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Assignment 3 – Shaikhah Alhomaizi

In chapter one of “Male Travelers, Female Bodies, and Racial Ideology”, Jennifer Morgan explains the connection between the female body and racism. Throughout the chapter, a common theme was familiarity and unfamiliarity. The familiar in this case was the gender of the native women, and the unfamiliar was their race, and the features and behaviors associated with it.

Although this theme is present throughout the chapter, the last paragraph on page 28, is a good example of this reoccurring theme. Jobson starts off by mentioning the African women’s beauty and the familiarity of their features. However, he only praises their behaviors when they match his. For example, when Morgan discusses Jobson’s fascination with the African women’s modesty. She points out that the lack of modesty found in the African culture contradicts his expectations of women in his culture. Therefore, due to the traveler’s unfamiliarity with the native’s lifestyle, natives are depicted as uncivil and savages.

In my opinion, the connection between the female’s body and racism was demonstrated through the exploitation of the female’s bodies. In this chapter, travelers and writers wrote about their explorations in new countries, in which they discriminated its locals based on their (dark) features and behaviours. Most of the travelers mentioned were white males who shared common familiars. Such as, the familiarity of (white) women in femininity and modesty. Seeing the absences of these familiars lead them to exploit women in order to reconstruct a more “familiar” lifestyle for the natives. Images of women’s bodies was their mode of manipulation – exploiting women’s bodies as evidence to display the corruption of their lifestyle. Through this approach, travelers were able to direct the settlers towards a lifestyle of white male supremacy and cultural inferiority. Thus, because of the intersection of racism and sexism, women of racial minorities are objectified by being portrayed as savages and cabalist. Due to the traveler’s belief of their superiority and their familiarity of life.