Finding effective weapons to defeat a happy warrior is beyond their capacity.

This one's sad, though.

In addition, shaming women for laughing is a common tactic for misogynists. They harped on HRC about her laugh only they called hers a cackle. Someone on DU connected it to that old saying, "Men worry women will laugh at them; women worry men will kill them."

The misogyny is also incredible. I feel fortunate to have grown up around men who valued women as intelligent, accomplished, and worthy of respect.

Nothing was taught about how female slaves were treated though, not even in the college class I took. I first learned of the horrors in my feminist readings.

I haven't read anything; I don't think I could stomach it.

I would say my high school didn't teach much about the holocaust, either. What I learned in college, again, I could barely stomach it....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pla%C3%A7age

Plaçage was a recognized extralegal system in French and Spanish slave colonies of North America (including the Caribbean) by which ethnic European men entered into civil unions with non-Europeans of African, Native American and mixed-race descent. The term comes from the French placer meaning "to place with". The women were not legally recognized as wives but were known as placées; their relationships were recognized among the free people of color as mariages de la main gauche or left-handed marriages. They became institutionalized with contracts or negotiations that settled property on the woman and her children and, in some cases, gave them freedom if they were enslaved. The system flourished throughout the French and Spanish colonial periods, reaching its zenith during the latter, between 1769 and 1803.



The system may have been most widely practiced in New Orleans, where planter society had created enough wealth to support the system. It also took place in the Latin-influenced cities of Natchez and Biloxi, Mississippi; Mobile, Alabama; St. Augustine and Pensacola, Florida; as well as Saint-Domingue (now the Republic of Haiti). Plaçage became associated with New Orleans as part of its cosmopolitan society. Emily Clark has challenged the popular notion of plaçage as being a systemic practice based on contractual marriages, and proposes that the practice largely consisted of a broad range of relationships between free women of color and white men that originated in various ways, which often lasted for a lifetime. Genetic evidence strongly supports the historical record of mass intermarriages between white men and women of color in New Orleans.



snip

Quadroon balls

The term quadroon is a fractional term referring to a person with one white and one mulatto parent, some courts would have considered one-fourth Black. The "quadroon balls" were social events designed to encourage mixed-race women to form liaisons with wealthy white men through a system of concubinage known as plaçage.



Quadroon Balls of Saint Domingue

The origin of quadroon balls can be traced to the redoutes des filles de couleur in Cap-Français in the French colony of Saint Domingue. In the French colony, the male population outnumbered women, white women were few, and there were few alternatives to prostitution for free women of color. The colony was known in the Caribbean for its "mulatto courtesans", whose trademark was elegance, a haughty demeanor, and the demand to be courted. As there were no brothels in the colony and sex workers worked independently, these balls were the place where the most exclusive courtesans met their clients. Having met, they were set up as the official housekeeper (menagère) or openly kept as mistresses. When their male client died or left to settle in France for their retirement, they were normally left with money, property, or slaves for their future support. This was a common background for free colored businesswomen, among whom the most famous were Nanette Pincemaille (d. 1784), Anne Laporte (d. 1783), Simone Brocard, and Julie Dahey. Many refugees from Saint-Domingue came to New Orleans and settled after the outbreak of the Haitian Revolution in 1791 until the Dominguan refuge colony in Cuba was ousted in 1809. These were white, black, and free people of color who were used to the plaçage system in Saint Domingue and who introduced a more formalized form of plaçage as well as the famous quadroon balls to New Orleans.

Quadroon Balls of New Orleans

Monique Guillory writes about quadroon balls that took place in New Orleans, the city most strongly associated with these events. She approaches the balls in context of the history of a building the structure of which is now the Bourbon Orleans Hotel. Inside is the Orleans Ballroom, a legendary, if not entirely factual, location for the earliest quadroon balls. In 1805, Albert Tessier, a refugee from Saint-Domingue, began renting a dance hall in New Orleans where he threw twice weekly dances for free quadroon women and white men only. This was an innovation in New Orleans at the time: balls for free women of colour had been held in New Orleans in the 1790s, but they had been opened for both white men and free men of colour, the latter of whom could marry the women rather than form a plaçage with them, and these new balls exclusively for free quadroon women and white men was therefore more closely associated with the plaçage system, introducing a Dominguan custom to New Orleans.



The quadroon balls were elegant and elaborate, designed to appeal to wealthy white men. Although race mixing was prohibited by New Orleans law, it was common for white gentleman to attend the balls, sometimes stealing away from white balls to mingle with the city's quadroon female population. The principal desire of quadroon women attending these balls was to become placée as the mistress of a wealthy gentleman, usually a young white Creole or a visiting European. These arrangements were a common occurrence, Guillory suggests, because the highly educated, socially refined quadroons were prohibited from marrying white men and were unlikely to find Black men of their own status. A quadroon's mother usually negotiated with an admirer the compensation that would be received for having the woman as his mistress. Typical terms included some financial payment to the parent, financial and/or housing arrangements for the quadroon herself, and, many times, paternal recognition of any children the union produced. Guillory points out that some of these matches were as enduring and exclusive as marriages. A beloved quadroon mistress had the power to destabilize white marriages and families, something she was much resented for.



According to Guillory, the system of plaçage had a basis in the economics of mixed race. The plaçage of black women with white lovers, Guillory writes, could take place only because of the socially determined value of their light skin, the same light skin that commanded a higher price on the slave block, where light skinned girls fetched much higher prices than did prime field hands. Guillory posits the quadroon balls as the best among severely limited options for these near-white women, a way for them to control their sexuality and decide the price of their own bodies. She contends: "The most a mulatto mother and a quadroon daughter could hope to attain in the rigid confines of the black/white world was some semblance of economic independence and social distinction from the slaves and other blacks". She notes that many participants in the balls were successful in actual businesses when they could no longer rely on an income from the plaçage system. She speculates they developed business acumen from the process of marketing their own bodies.

https://oxfordaasc.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780195301731.001.0001/acref-9780195301731-e-50279

Both can't be true in the sense that the practice was widespread.

Then again, I was told authoritatively that "picnic" was a racist term from lynchings. (Hint: It isn't.)

Thanks
Rec

Oh, and her laugh fills me with joy!

Information is coming out that was either hidden or not well known. It's been an education.

on my request list.

I didn't quite hear the details though

That is the current and historical paradigm. Women are permitted to giggle sweetly while gazing lovingly at their men as they tell the same story for the 11 thousandth time. Women are permitted to giggle quietly with other women so long as they are not bothering any men or GASP . . laughing at a man.

A laughing woman is considered suspicious and uncontrollable.