misogynoir

English

WOTD – 18 June 2022

Etymology

Blend of misogyny (“contempt for, hatred of, or prejudice against women”) + French noir (“black”), coined by the African-American feminist activist and scholar Moya Bailey and first published in a 2010 online essay: see the quotation below.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /mɪˌsɒd͡ʒəˈnwɑː/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /məˌsɑd͡ʒəˈnwɑɹ/
• Rhymes: -ɑː(ɹ)
• Hyphenation: mis‧o‧gy‧noir

Noun

misogynoir (uncountable)

1. (neologism) Contempt for, hatred of, or prejudice against black women. [from 2010]
   • 2010 March 14, Moya Bailey, “They Aren’t Talking about Me …”, in Crunk Feminist Collective‎^[1], archived from the original on 15 March 2022:

     My reorientation to the misogynoir ruling the radio took place when I tried to make the argument that “All the Way Turnt Up” was a great song because it didn’t objectify women. This was something I could get behind; a song simply extolling the youthful value of keeping the bass bumping in your vehicle. That was until I read the lyrics and found the choice lyric “three dike bitches, and they all wanna swallow.”

     Footnote 1 after the word misogynoir states: “Word I made up to describe the particular brand of hatred directed at black women in American visual & popular culture.”

   • 2013 spring, Aisha Durham, Brittany C. Cooper, Susana M. Morris, “The Stage Hip-Hop Feminism Built: A New Directions Essay”, in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society‎^[2], volume 38, number 3, Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 730:

     Hip-hop feminist studies continues to tackle black sexual politics by discussing and challenging the persistence and prevalence of hip-hop "misogynoir" (the hatred of black women and girls), respectability politics, and compulsory heterosexuality within the music and the culture at large.

   • 2014 September 24, Monica Cruz, “Someone Tell Kanye West to Stop Insulting Black Women”, in The Paper: Fordham University’s Student Journal of News, Analysis, Comment and Review‎^[3], volume 43, number 6, Bronx, New York, N.Y.: Fordham University, →OCLC, page 9:

     Unfortunately, the idealization of white women is most often paired with the condemnation of black women, creating the intersectional problem of misogynoir: the combined racism and sexism black women face.

   • 2015 January, Treva B. Lindsey, “Let Me Blow Your Mind: Hip Hop Feminist Futures in Theory and Praxis”, in Urban Education‎^[4], volume 50, number 1, Beverly Hills, Calif.: SAGE Journals, →DOI, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 19 March 2015, pages 57–58:

     Drawing upon a history in which racism, heteropatriarchy, and inter-racial gender ideology rendered Black women invisible and marginalized, Pough compels Black feminists attempting to reject hip-hop feminism to revisit the historical record of Black women pushing back against Black male sexism and misogynoir in Black political, cultural, and social spaces.

   • 2016, Sonita R. Moss, “Beyoncé and Blue: Black Motherhood and the Binds of Racialized Sexism”, in Adrienne Trier-Bieniek, editor, The Beyoncé Effect: Essays on Sexuality, Race and Feminism, Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, →ISBN, page 157:

     [A] Black woman as the arbiter of racialized sexism against a young Black girl is an example of misogynoir.

   • 2022 December 21, VV Brown, “The Sun will protect Jeremy Clarkson. Who will protect women who suffer violence every day?”, in The Guardian‎^[5]:

     To me, his words seemed a form of “misogynoir” – discrimination prejudice, and violence aimed specifically at women of colour.

Hypernyms

• misogyny

Derived terms

• transmisogynoir

Translations

contempt for, hatred of, or prejudice against black women

• Dutch: misogynoir
• French: misogynoir (fr) f, mysoginoire (fr) f
• Portuguese: misoginoir

Further reading

• misogynoir on Wikipedia.Wikipedia