Bakker, Feminism, and Slavery

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« Reply #30 on: May 07, 2013, 02:15:54 pm »
Quote from: Madness
That's a very American myth, I think, lockesnow, as much as it has been Westernized, maybe?

Circumstances constraint. That's where our discussion on Feminism & Slavery is going, neh? Agency is socially defined, until death?

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« Reply #31 on: May 07, 2013, 02:15:59 pm »
Quote from: Callan S.
Woops, I missed replying to a post!
Quote from: Madness
Did you read Auriga (Quick Edit) Ajokli's link, Callan? Aside that, in some cases, as good as people were as masters, they simply didn't want to pay former slaves. Or the rights of an emancipated individual were too much for former slaves to contend with - their agency in the world changed so drastically and instantaneously some couldn't adapt and deal with their new social skins (no pun intended).
I read it. But it's like reading someones account of survival after a tornado - it doesn't really give any clue as to whether the storm was man made or natural. So I'm not sure - okay, there can be a 'able to but don't want to' range. But 'don't want to' is often short for 'don't have the enviromental resources to pay for it'. To me it seems to make their emancipation bad in as much as womens equality and entering the work force and lowering wages by doing so is bad. It seems like begruding the actions of health for how they don't conform to the cancer they struggle in.

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Also, Callan... common. You don't get to just play the ambiguity... Look it up. Google Scholar, Donnerstein 1980, and this is the first experiment that comes up. Of course, my study notes don't have the full explanation.
Oh, I do in as much as I get to ask 'why' or that people who make claims are the ones to prove them. If it seems I'm trying to imply some conclusion about it and imply that conclusion is correct, I don't know what I it seems to anyone that I'm apparently implying. But I will try to question it apart in as much as someone submits it. It depends - if I  make a claim about god, then are you to go look up the bible? Depends if that sort of arrangement of claim and research doesn't seem all that great a set up? For myself, not so much.

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Abstract: Examined the effects of aggressive-erotic stimuli on male aggression toward females when 120 male undergraduates were angered or treated in a neutral manner by a male or female confederate. Ss were then shown either a neutral, erotic, or aggressive-erotic film and given an opportunity to aggress against the male or female via the delivery of electric shock. Results indicate that the aggressive-erotic film was effective in increasing aggression overall and that it produced the highest increase in aggression against the female. Even nonangered Ss showed an increase in aggression toward the female after viewing the aggressive-erotic film.
So, the person is given some button and the person who shunned them is on the other end, the scientist giving some BS reason as to how this qualifies as an experiment?

It reminds me of an example mentioned in 'A mind of it's own', where people would turn up the voltage on a test subject, apparently to lethal levels, because the scientist basically okayed it and said they were to.

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« Reply #32 on: May 07, 2013, 02:16:08 pm »
Quote from: Madness
Quote from: Callan
To me it seems to make their emancipation bad in as much as womens equality and entering the work force and lowering wages by doing so is bad.

+1, it seems to highlight it that way.

... Callan, in both cases people weren't being electrocuted...

People want to talk about how Feminism & Race are demonized in SFF. Talk about fucking science...

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« Reply #33 on: May 07, 2013, 02:16:15 pm »
Quote from: Callan S.
Quote from: Madness
... Callan, in both cases people weren't being electrocuted...
I know. I'm implying a potential permissiveness from authority in both cases. Definately in the latter case (particularly as it was a part of the deliberate study) of apparent (but not actual, I know!) lethal voltages, where the scientist gave the dossage the okay.

Though if you want to say after watching violent porn men are more likely to be aggressive if given permission by authority, okay, I'll lean toward that.

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« Reply #34 on: May 07, 2013, 02:16:21 pm »
Quote from: Madness
Well, that's exactly what they were testing for; seems to highlight that it intuitively holds some validity, as well.

Why should people on average succumb to such a bias? Why, when calmly prompted by an authority figure, would an average scoring participant turn the knob to lethal voltages, especially when correlated by a gradient of terror, ultimately leading to no sound, in a closed room beside them?

I'm not really going to bend on a case study, Callan. I'm also never sure you aren't being contrarian - not a fault but you tend to prominently engage, even when communication seems clear.

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« Reply #35 on: May 07, 2013, 02:16:27 pm »
Quote from: Callan S.
Well, why do we follow the as yet mostly implicit lines of authority in this forum? Our world is shot through wil iron rods of authority. All of which have complex repurcussions for failing to meet them - so much so they warrant consideration of breaking as much as one might casually consider leaping over the edge of a building, just by standing near it. So - we do so because big sticks line our path on either side?

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even when communication seems clear.
On other forums I'd expect this - but hasn't that overly tall Canadian made clear it's precisely when you think things are clear that you can be fooling yourself? You know the lesson, yet here you are at it's scenario?

