Feminist Knowledge | Student Writings

"Blue Eyes over Dark Skin: Acculturation and the Sexuality of the Woman of Colour"

by Ridwana Timol

"How a particular group is represented determines in a very real sense what it can do in society." (Dyer as quoted in Wilton, 1997:118)

In times of crisis we dig into our past but tend to select only that part of our history and ideology that will serve our purpose. Indian nationalists for instance, chose the "Aryan Heritage" that revolved around a hierarchical system of social organisation where women were at the service of great males warrior and heroes. They produced, reared and maintained soldiers of the nation. These soldiers in turn fought over territory, gold, truths, and followers, and the value of their conquered assets were measured by the amount and extent to which women of their environment submitted to them and constructed their self-identities as trophies. Pre-patriarchal traditions like the "shaktic" philosophy are not remembered or not thought of as opposing gender and class hegemonies as if the patriarchal way of life has been unconsciously internalised for the preservation and justification of a system whose survival relies on the subjugation of women (Thadani, 1999). The bases of colonial imperialism are hegemonic power relations and the conquest of whatever that can be subjugated. But, equating colonialism to patriarchy in order to localise the origins of sexual and gender oppression is a reductionist attempt that obscures the more complex dynamics involved in cultural contact and transmutation.

The sexuality of the woman of colour has been the object of various speculations, fantasies and mystifications. The non-White, primal female has been admired, scorned, enshrined and violated because of the hedonistic, bestial value that is attributed to her sexuality. Her sensuality, whether real or fabricated, has frightened and charmed many. It is exactly the ambiguity that her body evokes in the Western mind that has fed all the myths around the Earth goddesses of fertility, who are regarded as powerful yet vile. Somehow, at various historical instances, her sexuality has threatened patriarchal foundations, which consequently led to the regimentation of her 'sex' by men both within the private and the public sphere.

When the European colonisers set foot on "indigenous" land they were astounded by a way of life that contradicted their Christian notions of chastity, sexual humility and monogamy. It became a matter of personal reputation and duty to instruct these 'wild' peoples into more contained relations. The White man saw the African man as a child with no inhibitions, who satisfied his needs without any emotional sophistication. The African woman on the other hand was the daughter of the devil, who was sent, with her barely covered voluptuous body, to tempt him. Enter the missionaries! It is interesting to note that in a lot of cases, wives of high rank officials soon appropriated to themselves the duty of 'educating' the native women.

In some African traditions, women had ownership of land and participated in agriculture. This presented a threat to a socio-economic model that required a division of labour where females attended to the household and to the re-production of new labour. Eventually a male-headed family organisation with ownership granted solely to men was legalised.

The outcome of this was resistance on the part of the women when the men were sent away from home to work. The women had no means of survival if they were to stay at home, and thus clearly the Victorian family model was not experienced as very practical.

The 'ambiguous' sexuality of a lot of North and North-western African women caught the attention of missionaries as a contradiction to Christian values regarding the kinds of sexual relationships sanctioned by God. These values were used to control and stifle same-sex associations and polygamy. The guilt placed on the existing traditional framework and beliefs practiced by these women might have contributed to a sense of low esteem and the development of an inferiority complex amongst them. Sexual management became the affair of the Church, with all new 'transgressions' surviving in parallel, kept hidden from the foreigner's disapproving gaze (Foucault in Mercer, 1992). The foreigner also had an economic interest in maintaining patrilinearity and monogamy: it was a kind of social policing that gave him a sense of order and control; a means to structure the free labour force (Stearn, 2001).

In attending to the problem of temptation and she-devils, officials in India reported that indigenous women were far too sensual in their sarees, that they were too exposed (although we wonder if it was not rather an exposure of male bestiality in the white man!). The conservative missionaries soon took over the task of encouraging women to wear Victorian dresses.

These dresses were experienced as impractical for performing duties in and a few Indian feminists who visited England at the time, paid special attention to the social inequalities and misogyny that transpired. It seemed that in some ways, Victorian British women were worse off in terms of the social status of their gender. These women preached an "Indianness" focusing on the beauty and spiritual dimension of the traditional dress (Stearns, 2001).

Wife battering became another concern of the well intended, although often misguided missionaries. They eventually contributed to the formation of laws protecting women from domestic violence. These laws however, were overshadowed by elaborate legislation that gave the husband the right to confine his wife to the conjugal home against her wish, should she express the desire to leave (Stearns, 2001).

