Contextual sexualities: examples from the colonial past and capitalism Flashcards
(19 cards)
Chauncey: What 4 anxieties emerged at the turn of the century for men?
A crisis of masculinity caused by
- Women’s suffrage and movement into the labor market
- White collar workers (middle class) working office jobs, seen as the opposite of physical, manly blue-collar workers
- More men working for other men
- Visibility of “inverts”/homosexual men breaking with biological determination of gender roles
Chauncey: What is his main argument regarding homo- and heterosexuality?
They emerged in tandem in response to middle-class men’s anxieties over gender roles, women’s rights, and class changes. These men felt the need to protect their masculinity, power, and privilege by attacking any men who did not uphold manly ideals, for example gay men who showed that gender roles were not fixed and unchangeable, and that there could be sexual element to how men interact with each other. Created need to separate themselves from gay men (especially fairies who represented the fragility of the gender order), leading to exclusive heterosexuality
Chauncey: Did medical discourse produce heterosexuality?
No, it merely confirmed its emergence. Doctors were also middle-class men and thus having the same crisis and anxieties, which started on a societal basis. Medicine therefore merely reinforced the existing norms and ideas experienced by “regular” people by pathologizing gender and sexual non-conformity
Chauncey: What was the 2 purposes of medical discourse on homosexuality?
To explain, stigmatize and contain the unmanly behavior of some men by pointing to biological defects that made those men literally less than men -> “regular” people don’t have to worry about it for yourself, your sons, etc., as it is a medical defect
Also to stigmatize women who challenged the sanctity of the male sphere, to confirm the biologically determined gender roles at the time
Chauncey: Who were “fairies” and how were they different from “queers”?
Fairies were effeminate, often working-class men associated with gender inversion - often meant assuming the status of a pseudo-woman or a sex worker
Queers were more masculine, middle-class men who defined their difference from heterosexual people as sexual rather than gendered. Queers saw the gender inversion of fairies as lower-class (i.e., both working class and related to women), damaging to the public image of gay men, and involving a loss of dignity and self-respect
Chauncey: What was the “heterosexual counterrevolution”?
In the 1910s-20s, a shift where heterosexuality become normalized, single-sex institutions were stigmatized, and heterosexual intimacy was promoted to reinforce gender roles. The age of marriage dropped and the percentage of women married increased, and women who lived without men were stigmatized
Chauncey: Why was heterosexuality much more important to middle-class than working-class men?
Difference in views on male-male sexual relations - if working-class men engaged in same-sex activities, they merely needed to play the man’s part, whereas middle-class men believed that engaging in any homosexual activity meant being a homosexual
Chauncey: What marked the emergence of the hetero- and homosexual in middle-class culture?
Middle-class men’s growing resistance to same-sex physical or affective ties, and the insistence of middle-class queer men that it was their sexual desire, not gender inversion, that distinguished them from other men
Stoler: What is her main argument?
Sexual regulation, gender norms, and domestic arrangements were not peripheral concerns in imperialism, but central to the formation of colonial power and racial hierarchy. Gender inequalities were essential to the structure of colonial racism and imperial authority -> it was how women’s needs were defined for them that most directly shaped specific policies
Stoler: Why was concubinage encouraged during the early colonial period (4)?
- It was cheaper than importing European women
- Kept men satisfied to incentivize them to stay
- Provided unpaid domestic services
- Offered valuable local knowledge
Stoler: Why did concubinage then become stigmatized in the later colonial period (3)?
- Fears of racial degeneration through contact with the colonized
- Mixed-race children were challenging the racial hierarchy and white supremacy and created fears of them turning against their white father
- Genuine emotional ties between white men and women of color
=ensure white domination in the colony
Stoler: What role did European women play in colonial power structures?
They were both subordinate and central agents of empire, tasked with upholding racial purity and moral order, crucial to securing white dominance. They had to keep their men in moral line as well as raise the children
Stoler: What does she men when saying colonial authority relied on “false premises”?
The colonizer/colonized boundary was not clearly defined or stable through biological and social identities, but blurred and contested
Stoler: What anxieties did sexual regulation in colonial rule seek to address?
Fears of losing white male power, miscegenation, degeneracy, and white men’s moral and physical decline
Stoler: What role did the “Black peril” play politically?
Masked colonial instability by framing non-white men as threats to white women, justifying surveillance, punishment, and segregation, while uniting Europeans against the colonized
Stoler: How come eugenics became so popular in the colonial period?
- Provided a scientific justification of racial superiority
- Helped figure out who should have access to education, citizenship etc., and how women should raise their children
- Prevented people having mixed children to avoid questioning racial hierarchy
Stephen: What is the primary organizing factor of social life in Zapotec communities?
Gender, not sexuality! Sexuality is linked to gender, but is not usually a separate aspect of social identity in public discourses
Stephen: What are the two third-gender categories she presents?
Muxe: biological males who adopt certain female characteristics and roles, such as embroidery or domestic work, but also carry out male work of making jewelry
Biza’ah: similar to muxe, identified by their speech, way of talking, and the work they do of making ceremonial candles
Both are not related to sexuality, but to gender roles
Stephen: What are the 4 influences on Zapotec gender and sexuality understandings?
- The possibility of precolonial Zapotec societies having both an elite male/female gender system and a common system with a third gender option
- Spanish rule which imposed a binary gender system emphasized honor and restricting female sexuality -> traditional marriage ceremonies
- The Virgin of Guadalupe, who represents virginity but motherhood -> leading to emphasis on virginity among young women
- Migration, mostly to the US, bringing awareness of the concept of sexuality and “gay” and “lesbian” entering vocabulary as well as freer sexual norms for women
