Sexual Histories Lecture 12 New Worlds and Colonialism

Sexual Histories, Lecture 12 New Worlds and Colonialism

1. Medieval Sexual Stereotypes of Muslims, Welsh, and Irish Crusade era, 1095 -1291 Map of Crusader states, c. 1100 (Christian enclaves in the eastern Mediterranean formerly held by Muslim powers)

Crusade Propaganda Using Sexual Demonisation of Muslims ‘They have degraded by sodomizing them men of every age and rank: boys, adolescents, young men, old men, nobles, servants, and, what is worse and more wicked, clerics and monks, and even. . . bishops! They have already killed one bishop with this nefarious sin. ’ Quoted in John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality, p. 280, this letter was probably a Christian forgery composed c. 1095. Saracens as devils, in a late medieval manuscript

Saracens ‘burn with lust for them [Christian boys]…like mad dogs’ (William de Ada, quoted in Boswell, p. 282). • Crusaders killing Saracens (15 th. C French manuscript) Saracens ‘sexually abuse not only both sexes but even animals and have for the most part become like mindless horses or mules’ (Jacques de Vitry, Oriental History, c. 1219) Islam is an ‘abominable sect, one suitable for fleshly indulgences. ’ Alan de Lille (c. 1128 -1202), Contra paganos Crusaders killing Saracens (15 th. C French manuscript)

Queer Irish. Illuminations from a manuscript of Gerald of Wales’s History and Topography of Ireland, 12 th. C An Irish woman with a goat Kingship ritual from Ulster. Following sex with a mare the elected king bathes in her broth and eats her flesh.

2. Medieval Sexual Stereotypes of Jews ‘The Golden Haggadah’ (Jewish service book, c. 1320), made by Northern French artists; depicts Jewish men according to conventional anti-Semitic imagery but the women as elegant beauties

‘The Golden Haggadah’ (c. 1320), detail

3. Colonial America and Sexual Histories Columbus encounters Native Americans, 1492

Spanish explorer Vasco de Balboa sets his dogs on men who have allegedly committed same-sex acts, Central America, early 16 th. C

European authors of the seventeenth century often commented on the ‘nakedness’ of Native American and African women and found it remarkable that some suckled babies over their shoulders and felt no pain in childbirth. ‘An oran-outang husband would not be any dishonour to an Hottentot female, ’ Richard Long, History of Jamaica, 1770 s.

Early American colonists saw female slaves as sexually available to white men. They were ‘luxuries’, as was the privilege of maltreating their black slaves in general, as indicated in this undated, unsigned painting

Cheyenne ‘hetaneman’ or female two-spirit in a ledger drawing ca. 1889 Christian settlers and missionaries failed to comprehend the distinctive identity of two -spirit people and condemned them for ‘sinful’, ‘nefarious’ or ‘unnatural’ behaviours

He’emane’o, Cheyenne male two-spirits (on right), leading the scalp dance; Charlie the Weaver (Navajo) with two-spirit partner, ca. 1895

Conclusion Jeffrey Weeks said that ‘writing about sex can be dangerous’. The more one studies the history of sexuality, the more it seems that the danger is not in writing about sexuality, it is in ignoring it.