Reading Response - Week 3: Intimate Encounters in North America

Reading Response - Week 3: Intimate Encounters in North America Although readings ranged across different time periods, the primary focus was centered on the intersectional influence of race, gender, religion, and class on sexuality in North America. From indigenous populations to French Louisiana, each of the readings addresses the role in which social control and the state shape notions of sexuality between different races. Throughout the readings, it is evident that the influencing party, be that a colonizing power, plantation leadership, or lawmaking body strongly influence notions of mixed race relationships and sexuality. Ultimately, as Spear writes, sexuality is strongly “influenced by demographic, economic, cultural, imperial circumstances [which] authorities sought to legislate sex in attempts to further their 1 colonial goals and to control colonial populations.” To begin, these texts highlight the double standards of colonial powers or the state in the benefits of female sexuality and reproduction. Gutiérrez describes concerns of indigenous groups in increased production as 2 a “threat” which could change social balances in population between femininity and masculinity. For the indigenous groups, increased population would not only off balance divides in sex/gender, but economically proved difficult. Comparing these economic considerations with a different setting, Morgan describes through historical accounts of wills and estates the values in which slave owners and plantations evaluated the economic potential of fostering familial units for economic reproduction. Morgan analyzing the value of black women compared to black men in the Carolina slave inventories writes, “…only the black mother embodied both 1 Jennifer Spear, “Colonial Intimacies: Legislating Sex in French Louisiana,” William and Mary Quarterly, 60 no. 1 (January 2003), pg. 76 2 Ramon A. Gutierrez, "Warfare, Homosexuality, and Gender Status among American Indian Men in the Southwest," in Long Before Stonewall: Histories of Same-Sex Sexuality in Early America, ed. Thomas A. Foster. (New York: New York University Press, 2007), pg. 28 3 productive and reproductive potential.” Morgan also refers to the work of Brown when analyzing the role in which women “became a means for naturalizing slave status with a concept of4 race.” As these economic notions of the value of enslaved women compared to enslaved men as potential for economic reproduction in the “mathematics of mastery” evolved, so too did the intersectionalities between race and gender as identities in America were developed with “… key notions of mastery over property were 5 mobilized that defined both whiteness and masculinity.” These mentalities moved West in the United States with colonization and expansion strongly rooted in the mentalities regarding masculinity and constructs of race. Notions of sexuality and the laws which guided them would shape mixed marriages and sexual relationships moving forward with the law’s impacts on individual thought and individual sexuality. As Morgan refers to, and Spear writes, “... how sexual desire is expressed and toward what object it is directed are not historical 6 characteristics but rather shaped and mediated by human intervention.” In these periods, sexuality was strongly shaped by the aims of different groups to uphold the status quo which promoted whiteness and masculinity both in the state and society as well as in personal relationships. Perceived threats to whiteness and masculinity also shaped how legitimate marriages and children were defined between 1640 and 1670 in the context of enslaved and free populations. In 1961, Brown argues laws shaped previously shifted to address sexual relations between classes and indentured populations to account for race, “With their [white, free men] access to white women sanction by law and protected from the dual threat of 7 white female sexual autonomy and black male encroachments.” Furthermore, in these situations of race and 3 Jennifer L. Morgan, “‘The Breedings Shall Goe with Their Mothers’: Gender and Evolving Practices of Slave Ownership in the English American Colonies,” in Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), pg. 92 4 Jennifer L. Morgan, “‘The Breedings Shall Goe with Their Mothers’: Gender and Evolving Practices of Slave Ownership in the English American Colonies,” in Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), pg. 93 5 Jennifer L. Morgan, “‘The Breedings Shall Goe with Their Mothers’: Gender and Evolving Practices of Slave Ownership in the English American Colonies,” in Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), pg. 73 6 Jennifer Spear, “Colonial Intimacies: Legislating Sex in French Louisiana,” William and Mary Quarterly, 60 no. 1 (January 2003), pg. 79 7 Kathleen M. Brown, “From ‘Foul Crimes’ to ‘Spurious Issue’: Sexual Regulation and the Social Construction of Race,” in Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), pg. 198 male punishment in a court, Brown mentions, punishments and accountability for mixed sexual relations were only punished when it appeared “to be part of a pattern of self-assertion and trespass on white male 8privilege.” In conclusion, the intersectional influence of race, gender, religion, and class on sexuality was fundamental in shaping not only laws and the state, but interpersonal understandings of relationships and sexuality. Underlining the developing context of these different influences ran a current of “whiteness” and “masculinity” which enforced by the capitalistic-status-quo in North America predominately shaped the legality and notions surrounding race and sexuality. Discussion Questions ● How can thoughts on sexuality and sexual relations along the lines of race, gender, class, religion, etc. shape policy? Is the state solely guiding how individuals view sexuality, or are citizens’ in these different periods/regions also influencing policy through their own perceived truths? Is this a cyclical relationship which perpetuates race in terms of sexuality and sexual relations? ● What role does religion play in establishing laws regarding sexuality in sexual relations if any in these periods? Is religion a leading factor in legislating sexuality or is race/class/status quo the primary driver? ● How can we as historians with these works unpack how religion, race, gender, and class impact different situations in different time periods? What common trends can help to understand the role of the state (and the groups which control it) in as Spear states “shaping the thoughts of sexuality and sexual relations”? 8 Kathleen M. Brown, “From ‘Foul Crimes’ to ‘Spurious Issue’: Sexual Regulation and the Social Construction of Race,” in Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), pg. 200 ○ How do we compare experiences in French Louisiana to those of slaves in the American South to further understand the role of the state/law in shaping thoughts on sexuality and sexual relations?