PL Seminar

May 13, 2016

Dr. Ortega
Its A Dick Thing
My mother never taught my brothers about love unless it was directed towards me and

other women in our family. When my brother had his first girlfriend our parents immediately

decided to teach him how to use a condom. The conversation circulated around sex rather than

love. When I had my first crush, my parents asked a million questions about his goals and how

his grades were in school. No one taught me how to use a condom or had a conversation with me

about sex outside of the realm of abstinence. My brother had to take on masculinity at a young

age, if he was not chasing girls by the time he hit puberty his sexuality was up for questioning.

Abstinence was rarely a practice taught to boys in the black community in fear that the young

man would become feminine, because one of the main characteristics in manhood is

phallocentrism which focuses on the phallus or penis as a symbol of male dominance. This was

the reality of many young men around me growing up.

My parents engraved in my mind that my virginity was a prize to men and that they

would do anything to get it, even if it meant that they had to act like they were in love with me.

My mom made it normal for me to think that men were sex crazed beings that had no other

interest in me beyond what was between my legs and it was rightfully so because that is what it

meant to be a man. It was my job to never give it up so that I would be respected. I was not

encouraged to counter this visuality of masculinity or ask why couldnt men just put their

hormones in check instead of me constantly having to defend my body parts from being trophies

of manhood.
 In many instances I saw this theory of phallocentric manhood to be true. I thought that

men did not know how to love and saw women as objects to affirm their masculinity. This notion

was shown to be accepted through the visuality formed by relations in my family and the

community of people around me. My mother took my dad back every time he cheated on her, my

brother had many high school flings and no one ever criticized him for it. My aunts had countless

conversations over tears and alcohol preaching black men aint shit but they still

unconditionally loved them and settled for heart break simply because their men still came home

at night which was a symbol of some type of love being present in their relationship. Men being

promiscuous is usually not questioned in the black community because it is known as a part of

manhood. In this essay I want to discuss how this notion of masculinity is white washed and

harmful to, specifically, black relationships. Black men have internalized the notion of white

masculinity which is deeply rooted in patriarchy, the desire for wealth, and phallocentrism. Being

taught at a young age that men need to conquer women sexually in order achieve manhood has

normalized male promiscuity but this notion of manhood is emphasized in the black community

because of oppression of the black male body in America.

In The Reconstruction of Black Masculinity by Bell Hooks she explores how notions

of masculinity in America are created through a Eurocentric lens that was imposed on black men

when they were brought to America through the slave trade. Masculinity makes it possible for

misogyny to exist because it implies that men have to be dominant and reject femininity.

According to American society being considered feminine, as a male, makes you weak and

associates with homosexuality. Most black men seek their masculinity by trying to get revenge

on their white oppressors who emasculated them by taking their freedom, raping their women,

and taking away their power to protect their family. In the reading she gives a couple narratives
from slave men that were documented to show what black men thought of manhood at that time.

Fredrick Douglass did not feel his manhood affirmed by intellectual progress. It was affirmed

when he fought man to man with the slave overseer (Hooks, 90).

It is important to note how his physical strength played a larger part in making him feel

like a man than his intellectual progress. This is a prime example of the works of the Willie

Lynch Letter. The black mans selfhood was transitioned from his mind to his body and physical

strength. The goal has always been to take the mind and keep the body and it has never changed.

Today black men still seek manhood through physical domination because they were made to

believe they were nothing more than a large penis and entertainment through their physical

strength. The black male body is still a spectacle of the white gaze in sports and fetishized in

pornography. However, many black men find pride in it being widely theorized that they can

perform better than a white man on the court and in the bedroom, so they accepted this status

quo.

During slavery the plantation formed a visuality for slaves that only allowed them to see

white men as representation of manhood. Their only examples of manhood came from

patriarchal masters and slave overseers that expressed their masculinity and superiority through

violence. A person who is owned and cannot defend himself or his family is not a real man,

therefore a slave/black man cannot be an example of a manhood to other black men. Slavery

very much constructed how all black people saw themselves because they had no other

representations to awaken any selfhood in them, many slaves saw them as less than human

because of white supremacy. Being enslaved ripped black men of their ability to fulfill what was

portrayed to them as masculinity. The portrait of black masculinity that emerges in this work

perpetually constructs black men as "failures" who are psychologically "fucked up," dangerous,
violent, sex maniacs whose insanity is informed by their inability to fulfill their phallocentric

masculine destiny in a racist context (Hooks). Hooks examines different scholars essays about

masculinity and critiques them such as Robert Staples. He asserts that black men are

psychologically suffering because they cannot fulfill themselves as real men. They are denied

the ability to take on white notions of masculinity. However, he does not question how

problematic the notion of masculinity is.

It is important to understand how black masculinity was constructed by white oppressors

to identify how it effects relations between black men and women. Hooks states In traditional

black communities when one tells a grown male to "be a man," one is urging him to aspire to a

masculine identity rooted in the patriarchal ideal (Hooks). As black men have accepted this

status quo of masculinity there is an over compensation of manhood in the black community as

a result of their oppression and this journey to manhood undermines the black woman and black

feminism.

Being a man in America meant having you own property, wealth, and a good paying job.

