Slavery, sex, and rape

I was going to wait to address this one, but the reaction and comments of this reader are heartfelt, and doubtless are echoed by many, many others.  I wanted to be clear.
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(I said) "Because there are slave narratives where women clearly felt that their relationships with an overseer or "kind" master were voluntary..."
The rest are reader comments, with my replies.
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So, let me get this straight. And bear with me.

Are you saying that you are an apologist for slavery?
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What does that mean?  That I think slavery was good, or kind?  Hell, no.  Do I think it is human?  Yes, I do—most peoples in the world have indulged in it.  The form it took in the Americas was much more vicious than that in the Mediterranean, however.
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“Are you saying that just because a slave master was "kind", that makes his using the black slave woman or girl for a sexual toilet, for a sexual outhouse, was okay?”

Your language is too loaded to answer in this form.   But if a master was kind, and a slave decided to have sex with him, CLEARLY there is nothing optimal about this.  But the power differential alone does not make the situation what I would define as “rape” separate from any details about the interaction.  And I didn’t say it was just a matter of slaves having sex with their masters.  There were many other whites around—overseers, workers, customers, family friends, etc.

Let me be perfectly clear.  I think that slavery is perfectly predictable, given the power-hungry nature of human beings.  The institution itself is, I would think, a pretty decent definition of evil.  Those who supported it were, at best, turning a blind eye to the horror of the middle passage REGARDLESS of how “good” they were to their slaves.  Regardless of how the slaves might have appreciated or even loved their owners.

That said, the evil of a human being is at least partially determined by what is done in a given context.  Killing in wartime is not generally considered evil.  Torture generally is, however.  Owning slaves is a state of agreement with an evil institution.  The manner in which you treat those slaves determines your own level of humanity.

When I researched “Blood Brothers,” “Lion’s Blood” and “Zulu Heart”, my three novels dealing with the issue of slavery, I was surprised by what I found in the slave narratives.  That is, that about 20% of slaves felt they had been treated very well, almost like family.  About 60% were the stereotypical image of slaves: like indentured servants or migrant workers who cannot leave.  And about 20% was pure, grueling horror, evil in human form.

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“ Are you saying that given the inhumane, subsistence-level living, non-medical, worked six-days-a-week, beaten senseless until you either died from the beating or were left in a crippled condition, made it okay to take the bodies of black women and girls, like they were so many animals without feelings?”
Hell, no.  And I would consider no one who treated slaves in that fashion to be even a fully human being.  But no accounts, by whites or blacks, Americans or Europeans, free or slave, suggest that even 50% of slaves were treated this harshly.  Most were treated about like farm animals.  But that 20% kept popping up—slaves who felt their former owners had been good, decent people. 

By the way—almost all of the slaves who were eventually allowed to earn their way to freedom were in this last group. 
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“No matter how "kind' these sub-human slaveholders were, in the end they were what all slaveholders were: creatures who had no right to enslave and abuse the bodies of fellow human beings.”

No, they did not.
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“Of course some of the black women had to barter their bodies for sex.”

If I was to be asked: “what percentage of black-white sex during slavery would I consider rape?” I would say somewhere between 70-95%.  If pressed for greater accuracy, I would guess 90%, without being able to justify that particular number.
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The reader goes on to describe the substandard housing, diet, and sexual degradation suffered by slaves.  I agree that this was an all-too-common experience.  But remember something: I come from the position that no group has an exclusive on positive or negative behavior.

I wrote two books from the theory that if you switched the positions of black and white during the early days of America, you would get roughly equivalent behavior.  I’ve been criticized for this.

I’ve also said that if men were women, they’d act like women.  If women were men, they’d act like men—with all of the positive and negative implications of that.  And been criticized for it.

So be it.  But I find that attitudes of black supremacy are as distasteful to me as claims of white supremacy.  I stand against both.  And I don’t think that human beings are innately evil—although certain evil human behaviors are damned near a constant through our history.

