I’m sure you’ve seen or heard these type of statements before:
If you’ve had the pleasure of not hearing any of these kinds of statements before, consider yourself lucky. Unfortunately, I can not say the same. I’ve heard these statements repeatedly throughout my teen-young adult years. The funny thing is, very few see the harm in the queen vs. hoe dichotomy.
What’s the difference between a “queen” and a “hoe” honestly? Typically when people refer to a woman as a “queen”, it’s a woman who is “modest.” Meaning, she doesn’t show “too much” skin. She stays inside on the weekends instead of going out and partying. She’s what men consider “wifey material.” She cooks, she cleans, she basically lives life along the grain. Her womanhood is “acceptable” and the blueprint of what a woman “should be.”
The “hoe” people are referring to in the binary is the woman who is “immodest.” She loves showing off her body. She is sexually active past what’s considered “acceptable” for women. She may be involved in sex work. She may also regularly go out on the weekends and party. She is the woman who lives against the grain. She is what people consider to be the worst kind of woman.
People have this horrible obsession with compartmentalizing women. They can not guage women unless they can fit a woman in some sort of box whether it’s a “queen”, “good girl” box or a “hoe”, “thot” box. They do not care enough to guage women as the complex beings that they are. This narrative is harmful because it denies women’s humanity. It denies that women are people with a myriad of characteristics, feelings, and thoughts. It is also harmful because it suggests that only one kind of woman is deserving of respect. It is essentially saying that as long as a woman lives within what is socially acceptable she will be worthy of respect and love but even that “respect” is limited.
I call this regard for women “conditional respect.” People can not respect a woman or give her common courtesy unless she fits into their idea of what a woman should be. Their respect for women is so minimal that shallow things such as clothing determines how they will treat and regard said woman. Just because a woman presents herself in a way someone does not care for, does not mean that gives them the right to degrade her.
In order to fully accept and understand this, people have to examine why they feel that only one kind of woman is deserving of respect. From the day we are born, we are taught a patriarchal, rigid notion of what a woman should be: a mother, wife, homemaker, “nurturing”, and “modest.” We are not taught to respect women as individuals but rather by how well they fit into a box.
Think about it. We are taught to judge a woman’s value by shallow things such as what she chooses to wear, what she looks like, and who she’s sleeping with but rarely by who is she is as a person. Rarely about what she believes in and stands for. Rarely by how she treats other people. The sad part is we don’t even interrogate why we view women is such a vapid way.
In order to fully understand why the “queen vs. hoe” binary is harmful, one would have to unlearn these toxic, patriarchal ideals they’ve been fed about what a woman should be. In short, people would actually have to see women as human beings. Amazing, right?
If someone can only respect one kind of woman, they don’t actually respect women at our core. If they can only respect a woman for some archaic reason or because she has some familial value to them, they don’t actually respect women as a whole. If the only thing that’s keeping you from disrespecting me is because I’m related to you or because I fit into this mold, you don’t respect me, as a woman. Meaning, you don’t even see my womanhood as something that’s inherently worthy of respect. In a patriarchal society, we are not brought up to default women as valuable. We are not brought up to believe that “woman” as an identity is something alone worthy of respect and worthy of humane treatment. You are taught that a woman has to be suitable for your consumption--in some sort of aspect--for you to be able to value and respect her. Her being a human being like yourself is not enough for you. You have to be given a reason to find her worthy of respect. How can we not see that as troubling?
All kinds of women are deserving of respect. The “modest” woman is deserving of respect, yes, but so is the woman people call a “hoe.” How someone treats a woman should not be contingent upon a woman’s sexual activities, identity, and expression. A woman’s sex life doesn’t speak to her morality. That should not be the deciding factor on whether a woman is a “good” person or not.
What a woman does in the bedroom is none of our business nor does it affect us in any way. So why is it that we use that to decide whether she’s a good person or not? Does it ever cross one’s mind that a woman can be “modest” and still be a horrible person? A woman can be dressed from head to toe, “saving” herself for marriage and still treat others poorly. A woman can show lots of skin, have all the sex in the world, and have a heart of gold. Her heart of gold isn’t even considered because she’s written off as a “hoe” because in our minds, we believe a woman’s sex life and how she sheaths her body is the epitome of her morality.
People have to unlearn this impulse to place women into boxes. Instead, we need to view women as human beings who are individuals and not caricatures. Society has to stop insulting us by simplifying our complexities as human beings and recognize that we can be multi-faceted. A woman can be book smart, love to cook, be a bomb ass mom and know how to twerk. A woman can love sex and have a degree. It does not have to be one or the other. We have an array of interests and characteristics. Once people stop seeing women in an one-dimensional lens and respect all types of women--not just the ones who “keep their legs closed” and are fully clothed--we’ll be making progress to alleviating women of the exhausting weight of misogyny.