you will submit a proposal and annotated bibliography for your final paper. In this 500-word proposal, you will outline your plan for your final project: topic, thesis, which sources from the course you plan to draw on, etc. You will also submit an annotated bibliography with a minimum of three sources. For each annotation, in 3-4 sentences, you will explain the main argument of the piece, how it relates to your project, and why you are using it. These sources should be academic in nature.
Buytig ndSlling the “Gitfiendbxperince|B
of bodif stibues and iargir. and the meiding afforded to sextual
the exchange of sex or money in tie globalted, lttcapicilisc marketplace. My cot-
wentiont is thar experiencs sich as those of Amand and her dlenc reflec and rtus
Buying and Seling the
Once agely reatricted to hee·to-face interactiont and the smd-scale circulationbirlfriend txDerience”
of pornogrphk inag,, seual commerce has grown to indudk a vast and ever-
exqPanding rang of cornmercially vailable product and expriene——feish cubs;The Social and Subjective Contours of Market IntimaC]
drivs-throogh”stipetse venues; sexual” ing sex touritm co developing countres and within global ities and all ariery ofElizabethBernstein edlya mors than 20-billion-+year industry, and a mainsray of both first amnd hird
camining this erowdh and diverifcarion of gxual comncrc frpm he peraoective of che purveyors of seual servioes and their consunert,my ain has been to wrticu-seo neiglhborhood,I msittng on a brown leather sofa cafking witbAmanda,who lhas jut sai good-bye to the day’t fict customerWe drink tet as the early afernoon
beuween jnoney and wx at the “micro’level of bodies and subjeaivities,I ceksunshine seamt into the rom,lluminating many owersiulfed bookcaes, an ce
rereil thereadiowship berween conromy and deir mor breadyeciur bicyde, and Amanda hersel-—a dender woman in her lace thities with dad vestment thac has taken plece sinc the 1970a has had consequenice tha( ace more sdet: The dssre thax drive the rPpidly osyandungand drvesityng mtermiacora kActüally,Iypent most of che Ume giving him a backrub,and we alo spenc a of my clents are comPuter indusry wotker——bout half Sometimes [ask
| from developing to deveoped coudtris, have fhucled the growth and diversifcatior confgurationy of fmilial lfe as well s in new crotic dspositiont.ones that the nme, dhey dontseem to even have time for a socia lif O0ld and New Markets in Sexual tab
To histodically situate my claims about the”nhewnss’ of lte caplttlis configurncioos
of erotlcism and desice. i begin with a brief review of wome of the seholarship that taken place in the United Stares and Wescrn Europe over tbe pas few centurics. As Hobon(1987) have pointed out, despire the frequent equation of “prostitution”
with the “oldes profesion,” what many of us ypiclly think of as proatinurion hs hihesigy of Chkig Phe,2007) Buyimg and Sellng the”Girlrend bperience2 ) working ou dhe sirees now bgn o get ell phonecs and to tahke our ada, or dedine of the ecrended-kin baed tradiional family Tler srucual transhorma persedthiroughout the ciy,boued in inconsplcaous Viktorians in quier reidential acusly tnciesin电, despite the poluce cackdown on As每-run maagpoions invare phere of the tome, maty woiking-class women and women of color joined earty 2oth cenuCy, maumerous vic commtsion had been crated to stidy——ind tion ofillgl nigants and oo visibk sceerwalking By coutras,wlat historans typlally refer to as”pemodern” forus of sex
the fate of a few hundred stret proxituts and dicir Cucomers but was about a more wide-sweeping reallocicion of urban spacz,in which the iner ciry was reckaimed by the whikte middle dasses, while thoet ar the socal margims were putihed to the cioy’s home and commvnitiet.Onlywth tbe onset of modert-induntral capinalihm did
shouvh the neighborhood resident 永tivelyopposd tngrant and isible Piotiturtionkuee mumbeis of women ind thensebve sequestered in i space that was physically and ocialy septrate, dereby afixing them with the permanently srignatizing lden-
of eras pusc, chey did not isue a denunciatin of the ituemmingling of kxuality and the market To the contrary, the young. wuite profesionals who tooded the ciry fundaruentelly aker the meaning of modem prostirution、 which marked the fendle
the fotreFonir of a nsw econoimny in sexual svices.by ceating a demand lor then and halitating new conditions of production.The sex trade did not. disPpar but The tems modkrnw and prwodon faciliare the comprehension of social realitik
|while an aray of soarialydipeed wexul servisces cnceed to bake is place. In cally premnodern forms of sexual barter never disappewred entiely but evis to thi cuble 9.1, I summariz the key aspatil and poliricdl rransformations of possindusttal | fexual ommerc. 族s wll as dhe subjctive componence of chese changs that I cilabocommunitics throughout the word, and in the se-tor-drugs barter conomy of the somle sociad change. They highlight the wry in whid new fomes and meanings of
he Subjective Contours of Maret lntimacy| scxual exshange cemerg at particular hiscorical juHcrurcs, coexisig with, and: witnesed a simiar tratvitionual moment in paadigns of comamercil exual ex-
While g hair aiount has been written abourt dhe ways in whicb the new globilhueschange. In postindusril dcie ysch as San Francisco,Aunserdam,and Stockholm, the boundaries of vic lave beea reamapped in such a way so ao to curail the “devia
Latin America, and more recendy,Eatera Europe (Demleitner 200l;Ehreireich and Hochsxhild 2002;Balkes1999,] would like to polnt to a dfferent level at whichowerall las expAnded.! tide in the Wear. They have contributed to ctinformation im practices and mean- yeans was on R way to beig iacorporated into Union Squate, the princijpol ouris
disurict,s hushiouable retaurants and high-priced apsttment compleses condaued
to widen their spread.At the sane time,adverdisemeints for prustiturion in the news- papers and durough the aew on-line servics exploded,as did prosticurion inll of
urede, prosxitutes leaned to develop stategies to disrance thenuelves fron their la- [(ao por outuo aoijd-acalud |2u) sppE Tpnvas p1nO河Bnoq 8upq自吧dA e sa uopnypso.d, Jo uopexgyods ts q pneyna o prz]parulr方k舍-39ts uo smDoy suopuMwu]
zeds 2rTAnd,pun pue 2nond,urpemusq appAyp |epo0 suroqeu topEmsenbas) àI-PoX 35oupr atp w卓然 pur hp a1p mnognoq poBdm(
(aye ‘Ssoewnop Pros u3时 ;请GAynAg?dvoAt j0 aino91u pnrs0mHP(yo Aer pr1]odr pus pajwaNO Ape 3>1tmwoo ]eroxws ) jJwupans0Jtoympsord ppnmaoup Rneurnmsd pF to0mgpod F)mpu;uspou wM的 风upxap u6peR4 1’6 0 [9合 Boying and Sellng the”Gihiend Experience2 one (o see two scort that bhad curacd him down.They cod hin chat aot rcallygood.So be chaked me.Aid be said to me,.”Douit everle anyonc try
to ell yrou dhat wha( you’re doing iat iomporan rork.了 was lonely,tired, and hat Ive noticed is that a lot of people really waumt to bte wioesed when they
come.They rally wanr to feel that You know, I onlyger their deslie and I at thenm deeplyand very very lovingly.For them, it feces great. like its so
peraonal,like girdfricnd stuf.But】 feel thac I’m jc fering them..love ——Zoey,30,trotic m ents plac on toric aurhenticity were comments from the cliends themselves. During
out imtervews. thsy repeaiedly stresed to imne dhat one ot the chief vittues ot cour-
cal epochs, this “bounded’ qualiey may have piovided men with an unproblematic
|And readily availabke sexunl outdet to supplement a relationship with a pure and
cnggrmenr over other rtacional fomnt.Paid sex is neither a ad subatitute for sone
thing that one would idealy choosc co obain int a no0marker rooantic redatiouship aroud livitog alone, intaacy through dose friendships, and cine-efhcient.sfely | example of the profownid r6origaoitation of penonal life that has occurred in pos.
indusrial urbaun cencens and nationwide during the past 30 of so yar.Dcmogrephic
ia0ors_agbL
jective and croric cousequences that few sociologists have patsted to cnsider.
Harold Holanan ad Sharon Pines (1982) have argued that lt is dhe fantasy of
chuaing tn the Proatitution trarscion-——onethiog maouably distinct lroma Purely lines of the sesoworkers a charsacteritig thar were ar leasx ar importat (o thenm a一Amanda, 39,independent el
ment,”If hete creament is cold or perfuncrory l’m not inteetel.” Thcy were con- { Burying and Selling the”GilfrtendExpereRce sex for 北exs sk,oot for pay and that was the lar time l ever heard fom he anotion of bounded 和achendicity I am ofering here hac been miinterpeted
bry tome cricc of prostitutlon who contine to regird the comnercial sul encoo- One of the mogr souglhtafter features in the prostirution cncounter has dhu
|wby, if mot for the ake of pure domination would”15to 25 percent of the cutom- sotmething thar could presumably be sel-dniniscered. Yet as one cleit insisted, Hanaciol of one sex worker who specializes in this service):
qld nio iv te o puruea traitdgal rarionP rs more reat ad puma ransformations t Economy, Knship. andSexualit]
Finall.I would like co consider some of the broader social implications of the shuf retical model I developed ro undertand these ransicions,buc I do not intend to sug final cohumn is that they do nor supplanr the featuces of the prior listoricat epochs the hif to a posmodem sexual sthic has becn gradul and highly uneven.Neary
《o work in ‘non-fexible”jobs.”In rhe moet recent Matioad survey of sexul at- mariage and long-torm rdationslipe in late-capitalis wociey, rooanic love of the
modeitst wrey enalais a crut epowtoryo meinirg fotwgulueat titiber of vsbly around de istue of gy marige and bortion (boxh of which agnal a dis
thepoxtidustria Pparadign of sexual commeice have emerged withou( imporant historial precedeas.The uadicion of the European couxrtsan (prized as muc fo1 emotionally expatsive yer explicitly transactional eroric arangentents (Gri伍n 2001:
Dalby 1983:DowIner: 2001:Ramberg 2006).”Although I contend that contempo. 12 Racism, Birth Control When nineteenth-century feminists raised the demand for “voluntary motherhood,” the Birth control—individual choice, safe contraceptive methods, as well as abortions when The most important victory of the contemporary birth control movement was won during The ranks of the abortion rights campaign did not include substantial numbers of women The failure of the abortion rights campaign to conduct a historical self-evaluation led to a important clues about the history of the birth control movement. This movement, for As for the abortion rights campaign itself, how could women of color fail to grasp its Black women have been aborting themselves since the earliest days of slavery. Many … as the planters believe, the blacks are possessed of a secret by which they destroy the fetus at Expressing shock that “… whole families of women fail to have any children,”3 this doctor She rejoiced that the girl was dead—“now she would never know what a woman suffers as a Why were self-imposed abortions and reluctant acts of infanticide such common During the early abortion rights campaign it was too frequently assumed that legal having fewer children could create more jobs, higher wages, better schools, etc., etc. This The renewed offensive against abortion rights that erupted during the latter half of the Women’s desire to control their reproductive system is probably as old as human history [t]ake pearlash, 1 part; water, 6 parts. Mix and filter. Keep it in closed bottles, and use it, with or For “Abernethy’s Preventive Lotion,”
[t]ake bichloride of mercury, 25 parts; milk of almonds, 400 parts; alcohol, 100 parts; rosewater, While women have probably always dreamed of infallible methods of birth control, it was Sarah Grimke advocated women’s right to sexual abstinence. Around the same time the The notion that women could refuse to submit to their husbands’ sexual demands when the woman suffrage movement had reached its peak, feminists were publicly (t)he wife who submits to sexual intercourse against her wishes or desires, virtually commits Woodhull, of course, was quite notorious as a proponent of “free love.” Her defense of a It was not a coincidence that women’s consciousness of their reproductive rights was born Toward the end of the nineteenth century the white birth rate in the United States In 1905 President Theodore Roosevelt concluded his Lincoln Day Dinner speech with the How did the birth control movement respond to Roosevelt’s accusation that their cause for its advocates. Yet, as Linda Gordon maintains, this controversy “… also brought to the This happened in two ways. First, the feminists were increasingly emphasizing birth control as a The acceptance of the race-suicide thesis, to a greater or lesser extent, by women such as When Margaret Sanger embarked upon her lifelong crusade for birth control—a term she When Margaret Sanger joined the Socialist party in 1912, she assumed the responsibility According to Sanger’s autobiographical reflections, one of the many visits she made as a Sadie Sachs had attempted to abort herself. Once the crisis had passed, the young woman I glanced quickly to Mrs. Sachs. Even through my sudden tears I could see stamped on her face an Three months later Sadie Sachs died from another self-induced abortion. That night, I went to bed, knowing that no matter what it might cost, I was finished with palliatives and During the first phase of Sanger’s birth control crusade, she maintained her affiliation Unfortunately, the alliance between the birth control campaign and the radical labor When Margaret Sanger severed her ties with the Socialist party for the purpose of influence of the eugenics movement would soon destroy the progressive potential of the During the first decades of the twentieth century the rising popularity of the eugenics By 1919 the eugenic influence on the birth control movement was unmistakably clear. In … prevent the American people from being replaced by alien or Negro stock, whether it be by By 1932 the Eugenics Society could boast that at least twenty-six states had passed Within the American Birth Control League, the call for birth control among Black people (t)he mass of Negroes, particularly in the South, still breed carelessly and disastrously, with the Calling for the recruitment of Black ministers to lead local birth control committees, the … that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can This episode in the birth control movement confirmed the ideological victory of the racism The abortion rights activists of the early 1970s should have examined the history of their It was not until the media decided that the casual sterilization of two Black girls in After the Southern Poverty Law Center filed suit on behalf of the Relf sisters, the girls’ In the aftermath of the publicity exposing the Relf sisters’ case, similar episodes were Nial Ruth Cox’s lawsuit was aimed at a state which had diligently practiced the theory of better.
