Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall

 

"Respectability depends on acceptably performing gender and sexuality in ways that don't threaten traditional ideas of masculinity. In order to maintain their social and economic status, Black women are expected to manage their identities and sexual reputations in order to fit into a mixture of virgin and vixen constructs...Respectability politics are really about controlling group behavior with designations of appropriate or inappropriate behavior rooted in structural inequality."