Dumping Tan Julia Roberts: Controlling Black Female Sexuality on "The Bachelor"

ABC’s reality TV dating series “The Bachelor,” now in its 17^th season, documents one bachelor’s quest to find a wife among 25 women, women who all immediately “fall for” the carefully selected, successful, buff, “manly” man.  This season’s 29-year-old Sean follows the same casting patter “The Bachelor” has stuck with thus far: he is white.  With blonde hair, blue eyes, and a whitened smile, Sean is continually portrayed as the caring, sensitive, all-American “good guy.”  He’s lovable; he’s a catch; he’s every woman’s dream man! See for yourself:

Pithy sarcasm aside, “The Bachelor” re-mobilizes and re-enforces what Adrienne Rich coined “compulsory heterosexuality,” the idea that heterosexuality is viewed as this “natural” form of existence that bubbles up inside everyone.  “The Bachelor” sutures its story line to the idea of compulsory heterosexuality through overt iterations of the man/woman power binary, which by default disempowers women in order to bolster man’s power, control, and superiority.  When interlocked with race, gender becomes synonymous with sexuality on “The Bachelor.” 

Take, for example, 29-year-old poker dealer Leslie H.  She’s bubbly, she’s always smiling, she’s framed as a bit kooky.  With the catch phrase “Holy moly, batman,” she anxiously awaits coveted and precious one-on-one time with Sean (time only two women per episode are granted).  In Week 4, all of her wishes come true,--sarcasm intended--as Sean takes Leslie H. on a Pretty Woman inspired date.  Clad in diamond earrings (a pre-date gift from Sean), Leslie and Sean hop into a shiny gray convertible because, in Sean’s words, “Leslie deserves to be treated like a princess.”  In saying this, Sean frames himself as Leslie’s prince, in the position to make all of her (heterosexual) dreams come true because he is in power (by obtaining money from the show, by choosing her to go on the date with).

After Leslie is awarded with a new dress, handbag, and shoes on Rodeo Drive, she notes that Sean is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Richard Gere to her “tan” Julia Roberta, finally pointing out the elephant in the room: Leslie looks black. And among the intensely white female cast, her Blackness clearly stands out and alone.

   

The show has chosen Leslie in particular to go on this date and they have consciously formed a plot line that could have been structured differently.  Thus, it is important to unpack the ways in which Leslie, viewed as a Black woman, is desexualized in the white man's eyes via Sean/The Bachelor franchise.  After the entire, elaborate, date that Sean planned to "enhance the romance," he dumps Leslie because the spark isn't there.  In tears, she leaves in the limo with no rose, as we look on, cringing because we as viewers saw the lack-of-connection the entire time.

This contemporary iteration of Black female sexuality comes from a history of white men, white women, and Black men mobilizing images that served to control Black female sexuality.  In Southern Horrors, Crystal N. Feimster reclaims the history of anti-lynching and anti-rape during the post-slavery era by revealing the hidden lives of Rebecca Felton and Ida B. Wells, two women who the author argues played foundational roles in these female-centered movements.  For Ida B. Wells, lynching depended on and perpetuated "a variety of racialized gender constructions: the chaste and dependent white woman; the sexually violent black man; the immoral and unredeemable black woman; and the honorable and civilized white man" (Feimster 103).  Because Black women were in essence doubly stigmatized by being Black and female within a patriarchal, racist society, they had little power in changing these mobilized stereotypes that rendered them powerless in controlling their own bodies.  Negative images of Black women justified rape and lynching to white-dominated society.  For example, the controlling image of the jezebel, who lured white men into sex via her almost magical, irresistible hypersexuality, worked to confine Black female sexuality by writing it as bad, amoral, and opposite pure, respectable, chaste white womanhood.  Thus, Black female sexuality, at least in Wells's eyes, is always in opposition to white female sexuality in order to bolster and justify white female sexuality and the implicit rules governing white women's lives.

