The Rise of Sex Negative Feminism Among Young Black Women

[IwantToRetire]

There is a growing subculture of young women (and girls) who identify as sex-negative feminists, taking to the likes of Twitter and TikTok to express candidly negative views on phenomena deemed the offshoots of a male-centric and hyper-sexualised society, such as porn and hookup culture. This movement stands at odds with the sex positive legacy of the mainly millennial-heralded 2010s, which paved the way for ‘slut pride’ and a heightened consciousness of kink and BDSM within the mainstream. Such generational differences have become apparent through ongoing discourse on popular youth programming providing unrealistic and inappropriately graphic depictions of female teens and young adults.

For example, Sam Levinson’s upcoming , which stars a 23-year-old Lily-Rose Depp, has been dubbed a toxic man’s ‘rape fantasy’ for its supposed glamourisation of sexual violence and exploitation of women. And since its 2019 debut, Euphoria (another Levinson-HBO project) has been under constant scrutiny for its on and off-screen antics concerning the adultifying and sexually explicit storylines involving 20-something-year-old actresses playing teenage girls.

More specifically, women from online Black communities are also speaking out against the narrow dimensions of sexual expression that young Black women in the spotlight seem to be able to explore. Stars like Chloe Bailey and Normani are at the centre of these conversations, with many young Black women and girls expressing frustration over their perceived public portrayals as zealously raunchy beings.

The roots of sex negativity as an organised, feminist ideal can be traced back to the works of white second-wave scholars like Andrea Dworkin and Catherine Mackinnon, who have written extensively about the sex industry (termed the ‘sex trade’) as an inherently violent arena for women that only serves to reinforce male hegemony. These views have often been dismissed as essentialist and puritanical in the face of the ‘free love’ movement that characterised the 1960s and 70s.

Prominent Black feminists of the same time period weren’t so explicit in labelling themselves ‘sex negative’ in their perspectives of female sexuality and its relation to the male gaze. The more layered conditions of racism and colonialism for Black women often deprived attention away from this topic to focus on issues like media representation, marriage and motherhood. Nonetheless, Angela Davis offered a retrospective analysis of sex negative politics in a 1999 interview with fellow Black American sociologist Siobhan Brooks, noting its utility. “The definition of pornography as assaultive, objectifying and violative of women's autonomy and self-determination was strategically important because it allowed for a distinction between what was exploitative and violative on the one hand, and what was an expression of agency on the other,” she said. Also discoursing in the 90s was Patricia Hill Collins, who identified a link between the oppressive sexual realities of Black and white womanhood through pornography, writing, “the profitability of Black women's sexual exploitation for white 'gentlemen' parallels pornography's financially lucrative benefits for pornographers” in her seminal work Black Feminist Thought.

"I think the goal of sex negative feminism is really protection. Sex negative feminists view pleasure-centred sexuality as a Trojan horse or another way for men to exploit women. Sex positive feminism is radical freedom.

https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/2023/05/11329778/sex-negative-feminists-gen-z-millennial

Please note the quotes above are just selections that I have made and dont necessarily reflect the article as a whole.

Just thought it interesting, although difficult to absorb because of the language (ie does she speak like this or is this just a writing style) as it references 1970s radical feminism.

I won't post any more as I take the points made by you and @YetAnotherSpartacus but would like to note that I referenced Beyonce and Jay Z because they are married and the difference of how women are expected to perform vs the male is nicely drawn as they are a couple.

However - you can drop any female name - JLo, Miley Cyrus, Brittany Spears, etc. Almost every female on stage wears g-string, thigh high, high heeled leather boots and sparkly bras. The guys get to be comfortable and covered.

I think it speaks to the discussion.

I don't think white women wearing hot pants and grinding their crotches are treated or viewed any more favourably to be honest, even if this was supposed to be a sign of a strong and liberated woman. Personally I've never really bought into that sort of sex positivity. I've watched from. distance and can only ever see women objectifying themselves. The inherent double standards for men and women are always there.

As has been suggested there can be that image that black women are naturally more confident, overt, or even more aggressively animalistic in their sexuality - so to that extent it might be pereceived as being more 'powerful' than a white woman wearing and doing the same, but doesn't that sort of overt sexual display then further play into the image.

