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Policing boundaries of acceptable gender and sexual identity - Coggle…
Policing boundaries of acceptable gender and sexual identity
In the 18th century, homosexual sex acts turned from sex acts to sexual identities. Molly houses provided men a space to live as what we not recognize as gay men. In ways that anticipate Stonewall by centuries, police would raid molly houses, arresting the men.
Anti-sodomy tracts like Satan's Harvest Home and Sodom and Onan imagine the threat coming not from same-sex sex acts, but from people who organize their lives as sodomites.
In your group journals, please think about the mechanics, discourses, and strategies 18th century writers sought to police the boundaries of acceptable gender and sexual identity.
Strategies to police gender:
law
"the level of proof needed to gain a conviction was lowered, and following 1885 the definition of illegal sexual activity was widened to include “gross indecency” between men"
"was indicted for an unnatural crime", in the more prudish atmosphere of the nineteenth century. Accounts of trials for
rape
and
bestiality
were similarly truncated from the 1790s
so being homosexual was almost as bad as RAPE AND beastiality?????
The illegal nature of homosexual sex, however, ensured that the threat of a charge of sodomy or “sodomitical assault” was frequently used as the basis for extortion. As a result, while trials for sodomy itself gradually fall silent, fraud and extortion cases continued to retail at length detailed accounts of alleged sexual encounters between men.
social norms
"the Societies for the Reformation of Manners actively pursued homosexual men, using spies and provocateurs to close down molly houses and prosecute individuals."
Notable spasms of homophobia can also be identified in 1890 following the Cleveland Street prosecutions (in which the elite clients of a gay brothel were exposed to the public gaze) -> purposefully made their private life public to shame homosexual men for ... being homosexual!
"those convicted of attempted sodomy were frequently sentenced to stand in the pillory, where they were often subjected to merciless pelting from a hostile populace."
further trying to embarrass and shame those who are "found" to be homosexual by publicly shaming them
media/fashion
society policing the bodies of women is how fashion trends in the eighteenth century start to become particular in the sense that women shouldn’t dress extravagantly but also not laid back enough to be confused as a man. The kinds of dressings that are approved should be natural and “represent, not distort or dissimulate, their ‘natural’ identity” (p. 461).
Tatler and Spectator
socialization of culture surrounding gender binary
Women socialized to be nurturing, caring, good listeners, and patient
activities for women included sewing, cooking, being other people's therapists basically
men are taught to be strong, assertive, dominant, emotionless, and powerful
if men talk about their feelings that's "gay"
"full record of male homosexuality available from the Proceedings, lesbianism is not substantially recorded here. This is largely the result of the fact that sex between women was not illegal, and does not reflect a lack of sexual activity"
how men and women were treated differently:
males and females are socialized in different ways growing up
from the socialization of women, they are more likely to have a larger social support group, talk about emotions, and be more physically friendly towards their same sex friends
if men were to be physically affectionate to their same sex friends, they would be considered in acting in "gross indecency"
"the level of proof needed to gain a conviction was lowered, and following 1885 the definition of illegal sexual activity was widened to include “gross indecency” between men"
why do women not get treated as harshly as men?