As far as I can determine, the statistics reveal that since 1964, approximately 65% of the women As the flurry of publicity exposing sterilization abuse revealed, the neighboring state of Revelations of sterilization abuse during that time exposed the complicity of the federal Given the historical genocide inflicted on the native population of the United States, one Native American Indians are special targets of government propaganda on sterilization. In The domestic population policy of the U.S. government has an undeniably racist edge. had been rendered surgically infertile.51 Moreover, 43 percent of the women sterilized The astonishing number of Puerto Rican women who have been sterilized reflects a … if purely mathematical projections are to be taken seriously, if the present rate of sterilization During the 1970s the devastating implications of the Puerto Rican experiment began to The prevalence of sterilization abuse during the latter 1970s may be greater than ever The 1977 Hyde Amendment has added yet another dimension to coercive sterilization funded abortions. There have been many more victims—women for whom sterilization has Over the last decade the struggle against sterilization abuse has been waged primarily by What’s Love Got to
Do with It? Transnational
Desires and Sex Tourism i n
the Dominican Republic
DBNISB BRENNAN
?,
~l DUKE UNIViRSITY PRESS
DURHAM AJ.ID LONDON 200 4
J 3. PERFORMING LOVE
,. married-two Afro-Dominican male resort workers in a shared ‘cer- r
additional motives,” reported a leading Dominican news magazine President Joaquin Balaguer issued a statement on the wedding, i I 92 What’s Love Got to Do with It? ‘1?ogamo,11111e1rulfip’ldeque 6. Cartoon on the double wedding, DDT (Dedarado Delirium Tremens), 8 Decem-
ber 1994, “The Love of the Little Black One.” See page 94 for translation
Peiforming Love 93
,,,,, Cartoon on the dQuble wedding, DDT (Declarado Delirium Treme11s),
8 December 1994, ”The Love of the Little Bl*1ck One. ”
Lmido»: A local and melancholic morning of 1499, two English women, bored to_no end,
reneiv their passports before leaving 011 j’.l.n adventure toward “El Nacional” (Sorry: toward
the Caribbean).
ENGLISH WOMAN r: Allison, do yon have everything ready? I’m calling Apollo taxi
and coming to get you ..
ENGLISH WOMAN 2: Yes, I -already threw my stuff in the bag. Let’s go.
ENGLISH WOMAN 3: Be careful with the Sand Key Pants Klds!
Airport sign: Welcome to the Domi11ica.11 Republic
DOMlNICAN WOMAN: Welcome to the Dominican Republic, misses, but you’re
going to have to wait to check in because there is no electricity,
cuSToMs WORKER 1: The light is back! (Damn, it only lasted four hours!)
CUSTOMS WORKER 2: Good that it’s back!
Billboard: Welcome to Sosua
Hotel sign: Sosna, Kingdom of Kings
HOTEL CLERIC And your family, how are they, Mrs. Pujols?
DOMINICAN MAN: Hi, young ladies. My name is Cupid and I’m a specialist in love.
ENGLISH WOMEN: Sorry, we didn’t come for that.
Then a loudspeaker sounds .
LOUDSPEAK£rc “We ask our guests to come on down, the activity boys are going
to begin their dance spectacle.”
And then i11 Eaglish .
LOUDSPEAKER: “We say come on to the people because our boys are b1*inning
the dance class.” DOMINICAN MAN 2: The dog dance is like this!
94 What’s Love Got to Do with It?
t :;i~I-
~1 the overnight Weddings. The cartoon plays up the “predatory” na- The ”real thing,” marriage por amor, is understood by SosUans in In this chapter I am not attempting to determine which relation- I
Peiforming Love 95 will have more opportunities in Germany.” However, it is important Even though sex workers in Soslla talk about the possibility of Marriage in a Sexscape
This chapter examines the practices and meanings of “love” within 96 “What’s Love Got to Do with !ti’
iE
Below, I recount several women’s and men’s marriage choices, and Other scholars have documented poor women’s use of the sex Some relationships are not easily described, however. Many rela- Peiforming Love 97 I Ii
~
l\j
and overv;reight the women were and hm\’ handsome and well mus- and services they deliver. Bruner’s (1999) description of “touristic borderzones” as “performa- tourists primarily seek fun and pleasure.
98 What’s Love Got to Do with It?
(~:
~I
Sex and romance in Soslla have thus become more than just sites 7
Relationships in Soslla por residencia also can be a kind of stage 6
Of course not every Dominican worker in Soslla’s tourist econ· Peiforming Love 99 and visa sponsorships, yet many are perceived as doing so. SosUans 9 resort workers, particularly “activity directors” -the resort position they. being stereotyped as putas but usually from Dominicans outside of History of Migration off the Island: The automatic eyebrow raising and speculation of SosUans that 100 What’s Love Got to Do with It?
much of a big pain is this? She told me I needed to write her an Understanding why Dominican resort workers and sex workers Dominicans started using migration as a means to social mobility Peiforming Love 101 1995a). Many of ~hese early migrants had progressive ties and left omy (Georges 1990). difficult-even for middle-class families-and, often, families end up At the time this book went to press, prices for basic foodstuffs, 102 What’s Love Got to Do with It?
ffi’
r lost $2.2 billion, a figure equal to 13 percent of the country’s GDP. In In this context of limited economic mobility and extraordinary ob- Suspicious Love
On account of the obstacles to legal migration just discustied, Do- SANKY-PANKIES
One of the first groups of Sos\lans who were reputed to “perform” PeifOrming Love 103 wooing white, female, middle-aged tourists. In this early stage of 2II-l2).
Few of these “original” sankies remain in Soslla; they were suc- MALE RESORT WORKERS/ ACTIVITY DIRECTORS
In light of the desperation some Dominicans feel to leave the island, 104 “What’s Love Got to Do with It?
ft”
‘J tables, bartending, or tending a cash register-but the chance to Hotel management, keenly aware of how highly valued these Hugo, another activity director, left school at age fifteen in Pu- Peiforming Love 105 / I ~ 1! ~ resort complex at Playa Dorada, about twenty miles outside of At the time we spoke, he was not looking to marry-or to mi- FEMALE RESORT WORKERS AND SEX WORKERS
Consuelo, a twenty-four-year old sex worker, walked around Los 106 v\That’s Love Got to Do with Iti’
~ rf’
trying to learn German. I’m moving to Germany in the next few If it is “not easy” to get to Europe (or elsewhere off the island) by Mari and Andrea: “No, it’s not love.” The words romance and love are Peiforming Love 107 happy Valentine’s Day, and many expressed hopes that they might The hopeful pursuit of romance I witnessed on Valentine’s Day ll
married, Mari planned to return to Germany to see her husband and Another sex worker, Andrea, spent the night with her Dominican 108 ‘What’s Love Got to Do with It?
side onto her porch (she lived on the second floor of a house her Although Andrea’s friends who remained behind in Soslla saw Considering the benefits for family and friends, it is easy to see Performing Love 109 resort workers such as Hugo, have returned to Soslla to dispel the “Love” in a Global World: New Transnational Courting Practices
Part of a day’s work for sex workers who are interested in getting off Unlike the love letters sex workers send their clients, the faxes sex 110 ‘What’s Love Got to Do with It?
7. Western Union office in El Batey
will call the men from Codetel (usually paid for by money wires sent Peifonning Love 111 about him every day.” Following Elena’s guidelines, Carmen com- Dear- for a fax tO hear how you are. I got your money wire, thanks. But Please send me a fax at the following number-, and if possi- I miss you very much and think of you all the time. I love you Many Kisses, 19
Carmen never heard from th.is client again. being able to read and write is not a critical skill in transnational Of course, even those sex workers who are veterans of transna- 112 What’s Love Got to Do with It?
of the men. Nora, who has never received p.n international fax or Conclusion: Marriage, “Papers,” and Suspicious Love
It is not only in Soslla’s tourist economy that marriage solves obsta- Similarly, the rush to marry in February and March 1997, in cities Rarely has love been so suspect in New York City as in the last Performing Love 113 li ii ii!
i •:;-
stopped by imperfect strangers and asked whether it is their I99T A32)
As the reporter suspected, some of these marriages of course Sex workers and resort workers who feign love for an oppor- 114 What’s Love Got to Do with Iti’
[f marry, move the women’s children to Europe, or have children Pe1forming Love 115 ll.:
~! [~:,
” Tourism accounted for 13.52 percent of the Dominican Republic’s gross domes·
tic product in 1998 and has been above 13 percent every year since I994 (Asso·
ciation of Caribbean States 2001b). Receipts from tourism totaled $2,86 million
in 2000 and $2.68 million in 2001 (World Tourism Organization 2002).
Guests at these hotels pay a fixed p1ice in their home countries and generally
spend little money in the Dominican Republic. The packages include airfare,
hotel, meals, and sometimes drinks and even cigarettes. Symanski and Nancy Burly (1973), for example, write about 1,000 Jewish refu-
gees, whereas a recent article by Debbie Blumberg (2003) cites 645.
u These are the Jewish settlers’ real names and are the only real names I identify
in the book. The settlers agreed to be identified. Also, I decided to use their real before (by journalists, travel writers, and scholars of Jewish history) as well as
in fellow settler Josef David Eich en’s testimonial, SosUa: Una co Ionia hebrea en La
Repllblica Dominicana (1980). father’s memoir with me.
,, From 1980 to 1996, the average annual growth rate of tourist arrivals to
the Dominican Republic was 10.62 percent. Among the world’s top tourism
destinations, the Domi.tllcan Republic was one of only eleven nations which
boasted an average growth rate over ro percent (World Tourism Organization
1998: I3). International tourist arrivals grew by I2.I percent in 1999-2000; ar·
rivals, however, decreased by 6,6 percent in :woo-2001. The Caribbean experi.
enced a regional decline in tourist arrivals after September n, 2001. The aver-
age regional decline was 6 percent in the months following the terrorist
attacks, while arrivals to the Dominican Republic dropped by 5 percent (World
Tourism Orgatllzation 2002). (unemployment rate: 14-4 percent) and the 1999 labor force to be 2,965,000
(unemployment rate: 13.8 percent) (US. Department of State, Bureau of Eco·
nomic and Business Affairs 2001). Economists estimate that 141,000 were em-
ployed i.t1 Dominican hotels, restaurants, and bars in 1999 (Economist 2000: 9),
The estimated labor force in 2000 was 3,785,521, of which 1,224,u4 were
women, a participation rate of 37.6 percent (Biez 2000: 45, 49, 51).
16 The term sanky~pankies evolved from ”Jos hanky-pankies.” These men do not
work for a set fee but for gifts, meals, and other expenses at the discretion of
tourists. They hang out on the beaches hy day and in the nightclubs at night,
looking for foreign women. The original sank.ks’ trademark, in the early 1980s,
was dreadlocks, sometimes bleached by the sun. Dominican men who do not
want to be labeled sankies thus avoid having dreadlocks or long hair. In the
early 19Sos, sankies were rumored to have sexual encounters with both men
and women, but as the threat, and stigma, of AIDS increased, sankies’ homosex-
234 Notes to Chapter 2
ual liaisons have gone underground. A beachgoer or nightdubber today is
more likely to see sankies hitting on women. For more on Dominican sankles. ,, For example, see Rebecca Scott (1985) on cities in colonial Cuba. resent: Donna Guy (1990) on late nineteenth- and early twentieth·ccnrury
Buenos A.ires; Carroll Smith-Rosenburg (r985) on U.S. cities in the late nine·
teenth cenrury;Judith Walkowitz (r980) and (r992) on Victorian London; and
Luise White (1990) on colonial Nairobi_.
‘9
,0
~ 23
24
When I rerurned to Soslla in 1999, everyone l asked about the fire at the
Anchor told me unhesitatingly that they believed it was arson.
The Dominican police have been criticized by the US, Department of State for
frequent human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings, disappearances.
and torture or inhumane treatment. The police also have been cited for their
reluctance to handle rape cases and for frequent encouragement of victims to
seek assistance from NGOS (U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, In 1995, when the arrests I recount in this chapter took place, the average polke
officer was earning 900 pesos a month (U.S.$75.00), one of the lowest-paying The meeting was conducted entirely in German, but I sat with a German
friend who translated the discussions for me into English.
The suspect was dubbed the “gentleman robber,” since his modus operandi
was to politely question his victims as to where everything was while they
were blindfolded and tied up. He always apologized before he left. Many
believed he had lived in the U1llted States because his English was so polished
He hit at least half a dozen houso:s or apartments in and around SosUa and Despite these women’s perceptions of the exclusivity of the meeting, one of
the first items discussed was that the sea! of the association could not have
colors from the German flag, since the organization must be an international 25 Carlos was referring to an insufficient number of schools in the countryside
Many schools are understaffed and have few books or supplies.
26 Although Europeans are customers, I am unaware of any foreigners who own
these kinds of bars with rooms in the back.
3 Peiforming Love
“Un Amor en el Caribe” by Lorena S. Victoria appeared on 2r November in
one of the Dominkan Republic’s most well·respected news magazines, Rumbo 2 Judith Butler’s groundbreaking theodzation on ‘”performance” in relation to
Notes to Chapter 3 235 4 gender has become a central concept in gender studies. f’Or this project l am
interested in her writing on “gender parody,” which we see, for example, in
drag that “implicitly reveals the imitative structure of gender itself-as well as
its contingency” (1990: 137). If I were to write about a “love parody” in the inauthentic, or fabricated “love.” in ”.American understandings” as “idealization of the other, suddenness of
onset, physical arousal, and commitment to the other.” In Soslla, local under-
standings of what I am calling “real love” mirror Averill’s description.
Linda-Anne Rebhun was also interested in how people “describe sentiment”
bur moved past “vocabulary to discourse: what people talk about in relation to
sentimenr, how they communicate, what they say; as well as what they leave
unsaid and they act out in wordless practice” (1999: n). her research with the Ifalnk: “Emotion can be a cultural and interpersonal
process of naming, justifying, and persuading people in rclationship to each
other. Emotional meaning is then a social rather than an individual achieve-
ment-an emergent product of social life” (1988: 5). press. lo the wake of these stories, another British woman cmne forward with a
cautionary tale. Four years earlier, Sharon Kelly had met and married Rafael
Gutierrez, a DomJnican tour company driver, after an eight-week courtship.
They married in the Dominican Republic and then successfully applied for a
British visa for RafaeL Soon after their move to Sharon’s home in Norwich,
Rafael expressed a desire to obtain a visa to visit the United States. Denied
once, he applied again and received a tourist visa. He left England with a one-
way ticket to the Dominican Republic via New York but not before emptying
Sharon’s bank account, maxing out her credit ca”rd, and stealing her most
valuable jewelry. Although they spoke by phone when he was in New York, as
of November 1994 Sharon had not heard from Rafael since May 1992 (Hardy
7 1994). can men, (but] yellow cab was in fact invented and popularized by Japanese
journalists to imply that Japanese women are, from a foreigner’s perspective,
‘yellow’ and can be hailed as easily as a taxi” (1994: 465). tionship between the colonial eroticization of non-European women and the
contemporary exoticization of third-world sex workers. In particular, both
essays consider the role the brutal display in Paris’s Musee de !’Homme of
Saarrje Baartman (a young woman taken from what is now South Africa to be
exhibited like an animal in Europe) has played in shaping colonial and contem-
236 Notes to Chapter 3
.if;
porary views of black ?Omen’s sexuality. The display of her body “‘was placed
at the unsavory intersection of slavery, an Enlightenment classificatory system,
and quasi-pornographic notions of medicine” (Gilliam 2001: 179).
9 Men who are gossiped about as sankies do not use this term to describe
themselves, Mark PaWlla’s findings in a research project with zoo male sex
workers in Santo Domingo and Boca Chica suggest that only a small minority
of those interviewed use this term to describe themselves. Rather, more com-
monly; the men pejoratively apply the term to others, and sometimes use it
when ribbing one another. Padilla finds that the term carries less stigma than
the terms puta or prostituta for female sex workers, because male sex work
(with female clients) in comparison with female work seems less transgressive
and more in line with norms of male gende-r and sexuality (Padilla 2003).
