Presupposing Patriarchy: History as Terrorism

When we flatten the past we fail the future

CW - This essay discusses heavy themes throughout, including: enslavement, sexual assault, politically motivated assault, infanticide, and racism. I ask that you please read with care and consideration.

Self-Actualization does not Belong to White Women

Harriet Jacobs posing with students at the Jacobs Free School, she is marked with an X. Photo via Stuart A. Rose Library, Emory University.

For seven stretching years Harriet Jacobs watched her children through a hole she had bore in the wood of her crawlspace sanctuary. Scarcely enough room to roll without a shoulder meeting resistance from a wall too thin to protect against the harsh environs beyond, Harriet endured this excruciating existence to ensure the safety of her children. So stifling was this shelter she would later reflect that even the mosquitoes were wise enough to avoid the stagnant air that endlessly enveloped her during the long, hot summer months of humid North Carolina—a small blessing to be sure.¹

For seven severe years Harriet “longed to draw in a plentiful draught of fresh air.” She wished to ‘stretch her cramped limbs,’ to ‘stand erect,’ to feel the life of ‘earth under her feet.’ She ached for human touch from those she loved and found but small relief at the cooling effect the summer thunderstorms had upon the wood beneath her—those same storms would soon leave Harriet chilled to the bone, yearning for the arrival of the autumn morning sun.² Yet however inhumane the conditions, however much her body and mind protested the self-imposed imprisonment, this harsh reality far exceeded that of the one Harriet had been forced to experience for the seven years prior to her voluntary confinement.³

Upon entering her fifteenth year in 1828—“a sad epoch in the life of a slave girl”—Harriet’s enslaver began to make sexual advances towards her.⁴ First in the form of whispering foul intentions, which Harriet tried to treat with ‘indifference or contempt,’ physically blocking him with her body when possible.⁵ Then all too quickly the whispers ceased and the bodily conquest and domination began. All too quickly sexual abuse became Harriet Jacobs reoccurring reality.

Of the experience, Harriet wrote:

“I was compelled to live under the same roof with him-where I saw a man forty years my senior daily violating the most sacred commandments of nature. He told me I was his property; that I must be subject to his will in all things. My soul revolted against the mean tyranny. But where could I turn for protection?”⁶

Harriet was doubly burdened when, instead of being met with empathy and protection from a shared understanding of this perversive form of patriarchal power, her mistress chose instead to treat such victims with jealousy and rage—an intentional decision to make an incomprehensibly challenging life all the more difficult. This inescapable assault from those placed in positions of power through institutionally enforced cultural norms had not been Harriet’s burden alone to bear “specific to the time between the colonial era through westward expansion.”⁷

Harriet Jacobs later in life; a free woman. Photo taken by the Gilbert Studios in Washington DC. Photo via WikiCommons.

Years later under threat of losing her children to the bonds of enslavement, Harriet would flee her enslaver’s home and find safety first within the homes of friends—both Black and white—and then within the aforementioned stifling crawlspace.⁸ It would be in the confines of that space where she would overhear another enslaved woman muttering to herself as she unknowingly walked within earshot of her hidden sister.

This woman, Harriet would later learn, had likewise been a victim of her enslaver’s advances, having been forced to bear and bore her rapist’s child.⁹ When the woman’s mistress had laid eyes on the face of the babe that so strikingly mirrored that of her own husband’s, she cast both mother and child to the streets in an act of white supremacy disguised as jealous rage and the two were sold south the very next day.¹⁰ A hidden Harriet who overheard the enslaved woman mutter “it’s his own, and he can kill it if he will,” had understandably become awash with gratitude for her own horrendous circumstances within that out-of-reach crawlspace.¹¹

In 1861 “Harriet Jacobs published [a] remarkable account of one black female slave’s escape to freedom. Using the pseudonym Linda Brent to protect the identities of those dear to her, she penned what was in fact her own story: an eyewitness account of the dehumanizing process by which human beings are reduced to mere personal property, focusing particularly on the sexual and moral ramifications for its female victims.”¹² Through penning the narrative of her life and confronting head-on the stark contrast between 19th century cultural moors and the lived reality of enslavement, Harriet hoped to galvanize free white women into action against the institution itself by connecting to the shared burden of gender under patriarchy.¹³

‘A Man of his Time’

Newspaper ad written by Harriet’s enslaver. Image via PBS.

