Beyond Black and Blue: BDSM, Internet Pornography, and Black Female Sexuality

• Published in: Feminist studies 2015-07, Vol.41 (2), p.409-436
• Main Author: Cruz, Ariane
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: African American culture; African Americans; Black people; Female sexuality; Females; Feminism; Internet; Otherness; Pleasure; Politics; Pornography; Pornography & obscenity; Power; Race; Racism; Rape; Sadomasochism; Sexual violence; Sexuality; Silence; Slavery; Text analysis; Textual analysis; Trauma; Violence; Women
• ISSN: 0046-3663; 2153-3873
• DOI: 10.15767/feministstudies.41.2.409

THE EVIDENCE OF SLIME Slavery, itself a kind of "slime," remains an active marketplace for the production of Black female sexuality and its representations.1 The impact of chattel slavery and the pervasive rape of Black female slaves on modern constructions and representations of Black women has been well theorized, in particular by a number of Black feminist scholars who have worked to rupture what Darlene Clark Hine terms the "culture of dissemblance," the politics of silence shrouding expressions of Black female sexuality.2 While the antebellum legacy of sexual violence on Black women is substantive, what has not been effectively considered is how Black women deliberately employ the shadows of slavery in the deliverance and/or receiving of sexual pleasure. [...]I examine race play as a particularly problematic yet powerful practice for Black women that illuminates the contradictory dynamics of racialized pleasure and power via the eroticization of racism and racial sexual alterity.4 Using textual analysis, archival research, and interviews, I reveal how violence becomes not just a vehicle of pleasure but also a mode of accessing and critiquing power.5 bdsm is a fertile site from which to consider the complexity and diverseness of Black women's sexual practice and the mutability of Black female sexuality.