Rethinking Rufus: Sexual Violations of Enslaved Men

[xoxodede]

Rethinking Rufus is the first book-length study of sexual violence against enslaved men. Scholars have extensively documented the widespread sexual exploitation and abuse suffered by enslaved women, with comparatively little attention paid to the stories of men. However, a careful reading of extant sources reveals that sexual assault of enslaved men also occurred systematically and in a wide variety of forms, including physical assault, sexual coercion, and other intimate violations.

To tell the story of men such as Rufus―who was coerced into a sexual union with an enslaved woman, Rose, whose resistance of this union is widely celebrated―historian Thomas A. Foster interrogates a range of sources on slavery: early American newspapers, court records, enslavers’ journals, abolitionist literature, the testimony of formerly enslaved people collected in autobiographies and in interviews, and various forms of artistic representation. Foster’s sustained examination of how black men were sexually violated by both white men and white women makes an important contribution to our understanding of masculinity, sexuality, the lived experience of enslaved men, and the general power dynamics fostered by the institution of slavery. Rethinking Rufus illuminates how the conditions of slavery gave rise to a variety of forms of sexual assault and exploitation that affected all members of the community.

Book Download Link: Library Genesis

 

[xoxodede]

In five chapters this book attempts to understand the possibilities of Rufus’s experience by examining and listening to the experiences and tellings of a wide range of enslaved people.

Chapter 1 focuses on the bodies of enslaved men. Although men’s bodies figure throughout the book, this chapter pays particular attention to the ways that dominant American culture denigrated, celebrated, and damaged the bodies of enslaved men. But whites’ sexual attraction to black men did not lead to their sexual assault. Black men were sexually violated and exploited because those actions served the racial hierarchy and subordination of black men under slavery.24 Chapter 1 also posits that enslaved men used their bodies for pleasure and resistance, and they shared publicly their resentment at the abuses they endured.

Chapter 2 historicizes relational standards of masculinity that were culturally present during the height of slavery. Men like Rufus valued autonomy in intimate aspects of life. The ability to choose and then protect one’s loved ones was paramount. Chapter 2 examines these ideas and the ways that enslaved men found 8 Introduction themselves frustrated and violated in various parts of their lives. Although this book has wide-ranging implications for our understanding of the history of sexuality in America, it does not purport to be a history of sexuality for enslaved men. Rather, it is a history of the particular topic of sexual violence against enslaved men. Study of this topic necessitates some broader examination and contextualization that touch on understandings of enslaved male sexuality, but it is not to be taken as a complete history in that area. As Treva B. Lindsey and Jessica Marie Johnson remind us, we must continue to complicate our understandings of sexuality for enslaved people: “To have erotic sensations was to steal bodies back from masters. . . . [T]o search for [erotic sensations] in chattel slavery . . . allow for the interior lives and erotic subjectivities of enslaved blacks to matter.”25 Abuse and violation here are not meant to define enslaved men’s sexuality, although for some they may well have done so.

Chapter 3 looks at the widespread practice of forced reproduction and coerced coupling. Rufus enters Rose Williams’s narrative because the two were told to Figure 2. Virginian Luxuries, 1825. This abolitionist painting by an unidentified artist exemplifies nineteenth-century depictions of the different violations suffered by enslaved men and women. These gendered portrayals have largely continued unquestioned. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Museum Purchase. The Rape of Rufus? 9 set up a household and produce children for their master’s financial gain. A wide range of sources document that reproduction was expected and that coupling was often guided and directed. While chapter 2 shows how men complained that such interference stymied their masculine independence, chapter 3 examines more deeply the broader implications for this interaction between master and enslaved men and how it affected understandings of manliness and positions within families and in the community.

Chapter 4 takes up the issue of white women’s relationships with enslaved men and the various other ways that white women violated and exploited enslaved men. It posits that the well-documented incidents of relations between enslaved men and white women suggest that more was at work than simply attraction that boldly flew in the face of prohibitions. Indeed, viewed within the context of power and abuses of enslaved men, the number of such connections suggests that accessibility and exploitation would also be at work in such cases.

