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How hypersexualization looks in real life
But “taking care” of your partner is subjective, so this statement is sketchy.
Every person has different needs.
I’m a curious soul. So, naturally, I had follow-up questions:
How many black women have you dated? His Response: One.
How did the black woman you dated take care of you? His Response: When I came from a bad day, she could tell I had a rough one and gave me some head.
Did she demonstrate any other ways of taking care of you? His Response: Yes (but he didn’t elaborate).
As we can gather, this man is ignorant. But he is a perfect example of how the hypersexualization of black women plays out in daily life.
Many black women do take great care of their men (if they’re in a heterosexual relationship). But this doesn’t only include romantic relationships; black women frequently take care of their families as well. Black women are historically leaders in the home. We run shit.
But equating black women caring for their men to a sexual act is deplorable, on top of the dude being incapable of elaborating on other non-sexual qualities the black woman he dated possessed.
Is it fair to say he does not place value on Black women? Potentially. And I’m leaning more towards “yes” since he didn’t put any effort into mentioning those other qualities.
The problem with his statement was loaded, though.
People Frequently Hypersexualize Black Women
People frequently equate black women to sexual objects. In this case, her other qualities were invalidated outside of her sexual ones, as if he could not see her as a whole person outside of her sexual capacity.
It’s not uncommon for people to do this for all women, but black women have a reputation as the “Jezebel” or “sexual.”
“In the media, Black women often play roles such as the “hoe,” the “stripper,” the baby mama, and the jezebel stereotype, which “represents the African American woman as a promiscuous man-eater” (Versluys 2013).
If you were to come up with similarities between all of these roles, the underlying common factor that can be found is the proponent of sex.
Black women in the media are portrayed as sexual objects and this is not on accident. Hollywood works hard at perpetuating dehumanizing stereotypes of people of color, and Black women often take the target hit for this.
In this era, we know that the media is a powerful outlet to the world, not just the nation, and has a significant impact on molding the general public to think a certain way.
In the media, we see black women are often shown as “sexually willing characters often inviting of sexual objectification. [These] transcend the confines of the media, and penetrate and manifest themselves in everyday society” (Ntinu 1).
There doesn’t seem to be much attention being paid to it. I am aware of the lack of attention being brought to Black women’s voices, but I have had it with the media trying to silence us and thinking they can get away with such a harmful form of oppression for any longer.
Source: Annalycia D. Matthews
Yes, black women have taken on tremendous and empowering roles in the media, but we still have centuries of media misusage affecting how others think and feel about us.
We are human but still working on being seen as humans. We have to start by humanizing ourselves and rebuilding our reputations through aggressive efforts in a society with skewed perspectives of us.
Are Black Women Hypersexualized?
Yes. Yes, they
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