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Representation Matters

The mainstream porn industry is filled with erotica that is majority produced by white men. In these depictions, men are subjected to ridicule, and if you are a woman of color, you are further reduced to your genitalia (Afroerotik, 2012). Sex worker and educator Tristan Taormino acknowledges her many privileges (educated, middle-class, white woman), and uses this platform to elevate sex workers of color in creating meaningful and character driven porn based on their experiences and desires. Furthermore, women have been objectified to the point that they are not seen as “visual” (Lush, 2013). Porn and erotica is a diverse subculture, but there is a shortage of people of color producing porn by them, for them, and for people who share their experiences.

Cherie Turpin, our professor and Afro-Futurism scholar, speaks about her own classroom where she remembers students looking for representation in course texts, “You don’t really fit in one of the boxes, so you don’t really have a place,” (Afroerotik, 2012). People of color are not included in the conversation, even under a feminist context. We are so far into second-wave and third-wave feminism, but these topics are still problems. When we create a dialogue around alternative sexuality and kink, it is almost as if black and brown people are never portrayed for who they really are. Scotty, an Afroerotika author and pornographer, sees a lot of herself in Tristan. They have the same goal, being queer, female pornographers, to direct the attention from the patriarchy and maleness in porn. Both Tristan and Scotty work to portray images of women that are not caricatures, but a tailored experience that is as interpersonal as it is intrapersonal (Afroerotik, 2012).

POC are denied the same opportunities to work and even contracts with big porn companies, but Tristan believes that part of the feminist intervention in porn is to change that. There is a small window for POC in that industry to speak up for themselves. Tristan says that the disproportional portrayal of POC is a problem, so she purposefully makes her work very collaborative, so POC have a platform. Scotty also highlights race, because these individuals are not colorless, but they are people.Porns portrayal is not  a reality, it is dehumanizing and objectifying. People get off day to day on these very racist images. People find these images sexually appealing, but they do not want their porn interjected with pointing out how racist it is/can be. People like Tristan, Scotty, and our professor Cherie Turpin are apart of the people who revolutionise homogenous industries, so black and brown people are represented across all fields.

We have learned so much in this course, and enjoyed it even though it has been hard work. In this world we face so much adversity, but learning about where those adversities intersect us is one step further to dismantle them. During this lecture, Professor Turpin concerned herself with our literacy in terms of social awareness. We learned a lot about BDSM, and the ways in which it is based entirely on consent, a concept that is lost in most “vanilla-sex.” Communication is an incredibly important component for any relationship. The fact that in BDSM all parties involved in a scene will have thoroughly talked about their limits, their desires, their wants, their needs, and what they are looking for, as well as establishing their right to withdraw this consent for whatever reason at any time, creates a safe space full of equal control and power (Taormino, 2012). Even though BDSM may appear frightening, true BDSM is about utmost respect between participants, and many new-wave members of Kink communities are shifting the portrayal of alternative sex from one of maleness to a more femme-centered experience. Similar to Kink communities, the images of erotica are becoming more diverse with the help of women, working to diversify public industry and have it represented as such. Most of the content we have researched and cited for this blog has been written by a marginalized people, whether by race, sexuality, gender expression, or opportunity. They face erasure and are often undervalued, especially in comparison to their work. Nevertheless, they're stories are important, imperative to the movement, and often go unheard.  

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Sluts we admire

Marilyn Monroe was a sex icon. Her image is perhaps the pre-eminent sexual spectacle of the late 20th century.  She is both sweet infant and hot whore. I think it's safe to refer to her as a slut.  She had sex with alot of famous people.  I probably wouldn't have  wanted to get caught giving the former President head.  But, to each it's own.  I think Kim Kardashian is similar. 

Madonna has a long history of playing a provacative role in her music videos, in her song lyrics and in some roles she plays in movies.  Madonna's video for "Justify My Love" was banned from MTV due to nudity, S&M roleplay, and for it's gay and lesbian undertones. 

