Abolitionists who condemned rape still blamed enslaved women as accomplices.
Evidence
A devaluation of black womanhood occurred as a result of the sexual exploitation of black women during slavery that has not altered in the course of hundreds of years. I have previously mentioned that while many concerned citizens sympathized with the sexual exploitation of black women both during slavery and afterwards, like all rape victims in patriarchal society they were seen as having lost value and worth as a result of the humiliation they endured. Annals of slavery reveal that the same abolitionist public that condemned the rape of black women regarded them as accomplices rather than victims. — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 169
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Nineteenth-century sexual morality taught mistresses to blame enslaved women for rape — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 112; Black slave women were both accomplices in and victims of patriarchy
Related
- Nineteenth-century sexual morality taught mistresses to blame enslaved women for rape (similarity 0.91)
- Historians have normalized and minimized the rape of enslaved black women. (similarity 0.88)
- Labeling black women as sexual savages enabled their rapes by denying their humanity. (similarity 0.85)
- Rape of black women was ignored because they were seen as sexually permissive (similarity 0.85)
- Rape of enslaved black women devalued black womanhood beyond slavery’s end. (similarity 0.85)
- Sexual exploitation dehumanized black women more than labor exploitation did (similarity 0.83)
- Sexism and racism were twin oppressive forces in black women’s slave experience (similarity 0.83)
- Abolitionist ‘prostitution’ language reinforced the myth of Black female wantonness (similarity 0.83)
- White abolitionists opposed interracial sex to save white men’s souls, not black women (similarity 0.83)
- Enslaved women absorbed anti-woman violence that white women otherwise faced (similarity 0.83)
- White women, not white men, were slavery’s most direct beneficiaries (similarity 0.83)
- Rape of black women was not a crime under slavery law (similarity 0.83)
- Black women bore the brunt of slave-ship terror because they could not retaliate (similarity 0.83)
- Black slave women were both accomplices in and victims of patriarchy (similarity 0.83)
- Rape of enslaved women functioned as institutionalized terrorism, not lust (similarity 0.82)