queenhood

Noun

queenhood (usually uncountable, plural queenhoods)

1. (usually) The state, rank, or status of a queen.
   • Near-synonym: queenliness
   • I—who have 'gone the gamut' from an almost angry rejection of my dark skin by some of my brainwashed brothers and sisters to a surprised queenhood in the new black sun—am qualified to enter at least the kindergarten of the new consciousness now. New consciousness and trudge-toward-progress.1972, Gwendolyn Brooks, “Report from Part One”, in Report from Part One, page 86

   Synonyms:

   queenship, queendom, queenliness

2. (usually) Racially charged pedestalization of Black women, often as an extension of Afrocentric idealization, that is in fact damaging to gender equality; a particular type of "benevolent" sexism.
   • This focusing upon our own oppression is embodied in the concept of identity politics. We believe that the most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of our own identity, as opposed to working to end somebody else's oppression. In the case of Black women this is a...1977, The Combahee River Collective, "A Black Feminist Statement" (better known as the Combahee River Collective Statement), in Zillah R. Eisenstein, editor, Capitalist Patriarchy and the Case for...
3. (rare, usually) An apex or pinnacle.
   • "[…] They say my House loves beauty—they did and they do—and there's a kind of beauty in dying beautifully … in wasting away … half-alive, half-dead, with the very queenhood of your power."2024, Tamsyn Muir, chapter 26, in The Locked Tomb Series: Gideon the Ninth, Harrow the Ninth, Nona the Ninth