Pro-independence nationalists benefited from such violations of female autonomy in that it helped them to create an image of the Indian woman as virtuous and beautiful in her saree, specifically contextualised within her home. The newly established became regarded as 'traditional' and as in several other places, women became instrumental agents of struggle. Colonialists and nationalists competed for her subjugation to their ideologies, both of which were based on patriarchy. Being pulled from all sides, confronted with conflicting loyalties, and being objectified in terms of her sexuality, the woman of colour surely had a lot to resolve around what her identity ought to be. What was her status next to that of a White woman's? Was she morally inferior? Was she sexually predisposed to give pleasure without possessing the right colour nor the right features to be thought of as beautiful? Men of colour found her attractive, they wanted to take her as lover and wife, she was worthy of them. But, she still felt like she was 'less'. It became important to her that the foreigner who had brought with him this new ideal of womanhood, what mercer calls "eurocentric aesthetics" (Mercer, 1992:106), would appraise her positively with his blue eyes.

In "Peau Noire Masques Blancs", Fanon (1952) exposes the inner conflict of coloured women (women of mixed black and white origins), or what he calls "mulatresses", whose concept of beauty and sex appeal and of identity are entirely defined through the white "gaze". Their 'middle' status seems transitory to them, a Provincial grace bestowed upon them to "save the race" (Fanon, 1952:38). The goal is to "whiten" and be rid of the black and filthy peel of the prison in which they live in. To be desired by a white man is a form of transcendence for the woman of colour: she becomes more than a race, she becomes the shrine of womanhood, more than a black female, she becomes feminine. The white master creates this 'femininity' with his lustful gaze; her self only comes into existence with his approval and acceptance. The fact that she can arouse him means that she is unique and special despite the lack of clarity with regards to her corporal envelope. She becomes "visible" (Simmonds, 1990) only when he notices her. Any pair of blue eyes, set in a white face ordained with blonde hair will do. She wants to be a woman first and foremost, but as long as colour 'stains' her skin, she will always be less. Her sexuality is silenced by her racial identity. The woman of colour thus feels the need to "whiten", to be 'clean' in order to have her desires heard, to have her body seen and touched.

A black man touching her achieves the opposite. It means regression, sinking back into a suppressed persona. In the best of situations, his attention proves nothing at all. She is perhaps all he can aspire to, should he dare. He is that part of her identity that she has rejected, that pigment that denies her the contrasting, pale background against which she can perceive her uniqueness as a sexual being. She argues that the Negro brother is not refined enough. When the argument fails, she claims that he is not handsome enough, and when she is accused of being shallow, she advocates her freedom of choice when it comes to choosing a husband. In that sense, the life of the "mulatresse" is more difficult than that of the white woman since the former carries in her chromosomes the potential to be ugly. She not only has to compete with other women, but must first rise above the depravity of her racial heritage. She expresses the wish to "evolve", perpetuating the myth of the indigenous as being removed from the white person on a Darwinian scale of civilisation and being closer to the chimp instead.

The answer to her prayers is the white knight, the fantasised perfect lover, who historically was often an officer who would 'take' her, impregnate her, and leave. But, not without compensation for his actions: her womb would now nurture her share of whiteness, a fairer "metisse", allowing for a 'psycho-ancestral' rite of passage from the status of slave to that of mistress (Fanon,1952).

Fanon's portrayal of the "mulatresse" as a pitiful, insecure, and almost neurotic character with such a low self- esteem that she is disgusted by her own share of blackness, powerfully exposes the dynamics springing from acculturation and identity formation soaked in discriminatory power relations. We can draw the case to fit Tajfel's useful Social Identity Theory whereby group identity is insecure, perceptions are somewhat negative and out-group seems to be favoured at the expense of in-group. These women seem to suffer from a deeply rooted inferiority complex that they themselves rationalise. Due to the rational approach taken, the group boundaries become somewhat permeable and the social ladder is climbed through the action of marrying a white man, a valued member of the out-group. White is definitely regarded as the superior status that the woman aims for and thus associates with (Tajfel, 19).

