Nineteenth-century sexual morality taught mistresses to blame enslaved women for rape

Evidence

Those white women who deplored the sexual exploitation of slave women were usually reluctant to involve themselves with a slave’s plight for fear of jeopardizing their own position in the domestic household. Most white women regarded black women who were the objects of their husbands’ sexual assaults with hostility and rage. Having been taught by religious teachings that women were inherently sexual temptresses, mistresses often believed that the enslaved black woman was the culprit and their husbands the innocent victims. — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 112

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Historians have normalized and minimized the rape of enslaved black women. — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 85; White male sexual power over slaves redirected white women’s anger onto black women — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 451; Abolitionists who condemned rape still blamed enslaved women as accomplices. — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 169 (+1 more)

Related

• Abolitionists who condemned rape still blamed enslaved women as accomplices. (similarity 0.91)
• Historians have normalized and minimized the rape of enslaved black women. (similarity 0.91)
• White mistresses usually sided with their husbands against enslaved women (similarity 0.87)
• White mistresses often punished rather than protected sexually exploited slave women (similarity 0.87)
• Labeling black women as sexual savages enabled their rapes by denying their humanity. (similarity 0.86)
• Sexual exploitation dehumanized black women more than labor exploitation did (similarity 0.86)
• Enslaved black women withheld the respect they granted white men from white mistresses (similarity 0.85)
• Rape of black women was ignored because they were seen as sexually permissive (similarity 0.85)
• Slave sexual violence was punishment, with the master’s deviance transferred to the woman (similarity 0.85)
• Enslaved women absorbed anti-woman violence that white women otherwise faced (similarity 0.84)
• White women, not white men, were slavery’s most direct beneficiaries (similarity 0.84)
• White male sexual power over slaves redirected white women’s anger onto black women (similarity 0.84)
• Black women bore the brunt of slave-ship terror because they could not retaliate (similarity 0.83)
• Enslaved people also absorbed the view of women as temptresses (similarity 0.83)
• The jezebel stereotype blamed Black women for white male sexual assault (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• White male sexual power over slaves redirected white women’s anger onto black women #corroborates (0.75) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 451
• White mistresses often punished rather than protected sexually exploited slave women #corroborates (0.70)
• Abolitionists who condemned rape still blamed enslaved women as accomplices. #expands (0.65) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 169