soulbrotherv2:Sexual Relations Between Elite White Women and Enslaved Men in the Antebellum South: A
soulbrotherv2:Sexual Relations Between Elite White Women and Enslaved Men in the Antebellum South: A Socio-Historical AnalysisBy Jacqueline M. AllainSexual Agency, Power, and ConsentAccording to one historian, “few scholars… have viewed the relationships of enslaved men and free white women through the lens of sexual abuse in part because of gendered assumptions about sexual power” (Foster, p. 459). This is in keeping with both the standard feminist conceptualization of rape as a tool of patriarchal oppression3 as well as the traditional (un-feminist) notion of women as too weak, emotionally and physically, to commit serious crimes, let alone sexual abuse, and the idea that men cannot be raped (Bourke, 2007, pp. 219, 328). However, it is becoming increasingly clear that women, too, are capable of committing sexual offenses and using sex as a means of domination and control (Bourke, pp. 209-248).[Continue reading at Student Pulse: The International Student Journal.] -- source link