Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture

by Sherronda J. Brown

Historical precedence for this attitude was set by the institution of slavery and the systematic sexual violence it relied on. The rape of Black women and girls—regardless of the race of the rapist—was legal and socially acceptable during chattel slavery and the post-Civil War era.14 In 1918, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that, in cases of statutory rape—the rape of a minor—it would only be considered rape if the victim had been a virgin prior to the assault. Cloaking itself in the mantle of legal reasoning, the court states that most young white women are virgins, that most young Black women [and girls] are not, and that unchaste women are immoral. The traditional law of statutory rape at issue in the [aforementioned] case provides that women who are not “chaste” cannot be raped. Because of the way the legal system considered chastity, the association of Black women with unchastity meant not only that Black women could not be victims of statutory rape, but also that they would not be recognized as victims of forcible rape.15 When we look at this adultification and sexualization of Black children alongside the chrononormativity our society upholds, it both complicates and further highlights how much of the predetermined timeline is rooted in white values, interests, and understandings of the world. Black people never truly get to be seen as innocent or as children, as separate from sexuality, and yet the same colonial thought processes that adultify Black youth also dema...