Sarah Baartman (1789-1815), also known as Saartjie Baartman or the Hottentot Venus, was an African woman who became a sideshow in London and Paris. She was almost completely naked and had a very large behind, even for the part of Africa she came from – near Cape Town in South Africa. Those who paid more were allowed to touch it.
She was promised riches if she came to Europe, but she ended her life in prostitution and drink in the streets of Paris, far from home, dying at age 26 of an “inflammatory and eruptive sickness”.
It gets worse.
After she died her body was cut up and studied by Napoleon’s doctor, Georges Cuvier. He made a cast of her body and put her skeleton, brain and labia in the Museum of Man in Paris where it was seen for more than a hundred years, until the 1970s.
She is well known by her own people, the Khoisans (who used to be called Hottentots). She has come to stand for all the sick injustices they have had to live through under white rule.
Baartman’s parents were killed when she was little. She became a slave of a Dutch farmer who lived near Cape Town. In 1810 a man from England promised her half the profits if she came to London with him to show her off.
She was shown off to Londoners as if she were an animal. She was kept behind bars most of the time, almost completely naked. She was told to act like a wild animal. Sometimes she was let out to do tricks, like sitting, standing and walking on command.
A man from Jamaica saw this and demanded that she be freed. But the judge, after speaking with her, said she was doing it of her own free will.
In 1814 she came to Paris where she became part of the show of an animal trainer. When the French tired of her she was forced into prostitution.
Her labia were large and hung down from her body. That is natural for Khoisans but not for whites. Some took it as physical proof that black women are mad for sex. While she was alive she let no one see them, as it is a private part of a woman’s body, but once she was dead Cuvier had them shown in public.
When Mandela became president of South Africa in 1994 he asked France to return her remains. It took eight years and a special law, but in the end the French gave her back. Her body has now been laid to rest on a hill near where she was born.
Sadly, it is not a huge jump from the Hottentot Venus of the 1810s to the Danse sauvage of Josephine Baker in 1925 to the video vixens of 2008. But there has been progress of a sort: no one thinks of putting Buffie the Body in a museum after she dies.
See also:
This display of Sara Bartmann was sick and evil form of racist sexism the world has ever seen. It was no different from slave auctions of yesteryear and today(yes, slavery is still happening in parts of Africa by Middle Easterners today)which display Black women for inspection to be used for servitude and worse. We also see it in today’s music videos and in the porn industry.
It seems to me that little has changed in world’s treatment of Black women. We see it in Hollywood’s erasure of Black women except as stereotypes, the replacement of Black women by nonblack women, most notably, Angelina Jolie in the 2007 movie, A Mighty Heart.
Read the article regarding Hollywood’s replacement of Black women at “Is White The New Black?” at:
http://www.straight.com/article-96155/is-white-the-new-black
Stephanie B.
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“But there has been progress of a sort: no one thinks of putting Buffie the Body in a museum after she dies.”
And she shows her body off, of her own volition. She’s not a slave and she profits from it.
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I was going to mention that Buffie is the new Sara Bartmen.
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The judge ruled that Baartman was free, not a slave. That was a big issue in Britain in those days, it was not something that was taken lightly.
On the other hand, quite unlike Buffie, she was a young woman alone in a strange land, so it was easy for others to take advantage of her. We do not know what she got paid if anything.
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Thanks, Stephanie, for the article. I added a link to it in my post on black actresses here:
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Thanks, Abagond. I just invited you to my blog forum. Please accept my invitation. Thanks.
Stephanie B.
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I just did. Thanks.
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It’s pretty clear that if she were making money, she wouldn’t have been forced into prostitution. That is a part of the story I was not aware of.
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Good point.
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The crap people put others through is unbelievable. I feel for Sarah Baartman and I hope that all those who ridiculed her are smouldering in hell as I speak.
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God will surely judge them
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The Hottentots are a subspecies of humans, sort of a breed with lesser cognitive abilities. There is an overlap with individual members of other groups functioning in the lower range. The Hottentots range above Bushmen but below Caucasians and Orientals.
The reasons for exploitation of sub-Saharans is the inability of these folks to function at the level of other groups. There are also other distinguishing characteristics which relegate this group to manifest lower abilities to achieve in areas necessary to maintain a functioning society.
What are the IQs? A chimpanzees is 12, a Bushman’s is 57, and that of a Hottentot is not much higher.
With portended Chinese full exploitation of Africa’s mineral and agricultural resources, the survival of “Africans” is problematical at best unless they are identified as endangered species, and provided protection by the world at large. Their deficiencies are lamentable, but they do exist.
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Phlogiston:
In the 1800s Paul Broca, a French scientist, collected human skeletons from all parts of the world. He wanted to find some measurement by which he could tell which part of mankind was the most evolved from the apes.
He noticed that apes had long forearms when compared to their upper arms. So he compared blacks to whites: sure enough, while blacks had shorter forearms than apes, they were longer than whites! For blacks the ratio of the lower arm to the upper arm was 0.794. For whites it was 0.739. Proof that blacks are more apelike!
Then he measured the bones of Sarah Baartman. Her ratio was 0.703. Which, by his line of reasoning, meant she was even further from the apes than white people. But instead of being led by facts and reason, Broca let himself be led by his own racism and gave up measuring people that way.
The moral of the story: racists will find whatever measure fits their own foregone conclusions. They are not seeing the world as it is but in a way that suits their own false pride.
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“While she was alive she let no one see them, as it is a private part of a woman’s body, but once she was dead Cuvier had them shown in public.”
that is so so sad…
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It’s disgusting how she was degraded during her life well into her death. She deserved better than that.
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I put phlogiston’s I.Q. at about 18, which coincidently is the exact same as that of a retarded parrot, who’s been taught to repeat a rote line of stupidity for the reward of a peanut per try.