As Harriet hid, her enslaver littered the town with runaway notices offering $100 for her capture and return.¹⁴ Notices meant to reinforce and reaffirm the narrative of the dominator while intentionally crafting the story of the voiceless. Her ‘corpulent habit,’ and ‘variety of very fine clothes;’ her ability to be ‘tricked out in gay and fashionable finery’ alongside the notion that she had fled ‘without any known cause or provocation’ construct an image of a well-cared for member of the household unjustly neglecting duties and hospitality.¹⁵ The threat of violence; The language of domination; The weaponization of institutions which round out the notice do nothing to diminish the victim-status of the enslaver, entirely overlooked and immediately excused by the presupposition of white supremacist patriarchy within the dominant culture.

Of the incident, Harriet observed:

"With all my detestation of Dr. [Norcom], I could hardly wish him a worse punishment, either in this world or that which is to come, than to suffer what I suffered in one single summer. Yet the laws allowed him to be out in the free air, while I, guiltless of crime, was pent up here, as the only means of avoiding the cruelties the laws allowed him to inflict upon me!"¹⁶

A snippet from Early history of the North Carolina Medical Society by John Wesley Long, 1859-1926.

A man lauded for his ‘tactus eruditus’—his skilled touch—and regarded as both ‘kind and courteous’, Harriet’s enslaver is recalled in ways afforded to the dominant culture; to the dominant narrator of history; to the dominator.¹⁷ His behaviors, his beliefs, his motivations are all characteristic of the prevailing social culture within the southern United States during the 19th century. A culture maintained through violence and intimidation; A culture so ostentatiously oppressive that evidence of its enforcement was willingly entered into the historical narrative by the abuser himself; A culture intentionally curated to conflate brutally enforced hierarchy with “a slavish notion of inferiority” on behalf of those forcefully deprived freedom of action.¹⁸

Harriet’s enslaver was a man of his time. As the ‘thought daughter’ within

ayan artan

’s piece would likely agree:

“that’s how everyone wrote about black people back then.”¹⁹

—His was a culture of assumed acquiescence.

We utilize such rhetoric to explain the moral failings of those past. Words that act as a time-line fulcrum to lean one’s own modern moral positioning as far from the subject matter as possible while unconsciously perpetuating the same Aristotelian desire to excuse the dehumanizing hierarchy implicit within patriarchy.²⁰ Such words are meant as a form of absolution not ours to give.

Aristotle’s argument presupposes patriarchy into the conditions of human nature while the thought-daughter presupposes white supremacy into that same millennia-old articulation of human experience. Both exquisitely exemplify how historiography within the construct of imposed patriarchy flattens human experience to make indistinguishable the performance of patriarchy from the human condition. Implicit within such arguments, such rhetoric, is:

A void of opposing views; an unimaginable alternate axis of reality.

A void of acknowledging the intentionality behind the brutality.

A void of voices such as Harriet Jacobs’.

‘Intimidation in the pursuit of political aims’

Engraving of Charles Sumner. Image via The Library Company of Philadelphia.

The very publisher which intended to print the first copies of Harriet’s account—becoming unable to due so for filing bankruptcy—had prior published the words of Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner.²¹ His speech, The Barbarism of Slavery, was to build upon an earlier argument he’d hailed “The Crime Against Kansas.” Both were ‘for the admission of Kansas as a free state’ and the abolishment of enslavement.²²

On May 19, 1856, in chambers christened the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body, Sumner was required to present a reasoned discourse as to why his fellow man should be granted personhood; Why his fellow man should be considered under terms of humanity.²³ He believed it a necessity that enslavement be discussed in the plainest language, with the utmost urgency:

“Not indirectly, timidly, and sparingly, but directly, openly, and thoroughly. It must be exhibited as it is; alike in its influence and in its animating character, so that not only its outside, but its inside, may be seen. This is no time for soft words or excuses. All such are out of place. They may turn away wrath; but what is the wrath of man? This is no time to abandon any advantage in the argument. Senators sometimes announce that they resist Slavery on political grounds only, and remind us that they say nothing of the moral question. This is wrong. Slavery must be resisted not only on political grounds, but on all other grounds, whether social, economical, or moral.”²⁴

Lydia Maria Child, Harriet’s editor, inscribed the above to Charles Sumner within a copy of Harriet’s book she’d sent to him. Image via Hollis Library Harvard.

Sumner’s 112-page attempt to disrupt the hegemony of white supremacist power included admonishment of the anti-intellectualism held by some within the chamber's confines alongside strong criticism of others for their (miss) utilization of medieval ideals.²⁵ Naming chivalry as ‘the swagger of a bully,’ Sumner pointedly chastised a South Carolina senator for his part in poisoning Kansas with the ‘brutality and vulgarity’ necessitated by the enforced conditions of enslavement; of thinking your fellow man nothing but property.²⁶ Sumner then proceeded down a more personal and dramatic line of attack, boldly declaring that the absent administrator of law had taken a “mistress” while being a self-declared gallant man.