Ever since she was humping a stage and singing “Like A Virgin” while wearing a wedding dress on the 1984 VMA stage, Madonna’s been an infamous cultural icon. The Evita actress has reinvented herself time and time again. However, each incarnation of Madonna has one thing in common, they’re all undoubtedly controversial.

I can’t speak for everyone, I can only speak for myself, but I admire this slut. She she’d rather be known for something “infamous” like being a slut, dressing how she wants, and having her own spiritual freedom than conform to societies’ norms. I find her behaviour to be positive and uplifting and within her right  to “express herself”.

You can be a virgin, a mother or a slut, perhaps all 3 if you so choose.

The character of Nola Darling, from the movie She's Gotta Have It, is a slut I admire. She puts her needs and wants ahead of societal pressures to keep her celibate or in a monogamous relationship. She is met with a little opposition from men she chooses to sleep with, because they are not her priority. The character of Jamie tries to woo her all along, writing poetry, and whispering sweet nothings in her ear, all the while not listening to the fact that she isn't searching for more. Mars, another lover, tells her he loves her too, she replies that he isn't listening, and he continuously compares himself to the other suitors. All try to weasel their way into a deeper relationship. One calls her "theirs," one calls her a "sex-addict," "sick," "not a nice lady." Her therapist tells her that her friend equates a "healthy sex drive with sickness." They flip a coin to decide who should leave and be alone with her when the four of them are having Thanksgiving dinner. The whole time all three suitors are known to each other and know that it isn't a choice between the three, she enjoys each for different reasons. All the while Jamie is portrayed as a sensitive, kind man, even though, he violently rapes her even as she tells him he is hurting her! He yells and asks who her genitals belong to?! He sexually assaults her out of frustration she a women could have mutiple partners and that he were not her priority. She tries to appease his anger by ending it with the other two suitors. He doesn't even apologize simply states that he had never done anything like that before. She chooses him regardless, but soon comes to regret this decision. She is complete on her own. She's "not a one-man woman."

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Black Rage

Black Rage

“To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious, is to be in a rage almost all the time. So the first part of the problem is how to control the rage so that it won’t destroy you. Part of the rage is this: it isn’t only what is happening to you, but it’s what’s happening around you all of the time, in the face of the most extraordinary and criminal indifference, the indifference and ignorance of most white people in this country.”  -  James Baldwin