Yes, contrarians exist. Yes, you don't want to be ruffled by their essentially nihilistic screw over. I get that. And yes, I accept I'll look like one. I only ask that people treat it as a guess that I am being one, not that they KNOW I am. Except I guess people have trouble sanctioning others on a guess - they like to know the other persons a bad guy, cause otherwise they feel they become the bad guy on a failed guess. Depends how bad the sanction is though - on some of the lesser ones (usually the more emperical ones), I wouldn't think the persons a bad guy, even though their guess was wrong and sanction was missplaced. Were all working from guesses so some room for forgiving a guess has to be given, otherwise how the heck can anyone deal with things even a little without eventually by chance becoming a bad guy? Never mind if I do happen to just rave and cause a ruckus, with no practical benefit for anyone from it at all, which is entirely possible and a problem (though the exact defintion of rave and ruckus are pretty much in the eye of the beholder).

Anyway, science/case studies have been proven incorrect before. That Schwitzgebel guy certainly questions the moral conclusions of some of them as well.

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« Reply #36 on: May 07, 2013, 02:16:34 pm »
Quote from: Ajokli
Quote from: Callan S.
Heya Madness,
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Thanks for that link, Ajokli. I'd hazard this strays into Bakker's argument, regardless. Immediate emancipation of the slaves marginalized those freed even more than slavery, in some instances.
I'd like to go into more detail - why didn't the freed slaves simply continue to work on the farms they were previously on (never mind how clear that makes wage slavery appear, for now)?

They couldn't afford them?

But that's an environmental/resource issue (well, I'll assume money at that point is somewhat a reflection of natural food resources to spare)? Seems unfair to blame the emancipation?

Depending on the situation, some slaves actually would elect to stay on their former masters' estate as freedmen if the could afford it. I'm remembering that nearly all of (Confederacy's VP) Alexander Stephens' former slaves decided to stay on.

Options weren't exactly numerous for them, either in the North or the South. If they were brutal assholes, freedmen would try their luck elsewhere say, for instance, at a kinder plantation owner nearby that was known to them as decent.

While I wouldn't completely place blame on forceful emancipation for the blacks' ensuing marginalization, I would say it certainly didn't help matters that it came by a war that killed a quarter of the white male population of the South and left much of it in ruins.

By switching to emancipation as well as Unification as the reason for the war, it isn't hard to imagine blacks would be the whites' scapegoat for the defeat. Not unlike Jews had been in Germany after WW1.

That is why I believe that emancipation by force actually eroded the best chance to achieve political and social (which is still off) equality for an ungodly amount of time.

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« Reply #37 on: May 07, 2013, 02:16:44 pm »
Quote from: Centurion
Oh man...Reconstruction was a brutal crap-storm of epic proportions, and it would be impossible to do it justice with a quick summary.  They teach entire college courses on this nightmare.  In short, freed slaves faced a meat-grinder of problems following the Civil War, and many of them were still basically slaves in everything but name.  You can't legislate tolerance, and pretty much all white Americans were some flavor of racist at this time.  That, and people wanted revenge, all kinds of revenge, any kind of revenge, and there was plenty of blame and retribution to go around (and plenty of political opportunity too).

Ultimately, these freed slaves were people, often uneducated and with few marketable skills beyond basic farming, and they had to do whatever was necessary to survive in an extremely hostile world.  There were slaves who stayed with their old masters for a variety of reasons (they thought it was their duty, they didn't know anything else, the world was a frightening place where you could get lynched, etc.).  They had to deal with poor whites who they were now directly competing with for a basic livelihood, a white elite in the South with strong connections to government and a powerful interest in keeping blacks oppressed, a white population in the North with no real love for blacks where the jobs they could get were often wage-slave positions, and a political system which initially supported them (quite successfully at first) before abandoning them to the metaphorical wolves.

Many slaves chose to continue working the same land (or land in the same area) because they didn't know how to do anything else and the prospect of going North was too daunting and/or expensive.  This became share-cropping, and it was a whole new world of suffering.  It was certainly not slavery, there were plenty of white share-croppers, but it was often only a little bit better.

For me, the study of Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction South is a study in corruption, pain, failure, and ambition driven by a new breed of aristocracy in the South and fueled by a new kind of slave, the kind you have to pretend to pay.  It's fascinating in the same way we slow down to watch a particularly bad traffic collision on the side of the road.

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« Reply #38 on: May 07, 2013, 02:16:51 pm »
Quote from: Callan S.
Ajokli, What is the other way to have emancipation? Condone slavery for however many years until you achieve emancipation by...some other means?

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« Reply #39 on: May 07, 2013, 02:16:57 pm »
Quote from: Centurion
I'm not trying to speak for anyone, but some people are of the opinion that slavery was already on the way out in the American South.  The theory is that if we had managed to hold off on the Civil War for another couple of decades the slaves would have been freed by the states and blacks would have been more easily accepted by white society.  Of course, this ignores the fact that the Cotton gin, patented near the turn of the century, opened up a vast new world of financial opportunity for Southern planters.  This aristocracy of the cotton industry was made up of some of the wealthiest people on the planet, and I personally find it hard to believes that they would have simply given up the means to their fortunes.

