Purity is for the Free

Media Clip: Many of these critiques are talking about the fact that the enslaved population is growing and that many enslaved people are lighter and lighter skinned. And you know, really, speaking to the evidence that look, these are women who are being exploited, who are being raped, effectively.

Media Clip: ...country, very courageous young people who say, 'I'm willing to stick to my claim, make a pledge, and I will abstain until I'm married.' I'm not married yet. I made a claim a long time ago, but I want to recommit myself to say that I will wait until I'm married. So I'm going to do it with them. I'm very proud of y'all. They're so awesome in number, I'm looking at an ocean of young people. And not only do they represent themselves, but each teenager out here, each young person, represents pundits back home that couldn't make it. As they stake their individual claims, their individual commitment cards and drive them to the ground here in the National Mall.

Sara Moslener: Welcome to Pure White, a podcast about sexual purity and white supremacy. A co-production of Axis Mundi Media and the After Purity Project. I'm your host, Sara Moslener. Welcome to episode two: Purity is for the Free. Many of us learn that sexual purity is an individual choice made between ourselves and God. One that concerns our sexuality and our sexual decision making. The assumption here is that we have choices. But what if the ability to choose purity has always been limited to a select group of people? What if purity is something that some people weren't or aren't able to choose? In the last episode, we introduced you to the movement of evangelical purity culture as it was developed through the True Love Waits campaign, beginning in the early 1990s. But the foundational concept of sexual purity in the United States has a deep and complicated history that goes back well over 150 years. Uncovering this history demonstrates how sexual purity was constructed as an exclusive category for white women, providing them with protection and status, while denying the same to other women, enslaved, immigrant, and other women of color. So today, we go back to the 19th century to examine the life and writings of Harriet Jacobs, a woman who was born into slavery and escaped to freedom in 1842. Once there, she was encouraged by a group of abolitionists to publish her story. 'Incidents in the life of a Slave Girl' remains one of the most important pieces of American literature, not just because it was one of the first slave narratives that we have, but because it portrayed the experiences of women in slavery. It seems wild to us now, but there were a lot of people, even in non-slave states, who weren't convinced that slavery was a problem. To counter this, Jacobs told her story of constant and continual sexual exploitation. She uses these details of her life to contrast with her desire to be sexually pure. For her, sexual purity meant having sovereignty over her own body, choosing whom she could marry and have children with and being able to raise those children rather than have them sold away from her. In other words, purity meant freedom. But she had none of these. So if sexual purity was a privilege of freedom in the 19th century, we have to spend some time understanding how and why that was justified. We also have to ask what this means for contemporary discussions of sexual purity in evangelical spaces and in American culture at large. What would it mean if sexual purity, as we have inherited it, was a concept born from White supremacy.

Kaisha: So, hello, my name is Dr. Kaisha Esty, and I am an assistant professor of African American studies with affiliations in history and the feminist gender and sexuality studies program-- now department, actually-- at Wesleyan University. I'm a historian of enslaved and freed women in the 19th century, focusing on enslaved and freed women strategies of sexual resistance.

Sara: Dr. Esty's dissertation research offers important insights into Harriet Jacobs and how she, like many slave women, used the principle of sexual purity as a form of resistance against the dehumanization of enslavement.

Kaisha Esty: The first thing that I would say is that when enslaved women used language related to notions of purity, virtue, chastity, it's first and foremost about protecting and preserving their internal values within a system designed to exploit their sexuality and their reproductive capacity. So in my research, I discussed the ways that enslaved women constructed a multifaceted notion of virtue as part of a sort of unique value system centered on individual, as well as, community survival. So it's very much in relation to their positionality as enslaved women within this system and protecting and preserving their internal values against that system. Enslaved women who identified as Christian, for example, were more expressive in using the language of purity to reinforce their Christian identity.

Sara: What Dr. Esty is describing are central themes in Jacobs' autobiography, 'Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,' which, while telling the story of one woman, is representative of how many enslaved women utilized sexual agency to protect themselves and their future children. Most slave narratives are public access through the Library of Congress, which means we can listen to some excerpts. This audio version may feel a bit odd to you, as it does to me. The reader appears to be a white woman. There's no way to know for sure, even if she is a human, given the age of AI that we are in, but it is a good reminder about all the ways that race is read on to people's bodies, including our voices.

