The Coloniality of Sexuality

Question 1

How were Columbus’s initial writings consequential for constructing the “new world”

Answer 1

• columbus’s initial description of the Carribbean island’s focused on their nakedness
• emphasized on lack of sexual shame, sexual aberration, beastiality, sodomy, incest and other practices that they understood as unnatural

Question 2

What is the Heterosexual Matrix

Answer 2

a cultural assumption that there are only two kinds of bodies, the so-called opposing sexes of male and female, associated with norms of masculinity and femininity respectively, which naturally come together to form a heterosexual union

Question 3

What is the wheel of power/privilege?

Answer 3

• lays out a number of axis of power
• when we’re born and grow into the world the social systems will gift us power based on some aspects of our identity and vice versa
• earned power is powerful as well however the wheel emphasizes on power that is gifted
• is positioned from a Western perspective

Question 4

What are the “big three” systems associated with the wheel of privilege

Answer 4

race, class and gender

Question 5

Define Sexual Dimorphism

Answer 5

the belief that there are only two biological sexes - male and female

Question 6

Who is Karl Ulrichs

Answer 6

• 19th century lawyer and activist who lived in Hanover
• published a series of booklets on same-sex desire from 1860-1880
• did not penalize same-sex sexuality, was actually concerned about the threat of penalization
• same-sex love and desire was not a sin, a disease, or a maladjustment (as dominant views insisted), but instead was a natural and biological variation

Question 7

Why can Colonialism and Gendered power/sexuality not be separated?

Answer 7

• part of the historical foundation of colonialist
• Western and non-Western judgements about sexuality
• othering

Question 8

How were people viewed by Columbus and his people ?

Answer 8

people (especially women) were viewed as hypersexed one one hand, and on the other were judged harshly for their nakedness - this provided justification for the violence inflicted

Question 9

The Colonial Logics:

Answer 9

1. nakedness = sin
2. people in “discovered lands” were naked (and engaging in diverse sexual acts)
3. therefore “they” and other/less than “us” (different form the West and thus not as “developed”, more sinful, animalistic)

Question 10

How are Colonial views imposed - even when some space is opened in the west?

Answer 10

• based on “love” and gender binary for Western folx so natural and pure
• othering of non-west- more bi-sexual, oriented to physical
• non-Western same sex relationship are not “legitimate” are “un-pure”

Question 11

Give an example of how coloniality continues to matter for sexuality today?

Answer 11

• not a linear narrative of rights development and freedoms
• ex. transgender rights right now in Alberta