✍🏾In Her Words: Racialized Rape and the Convergence of White and Male Supremacy
Guest Contribution by Jocelyn Crawley
The Peachy Perspective occasionally features guest posts from Southern radical feminists whose voices sharpen our collective fight for women’s liberation. In this In Her Words contribution, Jocelyn Crawley examines how white and male supremacy converge to legitimize the racialized rape of Black women—and why naming and confronting this convergence remains essential to radical feminist theory.
Thinking about how oppression functions plays an integral role in the development and evolution of radical feminist theory; indeed, theory is frequently defined as an explanation for a socially or culturally observable phenomenon that surfaces in the material sphere we often refer to as “reality” or “the real world.” One key element of understanding male supremacist oppression is recognizing how it exists within a field of convergence which involves more than one form of discriminatory subordination operating in conjunction with another to dehumanize and degrade an individual or multiple people who exist within a designated “group” such as black, female, and/or poor. (This convergence is oftentimes thought about within the framework of intersectionality, with this term being coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw.)
The presence of oppression within a framework of convergence will typically reflect one or multiple aspects of a hierarchical logic which involves rationalizing both domination and subordination. One prevalent component of the multifariously unfolding logic of hierarchy involves a two-fold framework in which oppressed people are viewed as 1. a disease and 2. diseased. Stating that the member of the oppressed group is a disease conveys the presence of an undesirable ontological state that the oppressor confers onto the oppressed for the purpose of logically legitimating oppression. Next, conferring on the oppressed the status of diseased is to state that the subordinated other is inundated in an actively operative reality which constitutes a threat to members of the non-oppressed group who, in occupying the privileged position of invented racial purity, risk infection if exposed to the diseased oppressed.
What is important to recognize in understanding the ideological underpinnings of the logics of subordination is that, at any time, members of the oppressor class can operate in ways which reflect their awareness of how members of oppressed groups are perceived as a disease and diseased but then, rather than viewing oppressed people as a site of contagion to be avoided and ignored, use the reality of the diseased state of the oppressed to engender other forms of oppression, such as violent somatic and cognitive invasions. An example of an oppressor adopting a behavioral pattern of invasion rather than avoidance toward the oppressed other would be racialized rape. It is this reality–the oppressor invading the space of the oppressed individual who has been deemed inferior and diseased, rather than noting the invention of a diseased other as rationale to avoid intimate contact with her–that becomes evident when one considers Daniel Holtzclaw’s racialized rape of thirteen women of color. Moreover, this reality–the ability of the oppressor to decide to create a deleterious harm by avoiding the ostensibly diseased other and thereby causing her to experience the pain of racialized and/or gender-based rejection or to develop a necrotic harm by actively invading the space of the oppressed individual who has been reduced to the sphere of diseased other–reflects the multi-faceted nature of male supremacist power. This power is multi-faceted because it reflects the male ability to do whatever he chooses to do with respect to the way he wants to relate to the oppressed.
To understand how the logics of domination manifests in terms of the convergence of white supremacy and male supremacy in the case of Daniel Holtzclaw, the reader can first consider the legacy of racist domination actualized by the police force. Although normative, mainstream logic regarding the purpose of the police incorporates the idea that their primary task is to protect the people, theorists and scholars have documented and unequivocally demonstrated that the police force was actually designed to protect the interests and safety of wealthy, property-owning white people while monitoring and containing poorer and/or propertyless people, particularly black people. The operative logic of domination within the police force involves viewing poor and particularly black people as a disease, with this notion rising from a plethora of intersecting racist mythologies which regarded blackness as a gross deviation from the ideal purity which only whites could embody. The racist mythologies used to perpetuate the idea that black people are innately and irrevocably “tainted” and must be segregated from or become subordinated to whites are espoused in literature, images, stereotypes, public speeches, signage, etc. Additionally, the police force operates according to the racist logic that in constituting a disease, people of color are simultaneously diseased, meaning that their inferior condition is potentially transferable and therefore needs to be contained. This is the reason that people of color are heavily policed both in many primarily African-American neighborhoods and in cases in which they venture into primarily white spaces, including neighborhoods, shopping centers, restaurants, etc.