There seems to be a conflict of interests between black male nationalist activists and some black feminist activists. Their different priorities seem to place them at opposite ends of a power seesaw. They seem to be involuntarily (or not?) undermining each other's perceived, macro identity (the one sold and witnessed by the rest of the mostly white, Western world). Spike Lee, the most revered young Black American movie director, accused Alice Walker of perpetuating the myth of the black man being a barbarian in her portrayal of the male protagonist of her novel " The Colour Purple". Partly in retaliation, he conceived the movie "She's Gotta Have It!" (1986), which as the title suggests, revolves around a promiscuous woman whose identity is solely determined by her sexuality. Lee's main character Nola Darling, his Black American woman, is a tease, independent and liberated only because more than one man has access to her body. She is inconstant and irrational (note the recurring tendency to portray the Black woman as being neurotic and unstable) and only finds inner peace after one of her lovers has raped her and convinced her of foregoing her other lovers. Redemption for her is monogamy and subjugation to the male penis. Nola has her 'brains fucked out' whilst on her knees, after which she finally comes to her senses. Simmonds (1990) argues that Spike Lee used his credibility as a talented Black artist to paint an image of the Black woman in a way that would be readily welcomed by a male audience, Black or White, both of which sees the woman of colour as extremely sexually potent, yet simultaneously subordinate. He revives the age-old belief that the Black woman has too much sexual energy that has to be channelled in one way or the other. Spike Lee chooses to follow the example of 18th century slave owners by raping her. In both cases the basis is largely economic; the farmer needed to ensure reproduction of labour and Lee had to sell his movie. Both used aggression to restore a fragile manhood, a threatened identity (Mercer, 1992). Of course, inference as to their motives is speculative, a bit like how acculturation works: the writer, the "indigenous", internalises and constructs meaning from imported information either to survive or to create a theory. Although burdened by a clash of cultures or the stress of a deadline, and thus confined within an external context, the process is an active one where both writer and the "indigenous" person have some form of agency.

If not a "Black Mama" (Jackson as quoted in Simmonds, 1990) who is a compulsive, thoughtless breeder, the Black woman is "a one-dimensional animal" (Simmonds, 1990: 319) whose identity revolves around the capacity, desire and function of being 'fucked'. She is only given a voice in her bed and is voluntarily isolated from any supportive feminine contact. Friendship and intimacy amongst women is not talked about by nationalist brothers for fear of actualising an alliance from which they are excluded. Female sexuality without the male gaze and active penetration is taboo, and women involved in struggles should hold loyalties only to their soldiers, their fathers, their husbands and sons, to Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King. Their function is very clear: maintain a nice home in wait of the return of men from the battlefield (Thadani, 1999).

Women however, do form other alliances and bonds with each other when men are busy at their games and are away from home. Parallel social structures emerge and the now female-headed family organises itself both economically and emotionally to compensate for the absence of the male. In Lesotho for instance, it is common that husbands have to emigrate to work in South African mines due to the harsh economic realities, and wives get left behind to deal with immediate poverty. Often the husband deserts the family or takes another wife and thus becomes an unreliable source of revenue and effective support. Women have to find work in order to support their families and friendships form that involve more loyalty and security. There is a relatively new tradition of "mummies and babies" (Gray, 1986), which is an institutionalised, intimate, nurturing relationship between a high school girl and a slightly older Basotho woman. The relationship has a sexual component to it that serves as a pseudo-initiatory process that prepares the young girl for family life and womanhood. It also provides the older woman with companionship and a solid friendship even after one or both women have entered a heterosexual relationship. These women however feel uncomfortable discussing the issue of same sex relations with strangers out of fear of being judged and do not consider themselves as lesbians in the Western sense. This practice is for them neither political nor definitive. Their sexual and emotional association with a person of the same sex does not exclude the possibility of a relationship with a man (Gray, 1986). Mutually exclusive categories based on sexual practices such as 'heterosexuality' and 'homosexuality' do not seem to apply in such a context and are experienced just as problematic by North American Indian peoples such as the Navajos.

The western notion of identity is a fixed, static one that involves 'opportunity cost', which is a capitalist concept. A person can embrace one identity at a time and that means foregoing the next best alternative including all the practices, circles of people, and dress that come with it. The persona is centred around exclusive sexual orientation of which gender is thought to be an obvious outcome.

The "berdache" in North American Indian reservations (Lang, 1999) and "mati-ism" in Suriname (Wekker, 2000) are a few examples of social organisations that amplify the limitations of such a conceptualisation of the self. Third or fourth gender spaces that are socially accepted defy the binary thinking of the Western individual who finds it hard to assimilate the possibility of fluid identities dictated largely by collective interests, and whose gender and sexual practices are determined by communal responsibilities (motherhood for women irrespective of gender identity), role integration and spiritual superiority, instead of psychosocial, 'individual' free will or pathology.
The gender division of labour, argues Lang (1999), is becoming more fluid, more permeable, and as a result, the need for elaborate, institutional gender-specific role structures has decreased. If so, it would explain the gradual dissolution of 'in-between', third and fourth gender categories.

