Moya Bailey

Moya Bailey is an African-American feminist scholar, writer, and activist. She is noted for coining the term misogynoir, which denotes what Bailey describes as the unique combination of misogyny and anti-black racism experienced by black women.^[1] Bailey is an associate professor at Northwestern University.^[2][3]

Moya Bailey
Born	United States
Education	Spelman College Emory University
Institutions	Southeastern Women's Studies Association National Women's Studies Association Octavia E. Butler Legacy Network
Main interests	Feminist theory Critical race theory Disability studies Intersectional feminism Digital humanities Queer theory Sexuality studies Media studies
Notable ideas	Misogynoir

Career

Bailey attended Spelman College for her undergraduate degree. She received her doctoral degree from Emory University in the department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. After working at Northeastern University as an assistant professor in the Department of Cultures, Societies, and Global Studies and the program in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, she joined the Department of Communication Studies at Northwestern.^[4]

She works with the Octavia E. Butler Legacy Network,^[5] "an organization that supports and promotes the writer's legacy,"^[6] and is the co-founder of Quirky Black Girls, a collective for black women who do not fit cultural stereotypes.^{[7][not specific enough to verify]} She also worked on the project #tooFEW. The hashtag "FEW" stands for "Feminists Engage Wikipedia".^[8] The objective of this project was to have feminists engage Wikipedia pages, both adding and editing information regarding individuals, events and things regarding feminism (with a particular focus on Black feminism).^[8] She received backlash and derogatory comments for taking part in this initiative.^[9]

Misogynoir

Bailey originally coined the term misogynoir in 2008, but first used the term in a 2010 essay entitled "They aren't talking about me...".^[10] It is a portmanteau of the word misogyny and noir, the French word for 'black'.^[1][6] Bailey coined term to describe a unique type of discrimination experienced by black women, specifically the "anti-Black racist misogyny that black women experience, particularly in US visual and digital culture".^{[11][page needed]}

In a 2014 blog post she wrote:

I was looking for precise language to describe why Renisha McBride would be shot in the face, or why The Onion would think it's okay to talk about Quvenzhané the way they did, or the hypervisibilty of Black women on reality TV, the arrest of Shanesha Taylor, the incarceration of CeCe, Laverne and Lupita being left off the TIME list, the continued legal actions against Marissa Alexander, the twitter dragging of black women with hateful hashtags and supposedly funny Instagram images as well as how Black women are talked about in music.^[12]

Publications

• Misogynoir Transformed: Black Women's Digital Resistance. New York University Press. 2021. ISBN 978-1-4798-6510-9.

References

1. Bailey, Moya (2021). Misogynoir Transformed: Black Women's Digital Resistance. New York University Press. p. 1. doi:10.18574/nyu/9781479803392.001.0001. ISBN 978-1-4798-6510-9. S2CID 250104226.
2. Bristol, Keir (May 27, 2014). . The Visibility Project. Archived from the original on August 27, 2018.
3. Tiffany (June 2012). . QWOC.org. Queer Women of Color Media Wire. Archived from the original on March 15, 2022.
4. . School of Communication, Northwestern University. n.d. Archived from the original on March 2, 2022.
5. . Octaviabutlerlegacy.com. Octavia E. Butler Legacy Network. Archived from the original on March 26, 2018.
6. Thompson, Martine (November 28, 2018). "'Misogynoir' Coiner Moya Bailey Is Eating Pasta and Channeling Her Inner Black Auntie". Bon Appétit. Retrieved August 6, 2020.
7. lex. "Quirky Black Girls". quirkyblackgirls.blogspot.ca.
8. Bailey, Moya (February 26, 2013). . Moyabailey.com. Archived from the original on December 6, 2013.
9. Bailey, Moya (March 9, 2013). . Moyabailey.com. Archived from the original on December 6, 2013.
10. Marez, Curtis (2019). University Babylon: Film and Race Politics on Campus. Oakland: University of California Press. Note 37, p. 214. ISBN 978-0-520-30457-4.
11. Palczewski, Catherine Helen; McGeough, Danielle D.; DeFrancisco, Victoria Pruin (2022). "Media: Digital Blackface, Shadow Banning, and Digital Whiteness". Gender in Communication: A Critical Introduction (4th ed.). SAGE Publications. ISBN 978-1-0718-5294-1.
12. "More on the origin of Misogynoir". Moyazb.tumblr.com. April 27, 2014 – via Tumblr.

Further reading

• "3 Questions: Moya Bailey on the intersection of racism and sexism". MIT News. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. January 11, 2021.
• Carpenter, Faedra Chatard (2006). "An Interview with Moya Bailey". Callaloo. 29 (3): 753–760. doi:10.1353/cal.2006.0132. ISSN 1080-6512. S2CID 162251900 – via ResearchGate.
• Moyazb (March 14, 2010). "They aren't talking about me..." Crunk Feminist Collective.

External links

• Official website