Founding fondlers
I get that a lot of this linked article is written to (correctly) change the narrative around slavery erasure but some of it delves into baseless hyperbole that can’t be anything but counter productive.
For example:
Evidence suggests that sexual abuse of slaves was so fundamental to chattel slavery that it’s reasonable to assume any histories of “kind” slave owners are complete fabrications designed to preserve the legacy of the masters.
That is either playing fast and loose with wording or an absolutely incredible claim requiring incredible proof.
On one hand, the “kind” slave owner is always a fabrication because the act of owning slaves is inherently immoral and reprehensible. This view makes the claim a borderline platitude; perpetuating an institution that enables rapists is very obviously unkind.
On the latter interpretation, you’re claiming that rape was so universal that any slave owner was almost certainly a rapist (especially if they claimed they weren’t). This would require some sweeping evidence, think studies on the demographics of mixed race slaves or on medical records tied to sexual assaults.
So what evidence follows? Excerpts from Frederick Douglas giving second hand accounts of rape and of Harriet Jacobs giving her first hand account. Nothing that incriminates slave owners broadly beyond Douglas’s phrasing “…in [rape] cases not a few,…”.
I don’t even deny that the evidence might exist, and I would love to see it brought to light if it does. But the thing about slavery, and specifically the USA’s commercial cotton slavery: it’s fucking awful enough if you just list verifiable facts without aggrandizing. Even if everything in this article were true, it doesn’t move the needle much farther beyond the baseline of American slave ownership.
If you’re going to broadly claim “America’s founding fathers were sex traffickers that raped children” then please, name names! Bring receipts! You can’t open with…
These facts are not debatable. [Child sex trafficking] happened.
…and then lay out a single link rehashing that Thomas Jefferson was a massive piece of shit. What do we know about the other 54+ Founding Fathers?
baseless hyperbole
an absolutely incredible claim requiring incredible proof
I do not think it is much of a stretch to think that there were a fuckton of rapists in times past, judging by the fuckton of rapists in contemporary time. To be honest, I think it is awful of you to assume that men in positions of power do not rape, when we have so much evidence that they do (and please do not talk to me about “not all men rape”, because that is not what we are talking about, we are talking about systemic issues).
Boys at 16 years old rape sleeping girls, because they can. Film directors and businessmen (unsuccessful ones as Trump as well) rape women and children, because they can. Slave owners raped their slaves, because they could. This is a question of power dynamics.
Bring receipts!
No.
Finding it offensive to expect evidence for any such accusation is absolutely asinine. What a stupid fucking conclusion.
Expecting an American to have historical literacy is considered one of their gravest insults. Akin to telling an Israeli they are bad at raping children.
Do you disagree on my remark that Trump is a pedofile rapist or only that about the slave owners that also happened to be founding fathers for a genocidal empire?
There exists ample evidence of how widespread rape is today and throughout history. I do not see why you give slave owners the benefit of doubt in this regard, seeing as they had a blatant and fundamental disregard for their fellow human beings, in their eyes property.
I really appreciate posts like this. Thank you for making Lemmy a better place!
poor confused westoid still believes in the myth of abolitionists that own slaves
John Adams didn’t own slaves, but keep riding that ignorance.
Franklin would have, for sure, but I’m pretty sure the rest of them would have just kept raping their own slaves.
Franklin famously preferred older women.
I did not know that, I just knew he liked French prostitutes.
Not all. Pretty sure John Adams would not have been.
Hamilton and Jefferson would probably have written most of them though, about each other.
I don’t think they would have been called the Epstein files though. It probably would have been called the Franklin files. All of this stuff seems like Ben Franklin’s jam.
No I don’t think Ben Franklin would have done it for espionage or spying purposes I think he would have just done it for the love of the game.
I agree, Ben probably would have indulged and not cared about using it to his advantage.
Hamilton and Jefferson were absolutely cold blooded in their political pursuits and use of published letters. They would have used any opportunity to cut the other down. Maybe mutually assured destruction would have stayed their hands on that particular indulgence, though Hamilton did famously out his own affair to clear himself of the embezzlement allegation.
In fact, it goes back all the way to Christopher Columbus: https://museumfacts.co.uk/atrocities-committed-by-christopher-columbus/
All European colonizers were child sex traffickers (among the rest of their crimes).