Walking down the 14th Street corridor, you’d never think that this area of town was partially destroyed in a riot, you have high-end cycling centers to high-end athletic shops right next door, places like; soulcycle, lululemon, and high-end coffee shops like Wyndown and high rises. This neighbourhood oozes with money, charm, with all the trends of modern luxury. What we know from history was that the riots of 1968 started on April 4th less than two hours after the national news wires reported the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Author and Professor of Ethics Studies Kwame Holmes states in his report “Beyond the Flames” that it started when an unidentified black youth threw a brick into People’s Drug store which was located on the corner of 14th and U. Men and women, gay and straight, black and white alike all taking part in one of the oldest professions in history, prostitution. With racial disparity running high, police officers inability to clean up the neighbourhood, targeting ethnic minorities, leaning on historical concepts of discrimination. There’s a huge power struggle in this neighbourhood. There’s a rage from injustice. Cops trying to segregate the sex workers and customers. Black heteromasculinity clashes with the underground gay community. Society can never progress without white people acknowledging their unbelievable actions and their dangerous and evil behaviors, that persist even today. Their power reaches places that nowadays are almost impossible to break through, but that was their goal and their focus when a lot of society was trying to move towards love, they're hate could not be apparent, they had to lurk and murder. The history of the U.S. is riddled with such violence and depravity, it comes as no surprise that today police murder on camera and walk away free. It hasn’t even been a century since Billie Holiday sang about “Strange Fruit,” and lynchings carried on for decades after it’s release. In August of this year, an 8 year old biracial child was pushed off of a picnic table after a couple of white teens tied a rope around his neck, after assaulting him with stones and sticks, and talks of “white supremacy.” Fortunately, Quincy survived, even though the Police Chief from Claremont, NH, has stated that the white teens involved in his attempted murder  “need to be protected.” He also stating that: “we don’t want things to follow kids throughout their life,” as the 8 year old child is suffering from night terrors from this trauma. Racism continues because history was not expressed by those who suffered, their true pain and suffering never acknowledged or rectified. The white man took charge of the telling of pain, trauma, and suffering through the rape, murder, enslavement, abduction, and torture of People of Color. For a short time between the 70s-90s, it nearly faded into obscurity only to adapt as an evil lurking in the shadows, and not in plain sight as it once did. Through systematic political, economic, and societal powerhouses, the white people did not change their despicable views.  They merely adapted their control on PoC in ways that were difficult to bring down; laws, education, healthcare, law enforcement, gentrification, society as a whole. During the 60s in the neighborhood of Shaw in DC, “rebellions” were carried out as they attempted to dismantle the cruel and unusual punishment and treatment of black people. The wordings of “riots” brands the people who are rioting as in the wrong, angry, irrational, and acts of “random violence.” Words carry immense weight, and the use of “riot” branded a portion of a population’s attempts to make their voices heard as violent lunatics, angry for nothing. The word “riot” helped enforce a notion that “black people are congenitally unfit for citizenship” (Holmes, 306). “The political and juridical institutions designed to respond to citizen concerns in the United states are incapable of registering, let alone responding to, black people’s pain” (Holmes, 307). The “rebellions” were called “riots” as a successful attempt to discredit and vilify protesters who were angry at the transgenerational racism them and their families have been subjected to their entire lives. People of color were crammed into buildings in their community where the majority of buildings were owned by white people. The white people took away privacy & sanity, by offering inadequate housing, which was continued segregation between “white suburbs and black ghettos.” (Holmes, 311) White people were incentivized to ownership of land and buildings, while black people were forced to live in tight quarters forever paying rent and having no guarantee of safety or laws that protected them (Holmes, 311). A Greek “slumlord” owned 75% of the Shaw neighborhood’s property. He and his associates took advantage of black people and the government’s federal loans designed for the rehabilitation of the inner city. Had the government monitored and cared about these people, they would have quickly seen things were not how they ought to be, but as we know this country does as it pleases, and those loans may have been a smoke screen to countless illegal activities. Gentrification comes to mind when reading about “The Plan” (Holmes, 319). Definitely doesn’t seem unlikely that the district had aimed for a mass exodus of black people by 2000. The small living spaces also made it difficult for families to have peace and privacy, by “warping marital sexual relations … into deviance that reproduces the culture of poverty among black children” (Holmes, 313). “Black entrepreneurs, be they gay or straight, took advantage of general disinterest in the maintenance of black heteronormativity and fulfilled the needs of the sexual marketplace that was allowed to flourish with shaw- even as their establishments contributed to the decline of shaw’s reputation and animated black anger about white exploitations” (Holmes, 318). Police brutality took hold in numerous ways, first the white officers did not feel their job was to protect all life, only that of fellow whites, and second they saw black men as competition, and black and white women as theirs to assault and abuse. The threat from black men over ownership of white women’s bodies was too great, and they resorted to violence to subdue it. Assaults took place primarily because of “competing male heterosexualities” (Holmes, 310) and the conflicting feelings of “policemen’s proprietary relationship to the women on 14th St NW” (Holmes, 309). Women have long since been a bargaining tool, a body meant to be owned and sold, used and abused. The LGBTQ community hasn’t been treated much better, cast aside and painting LGBTQ people as suffering with a “sickness of the mind” (Holmes, 312). Police use excessive force, power, evil to tangle a person so far into the depths of hell, that they cannot escape, that is if they aren’t shot and killed first. The story of Kalief Browder, a 16 year old boy, is gut-wrenching and infuriating. An innocent young black boy who was incarcerated for a 3 year period, much of it spent in solitary confinement on Rikers Island, having never been given a trial or been convicted of a crime, all based on false testimony and allegations. He recounted much of his experiences to Journalist Jennifer Gonnerman. Two years after his release, Kalief hung himself at the age of 22, having learned how to kill himself from his time on Rikers Island. Black rage remains a muted, unresolved reality and a timely analysis of people in crisis. Understanding the origin and continuing reality of Black rage is vital for developing sustainable alternatives to the stubborn second-class status of Black people in this country. Hatred of Blacks has been so deeply bound up with being an American that it has been one of the first things white people learn and one of the last things white people forget. Such feelings have been elevated to a position of national character. This is exactly why “Black Lives Matter” needs to be shouted from the rooftops, black and brown children and people, need to know they matter! For 400+ years the HISTORY of murders, abductions, disappearances, rapes, brutality, injustice across all aspects of their lives points to the exact opposite.