Leslie H. is a modern iteration of this history of white-dominated society controlling Black female sexuality.  The Bachelor has been criticized for being racist, as there as never been a non-white bachelor, and Black/ethnic women only make it so far on the show before being cut off.  With this history, fans are primed to know that Leslie H.'s time is almost up when she goes on her "Pretty Woman" date, simply because she is read as Black.  What is crucial to look at here is the way that Leslie is dumped: Sean says that he "cannot allow" her to stay knowing that he's not the right man for her.  Further, in his break-up speech, Sean clearly implies that he's simply not physically attracted to Leslie, even though he does seem to be attracted to her personality, almost talking ad nauseum about what a "great" personality she has.  Let's back up a minute though, and return to Sean's words: "cannot allow."  This statement says a couple of things: (1) Leslie has now power in deciding anything about the relationship.  (2) Sean feels as though he has power over Leslie--I'm arguing not just because he is the almighty bachelor, but also because he is a white man.  This is the message viewers are getting, and we read it, whether consciously or subconsciously, as a racial power structure that leaves Leslie powerless, because of the history of the oppression of Black female sexuality, particularly during the post-slavery era.  Instead of being the jezebel, Leslie H. has been completely desexualized, almost an anti-jezebel.  This works in the same ways that the jezebel did, though, as it placates white fears about Black female sexuality.  Leslie can't take the white man away from the white woman because he just isn't attracted to her.  Problem solved!

So, The Bachelor shows us that we are not in a "post-racial" or "post-race" society just because Obama is President.  We still are part of a system that continually constructs Black womanhood and Black sexuality in ways that serve to bring down the Black woman's power at the same time that it increases the power, privilege, and justification of white womanhood.

And the show must go on...Sean will find his wife; she just won't be a tan Julia Roberts.

Myths and the Christian Maintenance of Cultural Hegemony

It's a challenge to call upon a time in history when Christianity was not the norm in the Western world. Once Christians became a colonizing European majority, the self-imbedded message they carried to distant lands espoused an evangelical tang in the procuring of individuals and ethnic groups at large to convert. Upon conversion, Christians new and old have willingly indicated their submission to an organized hegemonic power structure. Made up of men entirely, the hierarchy of the christian faith has largely been inaccessible to women until the more modern era.

In Crystal Feimster's book Southern Horrors, she highlights the concepts of black and white masculinity and black and white femininity at the time of the antebellum south through the height of the primarily southern lynching epidemic. Through her expose, we are able to better understand the formation of character stereotypes and national myths created for each intersectional group. Such myths not only extend to the present day to shape how we especially view black female sexuality and black men as predatory. Additionally, the creation of these myths was done through a lens of white male supremacy and vehemently enforced through a patriarchal system, namely, Christianity. It is through the lens of Christianity that white men, especially southern men, justified the character assassination that would then "justify" the lynching of hundreds of black men and women and many (though fewer in number significantly) white women as well on the basis of moral superiority.

Is the Christian faith responsible for the crisis of white masculinity? Not entirely, but the careful crafting of mythological predators of the black race is part of a rhetoric designed specifically to target black and white women and black men as, to varying extents, the "other". Certain qualities were portrayed as indicative of lower moral character in direct juxtaposition to white males. As the keepers and holders of the finest in Christian morality, the socialized world was forced to fall in line after white men in a spectrum of intersectional power relations that simultaneously chokes white women into passivity and named black masculinity as their oppressor. The rhetoric of Christian ethics did not allow the ability for women and black men to name their oppressors. Instead, as Feimster illustrates, women were pitted against each other as competitors for the affections and attentions of white men within plantation life and after the Civil War. While white women felt black women were stealing their men's affections, in fact they were silenced victims of unwanted advances. Christian men then justified these advances to each other and to their white women by portraying deviancy, theft, and unpredictability within the construct of the black female as "Jezebel". From these false constructs rose fear of the character of black women, inciting a sense of need to punish and publicly shame black women into continued submission.

White masculinity is therefore a construct of hegemonic power over the named otherness of black folks and white women. Modeled after Christianity in placing moral and political power solely in the hands of white men (until Rebecca Felton was seated briefly in the senate), white men seized and maintained sociopolitical rule over all others through two main methods, which our two heroines divided and conquered. Felton saw the power to protect and provide for (white) women through accessing the white male sphere of congressional politics. Ida B. Wells identified an avenue of resistance and self re-definition by seizing the white male controlled media and local newspapers, which acted as an agent in the creation of national myths surrounding the character of lynching victims. White southern men's moral, "Christian"-flavored grip over the two major avenues of defining the nature of public discourse were, over time, infiltrated. However, it was many years later that lynching ceased and was federally banned and the grips of white supremacy over the fate of white women and black people was somewhat loosened. By coming to voice, Felton and Wells were able to break through the Christian "roles" the patriarchy had decided was best in favor of self-definition and social change.

