A proud unapologetic Black trans woman speaking truth to power and discussing the world around her since 2006
Black women as a group have long been framed in dominant American culture as essentially unfeminine. In what Monica Roberts has called the " black unwoman meme ," black women are unfavorably compared to a feminine ideal rooted in white cultural norms: white women are "considered the paragon of virtue, fertility, beauty and femininity." As a foil to this romanticized (and misogynistic) image of the angelic, respectable white lady, black women are widely stereotyped as promiscuous, bad mothers, unable or unwilling to land husbands, unattractive, angry and threatening. In short, black women in the popular imagination are so outside the scope of normative femininity that we are less than women, even almost men. Our bodies and lives are held up to intense scrutiny and routinely found wanting in appropriate femininity.
t's in this context that Carroll's comments read as a dangerous validation of racist, misogynist policing of black women's bodies and lives. Carroll perhaps unwittingly frames herself as the polar opposite of stereotypical images of black womanhood: a faithful wife and dedicated mother who doesn't look like women who "engage in relationships like that." She equates being a black woman who is "properly" feminine in appearance and behavior not only with being straight, but also with being respectable. She frames her accuser's femininity as suspect and even ridiculous by comparison. " She's the one who's been single a long time," she points out, insinuating that it is her accuser, Carletha Cole, not Carroll, who should be suspected of being queer -- i.e., not a proper black woman.