“14th Street Washington, DC, dark, dim underground where the hustlers meet and the whores prey on whitey’s sexual hang-up and walk away with his wallet and on occasion his life.”

    - Isaac Ruffin

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Power, Privilege, Perreo

             Society’s view of corporeality, the qualities associated with woman/man, the color of one’s skin, and one’s sexuality, all intertwine and stem from a distorted and marginalized representation of the full spectrum of a being’s life. These ideals and preconceived notions elevate a portion of the population to greater opportunities. Privilege is basically when you have special advantages and opportunities because you are a part of a certain group of people. These special advantages and opportunities make it easier for privileged folks to live, even at the cost of less privileged folks, who their lives are often built upon. An author featured in “Queer and Trans Artists of Color: Stories of Some of Our Lives” named Fabian Romero states how he received more attention for his work when he lost weight. He also recognized how the color of his skin led him to more opportunities, i.e. light-skinned privilege, thin-privilege (King, 90). In our current age of heightened social awareness, especially with the help of social media, people of different race, gender, sexuality are more open to understand how we affect each other when we don’t recognize the privilege we have in certain situations. Through this, we learn how to treat each other better, how to not harm our friends and how to teach our peers to interact with their own. Understanding how social interactions affect ourselves and others is important, especially when confronting the layers and layers of inequity and injustice that fuel our socioeconomic communities. “My privileges  and oppressions inform my decision-making, and they inform how I treat people. They also inform how I defend my actions” (King 93).

           Femininity and masculinity have for a long time been confined to certain characteristics. When one falls on the outside of the “norms” of society’s views of what a woman or a man is, their experiences, worthiness, and lives are not represented fully or at all. Representation matters because every person’s life is made up of different feelings, emotions, struggles. When one is not represented it offers a distorted view of the world, in which they are the outcasts and are not worthy enough for representation. For a long time, masculinity has been a series of traits revolving around physical strength, handsomeness, power, domination, and violence. Author, Fabian Romero, stated how this representation is harmful, because it minimizes the voices of men who do not fall into these norms. Femininity on the other hand, was molded to fit perfectly under the masculine traits. Women are taught to be meek, subservient, obedient, and violence is rationalized and expected. In the Afro-Latino/a dance of perreo/reggaeton, the women are the central figures. Their bodies are the focus and stars of the stage, while the men serve as their props. Even though their bodies are on display in various ways and positions, the women dancers have actual skill in this art, and have the power to captivate. Mr. Rivera-Servera states it is “a skillful performance of agency” (Rivera-Servera 108).

           As Mr. Rivera-Servera states: “Queer perspectives are unfortunately still marginal, though certainly emergent” (Rivera-Servera 97). Fabian states that he gets by in life as a gay man and PoC relatively easily, because he has typical masculine traits, traits associated with success and likeability (King 90). Mr. Rivera-Servera states that “the focus of the action is on bodies in motion queerly articulating a performance script rooted in homophobic and sexist violence” (Rivera-Servera 108). A slight at the blackness of reggaeton can be noted, in which the author calls attention to the fact that “in Puerto Rico and the United States, where blackness has been historically devalued but enthusiastically consumed” (Rivera-Servera 108). What we see in much of today’s dance culture is women taking a passive role, (sexually submissive) men taking the lead operating their masculinity, bent over women, men spanking their ass, thrusting their groins towards the buttocks. What we see is is music stars like Akon singing songs about “Smack that” in which he states that we wants to smack a woman’s butt until it’s sore. So women need to be fat only in places where it is desirable to men. Let’s look at the music world and in particular Reggaeton, a musical dance genre and style that originated in the early 1990s in Puerto Rico, something as simple as a dance could favor privilege towards men, towards the wealthy, or towards a fat phobic culture. Has this culture gone from expression of freedom to one that appeases the male hedonist desires?