Today, self-definition is more accessible to marginalized groups, and black women have more access to the capitalist firms and institutions that define people within our popular culture. Unfortunately, it's only a few generations later and we have not been able to see a complete divorce from old, harmful stereotypes. Look to the profiling in the criminal justice system, hypersexualization and exotification of black female bodies, and discrimination in cinematic and televised representation to see that although we've come far, we have a long way to go. 

Fighting for protection, not equality

In Crystal M. Feimster’s book, Southern Horrors, Rebecca Latimer Felton is ultimately portrayed as a white supremacist women’s rights leader. The issue of suffrage becomes prominent as the story develops in the 1920s. I was surprised and dismayed to learn the motivations and ways in which women’s rights were promoted, specifically in regards to the exclusion of black women and the positioning of Rebecca Felton’s support for suffrage as a last effort to promote womanhood. What I realize now is that there is an important distinction between fighting for protection and fighting for equality, and history should not confuse the two. Furthermore, to understand this, the connection between the anti-rape movement and the white suffrage movement must be clarified.

If I am to understand the order of events correctly, it seems that Latimer Felton first promoted white men lynching black men in order to protect white women from rape, then promoted lynching of anyone in order to protect white womanhood, then opposed lynching, except in cases when the accusations were particularly horrible, and then supported suffrage as a means to promote white womanhood because white men were not protecting women well enough. In this last “stage,” Latimer Felton was promoting the idea that white men were actually harming white women, and the vote was a way to give women power to enact legislation that would protect them.  This explanation of her rationale is clearly just a skeleton, but it suggests that her support of suffrage was simply another step in supporting white supremacy. Latimer Felton’s activism was outright racist—she promulgated the myth of the black rapist and jezebel for the gain of white women, but ultimately, in her support of woman’s suffrage, had a clear opportunity to support equal suffrage. Her intentions were not equality, but the safety of white women. One may assume that a suffragist is fighting for equality, but not only does Latimer Felton not fight for equal rights for black women, her cause is not even her own equality, just safety.

The book does not highlight her actions specifically in her position during situations like that of the national suffrage parade. As a As Ida B. Wells-Barnett founded the Alpha Suffrage Club of black women, white (supremacist) suffragists were finding ways to marginalize them within a disjointed women’s movement. Feimster notes “when southern suffragists threatened to boycott the parade if black women were allowed to march with their state delegations, northern suffragists, to Wells-Barnett’s disappointment, acceded to their demands” (217). White southern women felt their “white” womanhood was threatened by black womanhood, but it seems that if political voices like Latimer Felton and her contemporaries had not spoken so strongly to support the idea of the black jezebel and vilify black women, there would be no need down the line to say that black women were a threat to white women and could not be included in their suffrage movement. White women used black men and women as scapegoats for southern culture that was changing against the will of the women, but abused and ruined the fragile public image of black women (and men) in the process, thus making it harder for them to dig themselves out when time came to demand suffrage. The movements of black women like Wells-Barnett had to constantly combat whatever the white movement was doing to step on their feet.

Of course it impossible to accurately pick apart the inner workings of a movement from a time nearly a century removed from the actual events, but it entirely possible to critique the movement’s underpinnings from a modern viewpoint. If the suffrage movement was structured and supported with white supremacy, I can critique the racism embodied by white activists, but also point out the ways in which the women’s keystone principles would be seen as sexist and hypocritical today. Latimer Felton never wanted to be equal, rather, she wanted men to take better care of her. Protecting womanhood was not about empowering women, rather it focused on women’s inability to protect themselves from black men without white men to save them. Women publically supported the ideas of southern womanhood that deprived them of power. Wrapped up in the issue of safety, women fought not for equality but for protection. While history may assume, like I did, that suffragists were fighting for equality, it is essential to know that not all white suffragists fought to level the playing field, they fought to protect their own interests.  These intentions, to be sure, made the fight for equality much more difficult for women like Wells-Barnett. 

Men and Women as Allies against Sexual Violence

Throughout the course of Crystal Feimster’s Southern Horrors, Rebecca Felton’s stance on the most appropriate ways to protect and empower southern women changes. However, one constant was challenging the power of southern white men over the southern women: “White women’s acts of public protest and violent self-defense not only served as a political challenge to the image of he dependent and fragile southern belle, but also called into question southern white men’s ability to protect southern womanhood, a complaint that would carry over into the racial and sexual politics of Reconstruction and the New South” (Feimster, Southern Horrors, 27).  From class discussion and what I have observed in my personal life, I believe that this idea is still prominent in today’s conversations about rape. In both public and private life, young women are taught many different ways to protect themselves from sexual assault: wear conservative clothing, never walk alone at night, carry mace, and many more. It is still the woman’s responsibility to ensure that she is prepared to defend herself, rather than teaching men appropriate behaviors.