The integration of Western concepts like 'lesbian' and 'gay' tend to redefine traditional categories, while retaining some cultural dignity in the way in which identities are experienced. Identities and cultures involve tremendous complexities and the above mentioned gender identities and social values have been taken as a still fragment, in a singular space-time. Things have changed amongst the Navajo people, reservation days are over and young people are being exposed to other realities where the "nadleehe" (man-woman or woman-man) does not exist. The "unconscious" is born amongst the Indian youth and there is a search for an identity that incorporates western notions of sexual behaviour while retaining a sense of cultural integrity. In times of change, "crises of category" (Garber, 1993:17) occur and people use portions of the past to reconstruct origins and roots. Thus, the past is constantly being moulded, always changing with the urgent, immediate needs. The young Navajos today probably relate to Dr. Freud as equally as they relate to their ancestral "nadleehes" (which they have appropriated as the forefathers/mothers of American Indian homosexuality). Moral and ethical ideals have shifted and are still in constant flux driven by 'passages', crossings from one world to another, and by the market forces that have been gaining more and more economic space.

It would therefore be simplistic, unjustified and even dangerous to accuse the West (as if it were a unified whole!) of 'de-traditionalising' 'virgin lands'. It is true that European colonial chauvinism has attempted to 'civilise' the African "savages" according to 'proper', rigid Victorian values. Missionaries had the task of enlightening the morally decadent natives by showing them the way of God. Black feminists of the seventies, and even earlier national activists had to challenge the perception of the African as being an animal, incapable of reasoning and feeling. They had to create an "Africanness", a Black identity that was "beautiful". A mystical, romanticised Africa was created to counter the notion of the Black person as rough, stupid and sexually perverse. The construction of this universal "Africanness" has a double edge to it however: it serves to widen the symbolic wedge between Africa and a demonised West, and reinforces the illusion of fixed identities: an African woman with a specific gender role and status.

All Black women are reduced to having one experience, the same ambitions and a shared personality. It gives Nationalists and neo-patriarchs an ideal feminine model to subject all women to, perpetuating exclusion and intolerance. Realistically the variations amongst the African continent's women's experiences and identities (cultural, psychosocial, historical) do not permit such a mythical convergence, or such a unified, 'sacrelised' identity. It is certain that solidarity is a necessary ingredient for social change, but it should not be confused with oppressive reductionism of human experience. Making the West the vessel of all sins only diverts attention away from the day-to-day discrimination and silencing that women of Africa have to face.

Patricia Mc Fadden in "Sex, Sexuality and the Problems of AIDS in Africa" (1992) argues that although the introduction of capitalism has had disruptive effects on gender relations and women's management of their sexuality, pre-colonial Africa was not however a heaven of gender equality. Patriarchy regimented identities and practices even before the White man planted his flag in the African soil. His "civilisation" changed the form of her subordination or worsened it. In a few cases it also worked to protect her from domestic abuse (Stearns, 2001).

Acculturation is not a unilateral, passive phenomenon. Instead, it is rather an interactive, dialectical process of exchange, integration, and filtering of information, resulting in the complex production of new meaning and thus of new identities (Lang, 1999). All communities have their don'ts; the parameters of judgement might just differ. The West in the past has not always been the hypocrite, 'sexophobic', united whole. It has known its episodes of hedonism and social indulgence. It created the concept of perversion! The reason it is so often crucified is perhaps related to its arrogance, its candid but powerful claim of evolutionary superiority over the 'rest', its naïve conviction of holding the key to the ultimate Truth, and its position as 'saviour' and 'civiliser' of the world. But surely the colonisers were justified in their beliefs: they had God on their side! The whole Judeo- Christian ideology revolves around a Supreme Father who takes it to heart to gather His lost sheep. How does one blame Religion? How does one blame its followers of suffering from delusion when they honestly believe that they are the Chosen People? How does one blame men for accepting that their wives are there to serve them? If we are looking for someone or something specific to crucify in order to obliterate all our sins, we are far from being out of the woods.

