Cynthia M. Blair's Intimate Matters

This article begins with a quick discussion of the book Intimate Matters in which the author, Cynthia M. Blair, expressed how the book majorly influenced the field of studying human sexuality in the United States. She explains how she used the book often when she first began studying sex work of black women in Chicago. She explains how the book allowed her to better visualize the connection between sexual labor and race politics. Most importantly she says it allowed her to better examine, “This historical criminalization of black sexuality and the role that the regulation of black bodies playing in define citizenship in early twentieth-century cities.” (Blair 4) This topic of discussion is a very important aspect to regulating black bodies …show more content…
She then begins to reflect on her own friend which focuses on black women’s sexuality. Particularly she want to address and alleviate some issues connected to studying black women’s sexuality. She lays out some of the most commonly addressed topics in discourse about African American sexuality, but she makes it clear that they underscore an even larger idea. She writes, “sexuality has buttressed the establishment of America’s racial order in the United States.” (Blair 6) She goes on to say that knowledge of the “ constructive nature or sexuality, citizenship, and race in America…helps us to expand our understanding of the black freedom struggles.” (Blair 6) This quote is important because it highlights the connection of sex regulation to the oppression of African Americans. Labeling a group of people as sexually obscene in one of the many ways in which a group can be oppressed by hegemonic society, and this is particularly one of the forms of harassment long-used in the history of racism. This also gets at an important connection between race studies and feminism, as sexual regulation and sexual objectification is one of the most important struggles that women face, and this is only amplified for black …show more content…
Specifically, she aims to address the sexuality that is often removed for sexual labor. In addressing sex work as simply work, it makes invisible the fact that black women were and are selling their sexuality in order to survive. She even says that she is guilty of the erasure, “I did not talk about black women’s experiences of sex in their sexual labor. Sex itself remains hidden in the study.” (Blair 8) To remove sex from the equation of this study also removes the idea of black women have sexuality for themselves and the possibility that these women can experience sexual pleasure. This further marginalizes the experiences of black women because it focuses the study on the objectification of black women in the sex trade and how they are items to be bought an sold. This itself contributes to the objectification of black women since it removes any contextualization and turns them into commodities in a capitalist trade. Overall, I think this article is relevant because it direst addresses the importance of sexuality in the regulation of black bodies, something that comes up in readings and is vital to understand the history behind these struggles. Additionally, it is critical that this connect be made when looking at African Americans who take part in the sex trade as sexual labor is one of the more significant ways that black bodies continue to be bought