Negotiating Black Female Sexuality in the Black Church

When I was five years old, I joined the new Youth Liturgical Dance Ministry at my church. In the dance ministry we explored how to use our bodies to serve the Lord and minister to the congregation. However, there were some rules involved. Most of the movements we did solely involved arms, hands, or legs—no torso or hip movements because they could be perceived as sexual. We were also restricted in our appearance. Our ministry garments were loose and oversized so that no figure could be discerned underneath. We wore pants under the skirts and dresses that we danced in and a full unitard under all of that. The only parts of our bodies exposed were our heads, hands, and feet. These guidelines were all intended to prevent our bodies from distracting from the message of the Gospel we were supposed to be sharing.

Although these guidelines might seem typical of white Evangelical “modesty culture,” there was a slightly different context in this case. My church was African Methodist Episcopalian—a denomination founded by freed slaves. Most of the members of my church were Black and so were the women of the dance ministry. Thus, the form of “modesty culture” exhibited by the dance ministry was not just about shaming women, but critiquing the bodies of Black women in particular. In the Black Church, traditional Christian doctrine comes up against the sexual politics surrounding Black bodies. Black bodies have historically been exoticized and sexualized, putting them in direct opposition to the Eurocentric standards of purity that persist in the tradition of the Protestant Christian church. The hypersexualization of Black women dates back to European exploration of the African continent hundreds of years ago. Europeans viewed Black bodies as deviant and fetishized them. During slavery in the U.S., White slave owners thought Black women were incapable of not wanting sex. They were assumed to be always promiscuous, and were therefore routinely raped and sexually abused. Because Black bodies are always seen as sexual, Black women have to work extra hard in order to be seen as “pure”.

Because we’ve been subconsciously perceived as hypersexual and promiscuous for so long sometimes we try to completely remove ourselves from sexual pleasure in order to not fit that stereotype. We don’t talk about pleasure openly. We don’t teach our youth about it. We caution against pregnancy, against dressing a certain way, against hanging out with a certain group of people, against listening to certain music in order to appear as though we are not sexual beings. But we are.

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