JO Activity directors organize social events for hotel guests, such as dancing
lessons or sporting events.
II Remittances to the Dominican Republic grew by 85 percent between 1996 and
2000. In 2000 remittances totaled approximately $I.7 billion, 80 percent of
which came from Dominicans living in the United States (Latin Finance :wo1).
12 When I started fieldwork in the Dominican Republic in 1993, the official bank
rate was around 12 pesos to the US.$1. In the summer of 2003, the rate climbed I3 Between 1993 and I994, the DomJnican Republic was the country with the
highest increase in immigration in the United States (6,171 people, or 13-7
percent). This increase is attributed to an influx of immediate relatives of US
citizens (an increase of 9,5oj benveen the fiscal years 1993 and 1994) (U.S
Department of Justice, Immigration and Naturalization Service, worn).
14 Boca Chica is another toutist beach town with a lively sex trade. It is on the
south coast of the Dominican Republic, outside ofrhe capital, Santo Domingo.
15 Sex workers usually do not receive fax.es written in German or in languages
other than English or Spanish. In the case of their clients /boyfriends who do
not speak any English or Spanish, the men appear to have received help from
friends in translating their faxes so that the Dominican women can read them
16 Other Dominican customers at this branch of Codetel are internal migrants
who are in SosUa to work in the tourist trade. They generally use the service to
phone their families back home.
17 Sex workers do not have access to phones at the boatdinghonses; nor do they
have phones, other than cell phones, in their apartments or houses.
18 Although there are new cybercafes in El Batey, e-mail is not-as of yet-a form among sex workers, and their familiarity with compnters is nonexistent, it is
not likely that this will become a widely used form of communication. Big Honey, a collection of love letters that foreign men have sent Thai ‘”bar Notes to Chapter 3 237 20
” With only a third•grade education, Nanci could not read or write. In order to
correspond with her suitors, she sought the help of more literate sex workers. example, were Mexico (19,828) and the Dominican· Republic (14,894). The increased by 52 percent between fiscal years 1993 and 1994 (US- Department of
Justice, Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1..001b).
4 Sosua’s Sex Wor/eers
Multiple interests in the household and resulting complex power dynamics Sherri Grasmuck and Patricia Pessar’s (r99r) on Dominican migration to New especially true when one examines who has access to the resources necessa1y
for migration. Dispelling the notion of the household as a homogenous, site of unequal and hierarchical relations. For more on power dynamics in the and Young, Wolkowitz, and Mccullagh (1984). sectors.
4 Clara B3.ez reports that the economic participation rate for women grew from
29.7 percent in 1985 to 32.6 percent in 1990, 35.3 percent in 1995, and 37.6 percent 51). basic necessities (World Bank 2001) American States 1999). Human Rights Watch reported in 1996 that pregnancy 2002). Reductions in US. sugar quotas from the Dominican Republic, which had in 1980, to U.S.$19r million in 1989 (Safa 1995: 21). in 1999, sugar refining
238 Notes to Chapter 4
accounted for a mere 0.5 percent of the country’s gross domestic product 7 Who spepds money is just as important in understanding household dynamics different interests ap.d levels of authority, but their income allocation decisions needs hinges on their independent control of household income. When they allocate their wages to the household, while men generally only give half their 8 Their work decisions, in turn, will affect their daughters’ education and work
trajectories as is underscored by Lourdes Benerla and Martha Roldan’s (1987) Roldan d.escribe that girls are passed over when deciding which household household tasks that are understood to be women’s work, ~uch as acting as attention to the significant link between gender hierarchies in the household, 9 It ls unlikely, however, that Ani would have been able to send her daughter to IO She elaborates that households without mothers at the center to hold them
together “cease to exist,” while “a household withont men, either male head u I was extremely wonied about Maribel on~e I pieced together her age. AJ. 12 Scholars have written a great deal on women in extended families who raise 0ne
another’s children to overcome problems of absentee fathers. Edith Clarke’s 13 Data on female-headd households in the Dominican Republic reveal an in· 1971, 24.1 percent in 1984 (G6mez 1989), and 29.5 percent in 1991 (Ramirez 199J). r4 Feminist scholars haw written C…”\’.tensively on this designation of women’s
Notes to Chapter 4 239
“Miss, You Look like a Bratz Doll”: On Chonga Girls and Sexual-Aesthetic Excess
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This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:08:11 UTC “Miss, You Look Like a Bratz Doll”: JILLIAN HERNANDEZ
Often described by Latinas/os in South Florida as a low-class, slutty, My arguments are based on a questionnaire regarding chongas Keywords: Chonga / girls’ sexuality / Latina / body / representation / I was wearing tight black leggings under a fitted olive green sweater dress I was teaching an art workshop with girls at the Miami-Dade County ?2009 NWSA Journal, Vol. 21 No. 3 (Fall)
This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:08:11 UTC 64 Jillian Hernandez
Bratz doll the multi-racial, mass-marketed dolls with heavy make-up and The self-evaluation sparked by the student’s description of me, which my classes that these stereotypes did not speak to their intelligence, com on “chongas” was beginning to circulate in the local print, broadcast, and meanings associated with the chonga identity in South Florida and the This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:08:11 UTC Miss, You Look Like a Bratz Doll” 65
Methods
My arguments in this paper are based on a questionnaire regarding chongas I take an expansive approach to selecting the images under consider There is no explicit connection or relationship among Chongalicious, Latina Bodies in Visual Culture
Filmmaker and scholar Celine Parrenas Shimizu (2007) notes the criti Most literature, however, analyzes images of Latina celebrities such as This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:08:11 UTC 66 Julian Hernandez
interrogating the vernacular figure of the chonga, who is not represented Communications scholar Isabel Molina Guzman (2007) has shown how media focused on, such as Marisleysis’s public crying, long acrylic finger Marisleysis’s excessive body discursively unraveled the privileged, model The hyperbolic, stereotypical representations of Latinas often found As Shimizu (2007) states, “To panic about being identified within per Sexual-aesthetic excess is akin to Shimizu’s (2007) concept of the This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:08:11 UTC Miss, You Look Like a Bratz Doll 67
Productive perversity involves identifying with “bad” images, or working to Like Asian/American women, Latinas are subject to hypersexualization in Chongalicious Definition These Spanish terms, some emerging in the United States among Lati Performance theorist Jose Esteban Munoz (1999) has described the This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:08:11 UTC 68 Jillian Hernandez
Chusmeria is, to a large degree, linked to a stigmatized class identity. Within The chonga, a more recent term that appears to have stemmed from the The chonga finds a Chicana counterpart in the chola (“homegirl”). In Within the Chicana feminist deconstruction of Chicano familial discourse, I am situating this essay in the critical “chusma” and “chola” theoriza Though no “official” definition of the chonga exists, she entered the music performer Fergie, which likely bolstered its rapid local circulation. Lorenzo, then drama students attending an arts magnet high school in This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:08:11 UTC Miss, You Look Like a Bratz Doll 69
In Chongalicious, Davila and Di Lorenzo don tight outfits and vigor The opening shot of the video is a close up of the girls’ shaking buttocks, Chongalicious definition arch my eyebrows high Although they claim not to be promiscuous, the lyrics nevertheless typify This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:08:11 UTC 70 Jillian Hernandez
by describing her as “ghetto” and stating that she buys her “bling” at the Chongalicious crossed over from YouTube to traditional print, radio, Production value was added to the do-it-yourself aesthetic of the video more jewelry, make-up, and hair styling products than in the video (figure The Meaning(s) of “Chonga”
The emerging hypervisibility of the chonga body in South Florida prompted This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:08:11 UTC “Miss, You Look Like a Bratz Doll” 71
Figure 1
to me via e-mail. It developed into a snowball sample, as my initial pool Miami-Dade County high school, recruited fellow eighteen-year-old peers This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:08:11 UTC 72 Jillian Hernandez
The questionnaire posed questions concerning the provenance and Where did you hear the term first? Do you think it is an official Spanish I am approaching the responses to my questionnaire as discursive texts. I received thirty-one responses to the Chongalicious questionnaire. All middle-class neighborhoods of Westchester, South Miami, and Kendall. Two respondents identified as African American. Twenty-five respondents When asked where they first heard the term, twenty respondents stated This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:08:11 UTC Miss, You Look Like a Bratz Doll 73
Most participants stated that the term is slang, not “official” Spanish. Ten respondents offered that “everyone” uses the term, followed by Twenty-four out of thirty-one respondents stated that describing some word.” For the most part, participants advanced that the detrimental Eighteen respondents stated that they have encountered individuals Subjects who claimed they had not encountered individuals who identi This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:08:11 UTC 74 Jillian Hernandez
chonga admits to being a chonga” and “no [I have not met someone who made by second and third generation Latina/o youth to assimilate into The question that generated the lengthiest responses was “What is middle- and lower-class areas of Miami-Dade County such as Hialeah, The hypersexuality of the chonga was indexed by references to her That chonga last night was awfully crazy, I wished we taped it This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:08:11 UTC “Miss, You Look Like a Bratz Doll 75
The sexual identity attributed to chongas is intimately connected to The chonga is portrayed as “reffy,” a term used in Miami to denote The recurring characteristics of the chonga as un-intellectual, hyper In character, they are brash, sexy, bold creatures. They seem self-assured rather Lush continually makes references to the fact that the girls reside in Aven This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:08:11 UTC 76 Jillian Hernandez
the sexual-aesthetic excess of the chonga role through allusions to their Twenty-four respondents reported they viewed Chongalicious on You were glorified “as the true embodiment of the Female Miami Image.” galicious did not hinder the circulation of negative responses to the story. Miaminights (www.miaminights.com), a user by the name of “Laura” I grew up with females like this and it’s gross . . . how can people admire this The blogger’s intense reaction points to the chonga’s intimate connec We argue that, despite the rhetoric of “disembodiedness” that often accompa Drawing from this understanding, I posit that the Chongalicious video gen This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:08:11 UTC Miss, You Look Like a Bratz Doll 77
place. The chonga exemplifies Miami the way that “booty” music by acts Chongas in “High” Culture
The projection of chongas as Miami icons has also seeped into the contem ning cheerleader uniforms with hair, make-up, and accessories that refer In Untitled (Chain Mouth, a.k.a. Muse Ho, figure 2), a work from the The description of the subject as a “ho” in the title and the manner in This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:08:11 UTC 78 Jillian Hernandez
Figure 2
Most of the young woman’s body is decked in gold. The ornamentation The green chroma-key background that frames the performances of The Cheerleader series, completed soon after Gispert’s graduation This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:08:11 UTC Miss, You Look Like a Bratz Doll” 79
how “Gispert’s image of an airborne cheerleader was featured in the 2002 Perhaps representations of chongas are adopted when they are con It is not my aim to frame the images in Chongalicious and Cheerlead Imaging Sexual-Aesthetic Excess and Subjectivity
The artists of GisMo (Jessica Gispert and Crystal Molinary), who identi This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:08:11 UTC 80 Jillian Hernandez
recalled their adolescent lives. The title of the piece stemmed from the Miami-Dade County Juvenile Detention Center (JDC) in which a student This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:08:11 UTC “Miss, You Look Like a Bratz Doll’7 81
Figure 5
This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:08:11 UTC 82 Jillian Hernandez
accessories on the figures and envi ^’I?iP characters such as going to the
qpty A$\ GisMo’s project was part of an exhi Miami titled MOD 11: Discourses the JDC girls with paper-doll style movies or hanging out with friends. Gispert and Molinary provided
Figure 6
a date (figure 6). She wears a clingy patterned skirt, fitted tank top (with GisMo created a series of photographs based on the girls’ designs and Growing up, our bureaus were our altars, the place where we kept the relics of This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:08:11 UTC “Miss, You Look Like a Bratz Doll” 83
Figures 7 and 8
The girls framed their work in the context of friendship. In compiling Some would argue that the positive woman-to-woman relationships This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:08:11 UTC 84 Jillian Hernandez
:i|||^^^^^HHgH^Ki|j|i||ipl|’
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Figure 9
This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:08:11 UTC “Miss, You Look Like a Bratz Doll” 85
ethnographic study of Mexican American girls in a California high school Las chicas’ [a term the girls used as self-referents] gender performance and girl in rituals of traditional femininity as a kind of friendship bonding among girls. Unlike the typological women in Chongalicious and the Cheerleader work are subjects who have relationships and are connected to place. The was exhibited to encourage the interaction of viewers, makes the images United States. GisMo’s project can serve to complicate stock representa I am concerned with how the arguments in scholarship on girls of color This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:08:11 UTC 86 Jillian Hernandez
stereotypes. My position does not hold that these girls are indeed just like I have observed that most popular/academic books on “troubled77 girls Would a book on girls7 empowerment be marketable if it had a picture of I claim that the non-normative sexual-aesthetic excesses of chonga way that Chicana work has engaged the chola. I look forward to a feminist
This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:08:11 UTC Miss, You Look Like a Bratz Doll” 87
discourse that can draw from Chongalicious aesthetics in the agenda for Jillian Hernandez is a PhD student in Women’s and Gender Studies at Acknowledgments
The author thanks Louisa Schein, Arlene Stein, Celine Parrenas Shimizu, Judith Notes
1. The interactions between the girls in detention, the GisMo artists, and myself 2. My interchangeable use of the terms “South Florida,” “Miami-Dade County,” 3. The Miami New Times reported that Davila is of Cuban-Bulgarian heritage 4. “Besos” is Spanish for kisses.
This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:08:11 UTC 88 Jillian Hernandez
5. “Bling” is a hip-hop term for jewelry.
6. I did not want to present my subjects with the assumption that a chonga is a 7. “Lol” is an acronym for “laugh out loud” used in Internet chat applications.
8. See http://www.miaminights.com/miami-new-times-dissects-the-chonga 9. The exhibition was on view from October through November 2007 and fea 10. E-mail correspondence with author September 17, 2007.
11. “Hoochie” is a slang term connoting low-class “slut” or “whore.”
