Speaker 1: Welcome to The Laverne Cox Show, a production of Shondaland
Speaker 1: Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. Think about the
Speaker 1: embodiment of hegemonic masculinity, how eroticism gets even constructed or
Speaker 1: manifested in our bodies, in men's bodies specifically, because basically,
Speaker 1: what he's trying to tell you is that even though
Speaker 1: his mind has advanced beyond what he thinks are appropriate
Speaker 1: performances of men and women to be doing, his penis
Speaker 1: has not. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to The Laverne
Speaker 1: Cock Show. On today's episode, we're talking about the challenges
Speaker 1: that college educated women of color experience dating in the
Speaker 1: digital age. Now, many years ago, I was on this
Speaker 1: website called Plenty of Fish and I got a message
Speaker 1: from a man. I went to his profile and was shocked.
Speaker 1: He said on his profile really disparaging things about why
Speaker 1: he would never date black and Latino women, just things
Speaker 1: that were so horrible and so stereotypical. I just can't
Speaker 1: even bring myself to repeat them here today. And so
Speaker 1: I was just like, why would this man write me? So,
Speaker 1: in the spirit of research, I wrote him back and
Speaker 1: I said, I read your profile. I'm obviously a black woman,
Speaker 1: Why would you even, you know, write me and expressed
Speaker 1: interest in dating me. And what he said was, Oh,
Speaker 1: I can date you because you're light skinned. And then
Speaker 1: he said and I've always been curious about trans women,
Speaker 1: and so I just kind of remember sitting there and
Speaker 1: just sort of being like, Wow, this is this is
Speaker 1: really deep. And then I blocked him and I never
Speaker 1: had any communication with him again after that. But over
Speaker 1: the years, I've heard from so many black women, both
Speaker 1: trans and non trans, who have expressed frustration dating and
Speaker 1: attempting to date in the face of this kind of stereotyping,
Speaker 1: blamed racism, colorism, misogyny, and treating trans women as experiments
Speaker 1: and curiosities. When I came across Dr Sarah adayinka Schools
Speaker 1: research on dating in the Digital Age with the focus
Speaker 1: on college educated women of color, I knew I wanted
Speaker 1: to have this conversation with her. Dr Sarah is a
Speaker 1: licensed clinical social worker and assistant Professor of sociology at
Speaker 1: firm And University. She explores race, family, and gender in
Speaker 1: her research, with a focused interest in how forming intimate
Speaker 1: romantic relationships reveal inequalities in these areas. Please enjoy my
Speaker 1: talk with Dr Sarah. Hi, Dr Sarah. How are you
Speaker 1: feeling today? Good? Miss Cox? How are you doing? I'm well,
Speaker 1: you can call me the Burn, all right. I just
Speaker 1: wanted to make sure, yes, my mother is Miss Cox. Okay.
Speaker 1: Can you talk to us just about the nature of
Speaker 1: your research and what what really inspired this look into
Speaker 1: the challenges that college educated women of color experience and dating.
Speaker 1: What was the beginning the nexus of genesis? I should say,
Speaker 1: of you doing this, that's a great question soul. For me,
Speaker 1: I've always been a little bit of a mushy romantic.
Speaker 1: I love ear hustling about how people fall in love.
Speaker 1: I'm all about that. And when I was in high school,
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, so I'm gonna go to college
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna get married. It's gonna be lick yea.
Speaker 1: And I went to call ligiend that is not what happened.
Speaker 1: In fact, what I was noticing already was that my
Speaker 1: white college age friends were already partnering and my black
Speaker 1: female friends were not. We weren't getting together. And I
Speaker 1: don't think that it was people weren't hooking up with us,
Speaker 1: but there was definitely this field that we were going
Speaker 1: to have to wait to find our partners, whereas a
Speaker 1: lot of the white folks that I knew were like
Speaker 1: in serious relationships at college. So my junior paper, where
Speaker 1: did you go to school? Where did you do your
Speaker 1: undergraduate I went to Princeton University, and so I took
Speaker 1: a class with Mario Small, who I think is now
Speaker 1: at Harvard, and sort of everything became clear for me,
Speaker 1: my own understanding. I took a sociology class there, my
Speaker 1: own understanding of being a black woman, and things that
Speaker 1: hadn't made made sense to me started to make sense.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, as someone who's interested in meeting
Speaker 1: and meeting already, I was like, well, I gotta figure
Speaker 1: out what's going on, Like why aren't I dating? Why
Speaker 1: aren't my friend MS dating? Like what's going on? So
Speaker 1: my junior paper looked at how black women do marry,
Speaker 1: but they tend to marry down. I wrote a senior
Speaker 1: thesis that looked at how institutions like schools are actually
Speaker 1: matchmakers and we don't often think of them as matchmakers,
Speaker 1: as schools can be mechanisms to facilitate homogamy, which is
Speaker 1: where people get married along the same class, educational racial lines.
Speaker 1: But if you meet at work, for instance, you might
Speaker 1: be less likely to marry someone that is the same
Speaker 1: as you in terms of class, in terms of in
Speaker 1: terms of class, education, race, but that might be changing
Speaker 1: now because work can be so um specific. So I
Speaker 1: wrote a paper on that. I stopped there, and then
Speaker 1: my advisor was like, you gotta go to graduate school
Speaker 1: because maybe this is an important thing to study. And
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, I don't want to go. And
Speaker 1: I had told myself that, um, if I was still
Speaker 1: interested in this in five years, I would I would
Speaker 1: go to graduate school. So I read a book by
Speaker 1: Richard Banks called His Marriage for for White People, and
Speaker 1: the book pissed me off enough to be like, okay,
Speaker 1: when we need to go to graduate school. Why did
Speaker 1: the book piss you off? What was the press of
Speaker 1: the book that pissed you off? The title is interesting.
Speaker 1: His assumption was that black women simply were not open
Speaker 1: to dating outside of their race. They were just closed off.
Speaker 1: And so I was like, that's not correct. I've been
Speaker 1: trying to day outside of my race. The wacky things
Speaker 1: that I've been seeing online, the ways in which people
Speaker 1: approach me was just incorrect. And I was like, this
Speaker 1: can't stand. I really need to go research this myself.