Chapter 5 focuses on the experiences of enslaved men as they encountered sexual exploitation directly at the hands of white men. This included but was not limited to same-sex sexual behavior. It also included the complex ways that white men violated and exploited enslaved men in their intimate lives. The chapter focuses on the particularly vulnerable position of enslaved valets. It also underscores the bonds of intimacy that were forged between enslaved men in the context of enslavement. The book ends, as it began, with Rufus. The conclusion includes the full interview with Rose Williams because the sexual abuse and exploitation of enslaved men affected not only individual men but also their spouses, families, and communities.

Not all enslaved men would have experienced their identities in relation to the experience of sexual assault or even the perceived threat of it. Some men would have had little exposure or given much thought to it. Some might have even considered access to white women as a marker of their prowess.26 Others might have experienced sexual pleasure, better lives, or even emotional connections from sexually exploitative situations with those who held power over their wellbeing, their lives. But many experienced direct assault, and most, if not all, experienced the type of sexual violations that devalued and objectified the men, underscoring their status as enslaved men. The point of this book is not to heal the traumas of the past; indeed, for some, telling these stories may inflict more violence. Toni Morrison, bell hooks, and others have grappled with the harming and healing powers that sharing such stories hold.27 The literature on trauma that 10 Introduction limits itself to historical and collective memory, specifically, historical atrocities, has also probed these questions extensively.28

This book is not the story of how all enslaved men were subjected to violent and traumatic sexual assault, but it is a history of the peculiar conditions that enslavement established, nurtured, and expanded—conditions that enabled those in power to dominate many enslaved men in part through sexual violence.

 

[get these nets]

Good information.

I think the primary violation of Black enslaved men was the emasculation that came from not being able to protect Black women and girls from white men.

The shame from knowing that history still lingers. I think that shame is behind the (internet) popularity of terms like "bed wench".


I rewatched the original Roots recently, and noticed a scene of the slave ship captain calling for a girl to come up from below deck where the Africans were kept. A "belly warmer" she was called in the script.
I've read a lot about the slave trade including accounts of sexual violations of men, women and children. Watching that scene sickened me in ways that reading the history hadn't. She was directly violated, and the men below deck watched them take her up and (off camera) heard her crying when they brought her back down.

 

[xoxodede]

Good information.

I think the primary violation of Black enslaved men was the emasculation that came from not being able to protect Black women and girls from white men.

The shame from knowing that history still lingers. I think that shame is behind the (internet) popularity of terms like "bed wench".


I rewatched the original Roots recently, and noticed a scene of the slave ship captain calling for a girl to come up from below deck where the Africans were kept. A "belly warmer" she was called in the script.
I've read a lot about the slave trade including accounts of sexual violations of men, women and children. Watching that scene sickened me in ways that reading the history hadn't. She was directly violated, and the men below deck watched them take her up and (off camera) heard her crying when they brought her back down.

Definitely. But, this after reading this book and researching more about breeding - I have to say them having to have sex with random enslaved women - many they didn't like, find attractive, and did not want to have sex with - was definitely a huge form of rape/violation.

 

[xoxodede]

 

[Asicz]

 

[get these nets]

Good information.

I think the primary violation of Black enslaved men was the emasculation that came from not being able to protect Black women and girls from white men.

The shame from knowing that history still lingers. I think that shame is behind the (internet) popularity of terms like "bed wench".


I rewatched the original Roots recently, and noticed a scene of the slave ship captain calling for a girl to come up from below deck where the Africans were kept. A "belly warmer" she was called in the script.
I've read a lot about the slave trade including accounts of sexual violations of men, women and children. Watching that scene sickened me in ways that reading the history hadn't. She was directly violated, and the men below deck watched them take her up and (off camera) heard her crying when they brought her back down.

the scene cued up slightly after the starting point

Spoiler

 

[xoxodede]

the scene cued up slightly after the starting point

Spoiler

I want you to check out two books -cause I wanna discuss them with somebody...lol. You know you can hit up Library Genesis for the download.

Clinging to Mammy: The Faithful Slave in Twentieth-Century America - this one was SO good!

Sex Workers, Psychics, and Numbers Runners: Black Women in New York City's Underground Economy - This was great too -- it also talked a lot about Black immigrants and their contributions (good and some bad) to NYC.