It was while reading the quote from page 27 that I remembered seeing a campaign online featuring men, usually in a bar, with a scenario of how they stood up for their female (and in other cases, male) friend, and “took a stand.” Upon further research I found the Men Can Stop Rape campaign, which began in 1997, but has found recent popularity. In the history section on their website they state: “Men Can Stop Rape continues to mentor male youth and successfully mobilize them to prevent men’s violence against women and other men; inspire young men to create their own positive definitions of masculinity, manhood, and strength; develop healthy relationships with others; embrace the concept of personal responsibility; work in partnership with female peers; and do their part to end violence and build safe communities” (http://www.mencanstoprape.org). Rather than engage in violence against men who rape, such as the lynching that occurred in the late 1800’s, men today are being taught to intelligently interfere with situations leading toward sexual assault. This mentality relates back to Felton’s approach to empowering southern women in the early 1900’s: “Although the issues surrounding rape and lynching remained crucial components of her political campaign for female protection and equal rights, she eventually gave up praising southern white men for lynching black men, and instead came to speak again of mob violence as an inadequate means of empowering white womanhood” (Feimster, 187). Over a century later, the idea that one of the most effective ways to empower women and stop sexual assault may be men and women working together without forms of violence is in effect.

            There are obviously a lot of differences between Rebecca Felton’s work and the Men Can Stop Rape campaign, but one fundamental change is the concept of empowering men with the means to protect women (and, as a result of today’s society, other men) rather than supplying women with a means of protecting themselves. Compared to the previous “don’t get raped” rather than “don’t rape” approach to sexual assault many of us are familiar with, this campaign reminds men that they have the ability to help a friend and stop a potentially bad situation. Also, the Men Can Stop Rape campaign encourages communication between both men and women as a means of controlling the situation rather than placing the responsibility on one or the other: “In 2009, Men Can Stop Rape successfully convened over three hundred professionals, advocates, and activists for a two-day national conference. “Men and Women as Allies: A National Conference on the Primary Prevention of Men’s Violence Against Women” was a first for the primary prevention field. High profile media coverage, as well as billboards in Times Square and Las Vegas, has also strengthened Men Can Stop Rape’s visibility and credibility” (http://www.mencanstoprape.org). The issues that Rebecca Felton was dealing with in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, such as gender equality, sexual violence, and protection are all issues that are still being dealt with today. Race issues are still also very prominent, but in relation to sexual assault and the Men Can Stop Rape campaign, they have been pushed aside in favor of cooperation between males and females to end sexual violence. Felton’s work toward ending mob violence against accused rapists, and empowering women to defend themselves has transformed into communication between men in women in order to protect women’s rights.

Example of the current Men Can Stop Rape campaign

BLOG 1: Lynching as Citizenship and the Protection of White Womanhood

I was quite fascinated how women participated in lynching mobs in order to gain a sense of political power and citizenship. Feimster’s Southern Horrors illustrates how although women were viewed as unfeminine when partaking in political matters, they nonetheless stood up to defend themselves as well as empowering their sense of citizenship. “Certainly, in general, the call for white women to participate in their own protection had opened up a space in which the radical and sexual politics of the New South could be used to legitimize and support a new and politically powerful female (Feimster, 140).” As the ideology of lynching provided a passive depiction of women, this transition of participating and stating the violence that happened to them hoped to restructure how women were viewed as being independent protecting themselves. As women were told not to deal with the law, as it was perceived to devalue their sense of womanhood and involved “too much work” for them to do, further protecting white womanhood, this involvement was a giant stride in reclaiming an image of power, both socially and politically. By being physically present and engaging in voicing their opinion of the suspect’s sanctions, women’s presence was a bold move of leaving the domestic scene and entering the public realm of the violent punishments.

 Although women felt like they were establishing independence and promoting a means of self-defense by claiming, “They now feel as if they could walk to loneliest country road at midnight without being molested by a black or white man (Feimster, 149),” today this fear still exists. National myths of white southern womanhood and the black male rapist are not just instances from history’s past, but are still instilled in individuals today. I am curious as to how national myths still hold precedence in how our society understands ways of behaving and acting towards others.

