Chickenhead is an American Englishslang term that is typically used in a derogatory manner toward women.[1] The term mocks the motion of the head while performing oral sex on a man, but contains social characteristics and cultural relevance as well, and is frequently heard in popular hip hop music.[2][3] More recent uses of the term have seen it used by hip hop feminists and entertainers as a symbol of sexuality.[2] "Chickenhead" is also a term used in overseas sex trafficking for individuals that facilitate and monitor a person's transition into prostitution.[4]
The word, a chiefly American colloquial term, is usually written "chicken head" or "chicken-head", according to the Oxford English Dictionary, which has 1903 for a first recorded use meaning "foolish or stupid person". It cites John Steinbeck's East of Eden (1952) for its earliest use as a "refer[ence] to prostitutes". A secondary meaning, first recorded in 1988, is "U.S. derogatory slang (esp. in African American usage)", used to refer to "a sexually promiscuous woman" or a woman in general.[5]
Dr. R. Flowers Rivera used the term "chickenhead" more recently, in a poem that identifies it as a woman who is impoverished and an alcoholic lacking empathy.[6]
A chickenhead in the transnational sex trade is typically responsible for facilitating transportation, acquiring temporary lodging, and monitoring activities of the new prostitute, similar to the activities of a "pimp".[4]
Disempowering or empowering
Ronald Weitzer and Charis Kubrin note that "A favorite rap term is 'chickenhead,' which reduces a woman to a bobbing head giving oral sex."[7] Bakari Kitwana argues that many rappers refer to women, black women in particular, with demeaning terms names such as "bitches, gold diggers, hoes, hoodrats, chickenheads, pigeons, and so on."[8]Johnnetta B. Cole argues that hip hop's tradition to refer to black women in such terms disrespects and vilifies them.[9]
In Joan Morgan's When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost, she notes the derogatory tendency of the term "chickenhead", and further defines it as a woman who uses sex to get the things she wants.[10] As a black, hip-hop feminist, Morgan offers that chickenheads simply use the tools afforded to them when other means are not efficient, and that all women may have something to learn from the use of sex as manipulation.[11]
1 2 Morgan, Joan (1999). When chickenheads come home to roost: my life as a hip-hop feminist. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN978-0684822624. OCLC40359361.
↑ Hunter, Margaret; Soto, Kathleen (2009). "Women of Color in Hip Hop: The Pornographic Gaze". Race, Gender & Class. 16 (1/2): 170–191. JSTOR41658866.
1 2 Chin, K; Finckenauer, J (2009). "Chickenheads, Agents, Mommies and Jockies: The Social Organization of Transnational Commercial Sex". Crime, Law and Social Change. 56 (5): 463–484. doi:10.1007/s10611-011-9329-y. S2CID143344140.
↑ Kitwana, Bakari. The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African American Culture. New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2002, ISBN978-0-465-02978-5, p. 87.
Stephens, Dionne P.; Phillips, Layli D. (March 2003). "Freaks, gold diggers, divas, and dykes: The sociohistorical development of adolescent African American women's sexual scripts". Sexuality & Culture. 7 (1): 3–49. doi:10.1007/BF03159848. S2CID143036176.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.