Consent in the presence of force, sexual violence and Black women's survival in antebellum New Orleans, Emily A. Owens
Type
Label
Consent in the presence of force, sexual violence and Black women's survival in antebellum New Orleans, Emily A. Owens
Language
eng
Index
no index present
Literary Form
non fiction
Main title
Consent in the presence of force
Medium
electronic resource
Nature of contents
dictionaries
Responsibility statement
Emily A. Owens
Sub title
sexual violence and Black women's survival in antebellum New Orleans
Summary
In histories of enslavement and in Black women's history, coercion looms large in any discussion of sex and sexuality. At a time when sexual violence against Black women was virtually unregulated-even normalized-a vast economy developed specifically to sell the sexual labor of Black women. In this vividly rendered book, Emily A. Owens wrestles with the question of why white men paid notoriously high prices to gain sexual access to the bodies of enslaved women to whom they already had legal and social access. Owens centers the survival strategies and intellectual labor of Black women enslaved in New Orleans to unravel the culture of violence they endured, in which slaveholders obscured "the presence of force" with arrangements that included gifts and money. Owens's storytelling highlights that the classic formulation of rape law that requires "the presence of force" and "the absence of consent" to denote a crime was in fact a key legal fixture that packaged predation as pleasure and produced, rather than prevented, violence against Black women. Owens dramatically reorients our understanding of enslaved women's lives as well as of the nature of violence in the entire venture of racial slavery in the U.S. South. Unsettling the idea that consent is necessarily incompatible with structural and interpersonal violence, this history shows that when sex is understood as a transaction, women are imagined as responsible for their own violation
Target audience
adult
Classification
Contributor
Creator
Subject
- Sex workers -- Louisiana -- New Orleans -- History -- 19th century
- African American women -- Louisiana -- New Orleans -- Social conditions -- 19th century
- Electronic books
- Women slaves + Sexual behavior -- Louisiana -- New Orleans -- History -- 19th century
- Women slaves -- Louisiana -- New Orleans -- Social conditions -- 19th century
- African American women + Abuse of -- Louisiana -- New Orleans -- History -- 19th century
- Rape -- Louisiana -- New Orleans -- History -- 19th century
- Women slaves + Abuse of -- Louisiana -- New Orleans -- History -- 19th century
- African American women + Sexual behavior -- Louisiana -- New Orleans -- History -- 19th century
- Sexual abuse victims -- Louisiana -- New Orleans -- History -- 19th century
Content
Author
Incoming Resources
- Has instance1
Outgoing Resources
- Classification1
- Contributor1
- Creator1
- Subject10
- Sex workers -- Louisiana -- New Orleans -- History -- 19th century
- African American women -- Louisiana -- New Orleans -- Social conditions -- 19th century
- Electronic books
- Women slaves + Sexual behavior -- Louisiana -- New Orleans -- History -- 19th century
- Women slaves -- Louisiana -- New Orleans -- Social conditions -- 19th century
- African American women + Abuse of -- Louisiana -- New Orleans -- History -- 19th century
- Rape -- Louisiana -- New Orleans -- History -- 19th century
- Women slaves + Abuse of -- Louisiana -- New Orleans -- History -- 19th century
- African American women + Sexual behavior -- Louisiana -- New Orleans -- History -- 19th century
- Sexual abuse victims -- Louisiana -- New Orleans -- History -- 19th century
- Content1
- Author1