Sara: To get us started here, here is how Jacobs described having to navigate the sexual danger that characterized Black women's lives in slavery.

Audio Excerpt from 'Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl': And now, reader, I come to a period in my unhappy life which I would gladly forget if I could. The remembrance fills me with sorrow and shame. It pains me to tell you of it, but I have promised to tell you the truth, and I will do it honestly, let it cost me what it may. I will not try to screen myself behind the plea of compulsion from a master; for it was not so. Neither can I plead ignorance or thoughtlessness. For years, my master had done his utmost to pollute my mind with foul images and to destroy the pure principles inculcated by my grandmother and the good mistress of my childhood. The influences of slavery had had the same effect on me that they had had on other young girls. They had made me prematurely knowing, concerning the evil ways of the world. I knew what I did, and I did it with deliberate calculation.

Kaisha: The moment her owner indicates interest and starts whispering, she talks about him, whispering certain things in her ears and giving her a note, knowing that her previous owner had taught her how to read-- wasn't sure, but had suspected. From that moment, she talks about how this is an owner who is attempting to corrupt her, who is attempting to impress upon her these kinds of evils that she knows, that she knows, or that she has learned from her grandmother is something that she should not be exposed to. I think that such-- in a small but very powerful way, she talks about the corrupting sort of influence of slavery, right? She's talking about the fact that she's only in this situation and only exposed to these things at the age of, I believe 12, she called it a perilous journey in a young woman's life, or in a slave girl's life, actually.

Sara: Jacobs eventually does escape to the north, which is why we have her autobiography. A group of white women abolitionists encouraged her to write her story as a way to grow the abolitionist movement, specifically among white women. At this time, there were still white people, Christians, in the north, who didn't believe that slavery was an inhumane institution. And Jacobs was doing everything she could to reveal it for what it truly was. Here's Dr. Esty again:

Kaisha: There is a way in which the narrative does function as a kind of rhetorical tool to speak to the sort of sympathies and to build a connection with these predominantly white, northern, abolitionist women, these white women readers. But at the same time, the actual path that she takes and the calculation that she makes speaks to how she's coming out of a community that values these notions of, sort of, purity and virtue first and foremost as an internal value. And that doesn't have the same kind of culture of exclusion or ostracism for those who fall from the purity standard. So it's still a very different and distinct culture to, perhaps, the kinds that her readers would have been more familiar with.

Sara: Jacobs had to strike the right balance between discretion and revelation, especially since her audience were white women whose own social status rested upon their ability to preserve their sexual purity and religious virtue. But this only emboldened Jacobs in her commitment to tell the truth of her experiences.

Audio Excerpt from 'Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl': Pity me and pardon me, O virtuous reader! You never knew what it is to be a slave; to be entirely unprotected by law or custom; to have the laws reduce you to the condition of a chattel, entirely subject to the will of another. You never exhausted your ingenuity in avoiding the snares, and eluding the power of a hated tyrant; you never shuddered at the sound of his footsteps and trembled within hearing of his voice. I know I did wrong. No one can feel it more sensibly than I do. The painful and humiliating memory will haunt me to my dying day. Still, in looking back calmly on the events of my life, I feel that the slave woman ought not to be judged by the same standard as others.

Sara: She was preparing her readers for her confession, hoping that by providing all the details, they would understand that even with an abiding commitment to sexual purity, she had to relinquish the virtue in order to protect herself and her future children, whom she knew would be taken from her if she didn't have a plan to protect them. As an enslaved woman, Jacobs' primary job was to reproduce slaves for her master. Dr. Esty provides more context for this.

Kaisha: Some scholars have referred to this as the 2nd Middle Passage, where you have the internal domestic slave trade really take off. And enslaved women are so crucial to that, because, as we know, enslaved women gave birth to children who inherited their status. And so this really makes the kind of widespread, pervasive, sexual exploitation of enslaved women just part of the central logic of slavery as a system. Some scholars have referred to this as slavery as a sexual economy, effectively.

