Perversion the Social Relation

"As If Set Free into Another Land" 177makes no mention of what role black women might play in his newsociety beyond that of the future "wife" he imagines will help relieve hissexual tension. In the afterglow of his most violent rape fantasy in thenovel, he prays, "Lord, after this mission is done I will have to get mea wife" (347). Clearly sexist, such a prayer defines women as somethinglike their own form of property whose purpose is to assist, calm, andsatisfy him when he needs it. Where white women are concerned, hisattitude is even worse. For while he ultimately decides that some whitemen need not be killed, as we will see, he continues to fight against hisown better judgment and demand that all white women be killed. 11 Thisfascist exclusion of women is obviously the product of his own misgivingsabout sexual difference, but it may also signal another limitationof homo-ness itself. Because homo-ness evokes a model of socialsameness that specifically privileges sexual sameness, this characteristichelps explain Nat's quick adoption of fraternity as a conceptual model.And while we should be careful not to confuse homo-ness as the naturalsource of antifeminist or misogynist sentiment—the old myth thatgay men must hate women—its insistence on the subordination of differencesto a greater sense of sameness may leave homo-ness wide open formisappropriation by those who would actively suppress differences onthe basis of one sex's (or one race's or one class's) supposed superiorityover the other.However, even as Nat authors this genocidal and violently patriarchalplan, he also recognizes the irrationality of its extremism, albeitonly slightly, and revises his vision of community once again. As thetime of the insurrection draws nearer, Nat continues to redraw the lineof sameness to suit his own politics. And while he does broaden thescope of his insurrectionist community to move away from overt fascism,this new basis for a community of sameness remains highly problematicin its own way. Soon after Nat makes his sermon, an interestingopportunity arises that enables Nat once again to revise his visionsof Christianity and community into a form that nominally correspondseven more closely to the liberated "other land" he glimpsed with Willis.About a month after Nat makes his sermon, but immediately followingit in the narrative, a white man named Ethelred T. Brantley approacheshim and asks to be baptized. Brantley is a convicted "sotomite" who hasbeen cast out from all the white churches in the area, and he sees Nat as