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Misogynoir Transformed: Black Women’s Digital Resistance
Moya Bailey
Misogynoir Transformed
Black Women’s Digital Resistance
Moya Bailey
New York
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York
© 2021 by New York University
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ISBN 978-1-4798-6510-9 (hardback)
ISBN 978-1-4798-7874-1 (paperback)
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Also available as an ebook
For Mama and Daddy
We cannot sit on our behinds waiting for someone else to do it for us. We must save ourselves.
—Mary Ann Weathers, “An Argument for Black Women’s Liberation as a Revolutionary Force,” 1969
Contents
Preface
Introduction: What Is Misogynoir?
1. Misogynoir Is a Drag
2. Transforming Misogynoir through Trans Advocacy
3. Web Show Worldbuilding Mitigates Misogynoir
4. Alchemists in Action against Misogynoir
Conclusion: Misogynoir Transformed: #BlackWomenDragBack
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author
Preface
Although I did not know it at the time, I started writing this book as an undergraduate at Spelman College. I was on the road to becoming a medical doctor when two things happened that made me shift course: I fell in love with women’s studies, and I got international attention as one of the leaders of a small pushback on campus against the rapper Nelly. Both events profoundly shaped my thinking about the way Black women are treated in society and moved me to coin the term “misogynoir,” which in turn led to this book.
As a first-year student from tiny Fayetteville, Arkansas, I was appalled when Dr. Beverly Guy-Sheftall told the Spelman College entering class of 2005 about Sarah Baartman’s experiences as a human exhibit in Europe during the early nineteenth century. Baartman, a young Khoisan woman from what we now recognize as South Africa, was displayed throughout Europe to paying white audiences as an example of the animalistic and inferior nature of the African woman. Implicit in Baartman’s display was a comparison between her body and that of the white women who viewed her. European scientists equated Baartman’s anatomical differences with sexual deviance, drawing conclusions about her sexuality and subsequently, the sexuality of Black women from her form. Her butt and genitalia were used to justify racist and sexualized violence as well as the continued enslavement of Africans in the “New World.”1 Dr. Guy-Sheftall explained that the exploitative way Baartman’s body was treated in life and in death was made possible under the guise of “objective science, ” though what Baartman actually endured was objectification through scientific racism and sexism. In my first week at Spelman, before I had even attended a class, Dr. Guy-Sheftall had challenged my thinking by describing the differential treatment Black women experienced on a global stage. After that moment, I knew I wanted to take every class I could with her.
I was awakened to the profundity of the unique nexus of experience that is Black and woman on this planet and throughout colonial history. Along with enrolling in Dr. Guy-Sheftall’s classes, I took classes with fellow feminist professor Dr. M. Bahati Kuumba (Dr. K), who gave me the final nudge into the open arms of the comparative women’s studies major at Spelman. As I was matriculating, I also got involved in the feminist political organizations on campus, all of which were supported by the