How important is race to the history of sexuality?
Sexuality played a significant, yet often overlooked, role in the construction
and perpetuation of the British empire. The intersectionality of sexuality with newly
developing ideas of race in both colonies and metropoles has played a role in
shaping the distinctions between colonised and coloniser, such as the regulation of
interracial sexual contact, including prostitution, concubinage, legal marriage; and imperial interventions in the sexualities of colonised populations. 1 Furthermore, the
construction and regulation of sexuality throughout history have had lasting
ramifications on our current world, as they have been deeply intertwined with the
representation and understanding of different racial groups. Therefore, in this essay,
I will argue that race is a fundamental factor in the history of sexuality. Without
acknowledging the ways in which race intersects with sexuality, it is impossible to
gain a comprehensive understanding of the complexities of sexual history.
Specifically, this essay will highlight how sexuality was employed throughout
colonialism to create and uphold ideas of racial sexuality and ideas of whiteness, as
well as how these ideas were used in the attempts of justifying colonisation.
Firstly, I will discuss the important role sex and sexuality played in shaping the
distinctions between colonisers and colonised. As Mytheli Sreenivas has highlighted, sex in the colonies was never simply a private act irrelevant to the empire. 2 Colonial
sexual relationships were not simply individual encounters, but rather an integral part
of the colonial project, perpetuating and reinforcing dynamics between colonisers
and colonised as well as sexual ideologies and racial stereotypes, where people of
colour, particularly women, were framed as the exotic ‘other’, who had insatiable sexual drives that meant uncontrollable and animalistic sexual behaviours. 3
Throughout this period, one way in which colonial powers constructed and
perpetuated notions of the supposed sexual pathologies of black women was the
European exhibitions of native female bodies.
1 Robert M. Buffington, Donna J. Guy, and Eithne, Luibheid, A Global History of Sexuality: The Modern Era (England: Wiley Blackwell, 2014), pp. 59. 2 Robert M. Buffington, Donna J. Guy, and Eithne, Luibheid, pp. 58. 3 Doris Ewing, and Steven P. Schacht, ‘Sexuality: Toward a Race, Gender, and Class Perspective’, Race, Gender and Class, 7.1 (2000), 7-9, pp. 8.
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