In 1957 Roland Barthes published Mythologies, a text examining how culture has the power to shape social perception and interpretation of the world around us. Following the same line of thought, in 2010, black feminist and theorist Moya...
moreIn 1957 Roland Barthes published Mythologies, a text examining how culture has the power to shape social perception and interpretation of the world around us. Following the same line of thought, in 2010, black feminist and theorist Moya Bailey coined the term ‘misogynoir’ to mimic sentiments expressed by early black feminists such as Pauli Murray surrounding the earlier vernacular “Jane crow.” These terms verbalized concepts of intersecting racial and gender hierarchies that uniquely converge to articulate the discrimination experienced by black women in particular. These discriminations in society that targeted black women arose from a long history of the dynamics between mythologies in a Barthesian sense within our collective and immutable perception of the world. The word misogynoir encapsulates the professed ‘second language’ or code that shapes our reality according to Barthes. Misogynoir played a major influencing role in the development of the Civil Rights Movement, which acted as a critical notion in the development of the narrative and actions of the Civil Rights Movement. Through an analysis of the movement so intertwined with and influenced by misogynoir, this paper aims to more fully understand its impact on hierarchical subjugation established through cultural signs and semiology’s second language, as well as how we interpret the world around us. Hence, the Civil Rights Movement serves as a lens to examine the intersections between race and gender, and the consequential manifestation of misogynoir, in patriarchal society.