12. Examples include Sharon Lamb and Lyn Mikel Brown’s Packaging Girlhood 13. I employ Foucault’s terminology “bodies and pleasures” as opposed to “sexual will necessarily have emancipatory effects and that sexual identities represent References
Ahearn, Laura M. 2001. “Language and Agency.” Annual Review of Anthropology Althusser, Louis. 1971. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards Aparicio, Frances R., and Susana Ch?vez-Silverman. 1997. Tropicalizations: Trans Austin, Tom. 2007. “Homecoming: Luis Gispert Returns to His Miami Roots as Barrera, Magdalena. 2002. “Hottentot 2000: Jennifer Lopez and Her Butt.” In This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:08:11 UTC “Miss, You Look Like a Bratz Doll” 89
Bettie, Julie. 2003. Women without Class: Girls, Race, and Identity. Berkeley: Briggs, Laura. 2002. Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Calafell, Bernadette Marie, and Fernando P. Delgado. 2004. “Reading Latina/o De La Torre, Miguel A. 2001. “Ochun: (N)either the (M)other of All Cubans Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: -. 1978. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction (Volume 1). New York: Fregoso, Rosa Linda. 1999. “Re-Imagining Chicana Urban Identities in the Public Garbarino, James. 2006. See Jane Hit: Why Girls Are Growing More Violent and Gutierrez, Elena. 2008. Fertile Matters: The Politics of Mexican-Origin Women’s Harewood, Susan J., and Angharad N. Valdivia. 2005. “Exploring Dora: Re-embod Negotiation of Identity, ed. Sharon R. Mazzarella, 85-104. New York: Peter Lamb, Sharon, and Lyn Mikel Brown. 2006. Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Lush, Tamara. 2007. “Chongas! Two Aventura girls’ YouTube Sensation is Only Mendible, Myra, ed. 2007. From Bananas to Buttocks: The Latina Body in Popular Molina Guzman, Isabel, and Angharad N. Valdivia. 2004. “Brain, Brow, and Booty: Molina Guzman, Isabel. 2007. “Disorderly Bodies and Discourses of Latinidad in Mufioz, Jose Esteban. 1999. Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance Pascoe, C. J. 2007. Dude You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School. Putallaz, Martha, and Karen L. Bierman, eds. 2004. Aggression, Antisocial Behav This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:08:11 UTC 90 Jillian Hernandez
Ross Leadbeater, Bonnie ]., and Niobe Way, eds. 2007. Urban Girls Revisted: -. 1996. Urban Girls: Resisting Stereotypes, Creating Identities. New York: Shimizu, Celine Parrenas. 2007. The Hyp er sexuality of Race: Performing Asian/ Simmons, Rachel. 2002. Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls. Sontag, Susan. 1986. “Notes on Camp.” In Against Interpretation and Other Taylor, fill McLean, Carmen N. Veloria, and Martina C. Verba. 2007. “Latina This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:08:11 UTC p. [63] NWSA Journal, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Fall, 2009) pp. i-xvi, 1-236
Arab American Femininities: Beyond Arab Virgin/ American(ized) Whore Nadine Naber
Source: Feminist Studies, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Spring, 2006), pp. 87-111
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This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 02 Aug 2017 19:47:02 UTC Arab American
Femininities:
Beyond Arab Virgin/ Nadine Naber It was a typical weeknight at my parents’ home. My father was asleep
since he wakes up at 4:00 a.m. to open his convenience store in down
town San Francisco. I joined my mother on the couch and we searched
for something interesting to watch on TV. My mother held the remote
control, flipping through the stations. Station after station a similar pic
ture of an Anglo American male and female holding one another in
romantic or sexual ways appeared on the screen. As she flipped the sta
tion, my mother remarked, “Sleep, Slept . .. Sleep, Slept . .. THAT is
America!” She continued, “Al sex al hum, zay shurb al mai [Sex for -Nadine Naber, journal entry, December 2, 1999
A s I L I S T E N E D to my mother,’ I recalled several experiences growing up
within a bicultural Arab American familial and communal context. Al
Amerikan (Americans) were often referred to in derogatory sexualized worth investing in. Al Arab (Arabs), on the other hand, were referred to
positively and associated with Arab family values and hospitality. Similarly,
throughout the period of my ethnographic research among middle-class
Arab American family and community networks in San Francisco, Cal
Feminist Studies 32, no. 1 (Spring 2006). C 2006 by Nadine Naber
87
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ifornia,2 between January 1999 and August 2001, the theme of female sexu
ality circumscribed the ways my research participants imagined and con
tested culture, identity, and belonging. The theme of female sexuality
tended to be utilized as part of some Arab immigrant families’ selective
assimilation strategy in which the preservation of Arab cultural identity
and assimilation to American norms of “whiteness” were simultaneously
desired. Within this strategy, the ideal of reproducing cultural identity was
gendered and sexualized and disproportionately placed on daughters. A nify cultural loss and thereby negate her potential as capital within this
family strategy. In policing Arab American femininities, this family strate
gy deployed a cultural nationalist logic that represented the categories
“Arab” and “American” in oppositional terms, such as “good Arab girls” vs.
“bad American(ized) girls,” or “Arab virgin” vs. “American(ized) whore.” I
coin the term Arab cultural re-authenticity to contextualize this process
within Arab histories of transnational migration, assimilation, and racial
ization. Arab cultural re-authenticity, I suggest, is a localized, spoken, and
unspoken figure of an imagined “true” Arab culture that emerges as a U.S. nationalism, the pressures of assimilation, and the gendered racializa rate media and the notion of a universalized abstract American citizen racialized bodies and particularistic claims for recognition and justice by
minoritized groups.”3 who are specifically activists who have worked within or supported Arab
homeland struggles (i.e., Palestine and Iraq), radical Arab and Arab ments. Their location on the margins of both hegemonic U.S. nation which to explore dominant discourses on gender and sexuality that cir cally specific contexts in which the gendered and sexualized discourses of
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assimilation, anti-Arab racism, and U.S. Orientalism emerge, as well as the
multiple points at which they break down. Counter to dominant colo the primary determinant of Arab women’s identities, this article demon
strates that religion (Christian or Muslim) alone does not determine the
processes by which Arab American femininities are imagined and per context of intersecting coordinates of power (race, class, nation, and so
forth) and historical circumstances. Moreover, I do not present their nar
ratives as sites from which to universalize the experiences of all Arab contradictory loyalties, such as Arab daughter, sister, and cousin, anthro
pologist, researcher, community activist, and feminist. This location ually deconstructing, contesting, and often reinforcing the cultural logics
that circumscribed my research participants’ identities.
This article focuses on the tense and often conflictual location of Arab
American femininities at the intersections of two contradictory discourses:
Arab cultural re-authenticity and hegemonic U.S. nationalism. I explore
the ways that the theme of sexuality permeated many Arab immigrant
families’ engagements with the pressures of assimilation vis-a-vis a series of
racial and cultural discourses on Arabness and Americanness. I argue that
although my research participants (and their parents) perceived their cul
tural location within a binary of Arabness and Americanness, when lived
and performed, this binary constantly broke down, particularly along the
lines of race, class, gender, sexuality, religion, and nation. Yet binary terms
for expressing the themes of family, gender, and sexuality persisted complex processes that implicate my research participants and their par
ents within a desire for a stereotypical “Americanization” that is predicated
on “Arabness” as the crucial Other. A binary cultural logic of “us” and the complex dichotomies of hegemonic U.S. nationalism that at once pres
sure racialized immigrants to assimilate into a whitened middle-class U.S.
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national identity while positioning them outside the boundaries of the two racial-ethnic-national categories (Arab and American) in dichoto
mous terms because it provided a discursive mechanism for engaging with
the processes of immigration and assimilation in which Arabness and among thirty second-generation women between the ages of twenty and
thirty, both Muslim and Christian, of Lebanese, Jordanian, Palestinian, and
Syrian descent.4 My research participants’ parents emigrated to the U.S. in
the 1960s, during a period of heightened secular Arab nationalism in the
Arab world. Although most of my research participants were raised within
secular families, religious affiliation (Muslim or Christian) was a key mark
er of identity and difference throughout my field sites. Most of my of my research participants who were from Christian backgrounds gener
ally agreed that they were raised as “Christian Arabs” or that the “Arab
community” that their parents identified with was comprised predomi Before coming to the United States, most of my research participants’
families were traders involved in small business enterprises who were ism, neocolonialism, and war (i.e., Palestinians and Israeli colonization, or
Lebanese and the Lebanese civil war) or emigrated to the San Francisco integrate into culturally whitened middle-class corporate communities
upon migration, but relied on familial and communal financial networks
and support to eventually buy their own grocery and liquor stores. The
internal pressures of tight-knit, familial, and communal networks and the
external pressures of Americanization, assimilation, and racism have as the leaders of secular and religious community-based institutions-tend
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ed to generate a socially conservative and essentialized notion of “Arab assimilation into American modes of whiteness.
This article, then, is not an analysis of all second-generation Arab Amer
icans, but of how locational conditions (especially when it comes to racial
ized, gendered, class, and religious identities) mediate and break down an
imagined “Arab” identity in the context of the San Francisco Bay area of
California. It is an exploration of how binary oppositions within Arab women active in progressive Arab, Arab feminist, and/or queer Arab politi
cal movements whose parents are ethnic entrepreneurs and immigrated,
or were displaced, to the San Francisco Bay area-a traditionally liberal,
racially/ethnically diverse location. Focusing on the narratives of three nationalism police Arab American femininities circumstantially, depending
on the types of “bad girl” behaviors to be controlled within a particular
location. I argue that the phenomena of intersectionality cannot be gener
alized as taking one singular form for all Arab Americans; that one must be
cautious about using the terms “Arab American” or “Arab American wom
en” in a U.S. national sense; and that feminist theory and practice vis-a-vis
Arab American communities should take the specific ways that the coordi
nates of race, class, gender, sexuality, religion, and nation intersect in differ
ent contexts seriously. For example, perhaps part of the motivation behind
the policing of an Arab daughter’s behavior among middle-class business
entrepreneurs invested in economic mobility and the selective reproduc the most vibrant progressive Arab, queer Arab, Arab feminist, and Arab
student movements alongside some of the most vibrant civil rights, racial
justice, feminist, and queer movements in the nation. In the San Francisco
Bay area, multiracial coalition building, transgressive sexual politics, and
critiques of classism, capitalism, U.S.-led imperialism, and war heavily active in or loyal to progressive politics.
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Among my research participants, the performativity of an idealized they associated with “being Arab” and distinguished from the regulatory
ideals of “being American,” such as: knowing what is ‘abe (shameful); to do when someone greets you; drinking shai (tea) or coffee; talking your elders; looking after your parents and taking care of them; judging
people according to what family they are from; marrying through con Articulations of “selfhood” among my research participants were key
sites where the oppositional logic of self/Other, us/them, Arab/American
was reproduced among my research participants. Selfhood was often artic
ulated in terms of a choice between “being an individual, being my own Arab from Al Amerikan, among my research participants was a reiterated set
of norms that were sexualized, gender specific, and performed in utter
ances such as “banatna ma bitlaau fil lail” (our girls don’t stay out at night). the binary oppositions of good Arab daughter vs. bad American(ized) cultural re-authenticity reproduced a masculinist cultural nationalist of an idealized Arab womanhood, an imagined Arab community loses distinction while she was growing up, explains,
My parents thought that being American was spending the night at a friend’s
house, wearing shorts, the guy-girl thing, wearing make-up, reading teen maga
zines, having pictures of guys in my room. My parents used to tell me, “If you go
to an American’s house, they’re smoking, drinking . .. they offer you this and
that. But if you go to an Arab house, you don’t see as much of that. Bi hafzu ‘ala al
banat [They watch over their daughters].
My research participants generally agreed that virginity, followed by This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 02 Aug 2017 19:47:02 UTC Nadine Naber 93
mands of an idealized Arab womanhood that together, constituted the Here, discourses around Arab American femininities allow for a cultural,
versus territorial, nationalist male Arab American perspective within the
United States that emerges in opposition to hegemonic (white) U.S. notion of “Arab people” or an “Arab community” is inspired, in part, by a
collective memory of immigrant displacement and romantic memories of
“home” and “homeland culture.” Among middle-class familial and com constituted “woman” as virgin or mother vis-a-vis an extended family ideal of marrying within one’s kin group within the discourse of Arab cul
tural re-authenticity was refashioned in terms of marrying within the kin
groups’ religious group (Muslim or Christian); village of origin were hierarchical, as “religious affiliation” tended to supersede “national
origin” and “national origin” superseded “racial/ethnicity identity” as the
boundary to be protected through a daughter’s marriage. Although the that privileges heterosexual marriage-within particular boundaries of Arabness and Americanness shifted depending on the kinds of power rela
tions that set the stage for a daughter’s expression and/or transgression of
idealized notions of femininity within a given context. The first narrative
centralizes intersections of race and class in the policing of Arab American
femininities. The second narrative emphasizes intersections of religion and
sexuality. The third narrative draws attention to intersections of This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 02 Aug 2017 19:47:02 UTC 94 Nadine Naber
ent locations along a continuum of gendered experience among my uality; and Orientalism and religion. In doing so, they point to the process
by which different sociohistorical circumstances produce shifting con tions of Arab American femininity in particular. Although my research
also illustrates that Arab cultural re-authenticity articulates masculinity
and femininity as relational and mutually constitutive and implicates mas
culinity in binary terms that are contested, transformed, and often repro
duced along the lines of race, class, gender, sexuality, religion, and nation,
an analysis of Arab American masculinities is beyond the scope of this arti
cle. Overall, this article argues for a historically situated, anti-essentialist
approach to Arab and Arab American feminist studies that takes the loca
tional conditions that mediate and break down an “imagined Arab RACE, CLASS, AND THE DOUBLE LIFE
Rime and I met at Arabian Nights, one of the few clubs in San Francisco
where the DJ spins Arabic music. A mutual friend introduced us to one
another and told her that I was doing research among young Arab described herself as “living in two worlds . . . the ‘Arab’ world of [her]
family … and the ‘American’ world outside of home.” The next time she was the oldest among five siblings, that her father owned a liquor
store in one of San Francisco’s poor black neighborhoods for the past
fifteen years and that she graduated with a BA in nutrition and was per
suing a master’s degree in public health.
-Naber, journal entry, June 18, 1999
EXCERPTS FROM RIME’S ORAL HISTORY: In hilgh school, my parents didn’t want me hang
ing out with my brother’s friends because they got paranoid about my virginity and they didn’t
want me hanging out with my cousins’friends because they were Mexican and black. In high
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school, my mom got paranoid about my virginity. My dad used to tell me, “I had a nightmare
that my daughter would marry a black man.” That was because my dad owns a liquor store in
the Tenderloin [neighborhood] and all his life he’s been robbed and shot at, and his wife’s been
robbed by blacks. He blamed poor black communities for their situation without understanding
it and he couldn’t understand that I had a lot of black friends at school and that blacks were
always thefirst ones out there supporting Arab student movements at school.
I remember when my cousin got pregnant with a guy who was half Mexican and half black.
She lied and stayed out of the house for four years. Her family knew but kept it secret. The
couple got in a big fight and the guy kicked my cousin out and she moved back to her parents’
house. She did the most despicable thing a girl could ever do in Arab culture-and they took her
back.
I was with Roger until recently. He was someone who I thought was total instant love but he
was more of my support blanket because he was outside of the traditional Arab cultural realm.
I lived in his house, and his parents accepted that 100 percent. As far as my parents were con
cerned, I was living with my cousin. But there was always the anxiety about getting caughtfor
lying and I internalized hating being a woman. I would wake up at his house thinking about
my father seeing me with a black guy. It was pure panic. Roger would touch my skin and be
like, “You’re so cold.”