Speaker 1: And then you know, as you're getting into your mid twenties,
Speaker 1: you're having these conversations with your non black friends and
Speaker 1: your black friends, and you're starting to see, what our
Speaker 1: experiences aren't that similar. They're similar in some ways, but
Speaker 1: they're not similar in other ways. And so that basically
Speaker 1: lit a fire under me, and I was like, I'm
Speaker 1: going to get my PhD. And this is what I'm
Speaker 1: going to study. And for me, um, the comparisons are
Speaker 1: really key, right, I really want to talk to black women,
Speaker 1: but I think the uniqueness of Black women's experiences they
Speaker 1: really come into relief when you compare them to non
Speaker 1: black women's experiences. And that's what made me do the
Speaker 1: work that I'm doing. Girl, There's so many things that
Speaker 1: you said there that I just I want to unpack
Speaker 1: on so many different levels. The first one, you just
Speaker 1: sort of alluded to marrying down, and if you just
Speaker 1: go online, if you go to YouTube, there's so many
Speaker 1: conversations about like hypergamy and black women and like marrying
Speaker 1: up and what does that look like? And and then
Speaker 1: the interracial dating piece. There's so we black women. I
Speaker 1: saw one study that suggested that black women are less
Speaker 1: likely than black men to date outside of the race.
Speaker 1: That we are more statistically more likely to pursue relationships
Speaker 1: with black men, and black men are with us. Right,
Speaker 1: So where do we where do we even begin with this?
Speaker 1: Let me give me We can start with the data
Speaker 1: about black women being less likely to date and marry interracially.
Speaker 1: We do see that in census data UM two thousand.
Speaker 1: Intend we see the data that black men are actually
Speaker 1: twice as likely to marry interracially as black women. But
Speaker 1: I don't think this is solely an issue of preference.
Speaker 1: I think in our world today, we really you know,
Speaker 1: we have this rugged individualism. We tend to live in
Speaker 1: this pretend world where like the way that the US
Speaker 1: was set up to make black people three fifths of
Speaker 1: our human and then to put them at the bottom
Speaker 1: of the hierarchy doesn't at all impact our preferences. That
Speaker 1: doesn't make any sense. So we have to recognize that
Speaker 1: our preferences are within a particular kind of racial and
Speaker 1: gender order, and they're influenced by that order. For a
Speaker 1: long time, sexual abuses that black women experience at the
Speaker 1: hands of white men didn't count as illegal. You can't
Speaker 1: just ignore history and then pretend that black women are
Speaker 1: just gonna grow up in a vacuum where now it's
Speaker 1: just fine to date white or non black men and
Speaker 1: they have to be careful. We're seeing this even in
Speaker 1: our time now, like people are very bold about their
Speaker 1: hate and their dislike for black women. You don't have
Speaker 1: to look for Kamala Harris. So when black women in
Speaker 1: my opinion, and I see this in my data. So
Speaker 1: this isn't in my dissertation, it's in a forthcoming book
Speaker 1: I'm called the Logic of Racial Practice. In my experience,
Speaker 1: black women don't want to date black men just because
Speaker 1: it feels good. It's about racial solidarity. How are you
Speaker 1: going to go through a life where you're constantly struggling
Speaker 1: and the person is like, maybe that's racial discrimination, maybe
Speaker 1: it's not. You don't want that right. So, as this,
Speaker 1: as white supremacy bears down more and more and more
Speaker 1: on black women's lives, black women are trying to advance.
Speaker 1: We are one of the most highly educated populations in
Speaker 1: the US, but our college degrees, our post college graduate
Speaker 1: degrees are not getting us the same things that it
Speaker 1: is for non black women. So if we want to
Speaker 1: date black men, is because love is intimate. We want
Speaker 1: people to understand us and understand that struggle. And I
Speaker 1: haven't talked to black men, so I don't know what
Speaker 1: their reasons are for dating white women. I can't speak
Speaker 1: to that. But for black women, it's a little less
Speaker 1: than just like, well, I just want someone that's the
Speaker 1: same race as me. That race has history behind it,
Speaker 1: It has struggled behind it, it has resilience behind it.
Speaker 1: And in a world like ours, where your blackness is,
Speaker 1: people seek to trample upon it. They're saying, we want
Speaker 1: to count all legal vote, but your vote is illegal,
Speaker 1: right you? You want to be with someone that is
Speaker 1: going to get that. The immediate thing that I think
Speaker 1: about when I listened to you talk, it's trauma that
Speaker 1: that did. The trauma. The history of the ways in
Speaker 1: which black womanhood has been devalued in this country is
Speaker 1: deeply traumatizing. I think about my mother and how my
Speaker 1: mother there's no way she would ever date a white
Speaker 1: man that she grew up in the segregated South. I
Speaker 1: remember we were in it was twenty twelves. It was
Speaker 1: eight years ago. We were in Vegas and she had
Speaker 1: just retired and we were both in Vegas, for the
Speaker 1: first time, and she was supposed to meet me by
Speaker 1: the pool. Um. We were staying at the Mirage and
Speaker 1: I went for a dip in the pool and get
Speaker 1: out of the pool, and I have like ten messages
Speaker 1: from my mother, and I listened to the first and
Speaker 1: she's freaking out and she's like, you've got me about
Speaker 1: here around all these white people, she said to me.
Speaker 1: And I just founder and we sat down and I said,
Speaker 1: are you afraid of white people? People? And she was
Speaker 1: just so sort of riled up and it didn't clicked him.