Inb4 conservatives change from
“Mary was a teenager”
to
“The Founding Fathers were pedophiles too”
Inb4 hell freezes over you mean 😅
Ben Franklin’s letter from 1745 is pretty good evidence that he liked older women. We’re not just talking 30’s here either; he implies women in their 40’s and older.
https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/eros/praise-older-women
The misogyny is strong, but at least it’s not pedophilia.
Wait what?
Who is downvoting this? Legitimately.
People who think this is an attempt at saying “see, pedo’s aren’t that bad even the founding fathers are ones”
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usians*
don’t lump me with the nazis
*conservatives
Don’t lump me in with the nazis
Nah, you get lumped in just like every non-resisting German was, and for good reason.
Where was this energy when umbrella said the same thing?
Umbrella is from one of many countries of America not from USA, he is American too and has no obligation to unfuck USA.
Hard disagree. You live here, you fight for here.
They have as much obligation to fight this administration as any natural born.
Are you seriously saying if I move to another country, that I just sit back and let fascism take hold there?
No, fuck you and them for being lazy.
Sweetheart, just because I haven’t committed suicide-by-cop doesn’tean I’m not resisting. You sound like incredibly fertile soil for the fascists to plant their seed in when they inevitably try to take your country over. You should learn some empathy before that happens.
most democrats don’t care about fascism when it’s being sponsored outside the us.
there is only a small sliver of us leftists that don’t apply to this.
I never said anything about Democrats. Anyway, the Democrats are a conservative party, they’re just less conservative than Republicans.
If we’re doing a find-and-replace of “Americans” with “USians”, the result is “Brainwashed USians”.
So, unless you consider yourself brainwashed, you weren’t included.
European settlers
Uneducated people and I don’t even like ml memes but can’t deny this fact.
Why don’t you like ml memes?
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Lemmy.ml is one of the big communist instances, sure, but in no way fascist nor fascist collaborators. Communists support collectivization of production and distribution via establishing socialism, economies where public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy and the working classes are in control of the state. Fascism is about cementing capitalism and bourgeois rule in countries where capitalism has decayed. These stand diametrically opposed.
On Lemmy.ml’s meme communities, you see lots of leftist memes. Fascists are banned, as well as fascist memes.
Too fire; can’t handle the heat
Maybe not Franklin. He’s on record as preferring older ladies.
So, you’re saying he would have only flown to the island for Ghislaine?
No, she’s not french
I don’t think they airplanes then
Especially Jefferson. Not Franklin though. Benjamin Franklin in a letter to a young man listed 8 reasons why an older mistress was preferable to a younger one.
Also people thought Washington was gay so…
Who did? He was married to Martha with no accusations of homosexuality.
Also not really sure how this is a response to what that guy said.
Never had kids with her and she was a widow.
Is where it started. You’ll find various opinions on it/his inner circle.
Potentially he wouldn’t be interested in raping little girls.
And little boys?
Maybe but it’s a mitigating factor towards traveling to the island in the first place.
The island is a symptom, not a cause.
Still relevant to being mentioned in the files.
AFAIK Ben Franklin preferred old women. And I mean old. Like over 70. Lots of letters to people telling them how widows are the best partners because they know what they’re doing. And that they’re more open to threesomes/foursomes.
Isn’t there a fairly well documented history of him raping his slaves? He may vocally advocate for older women fun, but dude fucked pretty much anything with two tits, a hole, and a heartbeat.I was thinking about one of the other dudes.
It wouldn’t surprise me if he was into abusing slaves because it was a good ol’ boys’ club. Franklin did inherent several slaves, got to know them, realized they were people, freed them, then became an abolishinist.
At the end of the day, however, he still agreed with the 3/5ths. Compromise. And he was still buddies with monsters like Washington and Jefferson. Otherwise, everything we know about his sexual history points to him wanting older women, which is part of why he wanted the ambassadorship to France.
I just did a look see and while I saw it broadly asserted a few times on social media I can’t find any specific allegations like we have with Jefferson who is positively known to have fathered children with slaves.
I might be mixing them up.
ESPECIALLY JEFFERSON
If this happens to an international tennis star, imagine what happens to young, poor girls with little support
