Slave parents rarely prepared daughters for the reality of sexual exploitation

Evidence

Black female slave narratives that provide information concerning the sexual education of girls suggest that they knew little about their bodies, where babies came from, or about sexual intercourse. Few slave parents warned their daughters about the possibility of rape or helped them to prepare for such situations. The slave parents’ unwillingness to openly concern themselves with the reality of sexual exploitation reflects the general colonial American attitude regarding sexuality. — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 70

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Calling enslaved Black women prostitutes misdescribed their coerced sexual exploitation — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 99

Related

• Calling enslaved Black women prostitutes misdescribed their coerced sexual exploitation (similarity 0.85)
• Slave girls were sexually assaulted from age thirteen through bribes or force (similarity 0.84)
• Black women bore the brunt of slave-ship terror because they could not retaliate (similarity 0.83)
• Historians have normalized and minimized the rape of enslaved black women. (similarity 0.83)
• Sexual exploitation dehumanized black women more than labor exploitation did (similarity 0.82)
• Sexism made the black female slave’s lot harsher than the male’s (similarity 0.82)
• Black women’s exploitation is better described as masculinization than black men’s de-masculinization. (similarity 0.82)
• Enslaved people also absorbed the view of women as temptresses (similarity 0.82)
• Nineteenth-century sexual morality taught mistresses to blame enslaved women for rape (similarity 0.81)
• Rape of black women was ignored because they were seen as sexually permissive (similarity 0.81)
• Enslaved women absorbed anti-woman violence that white women otherwise faced (similarity 0.81)
• Planters rewarded slave motherhood while punishing abortion as theft of property. (similarity 0.81)
• Enslaved women were no more sexually liberated than white women. (similarity 0.81)
• Black slave gender roles replicated white patriarchal divisions of labor (similarity 0.80)
• White women, not white men, were slavery’s most direct beneficiaries (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Calling enslaved Black women prostitutes misdescribed their coerced sexual exploitation #expands (0.70) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 99