Anyway the reason that women of color donât think desexualization is relieving the way white women might is because of how colonial gender operates. Again, this goes back to how gendered stereotypes that apply to white women donât usually affect women of color in the same ways, because women of color are contending with acute versions of racialized misogyny. This is especially true for Black women, dark-skinned women of color, women of color who occupy marginalized/minoritized positions internally within their culture (i.e. they belong to minority sects or ethnic groups) and working-class women of color.Â
For example, the stereotype that âwomen are fragile and daintyâ actually applies more to white women, since white men typically donât view women of color as âfragile and daintyâ. Since women of color - especially Black and Indigenous women - were enslaved, or forced into hard labor under colonial regimes, or displaced through settler-driven genocide, the reigning stereotype about them became that they are non-women; that the reason it is acceptable to force them to do hard labor is that they arenât as âwomanlyâ or âpureâ or âsensitiveâ as white women are, and thus arenât deserving of the same protections.Â
Similarly, the idea that desexualization is âempoweringâ or âliberatingâ largely applies to white women, who are seen as the center of beauty thanks to the propagation of eurocentric beauty standards.Â
First of all, women of color face abject forms of sexualization, fetishization, and sexual violence. That they are desexualized in conjunction doesnât detract from how simultaneously sexualized they are. To be a woman of color means to face the double-binds imposed by colonial gender; women of color may face gendered divisions of labor within their own cultures (i.e. their families expecting them to be married off to provide for their husband) but they also face the external capitalist pressures of engaging in labor (i.e. the phenomenon of the feminization of poverty, largely created by globalization and neoliberalism, disproportionately affects women of color & nonwestern women/women from the global south, what with nonwhite women occupying the lowest material, financial, economic, sociocultural, and political rungs of every society).Â
Thus you canât think of the average misogynistic stereotype as a zero sum game when it comes to women of color, either. More often than not, because of racism, colonialism, and neoliberalism, women of color face simultaneous streams of seemingly opposing misogynistic forms of violence.Â
Second of all, this isnât ânot viewing someone as a sexual objectâ. Desexualization involves the stripping of the subjectâs sexual autonomy (and their autonomy as a whole); it involves reducing them to the perpetratorâs gaze and violence. The idea that specific subjects - i.e. women of color - are nonsexual is one way colonial gender (violently) decouples women of color from their womanhood. In fact, desexualization does not prevent women of color from being viewed as sexual objects. Rather, it recasts the sexual lenses people use to interpret women of color and their sexuality. Instead of combating the fetishization and objectification of women of color, it reinforces sexual violence by erasing the sexual narratives women of color cultivate for themselves, and replace those narratives with imported, coercive ideas created by white supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy. So while a white woman may be able to reclaim her sexual autonomy when people stop viewing her as a sexual object, the desexualization of women of color occurs in tandem with the sexualization of women of color, such that (as I iterated above), they face simultaneous streams of two opposing versions of sexual violence.Â
Desexualization is why those who enact sexual violence against women of color are often forgiven (i.e. âwomen of color canât possibly face rape/sexual violence because theyâre too ugly for anyone to desire them sexuallyâ). Desexualization forms the foundation of laws against interracial couples and interracial marriages. Desexualization looks like white people of ALL sexual orientations and genders discriminating against women of color and people of color in their dating choices (I say this to drive home the point that white LGBT people are just as capable of enacting this form of sexual violence against women of color as white cishet men are). Desexualization is the basis of eugenics against women of color (i.e. âthey breed like rabbits and need to be stoppedâ or the âwelfare queenâ stereotype, which especially impacts Black women), and why Black women, Latina women, and Indigenous women are forcefully sterilized, why white, western couples use the bodies of women from India and China and other nonwestern countries as surrogacy machines (the idea that Asian women are nonsexual beings contributes to the surrogacy industry by rationalizing the robbing of nonwestern womenâs autonomy - i.e. ânonwestern women deserve to have their children taken away from themâ). Desexualization looks like white people treating women of color as loveless, sexless, ogres who are incapable of feeling love and loyalty, and who are undeserving of love, gentleness, patience, respect, and dignity. Desexualization looks like white people viciously bullying women of color with âweirdâ or âuglyâ features that are actually racialized features (bushy eyebrows, dark skin, monolids, big noses, visible body hair, unibrows, afrocentric hair styles, big lips, etc). Desexualization looks like white people telling women of color that they look âmanlyâ or âmore like menâ because of their racialized features.Â
Third of all, as I stated before, since desexualization occurs alongside sexualization of women of color, what you get is people simultaneously going on things like sex tours in Thailand or the Dominican Republic & white, western men creating sex industries for soldiers in East & Southeast Asian countries, while also treating nonwestern/nonwhite women as vessels of infinite reproduction whose sole purpose is to provide for whites, westerners, and men, such that they cannot claim their own bodies - an example of this being how the surrogacy industry takes advantage of women in India.Â
By the way, desexualization is also inflicted against disabled people in heinous ways, and of course men of color face it rampantly as well. But Iâm talking specifically about women of color because desexualization is something we face in droves.Â
If you are unclear on what colonial gender is, please read âThe Coloniality of Genderâ by Maria Lugones.Â