Due to discrimination after slavery was abolished black men were denied jobs, many of their

rights, and opportunities to take on this patriarchal ideal and this caused them to seek their

masculinity in a phallocentric method. Black men began to embrace their sexuality as

masculinity. White supremacy limited a black mans masculinity to their phallus since they could

not be masculine in the sense that they had a high paying job, or power over others. They used

their sexuality to assert power. A sexually defined masculine ideal rooted in physical

domination and sexual possession of women could be accessible to all men. Hence, even

unemployed black men could gain status, could be seen as the embodiment of masculinity,

within a phallocentric framework (Hooks).

 This notion of black masculinity began to be accepted because of the sexualization of the

black body in America. In the 6th chapter entitled Its A Dick Thing of Bell Hooks book We

Real Cool she explores black male sexuality. After slavery segregation became constitutional so

black and white people began to separate from each other and this gave black people a chance to

reclaim and redefine their sexuality after years of exploitation under the white pornographic gaze

of the black body. Before black men began to reclaim their sexuality they were looked at by

white society as sex crazed rapists. This is why black men were beaten, jailed, or murdered for

interacting with white women. Black males deemed hypersexual in a negative way in the eyes

of whites, were in the sub-culture of blackness deemed sexually healthy. That black male body,

deemed demonic in the eyes of white racists sexist stereotypes, was in the world of segregated

black culture deemed erotic, sensual, capable of giving and receiving pleasure (Hooks, 66). In

this quote Hooks is explaining how the sexuality of the black man was being embraced in the

black community instead of feared as it was in the white community.

However, this also led to the acceptance of men dominating women through their

sexuality as a source of manhood. With the emergence of a fierce phallocentrism, a man was no

longer a man because he provided care for his family, he was a man simply because he had a

penis. Furthermore, his ability to use that penis in the arena of sexual conquest could bring him

as much status as being a wage earner and provider (Hooks). They no longer feared their

sexuality because it was raising their status as a patriarchal male. This changed the visuality of

young black males in the black community because unlike in slavery days they could look up to

other black men in their community as patriarchs, but the image of manhood they had to look up

to was a man who exploited women in order to prove his masculinity.

 When putting so much emphasis on the penis as manhood black men began to eliminate

their emotional attachments to sex and their women. Hooks stated in her book We Real Cool,

curriculum for sex education for a normal American boy simply teaches males that they must

fuck women or fuck somebody. Added to this lesson, Jensen says, was a notion that males

should fuck as many women as often as you can for as long as you can get away it or fuck a lot

of women until you get tired of it, and then find one to marry and just fuck her. (Hooks, 67).

This lesson teaches boys that women are nothing more than an object to have sex with and also

suggests that his wife will be a source of unlimited sex. Notice how marriage is the last thing

listed, it is thought to be normal in the black community for men to mess around with a large

pool of women before he ties himself down to one. The suppression of the erotic and femininity

became prevalent in the black community because the goal was to dominate women physically

without emotional attachment. Typically, men are taught at a young age that that being emotional

is a feminine trait and, with misogynist views in place, a man showing emotion emasculates him

extremely. Associating emotion with femininity and weakness conditioned men to believe that

women are weak and irrational when it comes to their feelings, therefore they were inferior.

In Audre Lordes Uses of The Erotic she talks about how men have exploited the erotic

to protect their masculinity turning it into the pornographic. women are maintained at a

distant/inferior position to be physically milked, much the same way as ants maintain colonies of

aphids to provide a life giving substance for their masters (Lorde, 54). In order to be patriarchs

in society black men had to dominate the black woman. Yet they could not assume this position

if black women were not willing to conform to prevailing sexist gender norms. Many black

women who had endured white supremacist patriarchal domination during slavery did not want

to be dominated by black men after manumission (Hooks). Black men were critical of black
women who did not support the patriarchal ideal and supported feminism. This created a

dilemma in the black female demographic. A lot of women accepted this notion of manhood and

became like my mother, who thought that this was the norm of manhood and women had to take

the lemons of the situation and make lemonade. Suggesting black women had to put up with the

cheating if they really loved the man and move past the pain. Male sexism is excused by a

woman when he decides to marry her, denying the black man the capacity to assume

responsibility for personal growth and salvation.

Those representations of black gender relationships that perpetually pit black women

and men against one another deny the complexity of our experiences and intensify mutually

destructive internecine gender conflict (Hooks). Many women felt that their men would

inevitably cheat on them even if he was in love with her because of the dick thing that women

would never be able to understand according to Eddie Murphy in his stand-up comedy movie

Raw. He suggests that men must go out and conquer as much pussy as he can simply because

he is a man.

As a result of this belief many black women built up a resentment towards black men.

Young women, like me, who are taught these things grow up defensive to all men that come into

their lives thinking they want nothing but sex. Women who are actively against sexism are

criticized by black men and characterized as anti-male or man haters. In The Reconstruction

of Masculinity Hooks states, Everyone seems eager to forget that it is possible for black

women to love black men and yet unequivocally challenge and oppose sexism, male domination,

and phallocentrism. It takes for men to recognize that they are more than just a big dick for

this conflict between black and women to start towards resolution. When we criticize their

phallocentric behavior it is us, black women, telling our black men that they are not limited to
their phallus, they are so much more than that. There are black men who counter this visuality of

phallocentric masculinity, but they still suffer the criticisms of bitter black women who have

dealt with men who have exploited her in the past. America is a male dominated country and

ending patriarchy is close to impossible. Many black men may refuse to acknowledge that

sexism provides them with forms of male privilege and power because they do not want to

surrender that power in a world where they may feel otherwise quite powerless.