Why is there no "pro-sex" contingency in black feminist scholarship? Why do so few African-American scholars expound on issues celebrating female sexual pleasure? Perhaps the answers to these questions reside within a discursive matrix of sexual repression commonly referred to as the politics of respectability, and its rein on black sexual politics. In Erotic Revolutionaries: Black Women, Sexuality, and Popular Culture, sociologist Shayne Lee steers black sexual politics toward a more sex-positive trajectory. Introducing feminist analysis to a conceptual menage a trois of scripting theory, media representation, and black sexual politics, Lee considers the ways in which the feminist quest for social and sexual equality can delve into popular culture to see the production of subversive scripts for female sexuality and erotic agency. Whereas most feminist scholarship underscores how sexual representations of black women in media are exploitative and problematic, Lee portrays black female celebrities like Janet Jackson, Beyonce, Karrine Steffans, Zane, Tyra Banks, Juanita Bynum, Sheryl Underwood and many more as feminists of sorts who afford women access to cultural tools to renegotiate sexual identity and celebrate sexual agency and empowerment. Erotic Revolutionaries navigates the uncharted spaces where social constructionism, third-wave feminism, and black popular culture collide to locate a new site for sexuality studies that is theoretically innovative, politically subversive, and stylistically chic.

About the Author
Shayne Lee received a PhD in sociology from Northwestern University and is now associate professor of sociology and African Diaspora studies at Tulane University. Lee is also the author of T.D. Jakes: America's New Preacher and co-author of Holy Mavericks: Evangelical Innovators and the Spiritual Marketplace, both published by New York University Press.

Reviews
This book is a notable contribution to the field. * Elevate Difference *
This project seeks to provide middle-class black women (and all other black women) a safe, though public, space in which to assert a sexual independence that is free from the trappings of black respectability. Lee challenges us to take the very same snippets from music videos, films, and magazines that are typically defined as unrespectable and exploitive and see them as "nuggets of empowerment." * Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society *



Book Information
ISBN 9780761852285
Author Shayne Lee
Format Paperback
Page Count 176
Imprint Hamilton Books
Publisher University Press of America
Weight(grams) 263g
Dimensions(mm) 232mm * 155mm * 11mm