Because I was Arab I had to take care of my family’s reputation and I was always reminded
of it. I think my parents knew about him, but their attitude was, “Do what you do … don’t let
anybody find out.” Then it was always myfriends’fault-my American friends-‘they’re bad.”
And I couldn’t work at the family store, because “American” men picked up on me there.
When I was graduating from college, I was partying a lot and Ifelt I needed to be more
responsible. That’s why I went back home to Jordan. In Jordan, my life completely turned
around. I met Omar. All my life, the message was that I had to marry an Arab Christian
man. Ifinally met an Arab Christian man who I love, and I thought the double life and the
lying could be resolved. . . but my parents are not accepting him. Before he told his family or
my family, he asked me to marry him, and traditionally, that was wrong. My mom is stuck on
that issue. The thing that was really bugging her is that he’s a communist and an atheist and
against all the traditions. But what they focus on mostly is that . . . “the guy has no
money-and you’re going to go live with his family.”
Traditionally if an Arab man is going to get married he shouldfurnish and open a housefor
the girl and then get married, not get married and then worry about that stuff My motn keeps
saying “Batlee [stop]. You’re not getting married.” It all comes down to our traditions-hav
ing Arab traditions, and then being raised here in the US…. Why does it have to be so dif
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ficult? Is it because I’m Arab? Is it because of my mother?”
I’m planning on moving to Jordan and marrying him. My parents will get over it. My
cousin asked me, “Have you told him about birth control?” And when I said yes, she went
crazy and said I was crazy for telling him about birth control. They see him through a Western
image of Arab men. They think I’m going to go back therefrom this independent, free spirit to
be all the way across the world in this backward culture, like I’m going to be locked up at home
rolling grape leaves all day. He says, “Don’t worry, it won’t be like that.”
If we get married and I move back to Jordan and it doesn’t work, I’ll say, I’m going to get
some milk, but then I’ll get a ticket and go to New York. I won’t even give them a phone num
ber. I’ll call them once a month-and tell them that I’m okay. Then I’ll go and get all thisfree
dom, but I’ll be all alone. I’ll be another lonely white CEO woman who’s all alone and has no
one: has nofamily, no brothers, no nothing. ‘Cause that’s what it’s like in American culture.
Sometimes it can all make you crazy because you can’t get out. I have so many worlds and
every world is a whole other world. But in your mind they’re totally separated, but then they’re
all there in your mind together. You get to a point that you are about to explode.
When Rime speaks of living in “two worlds,” fixity and singularity under
write her view of “culture.” Rime speaks about “Arab culture” and “Amer
ican culture” as though they already existed, transcending place, time, and
relations of power. Yet as Trinh T. Minh-ha puts it, “categories always class, which disqualifies him as a suitable marriage partner, disrupt Rime’s
homogeneous “Arab world.” Moreover, Omar’s position as a “disappoint of Arab cultural re-authenticity in that Omar bursts the bubble of ly’s life exposes the nostalgia underlying Arab cultural re-authenticity for
what it is.
Similarly, the racialized distinctions Mexican and black rupture Rime’s
essentialized “American” world. These discontinuities drive the present
argument that while Rime sees herself between “two worlds,” rupture and
difference position her along the two axes of sameness and difference. At a
critical distance from both “worlds,” Rime decides to marry a Jordanian
man of Christian descent who is an atheist. Yet her narrative reproduces a
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good girl versus bad girl binary in which “bad-girl behaviors” are signified
by her desire to marry across lines of socioeconomic class and political
affiliation. As she crafts an alternative plan to move to New York alone in
case the marriage does not work, she invents tactics for transgression Rime’s “two (Arab and American) worlds” are not homogeneous or sta changing intersections of class, race, gender, religion, and politics in differ
ent locations. Rime implies that the unacceptability of interracial marriage
compounds the virginity ideal. Although prohibitions against mixed-race
unions are common in the Arab word, Rime’s interpretation of her com
munity’s prohibitions is mediated by historically based U.S. nationalist
anxiety about interracial marriage. Rime’s father’s positionality as a liquor
store owner in the Tenderloin neighborhood further shaped the racialized
and gendered imperatives that policed Rime’s sexuality. His nightmare
over his daughter’s potential interracial marriage emerges as a threat to
securing white middle-class norms and implies the forging of a critical dis
tance from the racial Other toward whiteness. Here, “Arab culture” is
invoked as a strategy for harnessing markers of middle-class whiteness.
Meanwhile, the regulatory ideal that forbids sex with the United States’
racialized Other controls Arab daughters’ sexuality while protecting Rime’s
family, and an imagined Arab people, from degeneracy in white middle
class terms. Binaries collapse in the context of a much greater complexity
in that her father’s attitude fits comfortably when he seems to be speaking
(in his daughter’s mind) to Arabness. Yet in fact, in policing Rime’s sexuali
ty, he is reinforcing the new identity he has had to develop in the United
States, demonstrating the fiction of Arab cultural re-authenticity.
Rime’s two worlds are similarly narrated in gendered and sexualized when her aunt and uncle take her cousin back after she “got pregnant with
a guy who was half Mexican and half black.” Here, her cousin’s parents
seem to care less about her mixed-race relationship and illegitimate preg
nancy than with presenting the public face of an “authentic” or “tradition
al” Arab family. Through silence (that is, Rime’s cousin staying out of the
house for years; Rime living with her cousin) both “traditionalist” parents
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and their “Americanized” daughters are mutually implicated in keeping
the idealized notions of Arabness and Americanness active and in opposi
tion. These silences allow them to keep the binary intact and mask the fact
that at different points the oppositions threaten to be one and the same.
Although Rime narrates herself as a split subject, her “worlds” “inside”
and “outside” (Arab and American) were not discreet. In bed, the bound
aries between “inside” and “outside” collapse as her father’s disapproving
gaze interrupts the privacy of her boyfriend’s bedroom while her boy
friend places his hand on her skin. Rime interprets the regulatory ideal of
marrying “an Arab Christian man” as the central act that would render
her embraceable or acceptable within the discourse of Arab cultural re
authenticity in between two seemingly distinct and homogeneous “Arab”
and “American” worlds. Yet in learning of Omar’s unacceptability as a terms with the heterogeneity of Arab cultural identity. Yet she also repro
duces the notion of a normative “Arab cultural identity” when she inter
prets her reality as a choice between “having a family and community,” or
“being another lonely white CEO woman.” Here, Rime’s distinction be “Arab” cultural identity with love, community, cohesiveness, and control
and “American” cultural identity with individualism, autonomy, and of a romantic notion of “cultural authenticity” located in the homeland
collapses along the lines of class, religion, and gender.
THE HETEROSEXUAL IMPERATIVE
Waiting for a friend at Caf6 Macondo, in San Francisco’s Mission district,
graffiti reading QUEER ARABS EXIST caught my attention. Later, in
conversations among Arab women activists, I learned that the graffiti
artist was a Syrian American woman named Lulu. Lulu was also the
coproducer of a special issue of Bint Al Nas on the theme of “sexuality.”
Bint Al Nas is a cyber magazine and network for queer Arab women and
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as part of this issue, Lulu designed the web art, “Virgin/Whore,” where a bread, camels, Allah, a Syrian flag, and a photograph of her family
members wearing blindfolds) transforms into a second collage repre
senting her as “whore” (represented by images of dildos next to her girl
friend’s name written in Arabic, handcuffs, a blurred image of the pic
ture that represents her parents, and a photo of Madonna). A few out in the Castro district of San Francisco. I recognized Lulu from the
tattoo of her girlfriend’s name Amina in Arabic script on her arm and
the Palestinian flag sewn onto her book bag. We talked about the col
lage and she explained, “What I am doing with the two images is show
ing how they are dichotomous, or at least they have felt that way, and
how really, it has been an either/or situation. Also, I think it’s how my roll over of images is to show that the two states can’t coexist.”
-Naber, journal entry, December 28, 2000
EXCERPTS FROM LULU’S ORAL HISTORY: I grew up with this all the time: “Sex is an act
of love in marriage. If you’re not a virgin when you get married, you’re in trouble.” I fought
that all the time. I would ask my mom about Syria. I would say, “Ifgood Arab women are not
having sex and Arab men can have sex, then who were the Arab men having sex with?” She
would answer, “The Christian women.” So the Christian women were the whores. That is very
prevalent in my family, the Muslim virgin and the Christian whore. The whore is either
American or Christian.
My family is unique because we talked about sex. My sister was really vocal about having
boyfriends and they were always black, which was even more of a problem. My parents are into
the idea that Arabs are white. I think it’s more of a Syrian-Lebanese thing. But I didn’t have
the same problems with my parents about boyfriends as my sister because I knew I was queer
since I was thirteen orfourteen. It was when I came out when things eruptedfor me. It got to
the point where they were asking, “Don’t you want to have a boyfriend?”
My mom won’t come visit me at my house because she doesn’t want to see that I live with a
woman. The bottom line is premarital sex. Lesbian sex doesn’t happen because Arab girls
don’t have premarital sex. When I came out, it was like, “That’s fine that you’re gay-but
don’t act on it. We don’t want you having sex.” Everyday I heard, “Get married with a guy
and. . . ” suppress it, basically. I said, “I can’t do that. ” And I still get that . . . ” We (Arabs)
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don’t do that”. . . or “You’re the only gay Arab in the world.”
It became this thing that everyone was going tofix me. My uncles would come and take me
out to lunch. They would say, “Let’s talk. This doesn’t happen in our culture. You’ve been
brainwashed by Americans. You’ve taken too many feminist classes, you joined NOW, you
hate men, you have a backlash against men….” It was like . . . “This is what this American
society has done to our daughter.”
When that was the reaction I received, I totally disassociated myselffrom Arabs. Ifelt I
couldn’t be gay and Arab. Ifelt that either I have to go home and be straight or be totally out
and pass as white. But later, Igot a lot of supportfrom queer Arab networks.
One of the first people I met was Samah. She was doing some research and asked if she
could interview me. I did it and we both cried. Then I went to a queer Arab women’s gather
ing. I was the youngest one and everyone knew that I came out a week after I turned eighteen
and was kicked out by my parents four months later. I was the baby. They all supported me.
Over the years, they’ve become myfamily.
Now my mom tells me, ‘Just go have sex with a man-maybe you’ll change, ” and I say,
“Maybe you should try it with a woman.” She keeps finding ways to say I’m too
Americanized . .. and when I tell her, “You don’t know how many queer Arabs I know.” She
says, “They’re American, they’re American born, they’re not Arab . . . “or “They must be
Christian,” or “Theirfathers must not be around because nofather would accept his daughter
being gay.
They blamed Western feminism and said I should go to a therapist. Then they changed their
mind and said not to go because they don’t want it on my hospital records that I am
gay-because “You know, ” they would say, “After you change-someone might see on your
hospital records that you were gay.” Their idea was that they didn’t want anyone finding out
“after I change” and “once I get married, ” that I had this dark past. Then at the very end they
did try to send me to a hospital. That was when the shit hit thefan, our biSgfinalfight. I was so
strong in defending myself-and they thought that too was very American. So it became this
thing of like- and they make it very clear-“You chose your sexuality over us. Sex is more
important than your family.” Which goes back to the tight-knit family Arab thing. It’s all
about group dynamics.
When Lulu’s mother replaces the “American whore” with the “Christian American nationalist identity and the ways that Arab cultural re-authen
ticity shifts depending on sociohistorical circumstances. Lulu’s mother’s
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association of the category “Syrian Christian” with the classification “Wes
ternized Other” signifies the ways that the categories “Islam” and “Arab
ness” have often been conflated throughout Arab history and in several
cases, juxtaposed against the notion of a Christian West. According to her
mother, the Syrian-Muslim self is to be protected from the corrupted,
Westernized, Syrian-Christian Other.
Intersections between national origin and racial identification in Lulu’s
narrative further complicate Arab cultural identity in the United States.
Lulu, in remembering why her parents did not accept her sister’s black
boyfriends, explains that identifying as white is “a Syrian-Lebanese thing.”
The Syrian-Lebanese distinction is common within hegemonic Arab agree that Syrian and Lebanese Arab Americans have had more access to
the privileges of middle-class whiteness compared to other Arab Ameri
cans.7 Steering Lulu’s sister away from the racial Other, Lulu’s mother, like
Rime’s father, secures a white middle-class positionality. Yet when it
comes to Lulu’s sexuality, the association of Syrians with whiteness is
quickly disrupted as a sexualized, cultural, nationalist logic disassociates
them as “Arabs” from the loose, sexually immoral American “feminist”
Other in the name of controlling Lulu’s sexuality. In Lulu’s narrative, explains, her parents uphold the normative demands of middle-class themselves from Al Amerikan when it comes to taming Lulu’s behaviors.
Fissures in Arab cultural re-authenticity also emerge when Lulu’s moth
er suggests that Lulu “try sex with a man.” In the case of Lulu’s queer iden
tity, a heterosexual imperative becomes a more significant symbol of the
Arab virgin/American whore boundary than the “virginity” ideal. Gloria
Anzaldu’a writes, “For the lesbian of color, the ultimate rebellion she can
make against her native culture is through her sexual behavior. She goes
against two moral prohibitions: sexuality and homosexuality.”8 Lulu’s tion as traitor-outsider-American by cultural authorities such as her moth
er, her father, and her uncle. The extent to which she is seen as “un This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 02 Aug 2017 19:47:02 UTC 102 Nadine Naber
to a hospital to fix her so that she might return “straight” home. Here, the
stance of their conservativism is made possible by their inculcation and
reproduction of white American middle-class norms, such as “therapy,”
within the discourse of Arab cultural re-authenticity. Lulu’s parents thus
reinforce a particular kind of assimilation constituted by the ways that
Arabness and Americanness operate both as opposites and in unison in the
policing of Arab American femininities throughout my field sites.
In overriding the virginity ideal with the heterosexual imperative, Lulu’s
mother reinforces the control over women’s sexual and marriage practices
that underlie the heterosexual conjugal ideal in Arab and Western soci also reinforcing family ideals critically inherited from Arab homelands
that are not only conjugal, but include extended kin that are inscribed be
yond household or nuclear terms. In attempting to reinstate Lulu’s well as the family honor of her nuclear and her extended family. the refashioning of a patrilineal ideal in the diaspora, in which males and
elders remain responsible for female lineage members (even after mar parents, unmarried sisters, younger brothers, and the orphaned children
of their brothers.9
As a form of political critique directed against patriarchy and patrilineal
ity, Lulu’s chosen family is a sign of her resistance. In the act of choosing
her family, Lulu challenges Arab and Anglo-European ideologies that read
blood and heterosexual marriage ties as the key foundation of kinship,
demonstrating that all families are contextually defined. In undermining
the association of kinship with biology, Lulu overtly performs the social,
ideological, political, and historical constructedness of kinship. Yet when
she meets Samah and joins queer Arab e-mail lists, Lulu finds an alterna
tive to the Arab/American split in the coming together of what she under
stood to be her “queer” and her “Arab” identities. Lulu’s insistence that
QUEER ARABS EXIST is an act in resisting racism, homophobia, and This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 02 Aug 2017 19:47:02 UTC Nadine Naber 103
(ized) whore that seeks to control women’s sexuality by marking women
who transgress the heterosexual imperative of Arab cultural authenticity
as “American” and it disrupts the dualistic logic of hegemonic U.S. nation
alist discourses that homogenize and subordinate Arab women as either accessible to white/Western male heroes. Yet cultural identity, for Lulu, is
more than “separate pieces merely coming together”-it is a site of tension,
pain, and alienation that is constantly in motion.