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Baartman’s faith was really sad. I suppose you could compare her with the Elephant Man, who probably was treated better becouse he was a Caucasian male.
Phlogiston’s attitude dates back to the origin of the scientific concept of his username.
By the by, Alan Moore used phlogiston delightfully in his Tom Strong comic, that actually portrays the hero (WM) in an IR relationship with a BW (Dahlua Strong)! Cool!
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What are the IQs? A chimpanzees is 12
How do you know this? does the chimpanzee go “whwhoahahahahawhowh”, in response to the questions? You appear to be as intelligent as the chimpanzee, whose intelligence you question.
There are also other distinguishing characteristics which relegate this group to manifest lower abilities to achieve in areas necessary to maintain a functioning society.
They have been doing it for thousands of years before the advent of the European. So-called primitiveness does not equal simplicity. Many of these cultures are anything but uncomplicated.
unless they are identified as endangered species, and provided protection by the world at large.
They should declare you a an oxygen thief, or if they are being politically correct, the protection of people suffering hallucinations rooted in delusions of superiority. If nothing else you and your lot provide hilarity and fodder for jokes.
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Funny how this woman name Sara Baartman was called everything under the sun except a child of god. Her body type was said to be unhuman, unnatural, just plain hideous by a bunch of horny uncivilzed racist who dissected her like and animal. SMH. Someone said “god will judge them”…you got that right! They will be judge and explain why they did what they did when they knew for a fact that this woman was undoubtebly human. In fact she was more human then they were.
Now back to the funny part (well, its not really funny. just sad and racist).
I look at how in todays society how women like J-Lo, Kim Kardashian, Jennifer Biel, Coco, and more NON-BLACK women get the praise for having the same assets as black women had since the beginning of time but looked at as sexy, diesirable, worthy, and beautiful. Yet this same body type was seen as unattractive on black women. There is no other way but to look at this as plain RACIST to the fullest. It was just their way of making black women feel bad about themselves because white women were (and still is) so insercure about thier bodies. Typical racist.
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I found the 2010 french film of Sarah Baartman Venus noire online and have emotional prepared myself to watch it.
Just watched the first five minutes and I don’t feel well at all.
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I think your view of Sarah Baartman was accurate from what I’ve learned about her in the last 24 hours. Her story was brought to my attention by way of Facebook. A group made mention of her, and who she was and what was going on in her life. I then looked her story up on YouTube, and was able to watch the entire movie, Venus Noire (Black Venus). It is a sad, sad story, and it makes me angry that women don’t know her story. I’d like to see that if they knew Sarah’s story, they wouldn’t do the things that they do in videos, strip clubs, and broadcast on TV with their butts.
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Almost everywhere I look including Wikipedia, they say that the Musee de l’Homme in Trocadero, Paris, stopped showing Sarah Baartman’s preserved remains in 1974. I think this is wrong. Perhaps there was a request made then, but the first time I went to Paris was 1978. I passed the cabinet where I believe it was this woman who was displayed. I told my French relative I thought this was absolutely racist. She acted surprised that I would think such a thing. But the more I stood there, the more I was convinced that I would never see a white woman displayed that way in Paris, so it had to be motivated by the idea that this woman was not quite entitled to human treatment. I am so glad she was taken home to an appropriate resting place and not made to continue as a source of power for the white French people who could make pleasantries as they passed her. Thank goodness Nelson Mandela, no less, took on this problem.
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I’m saddened!
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God will judge.
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I see similar things happening. Do not underestimate HATE and the extent that evildoers,racist elites will go to instill and enforce their ideas. Look around at commercials on TV. Who do you see ? There is a bold and obvious implied standard of beauty. It’s not African of course! ”Buffy will never be in a museum”..Ha,you forgot to say knock on wood.
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Damn I bet you that ass was HUGE!!!
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Check out Minik, an Inuit man brought to the U.S. as a boy to be a living specimen in a museum in New York. His father died and Minik requested a traditional burial, but the museum staff tricked him by staging one and dismembered and preserved his father’s body. Minik found out what happened years later, tried and failed to make the museum return his father’s remains, and lived in fear of dying in the U.S. and having his brain put in a jar like his father’s. He tried returning to his people as an adult but no longer felt like he belonged. Quotes:
“You’re a race of scientific criminals. I know I’ll never get my father’s bones out of the American Museum of Natural History. I am glad enough to get away before they grab my brains and stuff them into a jar!”
“This is probably the last letter I will ever write. You see I worked my way up here and you can guess how hard it is to beat your way without any money, and many days I have been hungry and many nights I have cried. Now I am in Canada, and I am sick and weak and have no more strength to fight off the awful want to die.”
“My poor people don’t know that the meteorite that Peary took, it fell from the star. But they know that the hungry must be fed and cold men must be warmed and helpless people cared for and they do it. Wouldn’t it be sad if they forgot these and got civilized. I remember one day you told me that the sure way to get revenge is to be unlike the one that hurt you. I’m going to die smiling at Peary and the scientists…”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minik_Wallace
“American Experience: Minik, the Lost Eskimo”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/minik/program/intro.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/minik/program/pt.html
“Minik and the Meteor”
http://narrative.ly/stories/minik-and-the-meteor/
Give Me My Father’s Body: The Life of Minik, the New York Eskimo
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Speaking of video vixens Nicki Minaj has a wax figure in Madam Toussad wax museum. Where the wax figure is posing on all fours. Quite a few museum visitors (male) doing inappropriate antics. And I think of Sarah Baartman died because of this. So tragic. Several young black women have died trying to achieve this look.
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This speaks to the savage and animal like nature of white Europeans.
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* the savage and animal like nature of white male Europeans during that era*
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