Living in a wide range of circumstances and possessing the intersecting identity of both black and female, enslaved women of African descent had nuanced experiences of slavery. Historian Deborah Gray White explains that "the uniqueness of the African-American female's situation is that she stands at the crossroads of two of the most well-developed ideologies in America, that regarding women and that regarding the Negro."[1]: 27 Beginning as early on in enslavement as the voyage on the Middle Passage, enslaved women received different treatment due to their gender. In regard to physical labor and hardship, enslaved women received similar treatment to their male counterparts, but they also frequently experienced sexual abuse at the hand of their enslavers who used stereotypes of black women's hypersexuality as justification.[2]
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- ^ White, Deborah Gray (1999). Ar'n't I a Woman?: female slaves in the plantation South (Revised ed.). New York: W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0393314812. Archived from the original on August 18, 2020. Retrieved December 17, 2019.
- ^ White, Deborah Gray (1999). "The Nature of Female Slavery". Ar'n't I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South (Revised ed.). W.W. Norton & Company.