Tommy J. Curry, Ph.D. @DrTJC and Ebony A. Utley, Ph.D. @u_experience
She Touched Me:
Five Snapshots of Adult Sexual Violations of Black Boys
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ABSTRACT
Too often the idea of young Black boys as sexually aggressive or criminally assaultive displaces the idea that they can be victims at all. As such, Black boys are not theorized or researched as victims of sexual violations in current gender literatures. Instead they are almost exclusively represented as perpetrators of sexual violence, not victims of it. This study examines five snapshots of Black men who were victims of sexual violations as young boys. Our findings indicate that Black males are uniquely at risk for sexual impropriety and statutory rape, primarily via older women and teenage girl female-perpetrators (although risk also includes same-sex violations). This study, the first of its kind, argues that Black boys must be understood as a population at risk to be victims of sexual violations and require an earlier sex education emphasizing their sexual vulnerability.
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Biographies:
Tommy J. Curry, Ph. D. work spans across the various fields of philosophy, jurisprudence, Africana Studies, and Gender Studies. Though trained in American and Continental philosophical traditions, Curry’s primary research interests are in Critical Race Theory and Africana Philosophy. In Critical Race Theory, Curry looks at the work of Derrick Bell and his theory of racial realism as an antidote to the proliferating discourses of racial idealism that continue to uncritically embrace liberalism through the appropriation of European thinkers as the basis of racial reconciliation in the United States. In Africana philosophy, Curry’s work turns an eye towards the conceptual genealogy (intellectual history) of African American thought from 1800 to the present, with particular attention towards the scholars of the American Negro Academy and the Negro Society for Historical Research. In Biomedical ethics, Curry is primarily interested government regulation, the ethical limits of government intervention in the practice of medicine, and democratic potentialities that arise from collaborative doctor-patient diagnoses and regenerative medicine like stem cells. Currently his research focuses on the linking the conceptualization of ethics found in the Belmont Report to Civil Rights and social justice paradigms. Ebony A. Utley, Ph.D. is an interpersonal communication expert. Her research explores how individuals talk about faith, love, marriage, intimacy, infidelity, and the impact of early childhood sexual violations on adult romantic relationships. In addition to lecturing at universities across the United States, Dr. Utley’s expertise has been featured on The Oprah Winfrey Network as well as other national and international radio, print, and online outlets. Dr. Utley applies her research to technology product development for social impact. She created an online relationship game, served as board chair and director of technology for Infidelity Counseling Network, and has advised several intimacy technologies. Dr. Utley is the Associate Director of the Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at California State University Long Beach where she is a Professor of communication and teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on intimacy, popular culture, and technology. | ||||
