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This analysis is almost entirely exclusive to Pre-Colonial West Africa (the source of the African Diaspora and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade) and some Central African cultures that have remained uncolonized.
It is a paradoxical thing to be Black and a woman in a white patriarchal society. At every turn, we are reminded that women are supposed to be pretty, soft, quiet, submissive, protected, and provided for. Then immediately after, we are reminded that those roles — the standard of femininity — is not for us. We are reminded by our skin that there is no protection; that we are too loud; too outside of what is considered “conventionally attractive” to be worth any of the benefits that patriarchy provides to white women.
Some Black women internalize this message. They attempt to make themselves softer, more “conventionally attractive”, quieter, more appealing in terms of these sexist standards in the hopes that someone will find them worthy enough to afford them the same “benefits” that patriarchy offers to white women. While I understand why some Black women do this, I feel that there’s a paradigm shift that needs to occur for us to fully be liberated in this society.
Those people that say that we are outside of what white patriarchy says that women are supposed to be, are right. That system was never for us, so we can never truly integrate into it. Sexism is un-African. Pre-colonial Africa was not a place for sex-based oppression; it was not a place with a strict gender binary. It was not a place where a naked or scantily woman was considered an invitation for sexual violence, objectification, and/ or harassment. Nor was it a place where “feminine work” (as the West coined it) was devalued to the point where women were barred equal decision making power in the direction of the society. These colonized ideas of sex, sexuality, gender expression, and nudity are not our own. It is time for us to give them back and decolonize our ideas on sex, examine where they came from, and how we got to these points in how we view modern day sexual expression.
Nudity, Divine Femininity, and Religion
In the Bible, nudity was the status quo for humanity in the beginning. In Genesis, Adam and Eve roamed freely nude, until they ate…