These national myths contribute to the conversation of who should be protected and from whom. By analyzing the Gale Trotter’s speech and a list of rape myths in class, it is evident that white women should be protected from black males. Gale Trotter, a current gun advocate, plays up outdated gender stereotypes hoping for fewer restrictions, showing how she would feel much safer with a gun. This political performance proves how she can suggest white women need protection over others. The ideological myths are present when power relations arise knowing that the same speech could not be given if either a male of either race, or a black woman were to speak. Rape myths including: rape is caused by lower-class, non-white males on predominantly white women, mainly occur at night on the streets, and by strangers, are commonly believed. These myths are only a few out of many that highlight how historical pasts embed themselves in present-day America.

I believe these national myths are significant in how we have constructed our world-views throughout time. Until we can be able to have national discussions that do not continually refer back to these long, upheld myths, we can progress into new ways of understanding social relations and can take appropriate action into understanding rape on a case-by-case basis.  

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Alexander Tecumseh Duffy

Professor Shaw

20^th Century Political Movements

February 10^th, 2013

            Throughout the ugly years of the reconstruction of the post-war South was the genesis of the new Southern woman, after the falling apart of an entire social system based on a newly felonious lifestyle.  Being born parallel to this, and often intermixing, was black womanhood, the intermingling of the two would lead to a progressive shared womanhood.  Both the white and black women of the time realized the contemporary shift and integrating of culture, and forged of this a more unified concept of womanhood.

            The pointed figure in Southern Horrors, Rebecca Felton, was reared to be a plantation mistress, and, accentuated by the book, has no problem hitting her mammy as a child.  This comes crashing down around her, along with the society imprisoning people into roles that allow her world to function for, “Without slave labor, elite white women found it impossible to return to their former lives.” (Feimster, Southern Horrors, 31).  With no sense of normality remaining in their lives, Southern white women had no choice but to cooperate with African-Americans in rebuilding the idea of womanhood. 

            There were three main factors that forced an evening in the mental field of Southern black and white women: poverty, rape, and the law.  These three used to be on the offense against black women in majority; however, the civil war had destroyed any of the barriers between the races.   This sudden feeling of vulnerability that penetrated the mind of even the wealthiest plantation mistress served as a unifying factor between all Southern women at the time.

            The mass poverty suffered struck like ghost, slowly haunting across the landscape unimpeded.  Where there used to stand a clear separation between the women who were forced to work jobs to make ends meet, and those who could enjoy the fruits of slave labor there was now an empty wallet and factory doors as blockage.  The intense loss of social status amongst most white women, starting with poverty, let the rape and condescension from the legal system ensue. 

            Sexual violence towards women was and still is an ever-present threat; in the years before the war it was felt less with white women and entirely passed over with blacks.  However with the social unrest caused by the lack of money in so many people’s pockets, violence followed.  Whether black or white men enacted the violence towards black or white women, the message was clear: women need protection.  Women as a gender begin to feel less comfortable as the racial lines disappear around their problem, and all-of-a-sudden it doesn’t seem to matter too much what color you were. 

            The final issue that forced women to band together as a whole with the recreation of how society defines womanhood was the blind eye their patriarchal culture drew to the issue.  During the war, while rape in itself was not legalized by the Union, if a woman treated a Union officer in an unfit manner then he had the right to treat her as a woman of the night, thus setting an air of rape around the war torn South.  Most of the rape committed by Union soldiers was of black women, however white women suffered from this as well.  In the reconstruction years, the rape of a white woman would be blamed on a black man; instead of making justice injustice is only perpetuated. 

            The early segment of the book covering Ida B. Wells’ experiences with discovering womanhood and the disturbing goings on only influenced her ideas that something was rotten in the state of the South.  Having being brought up in one of the most hectic times for blacks, Wells was not raised to be the domestic goddess that Felton was to be.  Instead, her childhood was filled with the bloody racism of the South and her fathers’ progressive thinking.  Seeing first hand the sexual violence against women that Felton too saw, except from an angle where the law was never in your favor and those in power don’t care about you in the least. 

            The emotions felt not only by Wells, but shared throughout the black community whether it be the black women who were raped by whites, or the black men who were blamed for rape that didn’t involve them and, in a good many cases, never occurred in the first place added to the air of a need for change.  These sentiments coupled with the outrage felt anew by white women gave birth to the movements against rape and lynching which in themselves radically changed the view held on and by women about themselves. 