Once the feminist thinker has grasped the historicity of white supremacy and its specific manifestations of black hatred and suppression through the police force, it is necessary to grapple with the presence and pervasiveness of a racist patriarchal logic which overlaps and intersects with white supremacy to impact the way that white males can and do interact with and oppress women of color. This racist patriarchal logic includes the sexualization of black women within a framework that is intentionally distinct from the way non-black women, including white women, are constructed as sexual beings. Specifically, black women have been historically represented as sexually salacious and lascivious for the purpose of legitimating sexual assaults from white males, including the police, during the post-slavery era including but not limited to Reconstruction, the Jim Crow South, Civil Rights Era, and our contemporary zeitgeist. Thus, with respect to women of color, the patriarchal logic of viewing female people as sexual objects takes on a specifically negative, necrotic (de)characterization which involves reducing black women to promiscuous entities who recognize and encourage, rather than actively resist, the sexual advances of white men. While it is not the case that every white male who rapes a woman of color commits the violating act due to or as a product of the internalization of this racist logic, these rapes are still racialized as a result of how ingrained racist mythology is within both individual and collective consciousness. Therefore, the convergence of white supremacy and male supremacy becomes glaringly evident when the historical and contemporary reality of racialized rape as a deleterious harm is centralized in feminist discourse.
Once the reader grasps how male supremacy and white supremacy coalesce, it is important to consider specific manifestations of it so that discourse regarding how patriarchy and racism adversely impact women is not confined to the realms of the metaphysical and metaphorical. Daniel Holtzclaw, a half-white, half-Asian former police officer, attained national attention when multiple black women began coming forward regarding his sexual assaults of them. The rapes Holtzclaw committed transpired in a patriarchal, sexist pattern in which he patrolled low-income neighborhoods and specifically targeted female victims by checking their backgrounds to see if they had any warrants or prior arrests. Almost all of his victims had histories of being prostituted, drug abuse, or outstanding warrants. Given that prosecutors unequivocally assert that Holtzclaw deliberately targeted vulnerable black women from low-income neighborhoods, the feminist reader can grasp how the male proclivity towards sexual predation converges with the white tendential inclination towards predatory subordination of blacks in a manner that results in the profound dehumanization and degradation of women of color.
The feminist reader should also note the presence and relevance of the aforementioned two-fold logic of domination that unfolds within this case. I argue that Holtzclaw adopts and embodies the normative, racist paradigmatic lens of viewing blacks as a problematic disease whose ontological condition reflects error, disorder, chaos, and that which is fundamentally and irrevocably wrong within a framework in which blackness is the negative inverse of a positive, pure whiteness. Furthermore, Holtzclaw’s adoption of this subordinating logic precipitates his perception of the women as being diseased, meaning that their inferior, infected-with-the-error-of-blackness status creates the conditions confluent with him actively subjecting them to the necrotic harm of sexual assault because, if an individual is reduced to the realm of objectified, valueless other, actively harming her is not processed as a somatic and/or emotive infraction. Rather, it is the person of power viewing the less powerful or powerless person as needing to submit to the subordinating demands of a superior. It is this logic of domination which has guided the presence, perpetuation, and proliferation of racialized rapes, meaning that feminist challenges to the prevalence of white and male supremacy must transpire at both the cognitive and material levels. Specifically, we must understand and analyze the ideological underpinnings which give rise to the perception that white males can and should have the power to somatically subvert black females and their bodies if we are to effectively critique and condemn racialized rapes.
The racialized rapes exacted by Holtzclaw do not exist in isolation but reflect a patriarchal pattern of white men with police power utilizing their authority to dehumanize and demean people of color. This axiological framework, in which white males individually uphold the institutional valuation of race and sex-based domination and subordination, has repeatedly gained traction and recapitulates itself in the racialized rapes of Maleatra Montanez, Michelle Houcks, Saundra Newsom, Niko Quinn, Ophelia Williams, Richelle Miller and countless others.
