“We Are Fetishized”

Online dating is discouraging as a Black woman.

Photo by Tnarg via Pexels.

You know what’s funny? Not funny ha ha, but funny ironic? I didn’t know what fetishization was for a very long time. I thought a fetish was a word to describe a kink. I thought it was just something you abnormally liked when engaging in adult acts. Like a foot fetish. I didn’t understand how a person could be fetishized. I didn’t understand how it functions in our society as it pertains to sexual racism.

Here is the dictionary definition of fetishize when you simply type it into Google:

• Make (something) the object of a sexual fetish.
• Have an excessive and irrational commitment to or obsession with (something).

Here’s the Cambridge Dictionary definition of fetishization:

• A sexual interest in an object, a part of the body that is not a sexual organ, or a person as if they are an object.

Fetishization can also be:

The act of making someone an object of sexual desire based on some aspect of their identity.

There are many forms of fetishization, more specifically racial fetishization. You can have a preference for a specific race based on the stereotypes you believe to be…