            The fact that movements sprung up that were led and organized by women both black and white, and that were so powerful to threaten white male hegemony, caused a stir amongst Southern white men.  The fear put into them by the women only transferred power to the women who now saw that they could change the oppressive society around them, thus transforming the idea of womanhood into one on the offense for the first time.

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How have women gained access political power? How does female political power function?

            It is difficult for me to imagine entering the world of American politics. I never wanted to be a politician and I never saw politics as an option for me. I imagine I would be a lot more inclined towards politics if my gender were still prohibited from partaking in it.  Women are no longer exiled from the political sphere and there are many females who hold positions of power. In the contemporary, people are more or less raised for political figure-hood. Female political figures are tools the oppressive system, which can be seen from how women first gained access to political power during the 1800’s.

            Women’s initiation into the world of politics began with the highly influential Rebecca Felton (Feimster, Southern Horrors, 125). She became a figurehead as a supporter of lynching the ‘black rapist’ with the “lynch a thousand a week” address she gave in 1897 (Feimster, Southern Horrors, 126). After her speech, the media quoted and misquoted her as a means to perpetuate support for lynching. Rebecca gained political power even though she was woman because she got on board with a movement that supported white southern male ideologies. Rebecca was a wife of a politician, she had class and respectability on her side, and she happened to been fairly non-offensive to the agenda of the white southern male majority. The dominant power gives power to those it oppresses only when it becomes absolutely necessary in order for them to abet a continuance of their oppression. If women needed a leader, the southern white men would support the least offensive leader they could find who had merit enough. The dominant group does not have to relinquish control as long as they lead the oppressed to believe that they are relinquishing some control.

            You hear about people getting into Ivy League schools based on a legacy clause instead of merit. The legacy clause allows applicants with alumni relatives to have increased chances of acceptance. This is a tool for grooming future powerful people. Access to education, quality education especially, leads to more powerful positions. The dominant forces at bay do not provide access to those they do not think will serve their purposes. The 67^th congress honored Rebecca Felton, a campaigner for lynching, the same year they turned down the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill (Feimster, Southern Horrors, 230). They satisfied white women’s push against social constraints by giving them a figurehead, a role model of a white woman who penetrated the male-dominated field of political power. As a role model, she happened to have views that aligned with white southern men, modeling that women who enter into politics have to agree with the views of the governing group.

            Women of the political sphere today still serve the role as a tool of the dominant group. Throughout history we see “First African American woman elected to senate” and right next to it “only African American woman elected to senate.” “First female Senator of Georgia,” “Only female Senator of Georgia,” “First openly gay woman in senate,” it goes on and on. First interracial president! We’ll see how the next 20 elections go. It seems as though access is granted to certain social groups, but the access is limited to those the system chooses and grooms to represent the oppressed social group as if to say, “See, it isn’t just white men! Your kind is here to!” Access is granted when the oppressor realizes they can’t ignore the problem.

            But I can’t chalk political access as just the device of the oppressor. The oppressor is serving a purpose in providing representation. If there were not a fight against injustice, there would be no reason to subdue it. There has been lasting social change and will continue to be change. As with all change, there are those for it and those against it. When the 67^th congress gave Rebecca Felton an inch, she took a foot; she turned away from anti-lynching and moved onto women’s suffrage (Feimster, Southern Horrors). When people call for change, there is no safe way to subdue them; the action of subduing creates a crack in the system for the change to slip through. There are always those who cannot be subdued, they are the ones who push change further down the crack. When someone who cannot be subdued becomes the tool for subduing it has the opposite effect, it invigorates the movement, creates such a passion in people that history makes a giant leap.

            The first woman gained access to political power because she was too powerful to oppress, but subservient enough to infiltrate the male-dominated world of politics. Her representation as a white female political figure served to subdue the white women who were obedient to the rule of men, while simultaneously invigorating those who were unwilling to let go of the idea of equality and independence. Women in the political sphere represent the whole gender, this representation serves to subdue some women from entering into politics, serves to inspire others to pursue it, and does a mixture of those two things when combined with societal constructions. I'd say I'm subdued from entering the world of politics, and I'm fine with slipping into the cracks.

