Black women have faced and continue to face discrimination at the hands of white power.. Misogynoir, coined by Black, queer feminists Moya Bailey, speaks to “the specific hatred, dislike, distrust, and prejudice directed toward black women.”
The bias against Black women is a deep-seated issue prevalent in American and global history, linking back to colonialism, patriarchy, and the supremacy of white and western ideals of what it means to be a beautiful, worthy, womanly, human.
It was Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw who put words to the distinct experience of a community that lives beneath intersecting oppressions; intersectionality. As Black women, our intersectional identity of Blackness and womanhood bleeds into every aspect of life.
Even today, even though the experiences of young Black women in America and Canada have positively progressed leaps and bounds beyond that of our mothers, aunts, and grandmothers, we are still consistently left out of important conversations. This is mostly in feminist discussions on the perception and treatment of women by society as well as in Black discussions on the state of the Black community and our survival.
Often, Black women are forced to push themselves into the tiniest portion of the frame just to make sure we are not completely erased from the future of suffrage and liberation movements, though we are present for most, if not all, of the groundwork. It was only 2008 when the term misogynoir was even created, and even after Bailey’s work to make space for Black women’s suffrage in language, it took years for people to acknowledge both the term, concept, and lived experiences of Black girls and women.
Sometimes this misogynoir takes form through micro-aggressions, such as comments about the authenticity of Black women’s hair, bodies, and personalities. Other times it results in the disappearance of tens of thousands of Black girls without a single news report from mainstream media, or though the brutality of Black women afflicted by police. If I could write for hours, I would write about the truth of every Black woman. I would put every experience on the page and hope that you would read every word of it. I’d ask you to hear her, whoever she is, and to see her; all of her.
I want to discuss Netflix’s show The Circle and specifically address the treatment and characterization of two Black women on the show, Mercedez and Rebecca. The Circle is a reality TV show which places eight contestants in their own isolated apartments for a specific amount of time whilst they interact solely through a social media app entitled The Circle. Both women had fake personas created by a Black man named Seaburn and a Black woman named Karen.
The show, from my grasping, is meant to uncover the judgments and perspectives people project onto others online based on photos, bios, and brief conversations. The concept is interesting enough and quite honestly, I enjoyed watching the show. What I found most interesting was the choice to present yourself online either as your true, authentic self, or someone completely different, or somewhere in the middle. Most people chose to play some version of themselves with four contestants catfishing throughout the season. However, the constructed characters, Rebecca’s and Mercedez’s, role on the show revealed a dangerous and sadly common reality of Black women.
When it was revealed to the audience that the only two feminine-presenting Black women on the show would not be truly present at all and instead were being used as a mask by a Black man and a masculine-presenting, queer Black woman, I was nervous. My first issue was that there was no way these women would not be built atop a host of dangerously sexist and troubling stereotypes that are a daily inhibition to actual fem Black women. Karen, a queer, masc Black woman in her late 30s, acknowledged that she didn’t believe she would make it far in the game playing herself. I am compassionate to her reasoning.
Black women are perceived as a threat strictly based off of our social identities and physical reality of Black womanhood. Karen’s queer identity in the real world implements very real and constricting boundaries of acceptance and compassion. The de-feminization of Black women is already a reality that dates back to American slavery. Black American women’s value was intricately connected to their bodies and ability to produce labor for white American society, through forced sex and the bearing of children who would be exploited and utilized as tools for labor. This hypersexualization, while also dehumanizing Black women, makes for an incredibly violent and traumatizing relationship between Black womanhood, gender presentation, and sexuality.
So from Karen’s perspective, coming into The Circle and pretending to be a fem-presenting Black woman would give her a better shot than her more masculine presentation. So, she enters The Circle as Mercedez. Karen makes the choice to depict Mercedez as a mean girl which feeds into the narrative of the angry, aggressive black girl that most contestants immediately identify Mercedez as before they even get the chance to speak with her.
Now, it is not Karen’s fault that Mercedez was immediately dubbed a mean girl and “a problem,” as fellow contestant Sammie remarks. The pretty much instant vilification of Mercedez is clear misogynoir that is learned through history, in education institutions, and through media representations of Black women.
None of the contestants bothered to question why they make this unwarranted and immediate judgment about Mercedez, and the conversation is never touched.
When a Black girl is perceived as aggressive and angry, she is simultaneously robbed of her abilities, while also labeled as irrational. This affects the way Black women are treated regarding our experiences of grief and trauma. It affects the way we are believed about our pain. We are characterized as strong and capable of carrying the burden, but are also trivialized and demeaned when we voice our emotions and react to our constant humiliation and distress.
For so many Black girls and women, the ways we survive is by suppressing the portions of our identities, and often bodies, that can be perceived as threatening. This is done for others comfortability.
The character Rebecca, who is really a Black man named Seaburn using his girlfriend’s photos, is the realization of this reality.
Rebecca is a robotic, simple, one-dimensional puppet doll performing compassion and placidness to an extreme that is grossly unnatural. Everything about her personality feels like a satirical commentary on what men desire from women. And yet, she makes it to the very end of the show and is one of the highest-rated player.
Both my sister, roommate, and I couldn’t understand how people didn’t flag Rebecca from the beginning. Is this how men really see women? Or is this simply what they prefer? And, as a Black woman, did Rebecca survive longer than Mercedez because she presented as less threatening and more palatable for other contestants? Is a Black woman’s presence only comfortable when it is passive and quiet?
During the first impressions stage of the show, every contestant displayed similar but distinct defensive energy towards Rebecca. This time, they questioned her self-described shyness; implying that she had secrets. The only other Black man on the show described her as looking like the type of woman who would be a “crazy ex” and destroy their partner’s belongings if they broke up.
These conclusions were based on a single photo and one self-proscribed personality trait. Ultimately almost everyone questioned if either woman was real. The questioning of Black women’s innocence is directly connected to their hypersexualization and dehumanization. Regardless of how underlying and distant these oppressive, violent perspectives are from the contestants’ intentions, their inability to question why they were passing these judgments after the fact, and the show’s inability to address it, is the problem.
The misogynoir directed at Black women leads to long-lasting, intergenerational trauma that affects our ability to acknowledge our own humanity. The Circle was a smaller example of a bigger issue that isn’t dying out with our grandparents. A discussion about the way we all participate in the dehumanization and active oppression of Black women needs to happen more often in an open dialogue. If not, I fear for what future generations of Black girls will be forced to endure.