Throughout the semester many texts have influenced my thinking regarding sex, sexuality, and gender, but the text that had the largest influence on my thinking was from the Eve and Adam text. Prior to reading “To the Nation: Gender, Slavery, and Readings of Genesis”, I was aware that people interpreted Genesis and the Bible in many different ways, but what I didn’t know was the lengths that people would go to justify slavery and the subordination of women. I was shocked to find out that people talked about women in the same notion they talked about slavery, specifically when labeling the two as property of men. The defenders of slavery used treatment of women as a way to defend slavery, which baffled me. They viewed women so poorly that in their eyes, women and slaves were almost equal. In other words, women were on the same level of the societal hierarchy in
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The most surprising aspect was how defenders of slavery used the fall of mankind, specifically how women and slaves are similar, as a justification for slavery. The text says, “Defenders of slavery argued that slavery and the subordination of women were the logical consequences of the Fall. In Genesis 3, God cursed men to earn their bread by the sweat if their face and cursed women to be forever subordinate to men” (311). These pro slavery people, mostly white men, were so disgusting in their ways of thinking that they actually believed they were better based off their interpretation of the Bible. They didn’t care what any other interpretation said. In the reading, Fred Ross justifies slavery because in his eyes slaves are no different than women, in that they are the property of their owner (325). This was just one of many examples that people used to justify the subordination of women and acceptance of
The most surprising aspect was how defenders of slavery used the fall of mankind, specifically how women and slaves are similar, as a justification for slavery. The text says, “Defenders of slavery argued that slavery and the subordination of women were the logical consequences of the Fall. In Genesis 3, God cursed men to earn their bread by the sweat if their face and cursed women to be forever subordinate to men” (311). These pro slavery people, mostly white men, were so disgusting in their ways of thinking that they actually believed they were better based off their interpretation of the Bible. They didn’t care what any other interpretation said. In the reading, Fred Ross justifies slavery because in his eyes slaves are no different than women, in that they are the property of their owner (325). This was just one of many examples that people used to justify the subordination of women and acceptance of