"robin"  wrote in message
news:1109871309.230062.322510{at}g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> I saw somewhere, and can't recall just where, a comment that among the
> socalled 'primitive' tribes that are matriarchal in structure, the
> phenomenon of rape is unheard of. I believe it was the anthropologist
> Malinowski who stated this.
>
> The irony to me, is that Europeans for the past couple centuries or so
> have tended to label American society as "matriarchal." I know that
> Marx apparently believed this prejudice, and so did Freud. And both of
> them tended to dismiss America and Americans as a result.
>
> On the other hand, Tocqueville, somewhat earlier, had been highly
> impressed with America, and our democracy (in the north). He devoted a
> big chunk of his book Democracy in America to the power of women's
> influence, morally and otherwise.  His focus was on New England, which
> had a couple centuries old tradition of putting women's virtue on a
> pedestal, of teaching basic schooling to everyone, including girls.
> Tocqueville was highly impressed with the way New England (and states
> west of it) had a vast, bustling middle class, and relatively little
> poverty of the kind Tocqueville was used to in Europe. (And a
> negligible "upper class" almost none at all).

Go back and read him again  lol



>
> I was glancing at Susan Brownmiller's classic "Against Our Wills."
> There is a huge amount of emphasis on rape in American history. Of
> course, the bulk of discussion focusses on the American South, and what
> A.W. Calhoun calls, the "Master's Right of Rape."  The American South
> was in many respects a feudal society, suspicious of learning,
> suspicious of women's lascivious tendencies, and absolutely paranoid
> (from about 1832 onward) of the sexual powers and prowess of the black
> male stud.  He was so dangerous, that all of society's resources had to
> be marshalled to keep the white woman from so much as even looking at
> him, even by accident.

Ever see the film Mandingo?



>
> Slave auctions, of course, were off limits to white females, even if
> they were the actual ones making the purchases.  Some radical
> abolitionists even declared that the whole slave system was one huge,
> vicious brothel, all to gratify the lusts of white men.

Then why did they buy male slaves?  lol



>
> And yet these white men pretended to be the flower of chivalry, the
> most noble, the most enlightened, the bravest tier of society. They
> were the Lords of the Land, and no female within their demesne was off
> limits to them.  But at least the "wife" (by law) had the
protection of
> official acknowledgement by the legal system. She, at least, had her
> kin folk, and if they were of equal social rank to her husband's, he
> best not overdo his dominance.
>
> But if she was too stand-off-ish, or too frigid for his liking, there
> were plenty of other outlets for his hormones, within the slave system.
>
> For the sake of balance and accuracy, it ought to be noted that history
> provides numerous known instances of white masters who did NOT abuse
> their positions to effectively coerce servants to sleep with them.

Very few fucked slaves.



> Based on narratives handed down by slaves themselves, Jefferson had to
> plead with Sally for weeks before she consented to return (from Paris)
> to Virginia with him.

That's not true. Besides, Sally was white and was the 1/2 sister to
Jefferson's deceased wife. Sally's father was Jefferson's father-in-law and
white;Sally's mother was 1/2 white.



>
> Similarly George Wyeth, the constitutionalist and pre-eminent jurist
> also had as close to a relationship of marital equality with his slave
> mistress, as was possible at the time


 The scandal was the fact that
> he elevated her and her son (by Wyeth) to a status of veritable
> equality, and they lived as a family (before the three of them were
> murdered by a relative of Wyeth.)
>
> Still, many enlightened Southerners regarded the system itself as
> doomed. Instead of attempting to mend it, just END IT, outright. Get
> rid of it!  Washington and Jefferson and something like a half of the
> entire Virginia delegation to the Constitutional Convention were of
> such an opinion.  Robert E. Lee, though he regarded his loyalty to
> Virginia as a DUTY laid upon him by God himself, also regarded slavery
> itself with repugnance, and sincerely wished it could be ended (but not
> by war!!)
>
> Henry Clay, who like Jefferson owned a large estate with many slaves,
> regarded slavery as corrupt, and doomed.  And Jefferson himself was
> strongly on record opposing slavery, though also on record as at a loss
> how it should be ended, or even practicably COULD be ended.
>
> Some radical blacks in our own day (and no doubt some whites as well)
> tend to view slavery itself as tantamount to rape -- the rape of an
> entire people.  (And perhaps just as long to "get over.")

only 10% of Black African slaves were in the US colonies and the number was
small



>
> I think there is probably some degree of justification for the analogy.
>  But if American slavery was analogous to rape, or sexual coercion,
> what about what the Romans did to the barbarian tribes of northern
> Europe (while there were still forests)?

What did they do? Do tell. Civilise them? lol



  Hasn't civilization,
> (whether or not it deserves that title) quite often "imposed" (by
> force, generally) its "superior" values, modes of production (such as
> agriculture), religion, laws, on the more primitive peoples it made
> subject to it??
>
> Rousseau, in some of his writings, thought "civilization" was a false
> bill of goods, and that the primitives, far from being savage or
> barbarian, were in fact morally superior to those who imposed
> civilization on them, imposed agriculture on them, imposed a settled,
> sedentary existence on them.

Rousseau never lived with savages and was an armchair philosopher.
>




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