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Although there are many things that have been eye-opening to me in studying Feimster’s book Southern Horrors, the concept that struck me the most happened way back in chapter 3.  The quote that really got me thinking is on page 65: “No longer willing to accept the double standard that allowed southern white men to abuse black women with impunity, Felton revealed a shift in her ideas about black women’s sexuality and her understanding of who deserved protection in the postwar South” (Feimster, 65).  It took reading these words “double standard” to really throw the reality of the anti-rape movement into relief for me.  In studying slavery as an institution, and the psychology of colonialism that allows humans to assert dominance over “the different” (be it race, nationality, or gender), this double standard is critical.  The perpetrators of any type of slavery must believe that those they are subjugating are truly of lesser humanity than they of the dominant group.  For most of her life, Rebecca Felton fell squarely in this mindset; she remained a white supremacist for (dare I say all) of her public career.  It was striking to me therefore that her psychology allowed her to challenge the double standard upon which the entire institution of slavery in America was based: that black women were deserving of the same level of protection as white women.  To me, this represented an enormous mental shift for Felton, and I began to wonder how it happened.  Why did she now see black women (and poor white women) as equally deserving of protection, whereas before she could not?  And then why, in the late 1890s (chapter 5), does she revert back to her banner of white supremacy at the expense of the aforementioned newfound conviction in defense for all women?

            I don’t know much about psychology, but it is logical to me that shifts in belief are triggered by events.  Southern Horrors detailed an instance in which Felton visited a prison where a young black girl, Addaline Maddox, was being kept in the same cells as “hardened criminals” (Feimster, 64).  This situation sparked her campaign to end convict leasing and for the protection of black female convicts. When viewed in this light, her cause is one of empathy rather than a ideological revolution: she clearly pitied the female convicts who were subjected to a fate worse than death through rape at the hands of their white guards.  If Felton was seeking protection for black female convicts because she felt sorry for them, that would not have struck me at all because it seems only logical that she would feel pity.  But Felton took it further than that.  In seeking to “broaden the definition of protection to include black women and poor white women…[and] demanding protection that did not require dependency on fathers and husbands, and that insisted on women’s ability as well as their right to participate in their own protection”, Feimster asserts that Felton and other “southern white women did not always see the problem of rape in racial terms” (Feimster, 85).

            At first, this meant to me that Feimster was suggesting that Felton and “others like her” had transcended racism and decided that black women were of equal value as white women.  As I read further however, I discovered that Felton’s second shift in philosophy helped to color her psychological workings for me. Chapter 5 reveals that in the 1890s Felton embraced an image makeover from that of defender of all women against rape into the mainstream press icon of a white supremacist lynching supporter.  In August 1897, Felton addressed the annual meeting of the Georgia Agricultural society (Feimster 126).  The larger context in her speech was later ignored by the press; namely that she blamed white men for the problems in southern society, even for forcing black men to commit crimes of “theft, rape, and murder” (Feimster 126). “If white men were not manly enough to clean up their politics and provide poor white women with economic opportunity and the legal protection they so desperately needed, then they would have to continue to lynch…a thousand times a week if necessary” (Feimster 127).  When the media took the “thousand lynchings a week” concept and ran with it, Felton rode out the wave of popularity by essentially jettisoning her earlier philosophy for political gain.  To me, this seems incredibly calculating and logical. It calls into question her original commitment to the cause of protection for black women, and colors my interpretation of her previous campaign.

            Perhaps the fact that Felton is known as a feminist prevented me from seeing the radicalism of her campaign for the protection of southern white womanhood. In her August 1897 speech, her assertions were such an attack on southern white manhood that the press ignored them completely. She was definitely revolutionary in her time for championing feminism in politics. I also believe that while she did align herself with white supremacy, she had the beginnings of a revolution within her own mind regarding the personhood of black women and equality among all women that stemmed from their communal need of protection.  She was very much a product of her time, and contemporary scholars (myself included) would do well to remember that.  The mental shift that she experienced in realizing that black women deserved protection from white men, and subsequently her conviction that white men’s politics were the root of both women’s suffering and black male aggression, represented huge leaps for a woman that was raised as part of the upper class slaveholding planter elite. Although her first mental shift was later supplanted by her lynching advocacy I believe that she truly thought black women and poor women deserved the same respect as white women, and that her commitment to women’s rights may have been strong enough to blur the lines laid out by her subscription to white supremacy after all.