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh my god. And this is
Speaker 1: eight years ago, so I'm like forty years old, and
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god. She grew up in
Speaker 1: the segregated South, watched her father be called the N word,
Speaker 1: was in segregated schools, and invested um desegregated schools, and
Speaker 1: experienced to all that there was so much strong. She
Speaker 1: was passed over for a promotion in the eighties for
Speaker 1: a white woman who didn't have the same education, And
Speaker 1: so I think it's our experience. But then I also
Speaker 1: know that trauma has passed down in our genes and
Speaker 1: in our d n A, and so I think about
Speaker 1: that level of trauma as I listened to what you
Speaker 1: just said. But then I think about two. How so
Speaker 1: many black men, particularly black celebrities, rappers, et cetera, have
Speaker 1: no problem expressing their disdain from black women right and
Speaker 1: their desire not to date black women, or that that
Speaker 1: black women must be light skinned. So the colorism, and
Speaker 1: I think when we have this conversation, it has to
Speaker 1: be we have to sort of talk about colorism, and
Speaker 1: we have to talk about the ways in which certain
Speaker 1: scan tones are privileged in the in the dating market.
Speaker 1: What would you say to that? So I would say
Speaker 1: that just based on the work that I've done, I
Speaker 1: think it's important to think about hegemonic masculinity and when
Speaker 1: we think about the intersection of race and gender for
Speaker 1: black men, So in our world, patriarchy, masculinity, hegemonic masculinity
Speaker 1: are very powerful ideologies. You know, when you read the
Speaker 1: New York Times and people are asking, well, why did
Speaker 1: Latino men vote for Trump? Why did Black men vote
Speaker 1: for Trump? A lot of the answer is will they
Speaker 1: really see him as a macho man? So what happens
Speaker 1: I think, you know, based on my limited experience, is
Speaker 1: that for black men, part of defining that masculinity is
Speaker 1: putting that above racial solidarity right by showing I am
Speaker 1: a man and because of white supremacy. One way I
Speaker 1: can do that is by devaluing black women. I'm seen
Speaker 1: as more valuable in the realm of white supremacy, in
Speaker 1: the world of white supremacy, if I'm able to join
Speaker 1: along with others to devalue black women who are at
Speaker 1: the bottom of their racial hierarchy. So I think that
Speaker 1: whether or not black men realize it, they're literally part
Speaker 1: of that process of maintaining and perpetuating white supremacy by
Speaker 1: devaluing black women, and oftentimes they don't understand that. And
Speaker 1: so again with white supremacy, skin tone always matters. So
Speaker 1: if my goal is a black man is to get
Speaker 1: closer to whiteness, to get closer to white masculinity, of
Speaker 1: course I'm going to date a lighter skin black woman
Speaker 1: because all of it matters. Phenotype matters, skin color matters,
Speaker 1: what her nose look like. All that matters in terms
Speaker 1: of maintaining my place as a man and a black
Speaker 1: man within this racial harchy and within this context, the
Speaker 1: white supremacy. So that's how I, as a sociologists understand
Speaker 1: those actions. What this is such a complicated thing to
Speaker 1: talk about. I think too, because the question that comes
Speaker 1: up for me is like, well, if we just have
Speaker 1: our preferences, right, Like I just I am more attracted
Speaker 1: to someone who's lighter skin and that's like, not racism,
Speaker 1: It's just my preference. And a lot of people listening
Speaker 1: to this will say that, what would you say to
Speaker 1: the folks out there who are like, well, I just
Speaker 1: have a preference and it's it's not necessarily racist or
Speaker 1: misogynist or colorist. I just like what I like. I
Speaker 1: would say say to them, You're not alone. That's a
Speaker 1: totally valid perspective to have. I'm all about interrogation. Why
Speaker 1: do you like what you like? Where does that come from?
Speaker 1: When did you start liking it? What does it mean
Speaker 1: for you to like it? And I'm not just talking objectively.
Speaker 1: I'm married to a white man, so I had to
Speaker 1: do that work for myself of like, well, what does
Speaker 1: it mean to be attracted to white men? What does
Speaker 1: it mean for a black woman to hold up whiteness?
Speaker 1: What kind of life do I want to have with
Speaker 1: a white man? Why does it matter if I'm not
Speaker 1: or am I am married to a white man, so
Speaker 1: I had to do that work for myself, and frankly,
Speaker 1: what I found for myself is if I'm going to
Speaker 1: be with a white man, he better bring me closer
Speaker 1: and closer and closer and closer to pro blackness. His
Speaker 1: treatment of me better upgrade my humanity all the time.
Speaker 1: So I think it's fine to have preferences, but just
Speaker 1: recognize that they don't exist in a vacuum. So interrogate,
Speaker 1: do the work, reflect on where those are coming from
Speaker 1: and why they are important to you. I think that
Speaker 1: the thing too, it's like, if we do have our preferences,
Speaker 1: then they have those preferences, should not dinnigrade women with
Speaker 1: I remember there was I think famous singer or a
Speaker 1: rapper or something who had a song about, you know,
Speaker 1: women with their good hair or something like that, and
Speaker 1: and people like this is colorist, this is upsetting, and
Speaker 1: so that that even if we have our preferences, that
Speaker 1: we're not in the process of denegrating people who don't
Speaker 1: fall into their preferences right exactly. And that's where the
Speaker 1: self reflection comes from, because what you might actually find
Speaker 1: is if you're a non white person, is that you
Speaker 1: actually might have some internalized racism that you haven't dealt with.
Speaker 1: You might find that you have some internalized colorism that
Speaker 1: you haven't dealt with. So some of my respondents they
Speaker 1: were in this situation where they were always attracted to
Speaker 1: white men, and then one woman said that she went
Speaker 1: on a fast where she started to de colonize her
Speaker 1: her preferences. She's like, why am I attracted to this
Speaker 1: white guy, this mediocre white guy, when they're these black
Speaker 1: men over here, these Asian men over here that are
Speaker 1: meeting the same criteria. She started to do that work
Speaker 1: of reflecting on those preferences, and so you might surprise yourself.