The 'sex positive' goals of liberal feminism seem to be a bit of an illusion I think, or certainly naive, at best.

It is actually very sex positive!

Of course, Beyonce has goddess status for many people, and as a consequence a lot of influence.

When people talk about Black women online (including mumsnet), they're usually speaking about western Black women. If they're talking about African women, they'd typically say African women or Black African women.

I agree with you regarding African women

It’s not just black women. I’m watching this play out in real life with the very privileged female teens in my world. The sexual messaging they are inundated with has resulted in a withdrawal. They are going so far as declaring plans for lifelong abstinence.

I’m actually a bit worried that they are over correcting to the point that they will miss out on positive emotional connections, not just sexual contact. My hope though is that they can build a strong community and fight back against hookup and porn culture and reclaim their sexuality in the process.

Yes, this is true. Plus I had a very "puritan" upbringing (in the 90s and 00s due to religion) where girls were not allowed to dance, wear make up, listen to popular music, wear skirts above the knee, heels, tight clothes etc. due to 'tempting the boys'. If you had sex before marriage or a divorce or affair then you were the whore of Babylon, even if the man was abusive. Eve led Adam astray, and all that. This was coupled with an additional layer of respectability politics due to being a Black woman in a majority white UK region.

So I found the idea of being 'sex positive' and slut walks, pole dancing for fun etc. very liberating. At least on the surface. But that was in comparison to the other version of oppression, which was a harsh policing of women and their bodies and sexuality. And "would someone please think of our boys who are being tempted and led astray" 😱😱

It is always women's bodies which are the centre or the site of the struggle for power.

Was watching a programme about Recep Tayyip Erdogan ( Turkish president), ahead of the national election on Sunday, and the big battleground between those who governed newly formed secular republic ( which is now 100 years old) and the majority muslim population, was the headscarf.

The headscarf ( hijab) was banned in the secular Turkish Republic - well, certainly for women in public or civil office - but when Erdogan was elected he reversed this.

Istanbul ( a fabulous city) is real eastern religion meets western secularism - with lost of 'modern' women walking around in shorts and heads uncovered, but then lost of women in hijabs too, and even a growing number now in the full abaya ( which i always find quite disturbing, personally)

Yes this happens a lot and I never see anyone on “their” side call it out.

I think we see the effects of black girls perceived to be older in those recent cases where they were strip searched by police, one was in a school iirc.

I'm glad that some thought this article worth posting on FWR, and hope it is read in full.

For clarification I did NOT choose to have Andrea Dworkin's photo illustrate my OP. This is a problem caused by mumsnet assuming which links to activate, which can distort emphasis. I try and remember to use the dustbin image to get rid of the links mumsnet really bad programming picks on. I am sure where it is about advertising the atuomation works, but in a discussion is damaging. But it is my fault for always posting late and night when I am not as alert as I should be.

But yes I did quote the bit about 70s feminism as I thought that was interesting, because although acknowledged, went onto talking about carving out contemporary Black women's experience. ie the article was acknowledging they haven't invented it, but are now arriving at their own understanding.

I assumed the article was more about Black Women in US & European culture, and whilst obviously all women suffer male sexualization, in terms of being promoted to the public in a white male dominated industries of music, film etc., Black Woman are more disadvantaged in terms of having free choice. Because it is the preconception of white men that presumes to say this is what make Black Women sellable as musicians. And yes porn does play a part, because the 2 women (sorry I am really bad on names) who got slated for their raunchy video, admitted that those were the images that surrounded them growing up.

So it isn't a competition, and has nothing whatsoever to do with which women are or are not trafficed for instance.

The article illustrates that these conversations are going on.

So rather than what about white women, or can only Black women comment, it is about listening to women's experiences.

The purpose of consciousness raising groups wasn't to have a competition about whose experience was the worse, but to find out what was common and what was different, through maybe race, class, age, immigration status or whatever.

So maybe less sniping and more sharing?

