a 2012 survey<\/span><\/a>, 6.1 percent of active duty military women reported they had experienced \u201cunwanted sexual contact\u201d in the past year. Of these, 67 percent did not report the incident.]<\/em><\/span><\/p>\nYou mention a lot of difficulties with determining what happened during the Civil War in particular\u2014for example, many of the Confederate records were destroyed. How do you go about extrapolating what may have happened that was not reported?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nUnfortunately, because we don\u2019t have all the records, we don\u2019t really know. But when I uncovered several hundred cases [of rape], I think that speaks loudly because very few women would have come forward. Very few women come forward during peacetime; it\u2019s even fewer that come forward during wartime, so we know that this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what\u2019s being reported.<\/span><\/p>\n“If he was holding a gun to her head and <\/strong><\/span><\/aside>\nshe was scared to death, that was <\/strong><\/span><\/aside>\nstill considered\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>that she had given her consent.”<\/strong><\/span><\/aside>\n<\/aside>\n <\/p>\n
to<\/em>. During times of battle, the chances of them even knowing who they could report to would be almost nil, and even if they did find someone, the chances that the officer in charge would be able to find enough officers to take on a court martial at that time would be next to impossible.<\/span><\/p>\nIn the book, I mention [a rape that occurred during] Sherman\u2019s March, when the army was on the move. The victim did report it. But by the time the case made it to court martial, they were 100 miles away, so she could not testify. That\u2019s what people don\u2019t understand\u2014it was totally against the women to even be able to report it.<\/span><\/p>\nCan you give an overview of how the rape laws worked at the time?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nThe court martial tried to do by the state laws of the time. During the time, women had to essentially prove they had been raped, and that meant that she had to give the ultimate resistance against the attacker\u2019s force. One thing that was different in the Civil War era was that girls as young as 10 could often be considered as trying to entice men.<\/span><\/p>\nWomen in court settings also were often barraged with questions of how she had resisted his advances. If she consented because he beat her, or if he was holding a gun to her head and she was scared to death, that was still considered that she had given her consent.<\/span><\/p>\nDo you know what would have been an acceptable answer?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nAs far as resistance? Well, the woman usually had to go out of their way to say how much they had resisted. That\u2019s where the title came from, \u201cI had rather die.\u201d A woman was testifying that she \u201chad rather die\u201d than be raped, and it was during those resistance questions.<\/span><\/p>\nExplain the distinction between \u201cpersuasion\u201d and \u201cforce\u201d\u2014it seemed like that was a very nebulous thing.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nBasically, if a man could persuade a woman in any way to have intercourse, then it was not considered rape. Again, it didn\u2019t matter if he beat her silly in order to \u201cpersuade\u201d her, or if he had a weapon and persuaded her that way. In other words, a man could use as much persuasion as he wanted in order to have intercourse and it not be considered rape.<\/span><\/p>\nThere\u2019s a sort of double standard, especially if you think about the idea of what was considered \u201cbeing a lady\u201d at the time. Now you have to be able to fight off a man\u2014even though normally society thought you should be dainty.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nEven if it was an upper-class white woman, who was more likely to believed, sometimes judges would dismiss it because they would feel, \u201cOh, [if she were really a lady] she would have been too ashamed to actually come forward.\u201d So everything was stacked against the woman.<\/span><\/p>\nThat\u2019s the other thing: both the North and the South rarely thought it was rape when it was a black woman. It wasn\u2019t until the Civil War when black women were actually able to come forward and call it rape. Before that time, even in the North, they would make it a lesser charge [for black women], if at all. I do have at least one record where a black woman was able to testify about a sexual assault in New York or someplace like that, but that was very rare. For the most part, black women\u2019s voices went unheard.<\/span><\/p>\nIt seems there was every kind of hurdle: race, class, and whether or not the person had a weapon, or witnesses to corroborate the story. And the more factors you had in your favor, the more likely you\u2019d be successful.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nAnd if you had a white male witness, you generally were more likely to be believed.<\/span><\/p>\nMost of the black men that were found guilty of rape and executed, generally speaking, they were gang rapes, so it was multiple men against a white woman. And with the white men, most of them had other crimes [on their records], and a high percentage of the white men that were executed were foreign born\u2014so there\u2019s an obvious prejudice there, too. They tended to have a history of desertion or other crimes that they were guilty of in the past.<\/span><\/p>\nCan you talk a little bit about this quote:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\u201cIt is true that rape is a most detestable crime, and therefore ought severely and impartially to be punished with death; but it must be remembered, that it is an accusation easily to be made and hard to be proved, and harder to be defended by the party accused, tho never so innocent.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n— Sir Matthew Hale,\u00a0The History of the Pleas of the Crown\u00a0<\/em>(1736)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\nIt seemed, from your book, that all the laws and attitudes at the time revolved around this idea.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nYeah, that came from the judge, Matthew Hale, in the 18th century. He was saying that men had it very difficult to prove that they\u00a0hadn\u2019t<\/em>\u00a0raped. That woman was vindictive so, therefore, she would \u201ccry rape.\u201d His words were used in the court martial records and civilian records in the 19th century, and were still used in courtrooms well into the 1970\u2019s.<\/span><\/p>\nWhether or not those [specific] words are used, do we see this attitude continue today?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nFor sure. There\u2019s no doubt about that. It seems like so many times women still have to prove that they\u2019ve been raped when they shouldn\u2019t. I think we have made some steps forward, but unfortunately women don\u2019t go forward enough because they still feel like they\u2019re going to be lost in the justice system. And I know we\u2019ve had several cases recently where athletes were considered more important than women who had been raped, and that\u2019s essentially the same thing that was going on during the Civil War era. It was more important to have a good soldier, whether or not he had committed rape.<\/span><\/p>\nSo you can see parallels between now and then?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nMmhm. And I see it more and more each day, it seems like, where people keep saying, \u201cOh, we need to say a woman had been forced in order to be raped.\u201d Well, rape is rape, and any kind of rape is forced.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
>via:\u00a0http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/health\/archive\/2014\/02\/gender-race-and-rape-during-the-civil-war\/283754\/<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n
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FEB 20, 2014 Gender, Race, and Rape During the Civil War Slavery, the value of chastity, and laws that favored men all made it difficult for women to find justice during the chaos of war. JULIE BECK \u00a0 \u00a0 While researching a fictional trilogy about the Civil War, Kim Murphy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[6],"tags":[4,12,11],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176434825"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176434825"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176434825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":176434888,"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176434825\/revisions\/176434888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176434825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176434825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176434825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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