Speaker 1: You might actually realize, wow, I'm holding onto these things
Speaker 1: because the media's influenced me. How people define beauty has
Speaker 1: influenced me. So that's why people don't want to do
Speaker 1: the work, because they might be afraid to like go
Speaker 1: or something. They might have to realize that, actually, I
Speaker 1: don't think all people are the same. And so when
Speaker 1: you do that work, though, then you can really start
Speaker 1: to appreciate the humanity and other people. So you can
Speaker 1: still have your preferences, but not at the expense of
Speaker 1: denigrating other people. Yeah, I think it always comes down
Speaker 1: to a critical, loving, critical self reflection when it comes
Speaker 1: to all of these things that like, at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, it's like not about looking at other
Speaker 1: people and what their issues are, but like, how am
Speaker 1: I implicated in perpetuating or creating a racism, misogyny, colorism,
Speaker 1: et cetera. How am I participate eating and creating something
Speaker 1: new and starting new and different kinds of conversations. This
Speaker 1: is a good time to take a little break and
Speaker 1: we'll be right back though after a little love is
Speaker 1: thrown to our sponsors. Alrighty, now that's all taken care of,
Speaker 1: Let's get back to our chat. My ex boyfriend was
Speaker 1: white and we you know, posted on social media, and
Speaker 1: I remember with the first few times we posted, there
Speaker 1: were so many people who were frustrated and upset that
Speaker 1: I was dating a white man. And someone said, you know,
Speaker 1: why do all the lgbt Q celebrities when they get famous,
Speaker 1: they find a white man? And there was just like
Speaker 1: a lot of people were very very upset that my
Speaker 1: boyfriend was white, and it was just kind of I
Speaker 1: was like, most of the men I've dated are white men,
Speaker 1: and you know, and it's something I've thought a lot
Speaker 1: about and is something I've interrogated and but it's also
Speaker 1: about who is of any race right is going to
Speaker 1: treat me in the way that I feel I deserved
Speaker 1: to be treated and I should be treated. And so,
Speaker 1: you know, I happen to fall in love with a
Speaker 1: white man who treated me really well, and so I
Speaker 1: think a lot of it is about our options and
Speaker 1: being open. You know, I think there's a there's a
Speaker 1: piece of trauma though. I think I think for a
Speaker 1: lot of black women, there's trauma around having been treated
Speaker 1: it's purely dark skinned black women having been treated so
Speaker 1: badly over and over again. As I was preparing for this,
Speaker 1: I read so many accounts from dark skinned black women
Speaker 1: who just have been made to feel like they are
Speaker 1: just less than nothing by men, over and over and
Speaker 1: over again. And I think about, how how do we
Speaker 1: actually go into healthy relationships right where we can let
Speaker 1: don't bring that baggage into it. And what have you
Speaker 1: found in your research around the healing process that has
Speaker 1: to happen from all the wounds of of the intersections
Speaker 1: of misogyny and colorism and racism for the folks that
Speaker 1: you've interviewed. Yeah, that's a great question. So one of
Speaker 1: the things that I found in my UM work is
Speaker 1: that women, regardless of what race they are, they often
Speaker 1: experience negative interactions with men, both on and offline when
Speaker 1: they're in their romantic partner search. And there are two
Speaker 1: ways in which women will often deal with these negative interactions,
Speaker 1: and one of them is emotion work, which is where
Speaker 1: they prioritize men's feelings. So if men are intimidated by
Speaker 1: their accomplishments, or men are intimidated by their educational level,
Speaker 1: those sort of downplay. As part of this emotion work,
Speaker 1: they'll ask the man a lot of questions about what
Speaker 1: he's doing, have done that, Yeah, um. One of one
Speaker 1: of my respondents talked about how they were going to
Speaker 1: be lawyers. She has a PhD in sociology. One of
Speaker 1: her friends was going to be a PR person in
Speaker 1: l A and they these men came up to them
Speaker 1: and they told them exactly what they were going to do,
Speaker 1: and the men, she said, they shrank. So she turned
Speaker 1: to her friends and she was like, we need to
Speaker 1: tell people that were nannies or else we're never gonna
Speaker 1: get laid. So that's priority. It's one of my favorite quotes.
Speaker 1: So that's prioritization of men's feelings around their accomplishments. But
Speaker 1: the other kind of coping mechanism that women did was
Speaker 1: emotion and repair, which is where they prioritized their feelings. Right.
Speaker 1: They weren't going to talk to any men that were
Speaker 1: showing any hints of intimidation. They weren't going to talk
Speaker 1: to any men who called them bitches online. They weren't
Speaker 1: going to talk to any men who used criticized daization
Speaker 1: as a way to include them as romantic partners. It
Speaker 1: definitely shrank or pool, but you know what, they felt empowered.
Speaker 1: So I would say to black women, especially, take care
Speaker 1: of yourself. This world that we're in is not about you.
Speaker 1: I know that sounds terrible to say, but take care
Speaker 1: of yourself. Surround yourself with people who know your worth
Speaker 1: and who know your value, and this is an ongoing process.
Speaker 1: As a social worker, I'm all about therapy, even better
Speaker 1: if you do it with a black person that maybe
Speaker 1: even understands where you're coming from. But like, trauma really
Speaker 1: needs you to air it out. It needs to be
Speaker 1: out in the open. You need to let someone carry
Speaker 1: that burden with you, because trauma will tell you that
Speaker 1: you're not enough. Trauma will tell you that you're less than.
Speaker 1: So you already have the value. You're already worth something.
Speaker 1: People can't take that away from you. So the work
Speaker 1: is in you finding it and stepping into it and
Speaker 1: daily and again, this is not like a magical thing,
Speaker 1: like you're not gonna wake up one they and be like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I feel totally fulfilled enough and love.
Speaker 1: It's going to be a constant thing because of the
Speaker 1: world that we live in, in in the American society that
Speaker 1: we live in. So black women, you are already enough.
Speaker 1: There's no here there about it. There's no discovering it.
Speaker 1: It's just walking up and waking into it and living
Speaker 1: it out. That's what that's about. That's so beautiful. One
Speaker 1: of the main reasons I wanted to talk to you
Speaker 1: is that the ways in which so many men online have,
Speaker 1: the way they treat us, the way they the stereotypes
Speaker 1: they have, the ways in which they approach us, that
Speaker 1: is stuff that is systemic. That is something that is
Speaker 1: not it's not our fault. It's not something that we
Speaker 1: need to sort of blame ourselves for. And I think
Speaker 1: it's really really important that we understand that's a lot
Speaker 1: of these things are systemic. There's an element to this.