Amidst gasps of performed modesty from men who owned other humans, Sumner continued on:

“who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight—I mean the harlot, Slavery.”²⁷

Two days later as the senate adjourned for the day a house of representatives member entered the chambers moving quickly. As Sumner distractedly gathered himself the quick moving man flipped his metal-topped cane and slammed it into the unsuspecting man’s head. Again and again. Bludgeon after bludgeon. A room full of witnesses and one man was able to savagely beat another unconscious—the ‘World’s Greatest Deliberative Body.’ “Bleeding profusely, Sumner was carried away. Brooks walked calmly out of the chamber without being detained by the stunned onlookers. Overnight, both men became heroes in their respective regions.”²⁸

The caning of Charles Sumner. Image via NY Public Library.

When we presuppose male supremacy into the human experience, we make domination a condition of development. When we presuppose male supremacy into the institutions responsible for governing and shaping society, we disposes all but the dominant group authorial access to their own narratives: minimized are the intentional practices of enforced patriarchy; assumed are the internalizations of subordination by those most disadvantaged by the dictated hierarchy. Incidents such as the assault of senator Sumner are positioned as events in a vacuum as opposed to systemic acts of terrorism designed to protect the dominant culture and the distribution of power and resources.

Presupposing Patriarchy is Historical Terrorism

Christine de Pizan presents her book to Margaret of Burgundy. An illustration from The Treasure of the City of Ladies. Paris BN fr. 1177, folio 114 c. 1475.

History as a field of study has hardly been a neutral presenter of the past, but a ‘bastion of misogyny’; a curated syllabus conceptualizing male supremacy at an institutional level.²⁹ ‘The cloistered chambers of academia’ exist, in essence, to corroborate the systemic anti-feminist prejudice perpetuated by the dominant group in order to maintain control.³⁰ The presupposition of the anti-feminine into the conditions of humanity which line the pages of ancient translated texts has long been used as evidence for women’s continued oppression.

But as Christine de Pizan pointed out in 1399:

“Women did not make the books and that they did not put in them the things that we read there against women and their morals… But if women had written the books, I know in truth that the facts would be different, for they know well that they have been wrongly condemned and that the shares have not been divided equitably; the strong ones take the biggest portion and he who slices the pieces keeps the best for himself…”³¹

Two thousand years prior to Ovid’s misogynistic articulations—‘a girl’s word is lighter than leaves in autumn’; ‘her chastity consists in not having been asked’—and Galen’s dogmatic ‘woman is less perfect’, Enheduanna had been placed in a position of power and influence by her imperialist father.³² In hopes to further his dominion, Enheduanna’s father charged her with converting the masses and the rituals she performed were “instrumental in creating the new power structure by reconciling the city-states and the wider realm.”³³

Enheduanna is the figure in the center with the more elaborate clothing and headpiece, prominent in her size, positioning, and detail. The "Disk of Enheduanna" via University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

Born circa 2,300 BCE, Enheduanna’s social and political reality was one which would convert and compound under feminine influence. Her verses would be intentionally duplicated and preserved; Her name remaining ingrained in the rhythm of her words—“Let me, Enheduanna, pray to her,”—unyielding to the suppression of her sex which is said to have preexisted her position.³⁴ The first to document historically significant moments through poem and emotive language, Enheduanna was more than a writer. She was a historian, a chronicler, a politician, an authority figure: A self-authorized human.³⁵

Though members of oppressed groups experience internalized inferiority, to assume acquiescence and unwavering assimilation to such subjugation as inherent to the human condition is to allow the terrorism of patriarchal history to become fully actualized. A history that must “be viewed as factual [and] not constructed” is a history without context, without concession, allowing only a single frame of reference; of reality, and is quite simply ahistorical.³⁶ To maintain that there is but one authoritative voice presiding over the knowledge-validation process is to assert superior/inferior intellectual abilities between certain communities of humans and serves only to disposes the most disadvantaged from their own stories.³⁷

Historical development continues regardless if we choose to chronicle it or not. The study of history, however, will always be dependent upon literacy, interpretation, and the ability to posses an authoritative posturing within the receiving culture.³⁸ The systemic disadvantaging of women over thousands of years and an abundance of anti-feminine liturgy within the historiography is evidence—written into the account by the abusers themselves—of the ruling class seeking to maintain control through intimidation, manipulation, and domination. Presupposing (white supremacist- imperialistic- capitalistic-) patriarchy into the narratives of the past is historical terrorism—an archetype emanating from the ancient—yet it is still employed today to achieve the very same hierarchical adherence.³⁹

Writer’s note: A follow up essay written by the incomparable

Swarnali Mukherjee

will be published here within the next few weeks! Please be on the lookout, as you’ll not want to miss Swarnali’s thoughtful reflections.

