In Fall 2020, I saw a TikTok that changed the way I thought about gender. User @earthseedown make a point that is completely valid for black women and femmes to think of themselves as both black women and as nonbinary. I was instantly fascinated by this topic.
The video brought up a great point. How are black bodies excluded by white gender binaries while still living in a society that perceives them as a women? I tackled this question in my final research proposal for my Race & Ethnicity class in Spring 2022. Excerpts and the full paper are below:
The otherness of black bodies is a historical occurrence; African slaves sold into bondage in the United States were considered subhuman. Philosopher David Smith explains that this type of dehumanization constituted that “European colonists did not merely assert that Africans were non-human. They were asserted that they were subhuman...they possessed whatever was required to make one subhuman (“brute beasts” by implication)” (422). It was “possible for a being to appear human without being human...[Africans] carry some resemblance of manhood but nonetheless are denied human status” (422). How are black bodies today expected to abide by the “rules” of a male/female binary when blackness was—and still is—seen as subhuman? Slaves were subhuman creatures that were not even worthy enough to fit into a gender binary. Yet, black (queer) bodies are taught by our society to wedge themselves into labels of “man” or “woman” that were not created for them in the first place."
Many [black queer femmes] stress that they refuse to be called “a woman without putting black in front of it” (@rudeblackhottie) because their identity as people of color adds nuance to gender that needs to be acknowledged. While it may seem contradictory for a black person to identify both with black womanhood and with being nonbinary, this understanding of race and gender is an example of black (queer) bodies reimaging gender outside of the male/female binary that excludes them."
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