Erotic Revolutionaries: Black Women, Sexuality, and Popular Culture

Shayne Lee

doi:10.5771/9780761852292

Summary

Why is there no 'pro-sex' contingency in black feminist scholarship? Why do so few African-American scholars expound on issues celebrating female sexual pleasure? Perhaps the answers to these questions reside within a discursive matrix of sexual repression commonly referred to as the politics of respectability, and its rein on black sexual politics. In Erotic Revolutionaries: Black Women, Sexuality, and Popular Culture, sociologist Shayne Lee steers black sexual politics toward a more sex-positive trajectory. Introducing feminist analysis to a conceptual mZnage ^ trois of scripting theory, media representation, and black sexual politics, Lee considers the ways in which the feminist quest for social and sexual equality can delve into popular culture to see the production of subversive scripts for female sexuality and erotic agency. Whereas most feminist scholarship underscores how sexual representations of black women in media are exploitative and problematic, Lee portrays black female celebrities like Janet Jackson, BeyoncZ, Karrine Steffans, Zane, Tyra Banks, Juanita Bynum, Sheryl Underwood and many more as feminists of sorts who afford women access to cultural tools to renegotiate sexual identity and celebrate sexual agency and empowerment. Erotic Revolutionaries navigates the uncharted spaces where social constructionism, third-wave feminism, and black popular culture collide to locate a new site for sexuality studies that is theoretically innovative, politically subversive, and stylistically chic.

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Bibliographic data

Edition: 1/2010
Copyright Year: 2010
ISBN-Print: 978-0-7618-5228-5
ISBN-Online: 978-0-7618-5229-2
Publisher: Hamilton Books, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 148
Product Type: Monograph

1. Contents No access
2. Acknowledgments No access
3. Introduction:: Erotic Revolutionaries of Black Sexuality No access
Chapter One: Flipping the Sexual Script: The Social Construction of Sexuality No access Pages 1 - 9
Chapter Two: Sultry Divas of Pop and Soul: Janet, Beyoncé, and Jill No access Pages 10 - 22
Chapter Three: Confessions of a Video Vixen No access Pages 23 - 40
Chapter Four: Zane’s Urban Erotica No access Pages 41 - 58
Chapter Five: Serena and the Power Chicks No access Pages 59 - 69
Chapter Six: Vagina Power: Alexyss Tylor and the Sexperts No access Pages 70 - 81
Chapter Seven: Black Clergywomen and Sexual Discourse No access Pages 82 - 94
Chapter Eight: Erotic Queens of Comedy No access Pages 95 - 111
Chapter Nine: Tyra Banks: Erotic Talk Show Host No access Pages 112 - 122
Epilogue: Surfing the Third Wave No access Pages 123 - 132
References No access Pages 133 - 142
Index No access Pages 143 - 146
About the Author No access Pages 147 - 148