In rejecting white supremacist capitalist patriarchy as a tenable epistemological and experiential framework through which to organize and experience reality, radical feminists have sought numerous alternative ideological praxes for the purpose of cultivating a viable life in which women recognize themselves as, and are recognized as, sentient beings who have an innate and inalienable right to pursue subjectivity, autonomy, self-actualization, etc. However, the alternative ideological praxes often reveal themselves to be flawed and, upon recognizing this reality, we need to acknowledge and summarily reject the aspects which are not confluent with the radical feminist vision of challenging the notion that women are not people and replacing this persistent, pernicious idea with strategies and systems which make female humanity visible, operative, and nonnegotiable. The most primary error in thought that I locate when reflecting on feminist solutions to the monster of white male supremacy is the attempt to adopt various aspects of its logic and incorporate it into our Movement. This practice renders our Movement imitative and illogical. One of the fallacious patriarchal ideological models which many feminists have adopted is the reification of a binary logic which involves inverting the hierarchical model of male superiority and domination coupled with female inferiority and subordination. In inverting this logic, some feminists argue that women are superior and therefore deserve the position of dominator while men should be relegated to the sphere of inferior subordination. This logic becomes evident in the work of radical feminists such as Valerie Solanas who, in her important text SCUM Manifesto, writes:
the male is an incomplete female, a walking abortion, aborted at the gene stage. To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples. The male is completely egocentric, trapped inside himself, incapable of empathizing or identifying with others, of love, friendship, affection or tenderness. He is a completely isolated unit, incapable of rapport with anyone. His responses are entirely visceral, not cerebral; his intelligence is a mere tool in the service of his drives and needs; he is incapable of mental passion, mental interaction; he can’t relate to anything other than his own physical sensations. He is a half dead, unresponsive lump, incapable of giving or receiving pleasure or happiness; consequently, he is at best an utter bore, an inoffensive blob, since only those capable of absorption in others can be charming. He is trapped in a twilight zone halfway between humans and apes, and is far worse off than the apes because, unlike the apes, he is capable of a large array of negative feelings—hate, jealousy, contempt, disgust, guilt, shame, doubt—and, moreover he is aware of what he is and isn’t. (3-4)
Here, the patriarchal logic of constructing women as incomplete men who find only a fragmental humanity through the maintenance of relational systems with men is inverted such that men are thought of as “incomplete female(s).” Similarly, the patriarchally rooted accusations of female inferiority that stem from belief that we are excessively emotional are reworked into an argument in which men are emotionally vapid, lacking the capacity to empathize or express love and affection. Additionally, the misogynist view that women are primarily somatic entities with little to no cognitive capacities is inverted such that men are categorized as being “entirely visceral, not cerebral.” Feminists who have studied the prevalence and ostensible pervasiveness of male sexual predation may find that this argument has logical weight. However, the argument is a grand theory, meaning that it seeks to offer a comprehensive, universal explanation for the incessant depravity we observe in masses of men subjecting women to multifarious modes of dehumanization and degradation. When we study world history and examine our contemporary landscape, however, we do not find that males in every society consistently and unrepentantly manifest these behavioral deficits. Therefore, the argument is flawed; while it is an emotionally charged one and the pathos of it is impactful in that it reflects patriarchal patterns, the reality of its fallaciousness must preclude us from adopting it as integral to our ideological framework for liberation of women and girls. A more effective form of argumentation would be to scrupulously cite statistics regarding male violence while using this information to advocate for the development of a safer world for female people.
If arguments such as Solanas’s were to gain traction, we would be faced with a problem similar to the ongoing rhetorical and material war regarding the existence of a master race: a master sex. Specifically, Solanas’s argumentation is predicated on the notion that, because men are inferior to women, women must overthrow their power and take over the world. Solanas also argues for the elimination of the male sex, with this reality reminding one (or, at least, me) of the prevalence of arguments for the elimination or decrease of an entire racial group amongst those who adhere to the master race principle. This argument seems deeply imbricated in her inversion of the patriarchal hierarchical logic and production of a rationale predicated on female superiority, so it is the rational flaw of reifying the binary that must be addressed.
Let’s address it. Progressive radical feminist praxis should not follow a flawed revolutionary practice akin to an Orwellian framework in which dissident, revolutionary characters such as Snowball create mantras such as “Four legs good, two legs bad” to express dissent from human rule. When Snowball says “Four legs good, two legs bad,” he adopts and spreads a mantra designed to enable other animals to resist the anthropocentric violence involved in asserting that humans have the right to rule over them. Yet this logic is flawed in that it reifies the form of binary logic which involves asserting that one group must always be categorized as superior while the other group must be relegated to the sphere of inferiority. Thus, despite the fact that the ruling class of humans within the fictional world of Animal Farm operated oppressively towards the animals, Snowball’s logic did not necessitate asserting that there was something fundamentally and irrevocably wrong or “bad” regarding all human morality while simultaneously asserting that animals were innately (already and always) “good.” This hypersimplistic fallaciousness creates an ideological sphere in which both the depraved and venerable actions and attitudes of individual members of society can be and are systematically ignored to uphold the dominant paradigmatic view of the group, and these types of oversights are not good because they divorce the individuals making observations about others from reality. It was this praxis of Snowball’s which complicated and compromised his revolutionary efficacy at the ideological level, and this type of cognitive error is regularly repeated in the works of thoughtful yet problematic anarchists such as Valerie Solanas.