Furthermore, you could make an argument that forceful emancipation initially had some success.  Obviously, the new laws were not going to change how people felt about the newly freed blacks, but when the federal government finally did get seriously involved under the Radical Republicans and especially Grant it was able to stamp out the original Ku Klux Klan while the Freedmen's Bureau seems to have done significant good for blacks in the South. 

Then we got Birth of a Nation endorsed by the fabulous Woodrow Wilson.

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« Reply #40 on: May 07, 2013, 02:19:01 pm »
Quote from: Ajokli
Quote from: Callan S.
Ajokli, What is the other way to have emancipation? Condone slavery for however many years until you achieve emancipation by...some other means?

Gradual emancipation much like Brazil. Children of slaves freed, followed by those reaching the age of 60. Most importantly, compensation paid for by all participant parties to their former owners.

It was a huge rubbing point that slave owners in the South were to pay to end a system that also made the Northeast extremely rich, both in the Slave Trade and in industries such as textile manufacturing. Couple that with the Tariff of 1828 and, from their point of view, it was a lose-lose situation.

Unlike their Northern colleagues, Southern slave owners did not have the option to 'emancipate' their slaves by selling them off.

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« Reply #41 on: May 07, 2013, 02:19:09 pm »
Quote from: Ajokli
Quote from: Centurion
I'm not trying to speak for anyone, but some people are of the opinion that slavery was already on the way out in the American South.  The theory is that if we had managed to hold off on the Civil War for another couple of decades the slaves would have been freed by the states and blacks would have been more easily accepted by white society.  Of course, this ignores the fact that the Cotton gin, patented near the turn of the century, opened up a vast new world of financial opportunity for Southern planters.  This aristocracy of the cotton industry was made up of some of the wealthiest people on the planet, and I personally find it hard to believes that they would have simply given up the means to their fortunes.

Furthermore, you could make an argument that forceful emancipation initially had some success.  Obviously, the new laws were not going to change how people felt about the newly freed blacks, but when the federal government finally did get seriously involved under the Radical Republicans and especially Grant it was able to stamp out the original Ku Klux Klan while the Freedmen's Bureau seems to have done significant good for blacks in the South. 

Then we got Birth of a Nation endorsed by the fabulous Woodrow Wilson.


I'd contend that Grant had given up that it was ever going to work. I mean, he was looking into annexing the Dominican Republican in order to deport 4 million blacks to Santo Domingo.

And the Radical Republicans, don't get me started.  ;)

It may not have ended until the 1890's, but we can see in hindsight that slavery was definitely on its way out. And the Southern aristocrat's financial power vs that of his Northern competitor was laughably large by 1860.

One of the largest manufacturers of the cotton gin during the antebellum  was William Ellison, a freedman in South Carolina owning around 60 slaves. Ironic? Maybe.

/BTW, I'm not a southerner, just am obsessed with 19th century America

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« Reply #42 on: May 07, 2013, 02:19:15 pm »
Quote from: Ajokli
Quote from: Centurion
Snip

Well said. There's an  documentary that blew the roof on the sugar industry about 50 years ago where a overseer was asked about the daily life of his workers. And he replied something like "The only difference between back then and now is that we have to pay them."

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« Reply #43 on: May 07, 2013, 02:19:22 pm »
Quote from: Bakker User
Speaking of slave loyalty to masters or masters' political institutions (though this is partially subverted in PoN), it is well-known that several thousand blacks fought on the Confederate side, sometimes even as part of entire all-black militias.

See, Javreh.

Just look up "negro sharpshooter" on a search engine.

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Among the captured prisoners, amounting in all to 63, are 5 black men; two were fully armed and equipped, as REBEL SHARPSHOOTERS. They had the very best pattern of rifle, "neutral" make, and are represented by the "trash" as unerring shots. The other three were at work in the trenches. One of these sable rebels is represented to be a reb at heart; he is a large owner of chattels himself, and does not seem to exhibit any of that humble or cowering mien, to indicate that he thinks himself inferior to the "Great Jeff" himself. He holds himself aloof from the other "misguided brethren,'' the same as my Lord of the olden time did from his vassals. There may be many more such men as that in the South;

Quote from: Ajokli
By switching to emancipation as well as Unification as the reason for the war, it isn't hard to imagine blacks would be the whites' scapegoat for the defeat. Not unlike Jews had been in Germany after WW1.

Turtledove.  :P

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« Reply #44 on: May 07, 2013, 02:19:28 pm »
Quote from: Ajokli
Quote from: Bakker User
Turtledove.  :P

Oh God I do sound like him!...I tried reading that series but gave up. That writing....