 

[Counter Racist Male]

In Brazil white slave masters son would be given permission rape their MALE playmates

 

[get these nets]

 

[get these nets]

McGruder roots: Families trace lineages back to a single enslaved man
March 2021

Lucille Burden Osborne, known by some as Miss Lucille, refuses to give cruelty the last word in her story.

At 95 years old, she grew up in the same house as family members who’d survived slavery, including her great-grandmother Rachel McGruder. Her great-grandfather, Charles McGruder, had also been enslaved.

ABC
Lucille Burden Osborne

As she grew up, Osborne had heard people speak about her great-grandfather, but people rarely spoke about the fact that he is the patriarch to most Black people from Alabama with the surname McGruder.


“Evidently old man Charles McGruder must have been an important person to the community because we would hear his name many, many times,” said Osborne. “But nobody seemed to want to discuss how Charles fit into that slave situation, and it seemed like everybody would whisper when they were talking about Charles.”

Lucille Burden Osborne

She went on, “So this is what stands out in my mind -- that he must have been the big daddy … because during his early years, he was considered a [slave] breeder.”

Congress banned the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in 1808. No longer able to import enslaved Africans, many owners forced people like Charles McGruder to procreate.

“Slave owners owned enslaved women's wombs, and they owned the products of enslaved women's wombs. And that was foundational to how white southerners understood and conceptualized slavery,” said Chris Bonner, a history professor at the University of Maryland. “Charles McGruder’s story reflects that sense of what slavery was.”

Marie McGruder, 58, told ABC News her great-great-grandfather “was basically rented out to go from plantation to plantation to breed with other African women.”

J.R. Rothstein said that his great-great-great grandfather may have had up to 100 children, but that the records confirm he had at least 40. Of those children, he said each of them had about a dozen of their own children, who then went on to have a dozen more.

ABC
J.R. Rothstein is uncovering his family’s roots in a new book.

He has since been dedicated to uncovering his family’s roots in a new book, called “The Alabama Black McGruders,” while he works as a real estate attorney and investor.

Bonner said that while the number of children Charles McGruder had is “shocking,” it doesn’t mean “that enslaved people didn't value family.”

After Charles McGurder was emancipated following the Civil War, he chose to make a homestead for the women and his children. It was an act of love for people connected to him through a vicious crime, because, ultimately, they were still his family.

After a decade of sharecropping, he purchased land in 1877 for $1,500 -- the exact same market value he commanded as an enslaved person. The family still owns part of that land today.

Jill Magruder is a descendant of the white Magruders who once owned Charles McGruder. Magruder is the original spelling of the McGruder last name. After emancipation, Charles McGruder registered to vote and changed the spelling of his family’s surname as an act of independence and to signal a new beginning, his family believes.

Jill Magruder

Most white relatives still carry the original spelling of the last name Magruder.

Through Family Tree DNA, Magruder said she was able to definitively link her branch of the family tree to Charles McGruder. The test showed an exact match between Magruder’s brother and Charles McGruder’s great-grandson, which confirmed that the two are indeed related.

ABC News connected Magruder with a small group of Black McGruders to talk about their shared family history.

ABC
One family traces its lineage back to a single enslaved man, Charles McGruder.

“I know as a white Magruder, or just as a white American, you hear the stories about a slave owner having children with a slave woman, and there’s some kind of denial about that,” Jill Magruder said.

During the reunion, the McGruders passed around public records that confirmed Osborne’s memories of her great-grandfather, showing her for the first time the price placed on the lives of the people she knew and loved.

Osborne, a former Detroit school teacher, is a graduate of Alabama State University, an HBCU where she also joined the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, and the University of Michigan. An avid quilter, Osborne said she captures her story within the family tradition that she said was passed down through generations to her. She said her family’s legacy makes her proud to be who she is.

Lucille Burden Osborne

“They were once a slave and now they are free, so look at the legacy you got,” said Osborne. “If [they] made it through here, you can do even better.”

 

[2Quik4UHoes]

Definitely. But, this after reading this book and researching more about breeding - I have to say them having to have sex with random enslaved women - many they didn't like, find attractive, and did not want to have sex with - was definitely a huge form of rape/violation.

American Slave Coast is a good book on that subject.

Edit:

 

[IllmaticDelta]

sick