Lulu’s narrative signifies the critical inheritance of the polarization be
tween Muslim and Christian Arabs from the homeland(s) to Arab San among many bourgeois Arab American Muslims with whom I interacted.
Throughout my field sites, hegemonic Arab Muslim discourses often privi
leged Arab Muslim women as the essence of cultural re-authenticity-as
opposed to Arab Christian women who were often represented as promis
cuous and therefore, “Americanized.” Yet although cultural authorities
often deployed religion as a framework for policing feminized subjectivi
ties throughout my field sites, religious background alone did not deter
mine the extent to which my research participants upheld, reconfigured,
or transgressed the feminized imperatives of Arab cultural re-authenticity.
My research participants who transgressed “good girl” behaviors through
dating before marriage, interracial, and/or same-sex relationships were the extent to which parents, aunts, or uncles circumscribed their daugh
ters’ behaviors and identities.
While Lulu explained that her mother deployed her Muslim identity to
reinforce the normative demands of virginity, her parents’ self-identifica
tion as “white” complexified their understanding of a “normative feminin
ity.” In addition, Lulu stated that her mother deployed a pan-ethnic while the discourse of the “Muslim virgin” and the “Christian whore”
policed Lulu’s femininity, the “virgin/whore” dichotomy was also consti
tuted by a series of intersecting and contradictory discourses such as white
versus non-white, Arab versus American. The ways that these discourses
operated to police femininities depended on the different ways that coor
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dinates of race, class, gender, sexuality, religion, and nation intersected in
each of my research participants’ lives.
U.S. ORIENTALISM AND THE RELIGIOUS DIFFERENCE
Nicole and I agreed on Kan Zaman in San Francisco as our meeting spot
since we heard they served argilah [an Arabic water pipe]. Little did we pies who enjoy mixing a little humus and a pita with a few drinks before
a night of partying on the town. As we walked in, I greeted the owner
Yousef, who goes by the name of Joe to his customers, as we watched
two Anglo-American women who went by the names of Laila and down on a bed of bright colorful pillows in a recreated imaginary the United States would mean further distancing themselves from the
“backwards, uncivilized, Muslims.” Over dinner, we confessed similar
stories about our parents’ comments about the Muslim Other and pon
dered the irony that our immigrant parents view us as “more Arab”
than them because we interact with Muslims. For the following three
months, Nicole and I continued meeting for dinner as she shared with the boundaries of “Arab” and “American.”
-Naber, journal entry, August 16, 1999
EXCERPTS FROM NICOLE’S ORAL HISTORY:
One time I asked my uncle to send me an argilah from Lebanon. When it arrived in the mail,
my mom hid it in the closet and startedflipping out at me. She kept asking why her Western
educated, Lebanese, Christian, civilized, modern daughter-and she used all these adjectives
who they gave the privilege of having a Western education-wanted to go back and smoke an
argilah which is a backwards, dirty, horrible, uncivilized Muslim habit.
But when you grow up in the United States, all kinds of Arabs end up hanging out with
each other and the Muslim Christian thing isn’t as big. In college, the biggest movement was
the Palestinian movement. I was involved because it was an Arab thing, even though growing
up Lebanese, the Palestinian struggle wasn’t driven into you as much. In Lebanon, Pales
tinians, especially the Palestinian Muslims, were associated with being refugees, being radi
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cal politically, and trying to take over other Arab countries.
In college, my ethnicity bloomed. I felt more proud of being Arab-even though when I
would tell people I was Arab, they wouldn’t believe me because I go to parties and drink and
they thought that if you were an Arab girl, you had to wear a veil and your parents never let
you do anything. I remember once, when I told someone I was Arab, they said, “And your
father let you go to college?” In college, my name and my look became cool because I was
viewed as exotic. All of a sudden, you turn around with dark curly hair and dark lips and
you’re the item of the year. White men are confident to approach you. It’s trendy. It’s part of
the boy talk with other boys. This one guy said to me, “I’ve been with a Sri Lankan, a
Madagascan, a Somali. . . . It’s like . . . I was with this Lebanese.” People approach you
because you are the vision of this exotic Arab woman goddess.
My parents were really liberal about guys. I would tell them when I had a boyfriend. In
college, I started dating Ben. His mother is a Jewish lesbian. I told my father this over the
dinner table. He was upset, but he got over it. They accepted him because no one else would
have tofind out about his mother. We could have told my dad’sfamily that he is Christian.
Both my parents are Christian, but we were raised atheist. So why this reaction to
Mohammed? After college, I met the love of my life, Mohammed. He’s a Palestinian Muslim,
and we’ve been dating seriously. My momfreaked out saying that meant he is Muslim and how
dare I date a Muslim. She went on to say, “Don’t you know that there are 15,000 cases of
Christian Western American women married to Muslim men and the women are in the States
and the men have taken their childrenfrom them to the Muslim world and the women are in the
States trying to get their children backfrom those horrible men?”
She learned this on 20/20. Then she said, “Well you know, ifyou are sleeping with him, his
family is going to kill you.” The stereotypes never stop. She says that he will force me to sleep
with him so I will have to marry him or that he will make me cover my hair, or he will marry
more than one wife. After afew months she said, “Your father isfreaking out because people
in the community are talking about you. Even his friends in Lebanon heard your are dating a
Muslim. He’s saying that you’ve ruined his reputation.” My dad called me and said, “You
have to stop dating him right now.” I told him that this doesn’t make sense. I have aunts mar
ried to Palestinians. But even though Lebanese think they’re better than Palestinians, that
wasn’t the issue. The issue was that he is Muslim. My dad is acting as if he’s experiencing
absolute betrayal and they’re losing their daughter to the enemy.
What’s crazy is my mom is Armenian and her Armenian parents let her marry my dad, an
Arab! And my parents are atheists! So it’s not really about religion per se, it’s that they want
me to marry someone Westernized, and Lebanese Christian falls into Western. Then there’s
This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 02 Aug 2017 19:47:02 UTC io6 Nadine Naber
this issue of land. My dad has all this land in the village. He’s already discussed with my
brother and [me] what land we get. And in the future, I want to build a house on that land. I
know if I marry Mohammed my father is going to disown me and he won’t give me that land.
But I know that my brother will undo it. My brother told me he would give me the land but I
know it’s hard on him because he is also worried that he will get a bad reputationfor sanction
ing his sister to date a guy that is against hisfather’s wish. I think my parents are doing all this
to save face. I’ll neverforget the e-mail Mohammed sent me. It said, “How good is it that we
love each other if we’re going to allow Ottoman conventions to kill it?”
I have to figure out for myself if I can endure being rejected by my society and excluded
from the social glue that keeps me tied to my roots and all the networks of social relations my
family built here even though they’re so reactionary. If I make the decision to marry him, I will
be cut offfrom my lifeblood. Can I endure the pain and hardships of struggling against society
for the sake offollowing my heart? But personal happiness extends way beyond the bond that
ties man to woman. There are other ties . . . between an individual and her society, a daughter
and her mother, and a girl . . . and the community that nurtured her. When I think about giv
ing up Mohammed it’s like giving up one kind of happiness to preserve another. My family and
community’s love has roots and gives me stability, whereas Muhammed symbolizes risk and
daring and revolutionary uncertainty. That’s what is causing my identity crisis. My life is
bound up in the lives of others.
Within Nicole’s narrative, her peers’ Orientalist representation of Arab tion, or liberation. Her mother, in aspiring to avoid identification with the
Orientalist’s Other, refashions Ottoman distinctions between Muslims and
Christians and Lebanese nationalist distinctions between Lebanese and difference according to religious categories that persists in Arab states,
despite the establishment of nation-states. (Within the Ottoman period of
Middle East history, the categories “Muslim and non-Muslim” [with mul
This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 02 Aug 2017 19:47:02 UTC Nadine Naber 107
tiple subgroups] provided the predominant framework for organizing dif
ference, and civil rights were assigned and administered by religious sect or
rite.)’0 nizing difference, the terms of Arab cultural re-authenticity shift. Nicole’s
mother deploys a selective assimilationist strategy that on the one hand of cultural difference, such as Ottoman distinctions between Muslim and
Christians, while on the other hand, deploys Orientalist terms that deni
grate behaviors and identities that are associated with pan-Arabism and
Islam. This strategy disassociates Arab Christians from Arab Muslims, asso
ciates Arab Christians with the “West” and with “modernity,” and articu
lates a desire for middle-class U.S. nationalist notions of identity that affirm
that to be “modern” and “American” is to be “Orientalist.” Nicole’s mother
thus pronounces a selective assimilationist strategy that reproduces the sex
ual politics of colonial discourse in terms of a rape/rescue fantasy in which
the figure of the dark Arab Muslim male rapist threatens Western (includ
ing Westernized Arab Christian women) and sex between Muslim men and
Christian women can only involve rape.”‘
For Arab Christians, the possibilities for disassociating themselves from
Orientalism have been made possible in that the “Western trope of the archy defined by the barbarism of the Islamic religion, which is in need of
civilizing” has permeated Orientalist discourses.’2 The significance of Islam
within the refashioning of Orientalism among Nicole’s Lebanese Christian
family is particularly clear when Nicole recalls the difference between her
parents’ response to her ex-boyfriend Ben whose mother was a Jewish les
bian and their response to Mohammed. Although Ben’s mother’s Jewish Throughout her narrative, Nicole locates herself in between a series of
binaries, such as American vs. Orientalized Other, Western modernity vs.
religious discourse, Muslim vs. Christian, Lebanese vs. Palestinian, and indi
vidualism vs. “connectivity.”‘” While she uses binaries as a coding for articu
lating her struggle between different kinds of happiness, she simultaneous
This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 02 Aug 2017 19:47:02 UTC io8 Nadine Naber
ly articulates her identity at the intersections of a constellation of loyalties
that are multiple, contradictory, constantly shifting, and overlapping. As
these loyalties intersect, they produce a complex process that implicates
her (and her parents) within a desire for being with the man she loves in
the context of stereotypical Americanized norms such as freedom, individ
ualism, and loneliness, and for maintaining her ties to her family, which are
constituted by the multiple genealogies of Ottoman history, Western Nicole’s narrative thus redraws the boundaries between “Arabness” and binary formulations such as “Arabs” vs. “America,” or “Christians” vs. politics might suggest”;’4 and counters celebrations of hybridity that fail to
account for the ways that essentialist categories, while constructed and fic
tive, operate to support hierarchies of privilege and domination and power
and control.
CONCLUSION my usual skim of graffiti on Cafe Macondo’s walls. The “FOR” in LES ARABS EXIST in faint blue ink. A line was drawn between the words superimposed upon QUEER ARABS EXIST, the new message, in coupling about my research and the resemblance between the images on the wall
and my research participants’ everyday experiences. While Lulu’s graffiti
confronted the lumping of Arabs into the homogeneous categories “veiled
This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 02 Aug 2017 19:47:02 UTC Nadine Naber IO9
victim” or “polygamous terrorist,” the defacement of QUEER ARABS ic Arab American and U.S. nationalisms on multiple fronts, they also re
articulate hegemonic nationalisms in binary terms as a coding for a more
complex process in which the categories “Arab” and “American” are mu
tually constitutive and exist both as opposites and in unison, in the context
of immigration, assimilation, and racialization.
As I took another glance at ARABS ARE SEXIST, superimposed over written in black letters in Spanish and English that framed the top right side
of QUEER ARABS EXIST. It read ES ALGO BUENO. IT’S A GOOD THING.
-Naber, journal entry, June 2001
Notes Andrea Smith, Rabab Abdulhadi, and Evelyn Alsultany for providing me with invaluable
feedback and support while I was developing this article. I would like to especially thank structive suggestions and the immense time and effort they committed to seeing this arti
cle in publication. I am indebted to each and every person who participated in this project
and I am grateful to Eman Desouky, Lilian Boctor, my mother, Firyal Naber, and my
father, Suleiman Naber for their persistent support and encouragement throughout the 1. This is not a literal translation, but conveys the message of my mother’s words.
Throughout the rest of this article, I have edited my research participants’ quotes into
a readable form, maintaining the originality of the quote as much as possible. This the narratives, and simplifying elaborate explanations. I have also altered names and
places in order to protect my research participants’ privacy.
2. These networks included local chapters of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination 3. Minoo Moallem and Ian Boal, “Multicultural Nationalism and the Poetics of In
auguration,” in Between Woman and Nation: Nationalisms, Transnational Feminism, and the State,
ed. Caren Kaplan, Norma Alarcon, and Minoo Moallem (Durham, N.C.: Duke This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 02 Aug 2017 19:47:02 UTC 110 Nadine Naber
4. I first became acquainted with my research participants by joining community orga
nizations and cultural/artistic collectives and by attending functions organized by
Christian and Muslim religious institutions, Arabic language schools, and Arab and seven were Syrian, six were Jordanian, and two were Lebanese. The greater number of in what my research participants refer to as San Francisco’s “Arab American commu
nity,” in which Palestinians make up the majority among those active in Arab Jordan, Palestine, and Syria) comprised the majority of early Arab immigrants to San
Francisco. They developed a variety of community networks through the establish “difference” in terms of village of origin (i.e., the Ramallah Club), country of origin
(i.e., the Lebanese American Association) or pan-ethnic Arab identity (i.e., the Arab eties of institutions they established, and their overall socioeconomic privileges com
pared to Arab immigrants and refugees living in the San Francisco Bay area from
other countries (such as Yemen, Iraq, Tunisia, and Morocco), the term “Arab” or or marginalizing “other Arabs.” ways that my research participants regularly associated “Americanness” with freedom
and individualism and “Arabness” with family and connectivity.
6. See Trinh T. Min-ha, Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism (Blooming
ton: Indiana University Press, 1989).
7. Throughout my field sites, Palestinian and Jordanian Arab Americans tended to view to the San Francisco Bay area in the early 1900s, before Palestinians and Jordanians,
who first immigrated in the late 1950s.
8. Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands: La Frontera (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987), 17.
9. Here, I build on Suad Joseph’s definition of patrilineality in Arab families in Suad Joseph (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2000), 3-32.
10. See Aaron Rodrigue, “Difference and Tolerance in the Ottoman Empire: Interview by
Nancy Reynolds,” ed. Nancy Reynolds and Sabra Mahmood, special issue, Stanford 11. Here, I borrow from Ella Shohat and Robert Stam’s three axes of sexualized, racial
ized, colonialist discourse. See Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism:
Multiculturalism and the Media (New York: Routledge, 1992). of Patriarchy in Iran (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 20.
