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.The penis became a tool and weapon for white malesexual gratification and socioeconomic advancement.Such deviceallowed owners and overseers to maintain power and control overenslaved women s bodies, and the slave community at-large.Vaginal Incarceration: The Objectification ofEnslaved Women as VaginaThe plantation became a location of social annihilation, sexual tyr-anny, and sexual imprisonment in that white men treated enslavedAfrican women as the enemy and operated as though they were atwar with their bodies.Jacobs experienced this warlike-torture andimprisonment when she lamented,I was compelled to live under the same roof with him where I saw aman forty years my senior daily violating the most sacred command-ments of nature.He told me I was his property; that I must be subject tohis will in all things.My soul revolted against the mean tyranny.Nomatter whether the slave girl be as black as ebony or as fair as hismistress.In either case, there is no shadow of law to protect her from Enslaved Women and Sexual Violence 73insult, from violence, or even from death; all these are inflicted byfiends who bear the shape of men.3The white man s use of the penis or phallus as, according to Simonede Beauvoir, a tool of domination or as, according to Sigmund Freud,a weapon of preemptive aggression and sexual proclivity for his ownpersonal and socioeconomic interests was domestic terrorism.Vaginalincarceration was first and foremost constituted by the objectifica-tion of the enslaved woman as vagina.Such objectification becameanother means by which owners and overseers sought to breakthrough enslaved women s resistance in order to break them downand reduce them to an animal-like status.Once the black woman was reduced to a vagina, in the eyes of hermaster she was an object a reproduction tool or fantasy fulfillmentfor sexual appeasement and breeding.She ceased being human anintelligent self-governing woman of respectability, dreams, and leg-acies and became a sexualized commodity; an exotic other held incaptivity.No longer valued for who she was, but rather by what sheproduced, and yet, in most cases, the offspring and harvest she pro-duced became more valuable than her.The reducing and signifying of enslaved women as vagina thingi-fied them, making them useful for pleasure, play, labor, and repro-duction.Such reduction and signification transformed them fromfreeborn women to chattel property, concubines, and mules.It trans-formed them from matriarchs to plantation mammies, and industriousmarket women and mothers to prostitutes and breeders.It redefinedand labeled them as highly sexed Jezebels, and tragic mulatto servantsand Mammies.How slavers viewed enslaved women was central tohow they acted upon them.The perception and thingifying of African women as vaginahappened the moment Europeans arrived on the African continent.Upon arriving, Europeans saw Africa and its peoples as a tropicalzone.Their puritan mindset had difficulty apprehending Africancultural traditions, religious rituals, and more importantly, Africanwomen s agency.African women were unlike European women whomEuropean men had socialized into Victorian types cultivated womenwith reserved emotion and masked sexuality.From the European per-spective, Victorian women were virtuous, discreet, and circumspectwhereas African women were uncivilized, exotic, and base.Victorianwomen s bodies were pure unadorned temples not meant for pleasur-able sex but childbearing.The notion of bejeweled and half-clothed 74 Enslaved Women and the Art of ResistanceAfrican women expressing some sense of sensuality resulted inEuropeans labeling them as primitive and irreligious, promiscuous,and untamed.Slave trader Willem Bosman, for example, during histravels to Africa to purchase slaves, described in his journals Africanwomen as fiery and warm and so much hotter than the men. 4Such stereotypes and perceptions became even more prevalent onceAfrican women were transplanted to New World America.Formerslave owner President Thomas Jefferson later claimed that even apeswhen mating preferred the black woman over those of his ownspecies. 5 Europeans concluded that African women were uncivilizedwomen governed almost entirely by their libidos, and thereforeunworthy of the dignity and respect preserved for European women.6One former enslaved woman confirmed such sentiments when sherecalled that whenever white folks had a baby born, den all de old[slave] folks had to come th ough the room, and the master would beover hind the bed, and he d say, Here s a new little mistress or masteryou got to work for. You had to say, Yessuh, Master, and bow reallow, or the overseer would crack you. Them was slavery days, dogdays. 7 Harriet Jacobs also identifies her master s perception androle of negro women coupled with his own sense of entitlement.Jacobs wrote:Sometimes my persecutor would ask me whether I would like to besold.I told him I would rather be sold to anybody than to lead sucha life as I did.On such occasions he would assume the air of a veryinjured individual, and reproach me for my ingratitude. Did I nottake you into the house, and make you the companion of my ownchildren.Have I ever treated you like a negro? I have never allowedyou to be punished, not even to please your mistress.And this is therecompense I get, you ungrateful girl! 8Ironically, European slavers were both repelled and intrigued byAfrican women s presence.They saw the enslavement and taming ofAfrican women as their salvific duty.Yet, slavers desire to incarcerateto tame, was equally matched by their urge to unleash their inhibi-tions.They sought to harness African women s primordial energy fortheir own inhuman desires.As Alexander Falconbridge, a slave ship ssurgeon described, On board some ships, the common sailors areallowed to have intercourse with African women.The officers arepermitted to indulge their passions with them at pleasure, and some-times are guilty of such brutal excesses as disgrace human nature. 9Thomas Jefferson, in his slaveholders journal, Notes on Virginia Enslaved Women and Sexual Violence 75wrote, the whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetualexercise of the most boisterous passions. 10The paradox of slavers repulsion toward and desire for Africanwomen was most evident in their exploitation of the female houseservant.They demeaned her yet wanted her.Jacobs along with otherhouse servants experienced the brunt of this paradox on a daily basis.Jacob wrote:Everywhere the years bring to all enough sin and sorrow.Even thelittle child.before she is twelve years.will learn to tremble whenshe hears her master s footfall.She will be compelled to realize that sheis no longer a child.If God has bestowed beauty upon her, it will proveher greatest curse.That which commands admiration in the whitewoman only hastens the degradation of the female slave
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