because we are one of the most exploited groups to be fetishized. Fetishizing not also dehumanizes women but adds on to the constraints that keep women from equal rights and to be constantly forced into majority of the time negative subaltern subject positions. There is no time like now to address this issue everyday woman are forced between barriers that should not exist in the first place.
Before we start have you ever really though what a fetish is? What it means to fetishize someone or something?
The Research
To really understand why fetishizing woman of color is such an important issue you need to understand where it comes from and how it started. According to the article The Colonial Roots of the Racial Fetishization of Black Women by Caren M. Homes, "the first sexualization and romanticism of black women started during the slavery"(Homes). European imperialist saw blacks as a whole as less than human but these imperialist also internalized this concept into sexualizing black slave women.
To even add further to this concept in one of the most influential political documents Notes on the State of Virginia written by Thomas Jefferson, Thomas makes a suggestion about black slave women that depicts their nature as hyper-sexuality.
I know most of us have learned about slavery having effects like this one, but my point is not how what slave owners did in the past effected black slave women. However it DOES explain how women of color today are being fetishized in the gaze of non people of color.
In Todays Modern media a mast amount of images portray black women and all women of color in a hyper sexualized role, breeding the fetishization of women of. Homes also states in her article, "Racial fetishization continues this pattern of cultural and racial essentalizing in efforts to control black female bodies and sexuality"(Homes). This does not only apply to black females but all women of color who suffer the same media exploitation of their race and their culture. Fetishizing women of color is also a huge problem due to the contributing factors it has toward American rape culture which Homes clearly explains, "tolerates and even validates sexual violence perpetrated upon black female bodies"(Homes).
The next article I read Your Fetishization Is Not A Compliment by Paula Ethans, gave insight to what some of the negative affects caused by fetishizing women of color. Ethans explained, "It assumes a monolithic identity. It shows that what you actually want is not an equal relationship, but rather a delivery of the caricature you understand as seeped in their race"(Ethans). This is a common situation when women of color are being fetishized men will often make these women objects as trophies to obtain or conquer because of their race subjecting them to exploitation.
Getting Personal
For me this topic is extremely personal growing up as a young black woman in my generation there is so much interracial dating which for some of the parts is purely out of love and positivity. But I always notice how people trend dating latina women, or black women, or asian women. Especially with so many individuals that are connected to the internet I see other young women like me objectified and sexualized because of their race and often time no one is saying anything about respecting our culture and our bodies. Instead we are constantly objectified in the media and in real life men think its okay to walk up to me and say things like, "I like them brown what' your number?" and much worse than that. But I'll spare the viewers the outlandish things men have personally told me. I think one of the biggest things that really makes this an important topic for me is the effects racial fetishization has on American rape culture. I always think about the people who take their fetishizes to extreme and commit horrendous crimes sometimes at mass amounts of harming specific races of color. While often times these rapes do not get as much attention as other similar crimes because this category of women of color already has a hyper sexualized life styled attached to them and therefore are not made as important or urgent in popular media.
"It shows often fro example white men that fetishizes women of color will want to jump into a relationship or be with that person but not marry them. Love the idea of the dating but not a actual relationship" -Viviana Santos
"I agree its a problem, people have a image of life and see a black woman or man and fit into a lifestyle of mixed babies for the “culture” -Maiah Palumbo
"Why can’t people just be normal and like women for them not their stereotype" -Marjani Martinez
Work Cited
Ethans, Paula. “Your Fetishization Is Not A Compliment.” Paula vs Patriarchy, 15 Oct. 2017, paulavspatriarchy.wordpress.com/2016/11/30/your-fetishization-is-not-a-compliment/.
Homes, Caren M. “Black & Gold.” "The Colonial Roots of the Racial Fetishization of Black Women" by Caren M. Holmes, Open Works , openworks.wooster.edu/blackandgold/vol2/iss1/2/.
No comments:
Post a Comment