Speaker 1: There's so many elements to this. But see the thing
Speaker 1: about being intimidating. Many years ago, one of my first
Speaker 1: interactions with men I was after I transitioned or I
Speaker 1: don't even know if I had officially medically transitioned, but
Speaker 1: a man with told me I was intimidating, right, And
Speaker 1: I just sort of assumed that for whatever reason I'm
Speaker 1: men find me intimidating. And this was like, you know,
Speaker 1: before I, you know, had any sort of success or whatnot.
Speaker 1: And so when I tried to understand and parse out
Speaker 1: what that means, right, and some men like being intimidated
Speaker 1: by me. They saw me as a challenge and they
Speaker 1: were like it was hot for them that I was
Speaker 1: intimidating for some reason. And other men have coward and
Speaker 1: like sort of run away. And this has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with me even being trans. These are men who
Speaker 1: are who are attracted to me and knew I was trans,
Speaker 1: And so it's but then I here accounts from black women,
Speaker 1: women of color who were not trans, or women who
Speaker 1: of all races who were very successful, and they um
Speaker 1: here that they're intimidating, and so I I talk out
Speaker 1: with my girlfriends about how much work we've all done
Speaker 1: on our Most of my girlfriends are really my super
Speaker 1: close girlfriends. The cow Council of Transistors we call call
Speaker 1: herself the cops. Um. We do so much work on ourselves,
Speaker 1: trying to evolve and be better versions of ourselves and
Speaker 1: to go out into the world with a sense of worthiness.
Speaker 1: And it's rare that we meet men who seem to
Speaker 1: be doing the same work. You know, they say that
Speaker 1: there woke and they're feminist and there whatever, but then
Speaker 1: their practices don't really bear it out. Um. I think
Speaker 1: I've told this story on this podcast before, but I
Speaker 1: had a man many years ago tell me that he,
Speaker 1: you know, he was a feminist and he loved women
Speaker 1: and wanted to empower, you know, empower women. But then
Speaker 1: when it came down to his penis working and him
Speaker 1: becoming sexually aroused, the woman had to make less money
Speaker 1: than him, She had to even be less attractive as
Speaker 1: woke as he wanted to be an amazing he really
Speaker 1: was an amazing, awesome guy, but like he literally they
Speaker 1: could not physically get there for a woman who was
Speaker 1: more successful. And so this is what we're up against. Yea,
Speaker 1: so I think that, Like, I'm not in the business
Speaker 1: of demonizing anyone. So what do we what is the prescription?
Speaker 1: What do we do? I mean, you know, if this
Speaker 1: is the world we live in, it's it's really fascinating
Speaker 1: because I haven't done this work, but I think it'd
Speaker 1: be really interesting to think about the embodiment of hegemonic
Speaker 1: masculinity and the eroticism, how eroticism gets even constructed or
Speaker 1: manifested in our bodies, and men's bodies specifically, because basically,
Speaker 1: what he's trying to tell you is that even though
Speaker 1: his mind has advanced beyond what he thinks are appropriate
Speaker 1: performances of men and women to be doing, his penis
Speaker 1: has not. So there's something about in sociology, they're famous
Speaker 1: people were written about this, about the performance of gender,
Speaker 1: about the performance of femininity and masculinity, and when you
Speaker 1: perform it so long. So what you're really talking about
Speaker 1: is like this deep embodiment of masculine performance and a
Speaker 1: belief and a deep embodiment in what feminine performance is,
Speaker 1: and then literally being unable to get aroused because your
Speaker 1: penis does not believe and cannot get past the fact
Speaker 1: that this woman is performing femininity in a way that
Speaker 1: doesn't fit these ideals of gender norms. I'm literally stuck
Speaker 1: in hegemonic masculinity. I'm literally stuck in a place where
Speaker 1: I can't get up because a woman is not performing
Speaker 1: femininity in the traditional ways. So I think that says
Speaker 1: something about how deep patriarchy, misogyny, hegemonic masculinity. We see
Speaker 1: them as structures, but it's literally playing out on his body.
Speaker 1: And I think that that's powerful and real for a
Speaker 1: lot of people, but maybe they haven't had even the
Speaker 1: language to be able to talk about it in the
Speaker 1: way that he has. Wow, that is so incredibly deep,
Speaker 1: But I feel like that leaves us in a very
Speaker 1: precarious position for a lot of women who date men.
Speaker 1: Something that came up with you, just what you just said,
Speaker 1: is that historically, right, the ways in which patriarchy has
Speaker 1: sort of um and and racism has intersected in the
Speaker 1: lives and bodies of black women, is that like womanhood
Speaker 1: with something historically that was really preserved for white women.
Speaker 1: When sojournal true declared and a woman in one in Ohio,
Speaker 1: she said this in the context of her blackness being
Speaker 1: disavowed because she wasn't a man in her womanhood being
Speaker 1: disavowed because she was not a white woman, and so
Speaker 1: that history sort of persists. You know, Black women have
Speaker 1: often had their femininity sort of stripped from them by
Speaker 1: misogyny and white supremacy and these assumptions that black women
Speaker 1: are less womanly and less feminine. Well, I really think
Speaker 1: it's back to back to what you said about structure,
Speaker 1: and in sociology, we're always battling between how much does
Speaker 1: the structure constrain our agency and how much agency do
Speaker 1: we have. You are example of doing that work and
Speaker 1: continue to do that work. I'm just talking about hetero
Speaker 1: sexual women. I cannot imagine the barriers that trans women
Speaker 1: are going through as they're searching for partners. It is immense, Right,
Speaker 1: Intersectionality is gonna tell us that they're going to have
Speaker 1: a lot more troubles than we are, both structural and agentic. Right,
Speaker 1: But the thing is, like, you can't give up. You
Speaker 1: have the cots. They are helpful to you, They help
Speaker 1: you to live, they help you to serve vibe. So
Speaker 1: the world isn't going to change that fast, but as
Speaker 1: much as we can, we're responsible for how we react
Speaker 1: to that. And how we walk in it. This connection
Speaker 1: between sociology and social work is really important because sociology says,
Speaker 1: this is the structure, and this is how the structure
Speaker 1: constrains your agency, and then social work says, but let's
Speaker 1: work together to empower that agency. And part of that
Speaker 1: is recognizing that there's a structure that you can't deal with,
Speaker 1: but there's all these other parts of your life that
Speaker 1: you can deal with. So I honestly would say that
Speaker 1: to the man that said his penis can't do it, well,
Speaker 1: maybe there needs to be some work done there. Right,
Speaker 1: you can't solve that problem. No woman can solve that problem.
