re: #86 freetoken

Well, I don’t know the teacher and whether they were just being a dick or not. But I think it is wrong to simply assume that Thomas Jefferson raped Sally Hemmings, unless you want to believe that all sex is rape.

More fundamental in this case is the privileged male having a mistress. This would not be unusual, and more the case in 18th century for the elite, than rape. Now, I think it is right to point out that the male-mistress relationship is so one-sided in power that we can argue that it is immoral.

I’m not claiming that TJ didn’t rape his slaves, but if one is going to assert anything like that I too would ask for proof. As I would for any historical claim.

Even though it is undoubtedly true that many slave owners raped their slaves, not all of them did. In the case of TJ, I think the more interesting historical question to ask is whether Sally Hemmings started out a slave but ended up as a mistress.

Is one party incapable of giving legal consent? If no, then rape.