A promise to my readers: AI will never be utilized within any step of my work. Thank you Beth Spencer at the IntrovertedDrawingClub for creating this!

Further Reading:

reading sylvia plath doesn’t make you radical babes.

When Great Men Leave Behind Violent Legacies

1. Jacobs, Harriet A. (Harriet Ann), 1813-1897. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. (Dover Thrift Editions, 2001.)

Please don’t just read my reproduction of Harriet’s experience, her words are so incredibly powerful. The way she furthers her own thesis is so necessary to witness in its entirety.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

7. I utilize this obtuse language on purpose to further the point of the essay. This language is the 5th grade instruction for African American History in Florida. Tell me - what were Black folks doing in the US during the time between the colonial era through the westward expansion? They were enslaved! They won’t even name it! This is terrorism of History.

https://www.fldoe.org/core/fileparse.php/20753/urlt/11-3.pdf

https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/celiaproject/

https://eji.org/news/historical-marker-recognizing-lynchings-dedicated-in-washington-county-arkansas/

8. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2923.html#:~:text=In%20June%20of%201835%2C%20after,long%20and%20seven%20feet%20wide.

9. Though it would not have been considered rape by legal definitions of the time, we are calling it what it was.

10. Jacobs, Harriet A. (Harriet Ann), 1813-1897. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. (Dover Thrift Editions, 2001.)

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid.

14. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h1541.html

15. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h1541.html

16. Jacobs, Harriet A. (Harriet Ann), 1813-1897. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. (Dover Thrift Editions, 2001.)

17. Long, John Wesley, 1859-1926. Early history of the North Carolina Medical Society; Wilcox, Benson R., donor; Medical Society of the State of North Carolina. Meeting (64th : 1917 : Asheville, N.C.)

18. A turn of phrase utilized by the self-actualized Jane Eyre as conceived by Charlotte Bronte
Brontë, C., & Davies, S. Jane Eyre. (Penguin Books. 2006)

19. https://substack.com/@ayanartan/p-164191137

20. “And indeed the use made of slaves and of tame animals is equally not very different; for both with their bodies minister to the needs of life. … It is clear, then, that some men are by nature free, and others slaves, and that for these latter slavery is both expedient and right.”

Aristotle, Politica (tr. Benjamin Jowett), in W.D. Ross (ed.), The Works of Aristotle (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921)

Within The Creation of Feminist Consciousness, Gerda Lerner argues that implicit within Aristotle’s positioning is that ‘natural’ state of women’s inferiority: “The subordination of women is assumed as a given, likened to a natural condition.”

21. https://books.google.com/books?id=Z-dAAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

22. https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/The_Crime_Against_Kansas.htm

23. https://www.senate.gov/reference/resources/pdf/Traditions.pdf

24. https://books.google.com/books?id=Z-dAAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

25. https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/The_Caning_of_Senator_Charles_Sumner.htm

26. https://books.google.com/books?id=Z-dAAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

27. https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/The_Crime_Against_Kansas.htm

28. https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/The_Caning_of_Senator_Charles_Sumner.htm

29. Lerner, Gerda. The Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to Eighteen-Seventy. (New York, Oxford University Press, 1993.)

30. I explore this within:

Selling Womanhood: The Medieval Conceptualization, Capitalization, and Concealment of Women's Bodies

31. Hult, David F., et al. Debate of the Romance of the Rose. (University of Chicago Press, 2010.)

32. Respectively, Amores II. Amores I. On the Usefulness of the parts of the body.

33. https://archaeology.org/issues/november-december-2022/features/akkadians-enheduanna-poet-politician/

34. The same can not be said for Christine de Pizan whose name would be written out of The Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry because a 16th century translator/transcriber could not believe a woman wrote one of the most popular war manuals.

Enheduanna quote pulled from: Barnstone, Aliki. and Willis Barnstone. A Book of Women Poets From Antiquity to Now. Rev. ed. (Schocken Books, 1992.)

35. https://www.harvardreview.org/book-review/enheduana-the-complete-poems-of-the-worlds-first-author/

36. The introductory language found within:

https://www.fldoe.org/core/fileparse.php/20753/urlt/11-3.pdf

37. Patricia Hill Collins gets into this within:

Collins, Patricia Hill. “The Social Construction of Black Feminist Thought.” Signs, vol. 14, no. 4, 1989, pp. 745–73. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3174683.

38. I’m building on an argument originally posited by: Lerner, Gerda. The Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to Eighteen-Seventy. (New York, Oxford University Press, 1993.)

39. https://www.fldoe.org/core/fileparse.php/20753/urlt/11-3.pdf