Citation

Dunn-Gallier M. Cult. Health Sex. 2023; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2023, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/13691058.2023.2291395

PMID

38146738

Abstract

Discursive practices position Black women as racial, gendered, and sexual others. There remains a need to understand how Black women craft sexualities given this backdrop. This paper draws on sexual and dating advice from 30 semi-structured interviews to examine how cisgender heterosexual undergraduate women enrolled at a Historically Black College/University in the USA constructed and promoted heterosexualities. Neoliberalism, racialised risk narratives and notions of Black womanhood converge to frame how participants articulated their roles and the roles of women like them in maintaining sexual health and social status at the nexus of race and gender oppression, and in respect of aspirational Black feminine middle-class identities. Overarching messages in their peer advice revealed gender-specific expectations about sexual responsibility through self-reliance and sexual respectability through heterosexual monogamy. The present study expands sexualities research through an intersectional approach that examines the implications of racialised, gendered and classed meanings of Black sexuality and womanhood in an understudied population.

FINDINGS identify peer sexual advice as a rhetorical tool that simultaneously resists and reproduces power structures.

Language: en

Keywords

gender; Black women; HBCU; Heterosexuality; peer advice