Speaker 1: And that's not her problem to solve. That's his work
Speaker 1: to do. So let's leave men to do their work.
Speaker 1: So we, all of us, white women, black women, we
Speaker 1: need to call it out every time the structure lets
Speaker 1: men off the hook and puts more bird in on us.
Speaker 1: The reason we are where we are is because black
Speaker 1: women sojourn or truth men like women like her, They
Speaker 1: called it out every single time, and they did what
Speaker 1: they could to make sure that it didn't go on.
Speaker 1: So that's part of the work too. It's not just
Speaker 1: this personal journey, you know, to who much is is given. Um,
Speaker 1: you're just held more accountable. So as an upwardly mobile
Speaker 1: black women, it's my job to call out patriarchy. It's
Speaker 1: my job to call out racism, and then to act
Speaker 1: in ways that resist that. So that's what I see
Speaker 1: that we can do. We can't just let the structure
Speaker 1: overtake our agency. If we have the means to advocate
Speaker 1: for people, we need to do that too. M Hm.
Speaker 1: I feel like there's a crisis that men um, I say,
Speaker 1: heterosexual man specifically sis gender heaterosexual man, let's qualify that
Speaker 1: are having a crisis that they're having around women's roles
Speaker 1: shifting in society. And I I guess there's this promise
Speaker 1: right from of all races if I am a man,
Speaker 1: that I should be their breadwinner and I should make
Speaker 1: more money, and I should do this and this and
Speaker 1: this and this, and then the culture right that the
Speaker 1: structure actually of society isn't set up for all men
Speaker 1: to be able to do that. And so it's it's
Speaker 1: like we've been lied to, we've been betrayed, and there's
Speaker 1: this frustration, and a lot of times that frustration taken
Speaker 1: out on women. UM, LGBTQ people, immigrants, people of color.
Speaker 1: There is this set of assumptions and stories that that
Speaker 1: that men have been told about themselves and if their lives, yes,
Speaker 1: their lies. I see all this pain and trauma around
Speaker 1: these sort of expectations around patriarchy. Does your research tell
Speaker 1: us anything about how men can begin to heal around this?
Speaker 1: I guess what the work is. I think that's a
Speaker 1: great question, and my research is primarily with with women.
Speaker 1: But I think that this is like some introduction to
Speaker 1: sociology stuff. Gender is a social construction. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people think that what they've been told and
Speaker 1: what they've learned is natural, and that becomes what they believe.
Speaker 1: So because I'm a man, I'm entitled to a B, C,
Speaker 1: and D and that's the natural order of things. And
Speaker 1: so if you don't understand that gender is constructed in
Speaker 1: a particular way where men are at the top and
Speaker 1: women are at the bottom, and then whoever is deviating
Speaker 1: from that is even further at the bottom, then it's
Speaker 1: much easier for you to believe those narratives and to
Speaker 1: believe those lies because we've been thought that. But we
Speaker 1: also in many ways perpetuate this. So called natural order
Speaker 1: of of male superiority to women, And so it's the
Speaker 1: work has to start pretty simply, which is, it's actually
Speaker 1: not true. What they told you was a lie. They
Speaker 1: made it up so that they could create a particular
Speaker 1: learn kind of society that operates a particular kind of
Speaker 1: way and benefits a particular kind of person. So if
Speaker 1: we understand that masculinity and femininity are construction and they're
Speaker 1: made real by our performance of them, then that can
Speaker 1: help us go a long way. So if you read
Speaker 1: this article, it's called doing gender. They have this story
Speaker 1: where they share where agnes Um is a trans woman
Speaker 1: and she's deating this assist herald man, and he basically
Speaker 1: tells her, you can't do this because men will think
Speaker 1: that you're overbearing. You should sit this way, you should
Speaker 1: dress that way. So what that man is actually alluding
Speaker 1: to is trans women are learning the performance of femininity,
Speaker 1: and he appreciates that because part of that performance means
Speaker 1: that they're performing as though men are superior, they're performing
Speaker 1: as the women are inferior. So to heal is to
Speaker 1: come to the reality that what you're performing, how you're
Speaker 1: defining yourself is all constructed in a particular way to
Speaker 1: serve a particular kind of purpose. Now I don't know
Speaker 1: how how you move forward from there, but you know,
Speaker 1: I think it's it's kind of like a you just
Speaker 1: got to admit this is who I am, this is
Speaker 1: what it is, So we got to admit first, gender
Speaker 1: is a construction. So how am I playing into that narrative?
Speaker 1: And maybe that's where men sis herold men who can
Speaker 1: find the liberation that they need. And there are plenty
Speaker 1: of sis herold men that understand this, so it's not
Speaker 1: like they have to walk alone. So the education is
Speaker 1: there if people want to seek it out. If you
Speaker 1: just want to lie and feel sorry for yourself, you
Speaker 1: want to you know, grovel in the emasculation and that
Speaker 1: kind of thing you can, but that's not used in
Speaker 1: your agency. And literally, humanity is all about being able
Speaker 1: to use our agency. So if you want to grab
Speaker 1: onto your your your humanity, then you can learn more
Speaker 1: about what it is you're feeling and why you feel
Speaker 1: that way. Well, I think it's not always wallowing in
Speaker 1: any masculation. A lot of times it's about blaming other people.
