Misogynoir In Athletics is a Legacy of Eugenics. Here's How We Combat It!

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Misogynoir (anti-Black women sentiment and action) is intricately related to transphobia and eugenics. In the early years of the European eugenics movement, the idea of sexual dimorphism was used to legitimize white supremacy and dehumanize Black women specifically.

The idea was that the “white race” had men who were the most masculine and women who were the most feminine. According to this idea, Black women were not women because they were too similar to black men, i.e., too masculine. This theory helped justify the hard "manual" labor that Black women were subjected to while reinforcing the claim that white women were best suited for domestic labor. Sexual dimorphism framed Europeanness as the height of human evolution and all other races as flawed, less evolved variants. This school of thought reasoned that Asianness is hyper-feminine and Blackness hyper-masculine, contributing to the idea that Asian men are not real men because they are too feminine and that Asian women are subservient and doll-like. All lies that conveniently dehumanize every but Europeans.

Sexual dimorphism was widely accepted and influenced European literature, cinema, music, and marketing for decades. It affects us still. We see the influence of sexual dimorphism in how transphobes, racists, and misogynists target Black women athletes. When we question Black women athletes’ womanhood, we’re echoing the stereotypes crafted by European eugenicists.
Cisgender Black women face higher gender scrutiny, especially if they are darker skinned with features that are African-coded. They are denied their womanhood, in part, as an attempt to protect the idea of womanhood as white. White womanhood has been manufactured as the only legitimate form of womanhood. Recently, (now infamous) author J.K. Rowling criticized a Black woman, Barbra Banda, for being named athlete of the year by soccer fans.

The author, known for her public declarations of transphobic comments and beliefs, called Banda’s win a “slap in the face” for women. Earlier this year Rowling attacked Imane Khelif, an Algerian women’s boxing champion, after she won gold medal at the Olympics. Banda and Khelif are two African women athletes who do not fit within the European norms of what it means to be a woman. Both have also faced unrelenting attacks and accusations that they are not women.

J.K. Rowling is merely the most prominent representations of Misogynoir in action. She is an avatar of white feminism. Her racism is her transphobia is her misogyny is her ableism. One of the most important things that we can do in the face of massaging noir and anti-black women sentiment as it impacts black women athletes is to educate ourselves and to learn about the intricate and deep history and reinforcement that hateful ideologies and beliefs like sexual dimorphism have in the lives of everyone. It's not merely enough to understand how anti-blackness shows up in our lives.

It's not nearly enough to be aware of our unconscious biases or the heretic shortcuts that we have developed in our culture they equate muscles and dark skin and tallness with masculinity and frailty and softness and pale again with femininity. If we are truly to ever be become anti-black we also have to gravel with our pro whiteness that is deeply large within our collective psyche as westerner and as members of the world.

We have to grapple with the reality that White women athletes who conform to and fit within our collective understandings of gender and femininity do have an unearned advantage when it comes to the treatment that they receive both in and outside of the field or the track or the swimming pool or the ring. Black women athletes face additional unearned disadvantages because of the legacy of eugenics and sexual dimorphism which are the foundation for misogynoir and shapes impacts how Black women atheletes are treated by sports reporters, fans, sponsors, and members of the general public.

This is more than just about entertainment or about money or about business or about the individual feelings of people like Barbara Banda and Iman Khalif and Serena Williams and other countless darker skinned muscle tall Women who unapologetic unapologetically take of space.

This is about all the people all over the world who enter into a ring or step foot into a track field or prepare to swim and have to gravel with these unearned obstacles. If you care about sportsmanship and fairness you have to care about how black women are treated as athletes. Only then Will we be able to fully relieve ourselves and our institutions of the scourges of sexual dimorphism, anti-Blackness, transphobia, and misogyny. Then we will realize Athletics as actually a level playing field as actually a fair Arena where we know that girls and women can be strong, top athletes, and whatever else they want to be.