Opinion: We have to talk about the violence of hypersexualising Black women.

Today, April 26th 2022, a news story broke about BBC Radio DJ Tim Westwood. He has been accused of sexual misconduct by 7 women who do not know each other, between 1992 and 2017. All of the seven are black women.

I am not here to comment on that - though The Black Project stands with all survivors of abuse - but I do think now would be a good time to discuss the hypersexualisation of the black female body, particularly in the music industry. The history of it, how it pervails, and the ways it is so dangerous. Because there’s no doubt it is dangerous.

Think about mainstream media for a minute - TV, Film, Music videos. Think about dark skinned black women. Chances are you're picturing one of two things right now. Either a character totally devoid of any sexuality at all, the geeky best friend, the sassy side character. Or a character so sexualised you wonder what the point of those booty shorts actually are.

But where did this come from? The origins of the hypersexual black woman can be traced to around the 1400s, the early days of European exploration. European seafarers laid the foundations that led to a distorted view of the East, of Africa and of the Americas that still prevails today. The cultures of these lands would be exoticised and eroticised. Men would travel the routes that took them to Africa and return with tales describing the "monstrous sexuality far-off lands where, as legend had it, men sported gigantic penises and women consorted with apes.”

Many people in Europe had never left their towns let alone their countries, so this dramatisation of black women became the shared belief. The storytelling of European men dominating the hyper-sexual African woman was exaggerated further with each generation. It was this that contributed to such things as "human zoos" where the European elite could come and stare at the black body - always on display in the nude or semi nude. The presumed hyper sexuality of the black woman led to sexual violence by the colonisers, who deemed them incapable of saying no like the civilised white women at home, and this mindset was seen clearly during the years of the slave trade.

Slave owners used this mindset - that the black woman simply couldn't say no, she was so inherently sexual her body was his to use - to justify the abuse and dehumanisation of the Black women enslaved by them. Women endured assault after assault, being forced to carry and birth children. In 19th century Europe, society was increasingly bourgeois, and alongside that came the institutionalisation of sex work. Colonised lands were suddenly a place for Europeans to look for sexual experiences free from social ties. Sex in the colonial fantasy was, in comparison to sex within Western society, free from responsibility. Fantasy free of reality, which resulted in the further fetishisation of women of colour by white European men.

Then fast forward to the present day. Music videos featuring black women present this same image - the hyper sexual being. All boob and bum, very little clothing, glistening from the oil coating their skin, there for the male gaze to consume. The real world impact of the weight of this context is massive. A study by Georgetown University found that Black girls were more likely than white girls to be viewed as behaving and seeming older than their stated age; more knowledgeable about adult topics, including sex; and more likely to take on adult roles and responsibilities than what would have been expected for their age.

Statistics from the United States show the way that manifests. A survey that is nationally representative indicates that while almost 18% of white women and 7% of Asian/Pacific Islander women will be raped in their lifetimes, almost 19% of black women, 24% of mixed race women, and 34% of Native American and Alaska Native women will be raped during their lifetimes.

In the US, 54.3% of women are white, 7.1% are Asian/Pacific Islander, 0.8% are Native American/Alaskan, 14% are black. The mixed population is 6.9%, but there’s not data on women specifically. But it shows: the bodies that have been exoticised, eroticised, and hypersexualised for centuries are most at risk for violence.

There isn’t comparable research in the UK I could find to give as evidence of how this history manifests here. But we do know Black girls are more likely to face school exclusions than white peers, we do know that only 1% of girls adopted in the UK in 2020 were Black girls. Both of which support what was found in the Georgetown University - that adults perceive black girls to be less in need of nurturing and protection.

Understanding this history and the reality of misogynoir is only the first step to putting an end to present day suffering as a result of centuries of oppression. To get there, we need to be rooting our activism in intersectionality. Feminism that doesn’t make space to amplify the unique voices of Black women isn’t good feminism.

Until these histories and the ongoing consequences are understood and tackled, black women will be at risk of falling victim to the consequences of the Jezebel stereotype.