To maintain ideological and material allegiance to binary-based arguments like Solanas’s would inundate the individual in an almost Shelleyan process of Frankenstein seeking to create something meaningful but, upon observing how the parts of the monster created do not fit together, abandons his work of living art. I think this process of an unfinished, abandoned creative process transpires in feminist communities when we attempt to conjoin a plethora of ideologies for the purpose of producing a dissident, revolutionary feminist theory through which we can effectively contend male power. The misandrist ideology purported by Solanas cannot fit within a feminist framework for numerous reasons, one of which is that feminist thought is rooted in and grows out of antagonism towards the praxis of hatred made evident in men harming women. Feminism then, is inherently and rationally hostile to hatred, making the incorporation of hate into its theoretical framework irrational and untenable. These cognitive realities must be acknowledged and considered; we cannot wave them away with our hands or dismiss the process of intense, rational scrutiny on the grounds that we are “thinking too much about all this” for, as the feminist Ti-Grace Atkinson and many others have articulated, ideas have material consequences in the world. Thus rather than running away from the process of defining, processing, and modifying our feminist theoretical framework, we should remain committed to constructing, fine-tuning, and reworking our claims and frequently female-centered understandings of the world so that our theoretical framework makes sense and becomes a project that we can confidently align ourselves with and subsequently share with other sentient beings in the living world.
So, just as I have rejected the idea of a master race, I also reject the idea of a master sex. And just as I assert that I do not believe that women are the master sex, I also assert our right to assemble and build community based on sex, meaning that the development of women-only spaces is designed not to promote female superiority, but to reject manifestations of male superiority which involve silencing and subordinating women through ridicule, condescension, pornography, prostitution, sex trafficking, rape and other forms of physical violence.
Although one might think it should go without saying, it actually still needs to be stated that the development of female-only spaces is not a misandrist act conveying hatred of men. Rather, it conveys hatred of male hatred and the role misogyny plays in making it necessary and advisable for women to share space apart from them. Thus, in rejecting misandry as a solution to misogyny, we must also engage in ongoing discourse regarding the reality that male hatred of women is far more prevalent and germane to the development and evolution of society than female hatred of men, and these conversations should include solutions for the ongoing femicides which stem from the toxic forms of masculinity which cannot coexist with the reality of female embodiment unless that reality is regularly subordinated, negated, and subjected to multifarious forms of necrotic violence. Indeed, it is unconscionable crimes such as the racialized rape of black women by police officers which gives rise to the need for a feminist theoretical framework through which we organize against oppression–with these sex-based oppressions constituting manifestations of the import and outcome of toxic masculinity.
Irrespective of the specific theoretical frameworks we adopt or reject in the process of rejecting and resisting the ongoingness of white male supremacy, one uniting thread remains present and prevalent: the perpetuity of racialized rapes reveals the accuracy and ongoingness of Hortense Spillers’s assertion that the rhetoric of the 20th century remains grounded in the originating narrative of captivity and mutilation actualized through racial slavery. To paraphrase, the white supremacist patriarchal pattern of subjecting people of color to deleterious harms which involve enslavement and bodily mutilation is rearticulated through time in new and harmful ways, including state sanctioned violence. The accuracy of this analysis thus invalidates narratives, oftentimes produced and recapitulated within mainstream and centrist spaces, of racial and gender-based progress being a part of our country’s linear legacy. In fact, both race and sex-based processes and progress exist within a perpetually shifting, frail framework in which gains and losses can transpire at any time. With this reality in mind, radical feminists must remain attune to the disorienting ways in which gendered, racist forms of oppression surface in the 21st century while remaining cognizant of how those patterns–including racialized rape–are grounded in centuries of white patriarchal supremacist thought and praxis.
