“The Sexualization of Poor Women”

• In Event: Nice White Ladies: Solidarity and Suspicion from and for White Women

Abstract

Poor women in US literature are portrayed with the long-established acceptance of the correlation between poverty and promiscuity, a belief which crosses racial barriers. Writers including Wharton, Morrison, Steinbeck, Caldwell, Allison, Larsen, and Lee introduce us to women whose poverty and sexual deviance seem synonymous. Why? If this is a method of marginalizing poor women, why do these women fight along racial lines to reinforce those beliefs of other groups while attempting to negate the view of their own? Patriarchy may create and enforce, but can change succeed without women unifying across racial lines to counter such a deeply-ensconced belief?

Presenter

• Lynda Sinkiewich, Union Institute and University