           People of color, especially women of color, have had the details of their lives marginalized, cast away, or objectified. Malcolm X said, “The most disrespected person in America is the black woman.” New versions of disrespectful treatment of women pop up all over the world. The continued objectification, specifically of black women but also women in general, is a systemic problem in our culture. Women are continually relegated to levels of importance based on their curves and cup size. Fabian Romero states how even light-skinned PoC in Mexico, and many immigrants in general, wish to distance themselves from dark-skinned PoC. There is an “Anti-Black sentiment within communities of color and immigrant communities” as well (King 99). Fabian states also that “dark-skinned folks and black folks are usually talked about in this really unintelligent way” (King 92). Even though their struggles are similar, some of “their practices become really divisive” (King 99). Author Ramon Rivera-Servera states how he is insisting on “recognition of the blackness of latinidad, especially in Puerto Rican and queer contexts” (Rivera-Servera 97). An article, from website REMEZCLA, highlights the importance “to actively engage with the history of reggaeton (which is one of Afro-diasporic struggle).” Who gets credit for the things that artists of color create for their communities, and how does privilege and power translate into that?

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Erasure of Women

How is it that throughout centuries of modern civilization, women are still battling for civil rights, equal pay, reproductive freedom, and gender equality? Turn on your TV.   Open your social media.  You have heard the sayings.  You can’t make this up.Yet, social construction of race and gender has been produced, repackaged, and advertised so many times over. There are people who actually believe that a woman’s body should be controlled by the government; that a woman’s body can shut down rape; that a woman should carry a child to full-term even if it is stillborn. We have collectively formed a culture that ignores women and dissuades people from helping women, but this culture is not anything new (Solnit). 

The funny thing is, since the late 19th century, evolutionary theory has completely erased women from science, especially if they are black or a person of color. Forethought about women, how their bodies worked and putting it into practice was not something interesting to men, who were solidified as teachers appointed to explain evolutionary biology and its alignment to certain systems of belief. These beliefs portrayed women as inferior, weak, less smart and more emotional. “Woman” slowly formed into a racialized category. White women became synonymous with the savages and “lower” races of that time and were used as a basis of comparison, while the black and brown women were enslaved, segregated, or both. The domination of women had become natural, further legitimized by scientific findings. These discoveries were vetted by scientists who thought scientific accuracy was based on the quality of opinions and ideals of the scientist, not actual scientific study and experimentation that produces unbiased theory (White 81-116).

This vicious cycle was the face of evaluating the world in the 19th century, stitching together a very narrow world view for Europeans, white people, and the black and brown people under their colonization, especially pertaining to that of women.  Translating to now, a woman’s place in society is overlooked and outdated.  Black and brown women’s fight for their rights are constantly interrupted by targeted government authority and legislature. Roxane Gay says that the “rights of women are alienable,” meaning they can be given or taken away whenever the white man deems necessary (Gay 276).  Merriam-Webster defines "alienable" as something that is transferable to another's ownership, with an example being property.  Alienable perfectly sums up our place in this world. We are transferable. We are sold. Our bodies are up for debate, and our experiences, struggles, suffering, triumphs, accomplishments needs and dreams are ignored and dismissed.

Women are forced to thrive in a society designed to use them, ignore them, and to erase them. Author Rebecca Solnit has a noteworthy article on her blog that touches on these issues. Men's abuse and power is glorified and idolized. Women are abused, murdered, raped, and their attackers are given medals, awards,  and continue to live their lives as if the pain and trauma they caused didn't happen. The Constitution was written by several white men, so as Gay states, they weren't thinking of women and people of color when they wrote it, but consequently it should protect women and women of color too, but it does the opposite. Women have fought this culture of domination for centuries, a type of ownership over them that isn’t tangible enough to grab, but still lives, breathes, and affects their day-to-day lives.

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We’re Unmuted!!