Speaker 1: It's about lashing out, right. It often functions and lashing
Speaker 1: out and get people for various things. And the one
Speaker 1: thing I'll say about my own men who said they,
Speaker 1: you know, appreciate trans women sort of embracing a certain
Speaker 1: kind of femininity, that like the reality of my experience
Speaker 1: and dating is that even though a man might be
Speaker 1: attracted to me because he presumes I embraced a certain
Speaker 1: kind of feminity, wants it, gets to know me and
Speaker 1: understands I'm feminists and understands that I'm not really interested
Speaker 1: in any of anything traditional. I don't want to get married.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of things I don't want to do,
Speaker 1: and so it's it's tricky, right, alrighty, it's that time again.
Speaker 1: A lot more coming now, we'll be right back already.
Speaker 1: Then let's just dive right back in. So much of
Speaker 1: my experience as a trans woman has been like sort
Speaker 1: of being fetishized and being sort of treated this sort
Speaker 1: of fascination or experiment, and the experiences of so many
Speaker 1: women of color are also very similar. Right, We're we're
Speaker 1: fetishized in a really interesting and specific way. You know,
Speaker 1: there's so many people over the years who have who
Speaker 1: I've heard people say that, you know, I'm not racist,
Speaker 1: I you know, my boyfriend's black or I'm not racist,
Speaker 1: my girlfriend's black, And I'd like to remind those people
Speaker 1: that slave owners had sex with the slaves, but that
Speaker 1: does not mean that they were not engaged in a
Speaker 1: system that subjugated black folks. So what I actually think
Speaker 1: about racial fetish and relationship to trans fedish because I
Speaker 1: think this we experienced a lot of women of color
Speaker 1: online and trans women and around being fetishized. What what
Speaker 1: is your research told you about that? That's what I
Speaker 1: definitely found. One of the things I really wanted to
Speaker 1: explore was, well, what does the exclusion of black women
Speaker 1: look like online? And what is the inclusion of black
Speaker 1: and non black women look like online? And so when
Speaker 1: it comes to you know, in a racial dating, a
Speaker 1: lot of times this inclusion is about fetishization. When you
Speaker 1: see someone's full humanity, then your their power is equal
Speaker 1: to yours. Fetishization is all about wielding your superiority over
Speaker 1: some other person that you deem inferior, but you're upgrading
Speaker 1: them because you think they fit a special category. If
Speaker 1: you're not seeing people as fully human, So it's all
Speaker 1: about I think about it as like colonization, right, because
Speaker 1: we don't really see this fetishization the same way if
Speaker 1: women are doing it, but with men, it's all about, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm putting how I view you onto you. You're not
Speaker 1: defining your humanity. I'm defining your humanity. So feticization is
Speaker 1: all about power, and it's all about sis men being
Speaker 1: able to put their view of what minority women are
Speaker 1: like and obscuring their humanity at best and at worst,
Speaker 1: defining it on behalf of women. And that's where the
Speaker 1: assumptions come from, even when we talk about trans fetishization.
Speaker 1: So it's like, well, because I think you care about
Speaker 1: your femininity, this is what I think femininity is, these
Speaker 1: traditional ways of being feminine. So once you don't fit that,
Speaker 1: oh no, but then that's again me putting my assumption
Speaker 1: of what I think femininity is onto you, and that's
Speaker 1: a power play and nobody wants that. Yeah. I just
Speaker 1: about this thing that I say to my girlfriend. She
Speaker 1: was telling us a story about this guy they had
Speaker 1: met online and she had gone to meet him downtown
Speaker 1: and he was like, um, okay, believe when I say this,
Speaker 1: but he wanted to go into his car and have
Speaker 1: sex with her in his car, and she was like, no,
Speaker 1: you're gonna take me out if you're gonna do this,
Speaker 1: And I said, girl, you wanting him to take you
Speaker 1: out and treat you like a human being, that's your fantasy.
Speaker 1: Him wanting to get you in the car, that's his fantasy,
Speaker 1: And ultimately it's about his fantasy, not yours. So he
Speaker 1: never took her out, right, she didn't. She didn't get
Speaker 1: in the car. But like so often what I found, Um,
Speaker 1: it's about their fantasy and not mine. And so one
Speaker 1: has to be willing to walk away from their fantasy
Speaker 1: because it's not going to serve as it just that
Speaker 1: she wanted to get in the car, you know, And
Speaker 1: I'm not shaming anybody for that. And that's the structure.
Speaker 1: The structure is set up so that his fantasy is
Speaker 1: probably sitized over your fantasy, and you don't have to
Speaker 1: be about that. You can use your agency to resist
Speaker 1: the structure and look for someone who wants to have
Speaker 1: the same fantasy as you. Yeah, the fantasy that can
Speaker 1: become a reality exactly. So you've talked about dating closet racist.
Speaker 1: Can you explain what that looked like for you? Oh? Yes,
Speaker 1: I can. Um, Oh my god, this story is so embarrassing,
Speaker 1: so basically I did it. This guy who you know,
Speaker 1: said he was interested in black women and he was cute,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I thought he was cute. I
Speaker 1: thought he was interesting. And with me, you know, within
Speaker 1: two or three dates, we start to talk about race.
Speaker 1: This is something I find important. It is important to
Speaker 1: my own survival. So he's like, well, I think that
Speaker 1: the idea was that he felt like I was too
Speaker 1: much like Malcolm X and not enough like MLK. These
Speaker 1: were the words that he used. So he felt that
Speaker 1: racial progress we just have to wait. So he called
Speaker 1: me militant. I was a militant black person, and that
Speaker 1: I need to appreciate slow progress. And that's when I
Speaker 1: knew I was in trouble because I was like, no, one,
Speaker 1: that's about my humanity and it's about my blackness. It's
Speaker 1: gonna tell me that I need to wait on progress.
Speaker 1: And all of the people both Nigerian and African American
Speaker 1: that have come before me and set me up for
Speaker 1: where I am, they did not wait for progress. So
Speaker 1: that's when I was like, Oh, you might like black women,
Speaker 1: but you don't like black humanity, so you're a closet racist. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's really deep. How did it end. Did you say
Speaker 1: that to him? Did you just like not call him back?
