Killing boogeymen: Phallicism and the misandric mischaracterizations of black males in theory

Tommy J. Curry*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

Abstract

Black males have been characterized as violent, misogynist, predatory rapists by gender theorists dating back to mid-nineteenth-century ethnologists to contemporary intersectional feminists. These caricatures of Black men and boys are not rooted in any actual studies or empirical findings, but the stereotypes found throughout various racist social scientific literatures that held Black males to be effeminate while nonetheless hyper-masculine and delinquent. This paper argues that contemporary gender theories not only deny the peculiar sexual oppression of racialized outgroup males under patriarchy, but theories like intersectional invisibility actually perpetuates the idea that racialized males are disposable. To remedy the imperceptibility of sexual oppression and violence under the male category, the author gives an historical account of the development of racist (anti-Black) misandry throughout the centuries and proposes a theory of phallicism to describe the seemingly contradictory constructions of Black men as sexually predatory as in the case of the rapist, but nonetheless sexually vulnerable and raped under patriarchy.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)235-272
Number of pages38
JournalRes Philosophica
Volume95
Issue number2
Early online date30 Apr 2018
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Apr 2018

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