13. “Connectivity” here is from Suad Joseph’s definition of “patriarchal connectivity” in
This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 02 Aug 2017 19:47:02 UTC Nadine Naber III
Lebanon. See Suad Joseph, “Gender and Rationality among Arab Families in 14. Ella Shohat, introduction to Talking Visions: Multicultural Feminism in a Transnational Age, ed.
Ella Shohat (New York: MIT Press, 1998), 6.
This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Wed, 02 Aug 2017 19:47:02 UTC 87 Feminist Studies, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Spring, 2006), pp. 1-210 NYU Press
Chapter Title: The Sexual (Mis)Education of Latina Girls
Book Title: Respect Yourself, Protect Yourself
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3
The Sexual (Mis)Education of Latina Girls For our first scheduled interview, I met Samantha, who had character- This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:07:12 UTC 58 << T h e Se x ua l ( M i s ) E d u c at i o n o f L at i na G i rl s
confidently addressed questions directed at them. Later, I asked Samantha Samantha, like the majority of girls I spoke with, expressed her dissatis- Research on sex education has revealed that sex education policies are In this chapter, I explore Latina girls’ accounts of their school-based sex This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:07:12 UTC T h e Se x ua l ( M i s ) E d u c at i o n o f L at i na G i rl s >> 59
of their sexual subjectivity and respectability. The intersection of Latina Sex Education and Public Schools
Presently, sex education curricula are grouped into two broad categories: With the exception of two girls, all of the young women who participated Although girls discussed their sexuality education experiences at all grade This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:07:12 UTC 60 << T h e Se x ua l ( M i s ) E d u c at i o n o f L at i na G i rl s
Guest speakers, most of whom were women, typically taught sex education Maintaining Inequality through School-Based Sex Education
The girls’ narratives reveal that heteronormativity was central to the content Lessons about Engaging Sex Education in the Classroom
Whether they were speaking of abstinence-only or comprehensive sex educa- This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:07:12 UTC T h e Se x ua l ( M i s ) E d u c at i o n o f L at i na G i rl s >> 61
was starting to answer me when Ms. Phyllis [her eighth-grade teacher] was like, The young women vividly recalled that their teachers and sex educators Like the woman [the sex educator] was talking about sex as being a per- According to girls, these contradictory lessons left them uncertain about Yet, the girls’ narratives also suggest that these gender-specific messages This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:07:12 UTC 62 << T h e Se x ua l ( M i s ) E d u c at i o n o f L at i na G i rl s
teachers and sex educators in which references were made to these particular The lady [the sex educator] talking to us was all about how true love Like Olivia, other young women reported that teachers and sex educators Latina girls’ sex education experiences reveal that their interactions with Lessons about “Latino Culture” and Pregnancy Prevention
Another point that was widely discussed in the girls’ accounts of their This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:07:12 UTC T h e Se x ua l ( M i s ) E d u c at i o n o f L at i na G i rl s >> 63
Sometimes they come at us like we are these ghetto-ass kids who just make Minerva, like many other young women, criticized teachers and sex The significance of racialized gender stereotypes of Latinas was particu- So this woman [the sex educator] has the nerve to get up there and say, “I This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:07:12 UTC 64 << T h e Se x ua l ( M i s ) E d u c at i o n o f L at i na G i rl s
Similarly, fifteen-year-old Marta, who always seemed to be taking pictures The pregnancy prevention lessons that Latina youth encountered in This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:07:12 UTC T h e Se x ua l ( M i s ) E d u c at i o n o f L at i na G i rl s >> 65
Learning to Conceal Same-Sex Desire
Young Latinas who identified as lesbian said that, while in middle school, These young women indicated that they did not experience school-based Seventeen-year-old Linda was the only lesbian-identified girl who She started yelling, “Who asked this?! Who asked the question about The response to Linda’s anonymous question is yet another example of This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:07:12 UTC 66 << T h e Se x ua l ( M i s ) E d u c at i o n o f L at i na G i rl s
acceptable sexual behavior. Such a response is also reflective of the expecta- The middle school classroom for this group of girls was generally not a There was this guy in our class who everyone thought he was gay. . . . Any- Like Barbara, other lesbian-identified girls explained feeling intense pres- However, two girls told of instances in which they did attempt to chal- This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:07:12 UTC T h e Se x ua l ( M i s ) E d u c at i o n o f L at i na G i rl s >> 67
abstinence-only sex education. As part of abstinence-only programs, young The teacher’s reaction to Arely can be interpreted as indifference to her Latina girls’ own understandings of how their identities mattered for This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:07:12 UTC 68 << T h e Se x ua l ( M i s ) E d u c at i o n o f L at i na G i rl s
Risking Educational Failure
The setting sun cast a warm glow in the large second-floor hall at Hogar During the ceremony, graduating students were asked to approach the This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:07:12 UTC T h e Se x ua l ( M i s ) E d u c at i o n o f L at i na G i rl s >> 69
of the young people to not let anything “stand in the way” of their education I decided to head home after assisting with some of the reception I walked away from that conversation puzzled by Jocelyn’s comment that Lorena: When you said that Nancy should’ve waited—were you talking Jocelyn: No, I didn’t mean it like that! I meant like waiting to have a baby. Like many of the other young Latinas, Jocelyn thought there was specific This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:07:12 UTC 70 << T h e Se x ua l ( M i s ) E d u c at i o n o f L at i na G i rl s
desire to go to college, suggesting that these young women did not see a high According to Latina girls, the sequence of these achievements was impor- The weight that they placed on their need to do well academically was Partly ’cause I feel like it would be disrespectful to my mom not to, ’cause Latina girls thus incorporated their knowledge of their parents’ sacrifices This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:07:12 UTC T h e Se x ua l ( M i s ) E d u c at i o n o f L at i na G i rl s >> 71
education in their lives. When they shared with me their educational aspi- The Latina girls I came to know were not immigrants or migrants them- Latina girls’ approaches to education reflect their dual frame of refer- This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:07:12 UTC 72 << T h e Se x ua l ( M i s ) E d u c at i o n o f L at i na G i rl s
to build upon their parents’ efforts to improve their family’s socioeconomic But the girls also specifically highlighted their mothers’ experiences and Like mothers interviewed in other studies on gender and sexuality social- This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:07:12 UTC T h e Se x ua l ( M i s ) E d u c at i o n o f L at i na G i rl s >> 73
school, so that I wasn’t doing anything bad. I am keeping my grades up so However, the girls’ educational aspirations also revealed another frame of This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:07:12 UTC 74 << T h e Se x ua l ( M i s ) E d u c at i o n o f L at i na G i rl s
While Latina girls’ articulations of their educational and career aspira- Desires for Informed Sexual Subjectivity
In view of the importance that Latina girls assigned to their ability to achieve This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:07:12 UTC T h e Se x ua l ( M i s ) E d u c at i o n o f L at i na G i rl s >> 75
Some stuff you gotta know right now and some stuff you gotta know it for Marta’s and Yvette’s viewpoints indicate that these young women under- Yvette’s comment also draws attention to the emphasis on standardized He got up there and was like, “You all really don’t want to learn about this And seventeen-year old Minerva described how her eighth-grade teacher She [her teacher] went to some meeting and came back all pissed off, slam- This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:07:12 UTC 76 << T h e Se x ua l ( M i s ) E d u c at i o n o f L at i na G i rl s
Thus, another challenge that young women encountered in their access However, girls believed that sex education should indeed be a part of This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:07:12 UTC T h e Se x ua l ( M i s ) E d u c at i o n o f L at i na G i rl s >> 77
The majority of young women expressed worry that their parents would Sex education, according to girls, should provide them with an opportu- Unlike the academically successful young black women observed and This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:07:12 UTC 78 << T h e Se x ua l ( M i s ) E d u c at i o n o f L at i na G i rl s
a boy and remain focused on school, so as long they “handled their busi- Noticeably absent in their expectations of school-based sex education This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:07:12 UTC T h e Se x ua l ( M i s ) E d u c at i o n o f L at i na G i rl s >> 79
school-oriented femininity that was a pathway to better academic and life Conclusion
When considering school-based sex education, we typically focus on the The experiences of Latina girls show how the interplay of heteronorma- The emphasis that Latina girls in this study placed on their educational This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:07:12 UTC 80 << T h e Se x ua l ( M i s ) E d u c at i o n o f L at i na G i rl s
vulnerability. We generally assume that girls who engage in sexual activi- Building on their desire to give meaning to the sacrifices made by their The sex education experiences of Latina girls reveal that, to truly appre- This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:07:12 UTC T h e Se x ua l ( M i s ) E d u c at i o n o f L at i na G i rl s >> 81
educational and career aspirations can also be understood as a way in which This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:07:12 UTC This page intentionally left blank
This content downloaded from 184.187.189.249 on Thu, 13 Jun 2019 23:07:12 UTC See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249972653
Straight Girls Kissing
ARTICLE in CONTEXTS · AUGUST 2010
DOI: 10.1525/ctx.2010.9.3.28
CITATIONS
11
READS
1,846
2 AUTHORS:
Leila J. Rupp
University of California, Santa Barbara
66 PUBLICATIONS 638 CITATIONS
SEE PROFILE
Verta Taylor
University of California, Santa Barbara 41 PUBLICATIONS 1,209 CITATIONS
SEE PROFILE Available from: Leila J. Rupp
Retrieved on: 22 March 2016 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249972653_Straight_Girls_Kissing?enrichId=rgreq-636cc2d9-e1ff-4c9a-94d1-cc53df8ebf41&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzI0OTk3MjY1MztBUzoxMDMwODg1Njg0MDYwMjlAMTQwMTU4OTYzODM3NQ%3D%3D&el=1_x_2 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249972653_Straight_Girls_Kissing?enrichId=rgreq-636cc2d9-e1ff-4c9a-94d1-cc53df8ebf41&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzI0OTk3MjY1MztBUzoxMDMwODg1Njg0MDYwMjlAMTQwMTU4OTYzODM3NQ%3D%3D&el=1_x_3 https://www.researchgate.net/?enrichId=rgreq-636cc2d9-e1ff-4c9a-94d1-cc53df8ebf41&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzI0OTk3MjY1MztBUzoxMDMwODg1Njg0MDYwMjlAMTQwMTU4OTYzODM3NQ%3D%3D&el=1_x_1 https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Leila_Rupp?enrichId=rgreq-636cc2d9-e1ff-4c9a-94d1-cc53df8ebf41&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzI0OTk3MjY1MztBUzoxMDMwODg1Njg0MDYwMjlAMTQwMTU4OTYzODM3NQ%3D%3D&el=1_x_4 https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Leila_Rupp?enrichId=rgreq-636cc2d9-e1ff-4c9a-94d1-cc53df8ebf41&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzI0OTk3MjY1MztBUzoxMDMwODg1Njg0MDYwMjlAMTQwMTU4OTYzODM3NQ%3D%3D&el=1_x_5 https://www.researchgate.net/institution/University_of_California_Santa_Barbara?enrichId=rgreq-636cc2d9-e1ff-4c9a-94d1-cc53df8ebf41&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzI0OTk3MjY1MztBUzoxMDMwODg1Njg0MDYwMjlAMTQwMTU4OTYzODM3NQ%3D%3D&el=1_x_6 https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Leila_Rupp?enrichId=rgreq-636cc2d9-e1ff-4c9a-94d1-cc53df8ebf41&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzI0OTk3MjY1MztBUzoxMDMwODg1Njg0MDYwMjlAMTQwMTU4OTYzODM3NQ%3D%3D&el=1_x_7 https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Verta_Taylor?enrichId=rgreq-636cc2d9-e1ff-4c9a-94d1-cc53df8ebf41&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzI0OTk3MjY1MztBUzoxMDMwODg1Njg0MDYwMjlAMTQwMTU4OTYzODM3NQ%3D%3D&el=1_x_4 https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Verta_Taylor?enrichId=rgreq-636cc2d9-e1ff-4c9a-94d1-cc53df8ebf41&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzI0OTk3MjY1MztBUzoxMDMwODg1Njg0MDYwMjlAMTQwMTU4OTYzODM3NQ%3D%3D&el=1_x_5 https://www.researchgate.net/institution/University_of_California_Santa_Barbara?enrichId=rgreq-636cc2d9-e1ff-4c9a-94d1-cc53df8ebf41&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzI0OTk3MjY1MztBUzoxMDMwODg1Njg0MDYwMjlAMTQwMTU4OTYzODM3NQ%3D%3D&el=1_x_6 https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Verta_Taylor?enrichId=rgreq-636cc2d9-e1ff-4c9a-94d1-cc53df8ebf41&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzI0OTk3MjY1MztBUzoxMDMwODg1Njg0MDYwMjlAMTQwMTU4OTYzODM3NQ%3D%3D&el=1_x_7 28 contexts.org
The phenomenon
of presumably
straight girls kissing
and making out with
other girls at college
parties and at bars is
everywhere in
contemporary popular
culture, from Katy Perry’s
hit song, “I Kissed a Girl,”
to a Tyra Banks online poll
on attitudes toward girls
who kiss girls in bars, to
AskMen.com’s “Top 10: Chick
Kissing Scenes.” Why dogirls who
aren’t lesbians kiss girls?
by leila j. rupp and verta taylor
girls 29summer 2010 contexts Some think it’s just another example of “girls gone wild,” seek-
ing to attract the boys who watch. Others, such as psycholo-
gist Lisa Diamond, point to women’s “sexual fluidity,”
suggesting that the behavior could be part of how women
shape their sexual identities, even using a heterosexual social
scene as a way to transition to a bisexual or lesbian identity.
These speculations touch on a number of issues in the
sociology of sexuality. The fact that young women on college
campuses are engaging in new kinds of sexual behaviors brings
home the fundamental concept of the social construction of sex-
uality—that whom we desire, what kinds of sexual acts we
engage in, and how we identify sexually is profoundly shaped
by the societies in which we live. Furthermore, boys enjoying
the sight of girls making out recalls the feminist notion of the
“male gaze,” calling attention to the power embodied in men
as viewers and women as the viewed. The sexual fluidity that
is potentially embodied in women’s intimate interactions in
public reminds us that sexuality is gendered and that sexual
desire, sexual behavior, and sexual identity do not always match.
That is, men do not, at least in contemporary American cul-
ture, experience the same kind of fluidity. Although they may
identify as straight and have sex with other men, they certainly
don’t make out at parties for the pleasure of women.
The hookup culture on college campuses, as depicted in
another article in this issue, facilitates casual sexual interac-
tions (ranging from kissing and making out to oral sex and
intercourse) between students who meet at parties or bars.
Our campus is no exception. The University of California, Santa
Barbara, has a long-standing reputation as a party school (much
to the administration’s relief, it’s declining in those rankings).
