I watched a show on TV about genital mutilation last night. It was horrific.
It was about American plastic surgeons performing surgery on vaginas - on labia, clitorises and internally. They used words like rejuvenation to describe it.
The first doctor who was interviewed was white and middle aged or older. He looked smug and because of what he does for a living, he looked scary to me - mildly amused and detached like a movie psychopath. Of course I assume he is a misogynist. (Though I also see the scores of women who pay good money for the operations as scary misogynists as well...)
Fot the latter half of the show, a younger black doctor was featured. Some of his 'patients' were interviewed. He showed the camera 'Before' and 'After' shots as well as porno images of vaginas.
Utterly irrationally, I saw him as a black man wanting to mutilate rich white women. I saw his actions as both misogynist and raced. I recalled and fell into the oldest myth in the book - that black men do/want to molest/rape white women. I didn't realise I felt that way, that I believed that ugly myth, on any level. A second or 2 after it entered my mind, I recoiled from my own imagination.
I know it's crap. I know it's a myth, the product of white people's sexualised imaginations. I have read books and articles about that myth being propagated whenever Imperial white forces are at their weakest. The myth wasn't invented until regimes started to lose their power. It is perpetuated to create fear and loathing for the subjugated black male because the white regime is afraid it's losing its grip. (loads of examples of that - both in the Southern USA and in the end of the British Raj)...
I am v shocked that I, deep inside and rarely surfacing, still believe it as well.