Who are âgirls of colorâ and why attempt to understand their sexual development apart from White girls? For about a decade, the growth in research and theorizing about sex and sexuality in adolescence has had a primarily White focus; not a purposefully White focus, but a focus that makes assumptions about similarities rather than differences in the way girls of color take in and make meaning about their own sexuality given media messages and discourse about sexuality. Our focus group research with girls of color and our additional research in the classroom teaching the Sexual Ethics for a Caring Society Curriculum (SECS-C) (www.âsexandethics.âcom) to coed classes that included primarily girls of color led us to think differently. We passionately desire to understand how these girls work with cultural discourses about their sexuality and make meaning of their bodies and sexuality in this culture at this time. How might media images and discourse about beauty and sexiness feel different to girls of color? How might historical oppression and lack of visibility contribute to the way they make meaning of the messages they receive and to their own sexual development? What kinds of concerns do they bring to the sex education/sexual ethics classroom? And finally, how do girls of color experience, negotiate, and police the line between sexy-respectful and sexy-slutty, a line all too familiar to developing girls?
In this book, we also broaden the question of what is sexy to examine who âgirls of colorâ are at this point in history in the United States. While there is now a substantial body of research on some specific populations of girls (e.g., Latina, African American, Asian American), the country is changing such that race, ethnicity, and class are no longer neat categories, if ever they actually were. Some schools and neighborhoods are the proverbial melting pots that symbolize democracy in America. In these schools and neighborhood, students may identify as mixed race and/or daughters and sons of African immigrants and thus not how Americans now understand African American identity. They may identify as Caribbean Black, Caribbean Black Latino, or Cuban-American which is different from Puerto Rican or Mexican-American. They may be the daughters and sons of Vietnamese or Cambodian or Laotian immigrants, Chinese-American, Korean-American, Pacific Islanders, Native, or Native American with a number of specific tribal or cultural differences. In the face of such ethnic and racial diversity, typical categories that researchers have students check off on typical demographic forms mask real differences in culture, attitudes, religion, and background.
Class is also a marker of diversity, often assumed to intersect with race but rarely teased out in research. While neighborhoods can sometimes be a way of grouping together individuals of similar socioeconomic class, schools no longer always do this, as Charter schools and traditional public schools pull students from diverse socioeconomic groups, and class is not static.
Sexual orientation is another indicator of diversity, and although so little research exists on girls of color who identify as queer, bi, or lesbian in girlhood or adolescence, we take note that they are doubly marked by sexuality. That is, as a girl of color, particularly a Black girl, she is already read as sexual. As a girl who is not heterosexual, she is defined by her sexual practice. Her sexual risk-taking is more invisible (Riskind et al. 2014) and she may combat this sexualization of her identity by taking a âmoral high groundâ and labeling other girls âbad girlsâ and âslutsâ to differentiate herself (Payne 2010).
While our own samples are not as diverse as the lists of identities above, given where we were situated in the United States, we set out in this book to both embrace our diverse samples with a qualitative understanding of many differences among the students, while at the same time keeping open the question of how minority status, in all its particularity, may intersect with messages about sex and sexuality in the schools and the world these students live in.
With regard to sex and sexuality, there is precious little psychological research that explores sexual development specifically in girls of color without focusing on riskâpregnancy, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), or abuse. The bulk of the research on girls of color comes from a public health perspective, focusing on findings that some girls of color, Latina and African American, engage in âfirst sexâ earlier than White girls. This research also indicates that they are at greater risk of teen pregnancy (McCree et al. 2003; Wingood et al. 2003). We are thus faced, with a body of research that first and foremost situates girls of color as both oversexed and in danger, in need of services and education for the purposes of prevention. This research examines risk factors such as exposure to rap music videos (Wingood et al. 2003) and depression (Brown et al. 2006), as well as protective factors such as religiosity and the ability to communicate about sex with partners (DiClemente et al. 2001; McCree et al. 2003). This literature positions girls of color as comparatively at greater risk in areas of sexual activity and lends support to the W. E. B. Dubois observation that being Black in America means a girl needs to be constantly aware that others view her as a problem (Harris-Perry 2011).
There is a long racist history of seeing girls of color, particularly African American girls, but also Latina girls, as oversexed or hypersexual. Chapter 2, with its discussion of the research on body image of African American girls and women, will address the relationship of this research to the research on problematic White body ideals and connect this body image research to a history of seeing African American girls as oversexed. Chapter 3 in its discussion of ârespectâ will address the history of this idea in African American communities of women and its relationship to sexuality. The myth of Black female wantonness has a long history rooted in White justification of the abuse and rape of Black slaves as well as the sexualizing of the exotic and different as a way of preserving an ideal of White purity. This is not only true of Black females but of immigrant women; the earlier social purity movement at the turn of the nineteenth century situated immigrants as the wanton and exotic outsiders that put a supposed White and Protestant purity at risk.
Because of this history, it is dangerous to talk about and research girls of color and sexuality, although it is even more dangerous for girls themselves to be situated in this way. Even in the late twentieth century when poets such as Audre Lorde (1978) wrote so beautifully about owning oneâs sexuality as sensuality, when Eve Ensler wrote about global violence against women and included the voices of women of color in the Vagina Monologues (Ensler 1998)âin spite of recent criticism for lack of intersectionality (Cooper 2007), when womenâs studies classes learnt the horror of the âHottentot Venus,â Saartjie Baartmanâs public degradation (put on display in life and in death for sexual curiosity), and when authors such as Sapphire (1996) and Alice Walker (1992) wrote of the sexual abuse and rape of Black women, there still has been a silence around the healthy sexual development of girls of color.
Girls of color are shaping and expressing their sexuality on a stage for a variety of audiences with a range of expectations. But one of the strongest and most problematic readings of Black sexuality today, in particular, is that of the oversexed Black adolescent girl. While so-called promiscuity in White girls can be read as a result of trauma and while sexual activity of the hook-up culture can be read as a bid for sexual freedom, sexual behavior in the Black teen girlâs life is often read as an expression of some innate and animalistic oversexualization. This may not be true for some ethnicities and races but is particularly true for Black girls and thus much of our focus will be on them. We hope not to make other races and ethnicities invisible in this book, and will bring in the diverse voices of our focus groups and classrooms without also trying to make them stand for all minority races. However, our samples, current events, and the existing literature support this closer look at Black girls.
We are cognizant that we are writing at a particularly hopeful and vulnerable time for Black girls. The recent Black Lives Matter (www.âblacklivesmatterâ.âcom) movement has drawn attention to the overly punitive, racist, and lethal responses from systems of law and order to experiences of being Black, and Black being interpreted as violent or a problem to be controlled. The âBlack Girls Matterâ report by Crenshaw et al. (2015) and an essay published in Diverse Issues in Higher Education (Cooper 2015) highlight the way lack of protection in school from sexual harassment affects girls, and we might add affects girlsâ sexual development. It also notes how schools do not identify signs of sexual traumatization nor provide services for Black girls because of this trauma. The report also documents the disproportionate disciplinary action taken against Black girls when they speak out or act out in schools, something noted by our own focus group girls regarding their being punished for the clothes they wear if such clothing appears sexual to teachers and administration even when White girls wear the same clothing. The girls in their report also note the differential treatment of girls who act out from boys who are often positioned as boys just being boys.
We take these crimes against Black girlhood seriously, and ackn...