Book Review
Book Review | Misogynoir Transformed: Black Women’s Digital Resistance, by Moya Bailey (NYU Press, 2021)
University of Massachusetts Amherst
banu@wost.umass.edu
When I arrived in the United States over thirty years ago, almost overnight, I had to reckon with a new identity
as a woman of color, and thus contend with the complex histories of race in the United States. Thankfully, there
was a rich and evocative literature. I avidly read the brilliant work of women of color in the United States.
Striking was their commitment to a generative vision—a global vision, centering and including diasporic and
transnational feminisms. It helped me situate my own experiences as a new third-world immigrant. While there are
too many authors and books to name, one memorable title was All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But
Some of Us Are Brave, the edited collection by Akasha Gloria Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith,
published in 1982. In sixteen words, the title encapsulated the central problem of women of color, the
invisibility, indeed erasure experienced at the intersections of sexism and racism. Until now! Moya Bailey’s
“misogynoir” does this even more succinctly in just one word. Without doubt, in the tradition of these earlier
works, Bailey’s work is a tour de force that will be a classic that sets the terms of the debates and describes
the complex politics of the contemporary moment, in particular Black women’s digital resistance. It lays out new
ground theoretically, methodologically and epistemologically.
Misogynoir is a term Bailey coined in 2008 in her dissertation, where she sought to capture the combination of
misogyny with noir/Black (noir from film noir). It is a brilliant coinage that is a portmanteau of terms and
terminologies that captures the centrality of anti-Black misogyny and the experiences of Black women, which she
describes as “the uniquely co-constitutive racialized and sexist violence that befalls Black women as a result
of their simultaneous and interlocking oppression at the intersection of racial and gender marginalization” (1).
Bailey begins the book with Sarah Baartman, introducing early on that misogynoir is a global and
trans-historical phenomenon where a history of racialized cis-heteropatriarchy has defined the normative bounds
of representations of “Black women.” Bailey also establishes early on that when she talks about Black women, she
means to privilege queer and trans Black women as well Black nonbinary, agender, gender-variant folks’ work and
voices. In a wonderful moment in the book, and one that should be a mantra for all of us, she begins with a
powerful challenge: “I challenge you, dear reader, as you read this text, to think of ‘Black women’ first when
you see the word ‘woman,’ to think of queer and trans women first when you read the term ‘Black women’” (20).
Indeed, as she convinces us all throughout the book, the world would be a better place if we all did that.
In the introduction, Bailey thoroughly explains and explores the power of misogynoir, demonstrating to the
reader its considerable utility across a wide spectrum of academic and social spaces. Bailey, an activist at
heart, explains that she did not want to write a book that chronicles the expansive terrain of misogynoir, which
would only reinforce the much pathologized and abject figure of the Black woman. Rather, Bailey focuses on Black
women’s resistance, “alternate representations created by Black women as counterpublic productions that trouble
stereotypical depictions” (1). What emerges is the organized, committed, and, most importantly, successful world
of Black women’s resistance—a virtual community that works with each other through camaraderie and collaboration
challenging anti-Black misogynoir each day. The rest of the book is devoted to ethnographically rich accounts of
such resistance—some of the case studies may be familiar to many, but Bailey adds rich detail and complex
analyses that make you revisit the cases through the nuanced lenses of the histories and politics of misogynoir.
It transforms how you see the world.
Anyone who has lived through the immense power of the Black Lives Movement in recent years understands how much
work goes into such organizing. This did not happen overnight. Bailey chronicles the years of resistance and
world-making by Black women that made this moment possible. She helps us understand the immense work done in
digital and virtual worlds that ushered in a visible and passionate social movement onto our streets. In short,
Black women are digital alchemists. In four ethnographically nuanced and narrative-rich chapters, Bailey gives
us a close look at the makings of digital alchemy. She takes us through the worlds of Black women’s digital
campaigns, shows, videos, interviews, and the lively spaces of Twitter, Tumblr, and YouTube to document the
engaged resistance of social digital sphere. In rich detail, she describes may examples of Black women’s digital
alchemy. For example, she describes the emergence of the hashtag #RuinABlackGirlsMonday, which featured posts of
images of white women with round butts, ample chests, and long hair, and the suggestion that these images would
ruin a Black girl’s day because the white women had features that Black women were assumed to solely possess.