Brits were involved in the slave trade but we didn’t experience it in the way America did. Black people were never slaves in the UK. The average Brit benefitted from the slave trade through work in the cotton mills, the money paying for Victorian industrialisation, and maybe some philanthropy of wealthy traders, but at the time the black population of the UK was very small. The black population here is a very recent thing and many directly from Africa rather than descendants of new world slaves. I think racism in the UK is more based on immigration and, historically, viewing Africans as ‘savages’.

I have had quite a few friends who are American who move here, or British and moved to America. They all say that the culture is very different - far far more so than they expected. Yet so much analysis, and movements such as Black Lives Matter, ignore these difference and assume the UK is just an extension of America.

Not sure that workers including children doing long hours in a cotton mill would have seen it as a benefit. Huge amounts of people did not see any benefits in slavery for anyone but the owners and traders, which is one of the reasons they campaigned against it and hundreds of thousands did. For many people it was just entrenching an oligarchy. Before the Great Reform Act, nobody in Manchester could vote for an MP but many wealthy slave owners could purchase a rotten borough. The slave interest in parliament also made difficult life for other people in Britain by putting tariffs on sugar produced in other places, some of which did not use slave labour.

The black population here is a very recent thing and many directly from Africa rather than descendants of new world slaves.

The have been Black people living in the UK for centuries but yes very small.

However the current UK Black population is by majority Afro Caribbean ie direct descendants of "new world slaves".

Yes, work in cotton mills was harsh.

Of those in the UK born outside the UK in 2015 1.48 million were born in Africa vs about 300,000 in the Caribbean.

If you look at where people are 'born' that skews things. For example, I consider myself to be of Jamaican descent - my parents were born here, my grandparents were born in Jamaica (where they were British citizens as independence was not until 1962), so on that census, I would be classed as British, ignoring my ethnic identity.

Even so, I think those of African descent to just pip those of black Caribbean descent.

(and remember, Morocco, Algeria, Egypt etc are all in Africa, but might not consider themselves black).

Of those in the UK born outside the UK in 2015 1.48 million were born in Africa vs about 300,000 in the Caribbean.

How is that relevant or indicating anything?

Have you heard of Windrush (and other boats) bringing migrants from the Caribbean?

Many under the impression (cruelly deceived) that they would be settling in the UK. How many of them had children, grandchildren or even great grandchildren. All of whom are direct descendants of UK slave trade?

You cant just pluck a figure from a particular moment in time and then say it encapsulates the history that had led to that moment in time.

Sorry @samosamo I'm such a slow typist that you had replied making the point much better than I did when I was eventually ready to post.

U huh, no problem sis,

I'm not sure some of the posters on this thread have actually met a black woman before, much less had an intimate friendship or in-depth conversation with one, so we just can't get too upset by what we're reading.

I really wonder whether posters on here think that I, a Black Caribbean British woman, can go to Pakistan without being covered and not be treated as badly as a white woman? That's just so incredibly ignorant. I've been to the Middle East, and I'd say very religious countries, and I've been followed home and asked how much for sex on my doorstep, too. I was just driving. Just driving while being black and that made me a prostitute. But yes, let's talk about what women's experiences, as we always should.

*white women's experiences....

Because my point was many black people in the UK come directly from Africa.

NotHavingIt · Today 14:52

Orangeradiorabbit · Today 14:36

True. I didn't think about the power diffentials between men vs women in the beyonce example. It's definitely very complex, and difficult to navigate as a women (who has enjoyed pole dancing, long nails and hot pants in my younger years!)

Of course, Beyonce has goddess status for many people, and as a consequence a lot of influence.

I think women who really are like Goddesses , like she is, can exude sexuality as part of of being divine, while never seeming like objects or under male control. On the contrary. They look like they could give birth to the universe.

Serena Williams too.

Someones started another thread :( - so this is just a bump to make this visible

Its really sad how any post to do with black women becomes a heated history lecture in slavery and racism.

The rules aren't the same for all women. Behaviour that's gets you admired as edgy, free-spirited and bohemian if you are middle or upper class, gets you written off as a slag if you are working class. Working class women have to work even harder at being seen as a person with a valuable mind and an inner life, and not someone who is easy and nothing more than a sex object. Unsurprisingly, the people who are circling the drain of 'sex work' are less likely to have a positive view of it than someone for whom it is merely a theoretical argument or aesthetic.