Sara: Jacobs began an illicit relationship with a local white man. A man she describes as kind and generous and with whom she had some modicum of hope for securing freedom. But even so, she mourned the loss of having to reject the principles that her pious grandmother had instilled in her.

Audio Excerpt from 'Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl': The months passed on. I had many unhappy hours. I secretly mourned over the sorrow I was bringing on my grandmother, who had so tried to shield me from harm. I knew that I was the greatest comfort of her old age, and that it was a source of pride to her that I had not degraded myself, like most of the slaves. I wanted to confess to her that I was no longer worthy of her love, but I could not utter the dreaded words.

Sara: Like any pregnant teenager she was terrified to tell her grandmother, the woman who grounded her in familial love and in the promises of Christian piety. The rift between Jacobs and her grandmother that followed wouldn't last long, though the pain that Jacobs endured was significant. Both she and her grandmother understood that within slavery, sexual virtue was the one rare opportunity to maintain bodily autonomy. But without freedom, Jacobs had no means of protection within the legal structures that shaped her life. But she was strategic about using this part of her story, which allows her readers to identify with her grandmother's outrage. Never once does Jacobs question the virtue of sexual purity for women and including her grandmother's harsh response allows her to demonstrate her own contrition.

Sara: According to Dr. Esty, Harriet's sexual choices were not a rejection of what her grandmother taught her, but her embrace of them.

Kaisha: She talks about how her childhood, you know, is effectively being sort of stolen from her because of the conditions of slavery. I think that's incredibly powerful, and really speaks to how the, sort of, lessons and the, sort of, moral lessons that she calls them, that she had and the principles-- she uses the word principles as well-- that had been inculcated in her by her grandmother, provides a sort of compass for her to understand that this is a situation that she needs to fight against and escape, effectively.

Sara: It's notable that sexual purity is the one topic where Jacobs chooses to address her readers directly, hoping that the reconciliation with her grandmother would earn the same sentiment from her readers. Though Jacobs was subject to unfathomable injustice, she had to present herself as complicit in her own self-ruin. She reminds readers regularly that she made a deliberate choice to begin a relationship with Mr. Sands and to have his children without any promise of marriage.

Audio Excerpt from 'Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl': But, O, ye happy women whose purity has been sheltered from childhood, who have been free to choose the objects of your affection, whose homes are protected by law, do not judge the poor, desolate slave girl too severely! If slavery had been abolished, I, also, could have married the man of my choice. I could have had a home shielded by the laws, and I should have been spared the painful task of confessing what I am now about to relate; but all my prospects had been blighted by slavery.

Sara: Jacobs' description of sexual purity indicates that the conditions of slavery were incommensurate with living a virtuous life, allowing Jacobs and her readers together to affirm the value of purity as a condition of a good life. A pure life is a protected life, where laws and morals serve to enhance the lives of women, not degrade them. A pure life is also a life of freedom, where women are able to choose whom they marry and have children with those whom they marry. Jacobs, of course, had neither. Instead, her story describes a young, desperate, but bold teenager, fearful of an increasingly sinister and predatory slave owner. She already lived outside the legal and moral systems where her sexual purity could possibly merit protection and freedom. As such, it was outside those same systems where she found protection and eventually freedom. Pure White, a podcast about sexual purity and white supremacy has been made possible by generous grants from the Louisville Foundation and the Luce Project on Religion and Sexual Abuse. Next time on Pure White, we'll turn our attention to Harriet Jacobs audience, the white northern women for whom the virtue of sexual purity offered them significant moral authority and racial power. Its evaluation only made possible because, for 19th century Protestants, sexual purity was designed as the exclusive right of white women. Special thanks to Dr. Kaisha Esty for sharing her expertise so generously. Be on the lookout for her work. And to whomever it is that made 'Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl' an open source document, thank you very much. If you did not do your homework today, be sure you take care of that soon. Link is in the show notes. Pure White is a co-production of Axis Mundi Media and the After Purity Project. Created by me, Sara Moslener, executive produced by Brad Onishi, editing audio and music by Scott Okamoto and production assistance from Kari Onishi. See you next time.