We constantly seem to work within multiple networks, perpetuating our own myths, pulling each other down in quick sand, trying to construct a time-line, a linear history to pin down when the spiral started. We are confronted with thousands of dilemmas such as is one's racial or sexual identity more important at any given time? The notion of salience might come to our rescue. It is suggested that we wear several hats; that we are inhabited by competing voices that emerge in different contexts when they are needed. There would be various realms and layers of self or simply multiple selves that rise and fall interchangeably, depending on our parents' religion, the country of our birth, the colour of our skin, the sexual politics in vogue when we reached puberty, the language we speak, the economic regime in power, the socio-cultural perception of the body we are trapped in, the gaze of foreigners on our lifestyles, and finally our own assimilation of all this noise.

References

Bleys. R.C. (1996). The geography of perversion: Male-to-male sexual behaviour outside the West and the ethnographic imagination, 1750-1918. London: Cassell.

Fanon, F. (1952). Peau Noire Masques Blancs. Paris: Editions du Seuil.

Gray, J. (1986). "Mummies and babies" and friends and lovers in Lesotho' ". In Blackwood, E. (Ed). Anthropology and homosexual behaviour. New York: the Haworth Press. Pp. 155-164.

Greenberg. D.F. (1986). Why was the berdache ridiculed?" In Blackwood, E. (Ed). Anthropology and homosexual behaviour. New York: the Haworth Press. Pp. 179-190.

hooks, b. (2001). "Homophobia in Black communities". In Constantine-Simms, D. (Ed). The greatest taboo: Homosexuality in Black communities. L.A, California: Alyson Publications. Pp. 67-75.

Imam, A. (1997). Engendering African social sciences: An introductory essay. In AGI200F course reader 2000: Understanding gender. University of Cape Town. Pp. 16-27.

Johnson, C.A. (2001). "Hearing voices: Unearthing evidence of homosexuality in pre-colonial Africa". In Constantine-Simms, D. (Ed). The greatest taboo: Homosexuality in Black communities. L.A, California: Alyson Publications. Pp 132-148.

Kendall. (1999). " Women in Lesotho and the (western) construction of homophobia". In Blackwood, E. & Wieringa, E. (Eds). Female desires: Same-sex relations and transgender practices across cultures. New York: Columbia University Press. Part 2, chapter 7. Pp. 157-180.

Lang, S. (1999). "Lesbians, men-women, and two-spirits: Homosexuality and gender in native American cultures". In Blackwood, E. & Wieringa, E. (Eds). Female desires: Same-sex relations and transgender practices across cultures. New York: Columbia University Press. Part 1, chapter 4. Pp. 91-118.

McFadden, P. (1992). "Sex, sexuality and the problems of AIDS in Africa". In AGI200F course reader 2000: Understanding gender. University of Cape Town. Pp. 157-195.

Mercer, K. (1992). "Just looking for trouble: Robert Mapplethorpe and fantasies of race". In McIntosh, M. & Segal, L. (Eds). Sex exposed: sexuality and the pornography debate. London: Virago Press Ltd. Part 2. Pp. 92-110.

Patron, E.J. (2001) "Heart of lavender". In Constantine-Simms, D. (Ed). The greatest taboo: Homosexuality in Black communities. L.A, California: Alyson Publications. Pp. 124-131.

Stearns, P. (2001). Cultures in motion: Mapping key contacts and their imprints in world history. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Thadani, G. (1999). "The politics of identities and language: Lesbian desire in ancient and modern India". In Blackwood, E. & Wieringa, E. (Eds). Female desires: Same-sex relations and transgender practices across cultures. New York: Columbia University Press. Part 1, chapter 3. Pp. 67-90.

Thornton-Dill, B. (1995). "Our mothers' grief: Racial ethnic women and the maintenance of families". In Andersen, M.L. & Hill-Collins, P. (Eds). Race, class and gender: an anthology. Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Company. Part 3, chapter 25. Pp. 237-259.

Walker, A. (1984). "In search of our mothers' gardens". In AGI200F course reader 2000: Understanding gender. University of Cape Town. Pp. 230-243.

Wekker, G. (2001). "Mati-ism and Black lesbianism: Two idealtypical expressions of female homosexuality in Black communities of the Diaspora". In Constantine-Simms, D. (Ed) (2001). The greatest taboo: Homosexuality in Black communities. L.A, California: Alyson Publications. Pp 149-162.

Wilton, T. (1997). EnGendering AIDS: Deconstructing sex, text and epidemic. London: SAGE Publications.