Speaker 1: Because is there a moment where you thought, let me
Speaker 1: see if there can be a transformational moment, a teachable
Speaker 1: moment here? How did that play itself? So I'm ashamed
Speaker 1: to admit that this casual relationship went on for a
Speaker 1: little too long. It was like two or three months.
Speaker 1: And there had been signs that he might be a
Speaker 1: closet racist, that he might be someone who's like a
Speaker 1: social conservative, like people need to make their own money.
Speaker 1: But I'm like, you're living in an apartment that your
Speaker 1: parents are paying for, Like what are you actually talking about? Um?
Speaker 1: And so these things sort of emerged, and so that
Speaker 1: was the last conversation we had. I dropped him off
Speaker 1: at his house. Girl, he didn't even have a car.
Speaker 1: I dropped to make their own moneys didn't have a car.
Speaker 1: But yet you want to talk about how people need
Speaker 1: to pull themselves by the bootstraps, Okay, whatever, So all
Speaker 1: that emerged. I dropped him off at his house and
Speaker 1: I was just like, we're not gonna need to get along.
Speaker 1: We don't agree on things that are very important to me.
Speaker 1: And then he called me and left me a long
Speaker 1: message that I just deleted and I never spoke to
Speaker 1: him again. Hmmm, do you remember what the message said?
Speaker 1: I'm really sorry for the things I said. I didn't
Speaker 1: mean it. I really hope that we can talk again.
Speaker 1: And I'm not sure that I understood those kinds of things.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, blessed. It's hard. He's probably doing the very
Speaker 1: best two cod ah and and as Berni Brown tells us,
Speaker 1: if we assume people are doing the best that they can,
Speaker 1: then we must set boundary exactly. So my boundary was
Speaker 1: I'm never going to see you again, and I need
Speaker 1: to really be more careful about white men that I date.
Speaker 1: If I'm dating a white man, the signs are probably
Speaker 1: always there. I just kind of was like, Oh he's cute,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah. But I was just like, oh, no, no,
Speaker 1: no, no no, no, I need to be way more careful.
Speaker 1: I think, as if you're dating anyone, that this is
Speaker 1: that we have to look for, because the information is
Speaker 1: usually there. People are usually telling us who they are
Speaker 1: through various actions, and it's our job. I think that's
Speaker 1: just part of the process that our job over time
Speaker 1: is to learn what the what they're telling us and
Speaker 1: to discern that is faster. And I think the beautiful
Speaker 1: thing about what you've shared here is that I bet
Speaker 1: the next time you met a white man or any man,
Speaker 1: you were more stupid, you were more adept than like
Speaker 1: looking for those things. And so I think that's how
Speaker 1: we learn, is that we have these experiences. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's part of the invisible work, invisible labor that black
Speaker 1: women are are doing often times, right, this is the
Speaker 1: work that you don't even know that you're doing it
Speaker 1: half the time. And everyone is doing this work in general,
Speaker 1: and when they're dating and trying to make sure that
Speaker 1: they're not hooking up with people who are toxic for them,
Speaker 1: But then black women have this added layer of like,
Speaker 1: am I dating somebody who's about my humanity or not?
Speaker 1: So I like to end every podcast with this question
Speaker 1: what else is true? And it comes from the community
Speaker 1: resiliency model and the idea of shifting, stay and being
Speaker 1: in this space of both and right that the world
Speaker 1: might be very challenging right now, and it might be
Speaker 1: hard for me, but there is something else that is true.
Speaker 1: There's something that is positive or neutral in my body
Speaker 1: and in my life that I can also focus on,
Speaker 1: and so I'd like to ask you, Dr Sarah, what
Speaker 1: else is true for you today? Well? What else is
Speaker 1: true for me and for all the black women out
Speaker 1: there and for U Laverne is that black women are enough.
Speaker 1: That's what else is true, m HM. In a world
Speaker 1: where black women are devalued and degraded, black women may
Speaker 1: not feel as fair enough, but their humanity already exists.
Speaker 1: They just need to wake up and walk in it. Amen. Amen,
Speaker 1: I am enough. You are enough. Praise being. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much, Dr Sarah. Where can people find you online?
Speaker 1: You can find any of my work, any of my
Speaker 1: articles on Twitter at love e scold and so everything
Speaker 1: that I've published is available via link that way, and
Speaker 1: folks are also free to email me as long as
Speaker 1: they're not stalking me or sending me bad messages. Um
Speaker 1: Sarah dot Audienca Scold Audienca hyphen scold at Fermin dot
Speaker 1: du so. People can reach me there, but Twitter is
Speaker 1: probably the best way to reach me. If you're looking
Speaker 1: for me, um it's Dr Sarah a s. You can
Speaker 1: also find me that way. So yeah, amazing. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for your work, your research, and thank you
Speaker 1: so much for spending time with me today, no problem.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it,
Speaker 1: and it was really a lovely conversation. Yea. I wasn't
Speaker 1: prepared for how difficult this one would be for me.
Speaker 1: I think it's because it's the piece of weaving in
Speaker 1: my own kind of personal narrative and how painful a
Speaker 1: lot of it's been for me. So I'm so very
Speaker 1: grateful to Sarah having that sort of courage to be
Speaker 1: vulnerable and to talk me through it and to give
Speaker 1: me great data, research and perspective to try to get
Speaker 1: to something hopefully that is substantial for me and for
Speaker 1: all of you. Thank you for listening to The Laverne
Speaker 1: Cox Show. If you like what you hear, please rate, review,
Speaker 1: subscribe and share with everyone you know. Join me next
Speaker 1: week when I talked to Dr Karen Franklin, for forensic
Speaker 1: psychologist and award winning researcher about why some people target
Speaker 1: transgender and other sexual and gender minorities and assaults and
Speaker 1: hate crimes. Knowing why it is the first step to change.
Speaker 1: You can find me on Instagram and Twitter at Laverne
Speaker 1: Cox and on Facebook at Laverne Cox for Real. The
Speaker 1: Laverne Cox show is a production of Shonda land Audio
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