Many such images perpetuate age-old stereotypes of Black women. Bailey describes how Black women took on these
images with wit, satire, and anger. Some of these are truly brilliant! She explores how the frame of misogynoir
can help analyze viral videos such as “Shit Black Girls Say.” Bailey explores why and how Janet Mock’s widely
popular hashtag #GirlsLikeUs continues to be an important digital space for trans women to connect with each
other. Similarly, the digital campaign to #FreCeCe McDonald, a Black trans woman incarcerated for the accidental
death of one of her attackers during a racist transphobic incident. Bailey takes us through the YouTube video
campaigns and support blogs that reframe the story to expose misogynoir. She documents the proliferation of
Black queer women’s YouTube series such as Skye’s the Limit, Between Women, and 195 Lewis that focus on the
health and well-being of Black women.
There is much that characterizes Bailey’s work. First, she is a beautiful storyteller. She pulls you into the
story and takes you through the narrative plot with ease and great skill. Indeed, she makes the scenes come
alive. Second, even stories that are familiar to you take on new nuance as she adds details that were not
highlighted in the more familiar mainstream media accounts. Third, she deploys her critical analytical skills
and tools of misogynoir in each case to help us understand the complex terrain and historical precedents that
make events unfold as they do. Each story is a brilliant case study in misogynoir and the wisdom of Black
feminisms. Finally, and this is most creditable, she does this with deep empathy and care. Bailey makes clear
early on that not all Black women are feminists, or all feminists, Black women. Sometimes key characters make
problematic political decisions. Rather than overtly condemning these decisions and taking a moral high ground,
Bailey works through their decisions and in the process explains the complex terrain of politics. She always
writes with solidarity for those doing the tough work of fighting misogynoir.
This is work that provides a model of engaged scholarship. It eschews easy boundaries of theory/practice,
theory/storytelling, and instead deftly interweaves the complexity of Black feminisms into a compelling and
illuminating book. I have little doubt that this book will provide a model for all of us for years to come. It
is also the kind of work I want my students to read, because it demonstrates the best of what feminist
scholarship offers. After one hour of a women, gender, sexuality studies course, my students yearn for praxis
(annoyingly!) . It takes effort to have students understand that activism without understanding the complexities
of history can do more harm than good. Good intentions are not enough. Bailey demonstrates this brilliantly. At
the same time she is deeply interdisciplinary, theoretically nuanced, ethnographically rich, methodologically
varied, and politically astute. Bailey demonstrates the power of the digital space; there are no sites of
innocence here. This book is a model for feminist scholarship, of how we can and must integrate feminist theory
with engaged practice. I look forward to teaching this book. It is immensely engaging and covers terrain that
students are familiar with. By centering Black women, she challenges many assumptions, and reframes the world in
critically important ways. The book accomplishes so much of the work we are all trying to do in our classrooms.
It will prove an incomparable companion in our teaching.
By focusing on the digital space, Bailey chronicles both how misogynoir has persisted but also mutated into new
digital forms. It indeed takes the digital alchemy to fight the ongoing violence that marks anti-Black misogyny.
In exploring the complex roots and forms of racism and sexism, Bailey draws on the continued wisdom of the
Combahee River Collective (1977) when they say, “If Black women were free, it would necessitate the freedom of
all people because it would require the destruction of all systems of oppression because Black women experience
all of them” (215). Black feminist thinkers ground so much of feminist studies. To this rich legacy we can add
the wisdom and brilliance of Moya Bailey and the power of fighting misogynoir.
References
The Combahee River Collective. (1977) 2015.. “A Black Feminist Statement.” In This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, Fourth edition, edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa. 210-218. New York: SUNY Press.
Hull, Akasha Gloria, Patricia Bell Scott, Barbara Smith, eds. 1982. All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women’s Studies. Old Westbury, NY: Feminist Press.
Author Bios
Banu Subramaniam is a Professor of Women, Gender, Sexuality studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.