Читать книгу Misogynoir Transformed - Moya Bailey - Страница 13

There remains a belief that recognizing the misogynoir experienced by Black women detracts from efforts to support Black men and boys. In the wake of seasons of unarmed Black men being gunned down by police, instances of Black women’s murders at the hands of the police have not evoked the same demands for police accountability.48 The Boston activist and 2020 poet laureate Porsha Olayiwola’s poem “Rekia Boyd” asks the question why no one showed up for a rally in Boyd’s honor following her slaying by off-duty police officer Dante Servin over an alleged noise complaint:

Last night

No one showed up to march for Rekia Boyd.

Rekia was shot dead in the head by cops on Monday.

A cook county judge acquitted Dante Servin, went jailbird free

Rekia Boyd was a 22-year-old unarmed Black woman who had been living on the south side of Chicago and last night no one showed up to march at her rally.

I guess all the protestors got tied up.

I guess all the Black folks were busy making signs saying, “Stop killing our Black boys!”

I guess no one hears the howling of a Black girl ghost in the night time.

We stay unheard.

Blotted out.

Buried.

Dead Black girls receive tombstones too soon and never any flowers to dress the grave so we fight alone.49

Olayiwola describes the disproportionate attention Black men and boys get when they are violated and the absence of similar demands for justice when a Black woman is killed. I argue that the silence and erasure of the violence Black women and girls endure are connected to society’s inability to see them as worthwhile subjects deserving of respect and care, a sentiment exacerbated by misogynoir. Olayiwola’s words echo the epigraph that animates this text, reminding us that since we as Black women “fight alone,” “we must save ourselves.”50 Part of this saving includes the creation of representations that challenge the ways we are viewed.

Representations of Black women in popular culture help support and perhaps even bolster the harm they experience. In 2003, when fifteen-year-old Sakia Gunn and friends refused the street harassment of twenty-nine-year-old Richard McCullough and his friend by saying they were lesbians, McCullough got out of the car to retaliate. McCullough stabbed Gunn and fled, and though she was rushed to the hospital, she died of her injuries. McCullough’s sense of entitlement to Gunn’s attention pushed him out of the car and into choking her friend and ultimately killing Gunn. His beliefs about her sexuality and his right to control and punish her for what he perceived as its misapplication have everything to do with the misogynoir that makes Black women and girls seem undeserving of their autonomy and lives. When Black women are only rendered visually as in service to men, their autonomy is not believed. Misogynoir can precipitate racist gendered violence that harms “social well-being” and impacts mental and physical health, and can even result in death, the direst of health outcomes.

Portrayals of Black women as straight and at the disposal of men who desire them shape our cultural landscape. When misogynoir paints all Black women as sexually available to men, Gunn’s defiance is not only challenged but punished. Her health, her very life, is at stake when stereotypes materialize into justifications for deadly behaviors. In 2006, when another group of Black lesbian teens tried to defend themselves against a catcaller turned attacker, they were vilified in the news as a “wolf pack, an inhuman gang of animals.”51 Media’s portrayal of the “New Jersey Four,” as their group became known, led to them receiving longer and harsher prison sentences, despite the fact that the young women were trying to defend themselves against a man who tried to assault the smallest in their group.52 This violence and these harsher sentences, as numerous studies have shown, are disproportionately visited upon Black women.53

While many studies have explored the physical health of Black women, few have considered premature death, mental health, physical well-being, housing, education, and access to pleasure as equally important health concerns that misogynoir negatively impacts. Beyond public health calls to address maternal mortality and the so-called “obesity epidemic” among Black women, there is a need to address Black women’s health at a fundamental level that includes their quality of life beyond ableist metrics. Black women deserve to have accurate representations of themselves in popular culture. The images that circulate about them should support their well-being in society instead of negatively impacting their ability to live their lives. And, as in the quote that orients this entire text, Black women are doing that work themselves.54