Blog entry 1: Lynching As Protection for Southern White Masculinity

Even though I was originally apprehensive in thinking of the claims that I was going to make for this blog entry, I found the evidence for my claim to be strong. It seems wrong to be pointing fingers at white masculinity, but throughout writing this entry I have come to the conclusion that this is just another way in which white masculinity works for its own protection in an attempt to provide a pure image of itself. I found one of the most shocking aspects of reading Crystal N. Feimster’s Southern Horrors to be her argument that black men were not lynched in order to protect southern white women from rape, but rather in order to protect white masculinity and thus maintain white male dominance.

As Feimster describes early on in her book, “in the postwar years southern white men articulated a political discourse that defined rape as a crime committed by black men against white women” (Feimster, Southern Horrors, 5). In defining rape in these terms, white men had defined who could be a rapist (a black man) and who could be a victim (a white woman). Additionally, Feimster states in her analysis of a newspaper article, “white men hoped to make” the statement that the “lynching of black men would protect white womanhood and keep blacks in their place” (Feimster, Southern Horrors, 77). In constructing black men as rapists, white men used lynching as an excuse for protecting white women while really using lynching as a tool of racial oppression. This makes further sense in consideration to Feimster’s discussion of the beginnings of mob violence, in which she cites “economic competition, not rape” as the cause of lynchings of black men (Feimster, Southern Horrors, 90). Also stating that while white women were reconstructing southern femininity, these same white women held white men “to traditional standards of male chivalry and honor” (Feimster, Southern Horrors, 125), Rebecca Latimer Felton criticized chivalry for maintaining white male dominance and female subordination. Feimster states that Felton criticized the notion of chivalry, claiming that it “had done little to protect women during the war and seemed to be doing even less in the post-Reconstruction period,” while also having “shored up white men’s economic and political power while leaving women dependent and vulnerable to a host of abuses ranging from rape to financial ruin” (Feimster, Southern Horrors, 62 – 63). Felton’s comments, while pertaining to white women, reveal thoughts that while the lynching of black men was advertised as protection for white women against violence from black men, white women were faced with more violence from white men through the notions of traditional white masculinity. In continuing to point its finger at black men, white masculinity was also able to cover its abuses of white women, black women, and black men through myths regarding rape and violence.

Just as white men’s statement of who can be a rapist and who can be a victim, white men were also defining who could not be a rapist and who could not be a victim of rape. Thus, while Feimster uses Ida B. Wells’ Southern Horrors in pointing out that black women were often victims of rape committed by white men (Feimster, Southern Horrors, 91 – 92), this definition excludes black women’s experience of rape by white men, discrediting and silencing black women. Additionally, negative stereotypes regarding black women were created in order to place the blame of white masculine transgressions on black women instead of holding white men accountable. Giving up the idea of a kind, nurturing Mammy in favor of a seductive Jezebel, “southern whites began portraying free black women as savage criminal beasts during reconstruction….Negative images of black womanhood functioned to justify…violence (Feimster, Southern Horrors, 160). Instead of placing the blame for white male violence with white males, white masculinity held black women responsible because of the perceived delinquent characteristics it assigned to them. In defining who is the rapist and who can be raped and thus silencing survivors and misplacing accountability, southern white men have further protected their masculinity. In the tactics of excluding themselves from the social definition of who can be a rapist and silencing their victims by placing responsibility with them through negative stereotypes, the traditional notions of white masculinity are upheld.

With these thoughts in mind, I began to wonder that even though southern white masculinity had used both southern white women and black women as protection, why it was that Felton and the white women involved in the anti-rape movement were able to make these claims while Ida Wells-Barnett and the black women involved with the anti-lynching movement could not? Why could white women speak out against the shortcomings of white masculinity but black women could not? To me, it seems that southern white women still had their white privilege and the protection that came with it. Throughout white masculinity’s definition of rape and the subsequent acts of lynching black men for supposed rapes of white women, white masculinity defined that white women were worth protecting while black women were not. Feimster also hints at an answer to this question, stating that “while the rape of black women by white men still represented an assertion of white men’s racial and sexual power, in the postwar context it served also as both a punishment and threat to black women’s bodily rights as citizens” (Feimster, Southern Horrors, 52). Additionally, Feimster states “even though black women could not rape white women, their lynchings were often portrayed as a means of protecting white womanhood” (Feimster, Southern Horrors, 161). Southern white masculinity did not define black women as worthy of protection, but rather as an additional means to protect white women, and thus did not permit them space and voice in publicly sharing and critiquing their experiences.