I understand why black women have problems with how white women address problems, in the sense that it’s not just too narrowly focused but also not relatable to them. This is how the intersectionality theory got started, it addresses intersecting problems other women face. Especially if it’s compounded by racism, ableism, colourism and classism. While it could be said that all women are objectified, some are more objectified than others. It makes sense if such objectification either plays into stereotypes about nonwhite women or predicated on making such women closer to white standards.
Not to mention nonwhite women are more sexualised than white women, especially in the West, because of their presumed hypersexuality. Websites like Broadblogs, from the lens of race and disability, have barely scratched the surface. That blog seems to disproportionately focus a lot on gender and sexuality, not so much on other facets like ethnicity. If somebody took ethnicity into consideration, I have a feeling things would look different. Women can fetishise penises, if it comes from black men. This is because they’re often stereotyped as being well-endowed, despite some studies on black African men showing the contrary.
In the case with Balinese men, they can get fetishised a lot for their dark skin. Women and especially white women can fetishise men a lot, especially if they’re not white. Not that white men are any less objectified, but rather they’re still seen as human. Even within white people, certain ethnicities still get fetishised a lot. Since there were Northern European women flocking to Southern Europe for gigolos, romance novels featuring Southern European men take on a very fetishistic tone. If Southern European men are desirable for being romantic and macho, they will be fetishised more often than their Northern European counterparts.
I guess the blogger at Broadblogs not only knows so little about foreign, especially nonwestern cultures (she plays into outdated stereotypes about African women) but is prone to observation bias. It’s a psychological phenomenon where somebody has a very strong preconception based on what they observe, especially if they don’t observe other people and fail to take them into consideration. If I’m not mistaken, I remember reading somewhere that while western black people have many white friends, white people don’t have that many black friends.
In the context of Broadblogs, one might wonder if the blogger’s social circle is really narrow. In the sense that she barely knows or has interacted with anybody who aren’t white, able-bodied and middle class, to the point where it feels like a massive generalisation since it just takes gender and sexuality into account. I guess this is why western black women don’t trust white women, white women have a habit of treating their experiences and observations as the baseline. But to the point where it’s unrelatable to black women, since they face additional problems like racism.
Many African women don’t face racism, at least not as much as they did in colonial eras, but face additional problems of colonisation ever since the Scramble for Africa began as well as colourisms. There’s the elephant in the room for Indian women and it’s caste, I feel blogs like Broadblogs have really barely scratched the surface since the blogger doesn’t take race and culture into account. Or nowhere as extensive as western culture, it’s not racism in the formal sense of the word but it’s something that fails to take problems nonwhite and nonwestern people face.
If nonwestern cultures do get mentioned, it’s often only in passing and never in depth. She made the generalisation that sub-Saharan African women are scantily-clad, disregarding Muslim societies and countries like the Fulani of Nigeria or Senegal at large where due to Islam being the majority religion there are modestly dressed sub-Saharan African women since time immemorial. If you’re never venture this far into nonwestern cultures and societies that deeply, your observations are things nonwesterners will have difficulty relating to.
Hence the problems with white feminism, as it never addresses things black women could relate to. Intersectionality has become a big defining feature of fourth wave feminism, since it takes additional problems and experiences into consideration. White women may be disadvantaged by sexism, but still privileged by racism which’s why they fetishise and objectify men of colour in ways they wouldn’t do with white men. Why they treat their experiences as it if it’s universal to all women, regardless of the differences in culture and religion where some like the Senegalese Wolof would’ve been modest for many years.
From what I’ve seen, there are photographers (women included) who do take nude photographs of men but when it comes to black men it’s almost always the muscular ones that get portrayed and photographed. Alongside expectations of being tops, well-endowed and hypermasculine, the standard for black men is far narrower than it is for white men. White men can be desired without playing into stereotypes, black men are only desirable if they’re stereotypical. Something created by white people isn’t necessarily bad, but sometimes if they don’t address things nonwhite people go through nonwhite people will be wary of them.
Hence white normativity, which’s the tendency to treat white experiences as the baseline. People like Zuleyka Zevallos are better in this regard, if because they address additional problems relating to racism more deeply. White feminism is called white feminism because it only addresses problems white women go through, this might not be unique to white women themselves. But from my experience, western white women tend to be more preoccupied with sexism. If they do bring up black people, they might as well be an afterthought or a footnote. Not so much the main essay or chapter, hence why black women don’t trust white women that much.
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