Trying to make sense of it all consumes me, and from time to time I come to conclusions that are unpopular.  I can live with that.

But NOTHING that I say or think implies I think that black women behaved with one tiny speck less dignity or intelligence or morality than white women would have in the same circumstances, or whites would have if you changed position with blacks.

I am still left with the impression, based upon both direct testimony and my own view of human nature, the inhumanity of the institution, or the inevitability of abuse under its auspices doesn’t completely prevent human beings from reaching out to each other in even the worst of circumstances.  That power differential is problematic as hell—and some feminist theorists suggest that such a differential means that ALL sex between men and women is in essence rape.

I can’t buy that.  I don’t buy that all slave masters were “evil” even though the institution itself fits that definition for me.    And by their own words, taken after slavery ended, there was often (although not in the majority of cases) genuine affection and friendship between blacks and whites during this period. 

How often?  Damned if I know, but I’d be lying not to say it was there.  Understand something: I’m not saying “slavery was fine.  Get over it.”  I’m saying something more like “slavery was more horrible than white America wants to believe, but less universally horrible than many blacks think.  Its effects are devastating a century and a half after it ended.  And yes, get over it.  If I could push a button and reverse the relative positions of white and black I would in a heartbeat.  Since that’s not possible, my concern is: how do I get to the best world for my children and grandchildren?
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“If they were so "kind", they would have manumitted their slaves.”

Of course, the very best of them (in my book) did exactly that.  Most people, black or white, just aren’t that good.  Most people pretty much do what the culture around them says is right.  They’re not good or bad…they just try to get by.

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RAPE.

Rape does not always often have to be obtained with "force". And "threat of force" is oftentimes something very hard for many women to prove in court. Unfortunately many people still have the insane idea that if the man did not beat the woman senseless, drug her, hold a gun at her head, or hold a knife at her throat, then there is no way he could have raped her.

Which is probably why for every ONE woman who comes forward to press rape charges, there are at least TWO more who don't.
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Yes, and the fear of retaliation.  And the family shame. And being forced to confront their attacker in court. 

Let me put it this way: if a woman is broke, and offers her landlord sex to keep from getting kicked out, however unfortunate this is, I wouldn’t consider it rape.  If on the other hand he threatens to throw her out on a technicality if she doesn’t sleep with him…I do.  Financial hardship forces people to do things they wouldn’t do otherwise.  But “voluntary” prostitution isn’t the same as rape, any more than a minimum-wage job, however demeaning, is slavery.

I’m not saying these are good things.  They are horrible things.  But I think a different word would have to be coined.
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“Until people let go of the archaic belief that only "force" can be used in the act of rape (why do you think it's called "forcible rape" on the law books?), women will continue to be "raped" and not all of them will come forward to press charges.”

As I said, I think that a huge amount of this is the social shame attached.  I’ve probably spoken to fifty women who have been raped.  In almost every case, direct force was used or threatened.  I’m sure there are also indirect threats (I’ll hurt your sister), as well as cases where consent cannot be withheld (drugs, alcohol, insanity) that continue to test the definition.  A slave woman who cannot say “no” is clearly not in a position to withhold consent. 

One thing that surprised me in slave narratives, however, was the fact that women did sometimes say no, and fight back, and not be punished.  More interesting were the number of times a black male slave actually got into fights with overseers or others who tried to rape their women or abuse their children.  And some of them got away with it.  Again, this seemed to correlate with that 20% “treated almost like family” segment.
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Again, I have no interest in being an “apologist” for slavery.  It was a brutal, demeaning, dehumanizing institution, and anyone who says different is blind to the screams of the enslaved.  But within it, there was a variance of behaviors—from demonic on the one side, to admirable on the other, with most being the big, weary lump in the middle: underfed, overworked, brainwashed, and beaten down.

I don’t deny that.  But I can’t deny either that lust, if not love, can blossom in some strange freaking places.