Sexuality: Week #3 Reading Notes

Brown—The Politics of Sexual Difference in a 17th Century Anglo-American Settlement “Despite the paucity of evidence, Hall’s case presents a nonetheless richly detailed glimpse of an early modern community’s responses to gender transgression, exposing to view a multiplicity of popular beliefs about sexual difference and the variety of uses to which they could be put by groups of people with different stakes in the social order.” (172) “The subsequent need to report their findings to a superior court compelled people who normally did not articulate their views on sexual difference to define the essence of maleness and femaleness … “beliefsin-action … analyze each group's articulation of sexual difference by comparing it to their investigatory method, their claims (often implicit) to expertise, and their authority in the community.” (173) “The resultant absence of a coherent biological foundation for sex added to the inherent instability of concepts of sexual difference even as it made such concepts more available for local appropriation and adaptation … left the lion’s share of the work of producing gender distinctions to legal and religions institutions, local custom, and daily performance.” (173-174) “Borrowing liberally from religious and medical texts that assumed women’s inferiority, legal interpreters enshrined gender differences in the laws governing marriage, property, and accountability for crime … Law, religion, and custom thus stabilized gender although they did so without access to a stable biological concept of sexual difference.” (174) ● Topics of sexuality/gender as a means for establishing the tasks and the economic structure of a system, what did economics mean to Hall and what did economics mean to the broader colonial economic and this subtext there ● How do we avoid present thoughts/ideas when looking at these contexts/queer identity in a historical context, putting these identities onto others is complex and problematic ○ Using examples of current and past transgender people, guessing can put these labels onto folks, etc. ○ Queer as a vague, blanket statement to identify and understand folks who were outside the societal norm in that colonial/other period ● Role of migration/new people into the new world as a means for expanding gender ideals and norms in that society, Westward expansion as well in this way for expanding horizons ○ Role of women as the “civilizers” of a population, with queer identities that makes these ideas more complex with gender structures and gender norms in this way ● Reactionary measures in the colonies that was more problematic than in Europe ○ Hall being forced to decide between one sex or another to present as in the US ○ Is there an influence of indigenous culture with humiliation/pressure in those ways, why is humiliation such a common form of punishment in this society ○ Lack of another case for what happened with Hall, establishing a precedent in this way ● Impotence used as a means for sex and gender, the consolidation of (white) masculinity ○ Hall was only marked as a female/non-male identifying as he was deemed incompetent → therefore unable to productivity contribute to the capitalistic setting in which this occurred ● Brown’s idea of gender performance, how does one display gender identifying? ○ Hall utilized this different presentation of gender depending on what value would come from identifying/being either in a certain situation, determining gender identity in a way which works within a community based on the effects of a different society situation ■ This allows for social mobility which is problematic in terms of colonial and or societal control ○ Complex as Hall served in war, complexity to the typical gender dynamics ● What role does the division of labor in the economy play in the stratification of gender in the colonial setting? ○ Men in the colonies eventually had to conform to these tasks ● The role of the law in presenting: ○ The law wanting a representation of how Hall was presenting in public, the law in a way wanting to look at how gender impacts the standings of individuals ○ The matrons in the case wanting to know more as genitalia ■ Hermaphrodite or transgender? ● How did the case of Hall bring ordinary people into the conversation about gender and sexuality that they would have not been otherwise? ○ The matrons being included was especially unique, with women being consulted in the law, speaking out, but speaking more so to their identity ○ Virginia being a newer colony, not exactly a law system set up, but how there was no precedence set and how this impacted the thoughts and work of this ○ And more so how these ideals worked to build a new precedent and set of ideals Witchcraft Reading ● What impacted witchcraft and ideals of sexuality in the Puritan times? ○ Religion ○ Family/Inheritance/Patriarchy/State ○ Divisions of Labor/Economic Society/Class ● What types of women were accused of witchcraft? ○ “Sexually deviant” ○ Being independent ○ Not conforming to the church/structure of society ■ “Mockery of established religion” ○ Lack of “innocence”, put onto a woman by MEN ○ Husbands who were disabled/not at home, women were compelled to work on their own/operate on their own ○ “Lying” ○ Widows/older women ○ Lack of legal recourse for women, seemingly the only reason for your own self-serving purposes and maintaining your own social position ● How did these women, categorized by these indicators, present threats to the new societal structures in the colonies? ○ Everything is related to religion and puritanical ideals ○ Impacts the creation and maintenance of gender roles in society ○ Power structures such as these are dependent on influencing the role of economics, the structure of patriarchy is working, and these individuals are deviant to the society, enforced through fear and violence ■ Women and their role in civilization of bringing society ● Argument of the article that women are weak of character and susceptible to Satan ● Underlying motivations change what we see women as in this period, they are deemed as necessary for in this society ■ Means of not having the literacy/knowledge to not believe things that are not true (example today of modern media disinformation) ● Your only source of knowledge is the bible, lots of people can’t read, and this is clear in how people are impacted by their current states ○ Unfair to pinpoint them of not knowing what is happening, but the average people really don’t have the knowledge to know about what is happening in their society ● What does the “erotic” nature of witchcraft reveal about thoughts surrounding sexuality in a puritanical society? ○ Unless past childbearing ages ○ Detriment if unable to socially or politically reproduce ○ Sex only needed as a means for procreation, straying from religion ■ The idea of being a “drain” on society, by not economically or physically reproducing in a way that benefits the puritanical society ○ Role of these women being poor and relaying on charity, or menial labor ■ Being viewed as a burden to their communities and social welfare Week 3 Pt. 2 Reading Notes ● Only case in America of execution for sodomy: William Plaine 1646 ● Role of historical ideals and the lack of context, repeated themes regarding this and the role of the Matrons and the responsibility of a community ● Protection of Hallowell as a focus on the social/physical reproduction rather than ● Religion/Culture ○ The issue of abortion then was then to deal with the sin of having premarital sex rather than the issue of actually being pregnant ○ How the society and culture of the group impacts the religion ad the morality of this ● Shfit of culture regarding gender and the punishment of unmarried sex/pregnancy ○ Double standard especially with younger men (pg. 22) ● Role of generational wealth/class in terms of accountability ● Puritanical views in New England vs. Quakers in PA as a means of less legislated ideas and structures in the views of sexuality ●