Black Women’s Blueprint published “An Open Letter from Black Women to the SlutWalk,” which was endorsed by over 100 women of color and women’s health and anti- violence organizations such as the Women’s Health and Justice Initiative in New Orleans, the Audre Lorde Project, and the subRosa artist collective. The letter stated that women of color have worked for years to end the use of derogative terms such as slut, partly in response to histories of slavery and forced sexualization that white women do not share, and that they have no desire to reclaim the word slut.

Yet femme of color authors such as Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha also identify themselves as ‘slutty’ and still claim a politics of sexual agency for women of color as a strategy of survival (Femme Shark Manifesto). In Colonize This! she writes

Browngirlworld is home and heartbreak, the place where my heart meets my cunt and they cum and rip open at the same moment… I really went to revolution and feminism cuz [sic] I wanted a family that would love me, decolonize me, heal me. The feminism I walked into as a bi-queer brown breed girl was all about the women I wanted to fuck, love and make home with. More than any meeting, I wanted to make places where my girls, my queer dark sistren, could survive. (4)

Piepzna-Samarasinha describes a model for femme sexual agency where political action and sexual desire are not separate, but are mutually reinforcing, saying “is my fem body fake? …What does gender performance mean when you need a rock? I build this body, this gender, layer of silk over steel skeleton” (Femmes of Power, 98). Similarly, Miss Stewart of the Atlanta Femme Mafia links together her own queer of color politics with femme expression saying

black women have been objects of sexual curiosity and this history pervades our present in every which way, particularly for black femmes… But whether I have on my basketball gear or a short mini-skirt with some fierce heels, I control the way people perceive me. My femmeness is captivating. Once ‘others’ see what black femmes are capable of, this will help facilitate acceptance in the South and slowly deter racist, homophobic and heterosexist comments. (Femmes of Power, 105)

Stewart describes an act of subverting the racialized sexual gaze, changing a moment of objectification into a moment of empowerment by exploiting the attention given to her as a result of gendered bodily expression. Femme sexual agency, as performed and encouraged by Ke$ha, can operate in a queer of color context as well as a white heterosexual context. Pipezna-Samarasinha and Steward are just two examples that demonstrate that a mode of sexual agency that includes aggressive sexual desire does not preclude the inclusion of women of color or the ability to decide when and where that sexual desire will be performed.

This page is a tag of:

Comment on this page