In a student population of twenty thousand, more than half
of the students are female and slightly under half are students
of color, primarily Chicano/Latino and Asian American. About
a third are first-generation college students. Out of over two
thousand female UC Santa Barbara students who responded
to sociologist Paula England’s online College and Social Life
Survey on hooking-up practices on campus, just under one
percent identified as homosexual, three percent as bisexual,
and nearly two percent as “not sure.”
National data on same-sex sexuality shows that far fewer
people identify as lesbian or gay than are sexually attracted to
the same sex or have engaged in same-sex sexual behavior.
Sociologist Edward Laumann and his colleagues, in the National
Health and Social Life Survey, found that less than two percent
of women identified as lesbian or bisexual, but over eight per-
cent had experienced same-sex desire or engaged in lesbian
sex. The opposite is true for men, who are more likely to have
had sex with a man than to report finding men attractive.
Across time and cultures (and, as sociologist Jane Ward has
pointed out, even in the present among white straight-identi-
fied men), sex with other men, as long as a man plays the
insertive role in a sexual encounter, can bolster, rather than
undermine, heterosexuality. Does the same work for women?
The reigning assumption about girls kissing girls in the
party scene is that they do it to attract the attention of men.
But the concept of sexual fluidity and the lack of fit among
desire, behavior, and identity suggest that there may be more
going on than meets the male gaze. A series of formal and
informal interviews with diverse female college students at our
university, conducted by undergraduates as part of a class
assignment, supports the sociological scholarship on the com-
plexity of women’s sexuality.
the college party scene adjacent community of Isla Vista, a densely populated area
made up of two-thirds students and one-third primarily poor
and working-class Mexican American families. House parties,
fraternity and sorority parties, dance parties (often with, as
one woman student put it, “some sort of slutty theme to
them”), and random parties open to anyone who stops by
flourish on the weekends. Women students describe Isla Vista
as “unrealistic to the rest of the world… It’s a little wild,”
“very promiscuous, a lot of experimenting and going crazy,”
and “like a sovereign nation…a space where people feel really
comfortable to let down their guards and to kind of let loose.”
Alcohol flows freely, drugs are available, women sport skimpy
clothing, and students engage in a lot of hooking up. One
sorority member described parties as featuring “a lot of, you
know, sexual dance. And some people, you know, like pretty
much are fucking on the dance floor even though they’re
really not. I feel like they just take it above and beyond.”
Another student thinks “women have a little bit more free-
dom here.” But despite the unreality of life in Isla Vista, there’s
no reason to think life here is fundamentally different than on
other large campuses.
At Isla Vista parties, the practice of presumably hetero-
sexual women kissing and making out with other women is
Actresses Scarlett Johansson and Sandra Bullock prepare to Ph TV vi widespread. As one student reported, “It’s just normal for most
people now, friends make out with each other.” The student
newspaper sex columnist began her column in October 2008,
“I kissed a girl and liked it,” recommending “if you’re a girl
who hasn’t quite warmed up to a little experimentation with
one of your own, then I suggest you grab a gal and get to it.”
She posed the “burning question on every male spectator’s
mind . . . Is it real or is it for show?” As it turns out, students
offered three different explanations of why students do this: to
get attention from men, to experiment with same-sex activity,
and out of same-sex desire.
getting attention ture, as the girls who engage in it well know. A student told
us, “It’s usually for display for guys who are usually surround-
ing them and like cheering them on. And it seems to be done
in order to like, you know, for the guys, not like for their own
pleasure or desire, but to like, I don’t know, entertain the guys.”
Alcohol is usually involved: “It’s usually brought on by, I don’t
know, like shots or drinking, or people kind of saying something
to like cheer it on or whatever. And it’s usually done in order
to turn guys on or to seek male attention in some way.” One
student who admits to giving her friend what she calls “love
pecks” and engaging in some “booby grabbing” says “I think
it’s mainly for attention definitely. It’s usually girls that are super
drunk that are trying to get attention from guys or are just
really just having fun like when my roommate and I did it at our
date party… It is alcohol and for show. Not experimentation at
all.” Another student, who has had her friends kiss her, insists
that “they do that for attention… kind of like a circle forms
around them… egging them on or taking pictures.” One
woman admitted that she puckered up for the attention, but
when asked if it had anything to do with experimentation,
added “maybe with some people. I think for me it was a little
bit, yeah.”
experimentation story. One student who identifies as straight says “I have kissed
girls on multiple occasions.” One night she and a friend were
“hammered, walking down the street, and we’re getting really
friendly and just started making out and taking pictures,” which
they then posted on Facebook. “And then the last time, this
is a little bit more personal, but was when I actually had a three-
some. Which was at a party and obviously didn’t happen dur-
ing the party.” She mentions “bisexual tendencies” as an
explanation, in addition to getting attention: “I would actu-
ally call it maybe more like experimentation.” Another student,
who calls herself straight but “bi-curious,” says girls do it for
attention, but also, “It’s a good time for them, something they
may not have the courage to express themselves otherwise, if
they’re in a room alone, it makes them more comfortable with
it because other people are receiving pleasure from them.”
She told us about being drunk at a theme party (“Alice in Fuck-
land”): “And me and ‘Maria’ just started going at it in the
kitchen. And this dude, he whispers in my ear, ‘Everyone’s
watching. People can see you.’ But me and ‘Maria’ just like to
kiss. I don’t think it was like really a spectacle thing, like we
weren’t teasing anybody. We just like to make out. So we might
be an exception to the rule,” she giggled.
In another interview, a student described a friend as liking
“boys and girls when she’s drunk… But
when she’s sober she’s starting to like
girls.” And another student who called
herself “technically” bisexual explained
that she hates that term because in Isla
Vista “it basically means that you make
out with girls at parties.” Before her first
relationship with a woman, she never
thought about bisexuality: “The closest
I ever came to thinking that was, hey, I’d probably make out
with a girl if I was drinking.” These stories make clear that exper-
imentation in the heterosexual context of the hookup culture
and college party scene provides a safe space for some women
to explore non-heterosexual possibilities.
same-sex desire to same-sex desire as the motivating factor. One student who
defined her sexuality as liking sex with men but feeling
“attracted more towards girls than guys” described her com-
ing out process as realizing, “I really like girls and I really like
kissing girls.” Said another student, “I’ve always considered
myself straight, but since I’ve been living here I’ve had several
sexual experiences with women. So I guess I would consider
myself, like, bisexual at this point.” She at first identified as
“one of those girls” who makes out at parties, but then admit-
ted that she also had sexual experiences with women in private.
At this point she shifted her identification to bisexual: “I may
have fallen into that trap of like kissing a girl to impress a guy,
but I can’t really recollect doing that on purpose. It was more
of just my own desire to be with, like to try that with a woman.”
Another bisexual woman who sometimes makes out with one
of her girlfriends in public thinks other women might “only do
30 contexts.org
The reigning assumption about girls kissing girls it in a public setting because they’re afraid of that side of their
sexuality, because they were told to be heterosexual you
know… So if they make out, it’s only for the show of it, even
though they may like it they can’t admit that they do.”
The ability to kiss and make out with girls in public with-
out having to declare a lesbian or bisexual identity makes it
possible for women with same-sex desires to be part of the
regular college party scene, and the act of making out in pub-
lic has the potential to lead to more extensive sexual activity in
private. One student described falling in love with her best
friend in middle school, but being “too chicken shit to make
the first move” because “I never know if they are queer or
not.” Her first sexual relationship with a bisexual woman
included the woman’s boyfriend as well. In this way, the fact
that some women have their first same-sex sexual encounter
in a threesome with a man is an extension of the safe hetero-
sexual space for exploring same-sex desire.
heteroflexibility than drunken women making out for the pleasure of men.
Sexual fluidity is certainly relevant; in Lisa Diamond’s ten-year
study of young women who originally identified as lesbian or
bisexual, she found a great deal of movement in sexual desire,
intimate relationships, and sexual identities. The women moved
in all directions, from lesbian to bisexual and heterosexual,
bisexual to lesbian and heterosexual, and, notably, from all
identities to “unlabeled.” From a psychological perspective,
Diamond argues for the importance of both biology and cul-
ture in shaping women as sexually fluid, with a greater capac-
ity for attractions to both female and male partners than men.
Certainly the women who identify as heterosexual but into
kissing other women fit her notion of sexual fluidity. Said one
straight-identified student, “It’s not like they’re way different
from anyone else. They’re just making out.”
Mostly, though, students didn’t think that making out had
any impact on one’s identity as heterosexual: “And yeah, I
imagine a lot of the girls that you know just casually make out
with their girlfriends would consider themselves straight. I con-
sider myself straight.” Said another, “I would still think they’re
straight girls. Unless I saw some, like level of like emotional
and like attraction there.” A bisexual student, though, thought
“they’re definitely bi-curious at the least… I think that a woman
who actually does it for enjoyment and like knows that she
likes that and that she desires it again, I would say would be
more leaning towards bisexual.”
everybody but lesbians anyone else,” if they have an emotional reaction or really enjoy
it or want to do it again, then they’ve apparently crossed the
line of heterosexuality. Diamond found that lesbians in her
study who had been exclusively attracted to and involved with
other women were the only group that didn’t report changes
in their sexual identities. Sociologist Arlene Stein, in her study
of lesbian feminist communities in the 1980s, also painted a pic-
ture of boundary struggles around the identity “lesbian.”
Women who developed relationships with men but continued
to identify as lesbians were called “ex-lesbians” or “fakers” by
those who considered themselves “real lesbians.” And while
straight college students today can make out with women and
call themselves “bi-curious” without challenge to their hetero-
sexual identity, the same kind of flexibility does not extend to
lesbians. A straight, bi-curious woman explained that she did-
n’t think “the lesbian community would accept me right off
because I like guys too much, you know.” And she didn’t think
she had “enough sexual experience with the women to be
considered bisexual.” Another student, who described herself
as “a free flowing spirit” and has had multiple relationships
with straight-identified women, rejected the label “lesbian”
because “I like girls” but “guys are still totally attractive to
me.” She stated that “to be a lesbian meant… you’d have to
commit yourself to it one hundred percent. Like you’d have to
be in it sexually, you’d have to be in it emotionally. And I think
if you were you wouldn’t have that attraction for men… if you
31summer 2010 contexts
Ph es m 32 contexts.org
were a lesbian.”
In contrast to “heteroflexibility,” a
term much in use by young women, stu-
dents hold a much more rigid, if unarticu-
lated, notion of lesbian identity. “It’s just
like it’s okay because we’re both drunk and
we’re friends. It’s not like we identify as les-
bian in any way….” One woman who has
kissed her roommate is sure that she can tell
the difference between straight women
and lesbians: “I haven’t ever seen like an
actual like lesbian couple enjoying them-
selves.” Another commented, “I mean, it’s
one thing if you are, if you do identify as gay
and that you’re expressing something.” A
bisexual woman is less sure, at first stating
that eighty percent of the making out at
parties is for men, then hesitating because
“that totally excludes the queer commu-
nity and my own viewing of like women who absolutely love
other women, and they show that openly so, I think that it
could be either context.” At that point she changed the per-
centage to fifty percent: “Cause I guess I never know if a
woman is like preferably into women or if it’s more of a social
game.” A bisexual woman described kissing her girlfriend at a
party “and some guy came up and poured beer on us and said
something like ‘stop kissing her you bitch,’” suggesting that any
sign that women are kissing for their own pleasure puts them
over the line. She went on to add that “we’ve gotten plenty
of guys staring at us though, when we kiss or whatever, [and]
they think that we’re doing it for them, or we want them to
join or whatever. It gets pretty old.”
So there is a lot of leeway for women’s same-sex behavior
with a straight identity. But it is different than for straight men,
who experience their same-sex interactions in a more private
space, away from the gaze of women. Straight women can be
“barsexual” or “bi-curious” or “mostly straight,” but too much
physical attraction or emotional investment crosses over the line
of heterosexuality. What this suggests is that heterosexual
women’s options for physical intimacy are expanding, although
such activity has little salience for identity, partner choice, or
political allegiances. But the line between lesbian and non-les-
bian, whether bisexual or straight, remains firmly intact.
recommended resources: Laura Hamilton. “Trading on Heterosexuality: College Women’s Arlene Stein. Sex and Sensibility: Stories of a Lesbian Generation. Elisabeth Morgan Thompson and Eliza- Jane Ward. “Dude-Sex: White Masculini- Dudes.” Sexualities (2008), 11:414-434. A sociological study that Leila J. Rupp is in the feminist studies department and Verta Taylor is in the soci-
ology department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Rupp is the author of
Sapphistries: A Global History of Love betweenWomen, andTaylor is the coauthor (with
Rupp) of Drag Queens at the 801 Cabaret.
Ph Bl m Attention or attraction? Either way, they’ve got an audience.
Straight women can be “barsexual” or “bi-curious” GAYLE S . RUBIN
“Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the first published in Carole S. Vance (ed.) Pleasure and Danger: version from H. Abelove, M. Borale and D. Helperin, The THE SEX WARS
Asked his advice, Dr. J. Guerin affirmed that, after l
and vaginal onanism in little girls.
(Demetrius Zambaco)1
The time has come to think about sex. To some, The realm of sexuality also has its own products of human activity. They are imbued In England and the United States, the late The consequences of these great nineteenth- The idea that masturbation is an unhealthy “ THINKING SEX: NOTES FOR RADICAL THEORY”
parents tied children down at night so they Much of the sex law currently on the books The Supreme Court began to whittle down Although sodomy statutes date from older In her discussion of the British “white slave” forced the passage of the Criminal Law Amend– In the United States, the Mann Act, also known In the 1950s, in the United States, major From the late 1940s until the early 1960s, 101 government. Thousands lost their jobs, and Many states and large cities conducted their In San Francisco, police and media waged The current period bears some uncomfort- manufacture and distribution of pornographic The police crackdown has not been limited to For over a century, no tactic for stirring up GAYLE S.RUBIN 102 ‘THINKING SEX: NOTES FOR RADICAL THEORY”
“child pornography” swept the national media. The laws produced by the child porn panic are A new and even tougher federal child porn– The experiences of art photographer Jacque– It is easy to see someone like Livingston as a While the misery of the boy-lovers affects Right-wing ideology linking non-familial sex 103 104 GAYLE S. RUBIN
were attacked for weakening the moral fiber of Around 1969, the extreme right discovered New Right and neo-conservative ideology has Right-wing opposition to sex education, abortions have been promulgated. Sexual back- The most ambitious right-wing legislation Periods such as the 1880s in England, and the It is difficult to make such decisions in the THINKING SEX: NOTES FOR RADICAL THEORY” radical perspectives on sexuality. arship and political writing about sex has been SEXUAL THOUGHTS
“You see, Tim,” Phillip said suddenly, “your from a novel published in 195027)
A radical theory of sex must identify, describe, Several persistent features of thought about One such axiom is sexual essentialism – the social life and shapes institutions. Sexual essen– During the last five years, a sophisticated Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality The new scholarship on sexual behavior has 105 this body of work is an assumption that sexual- It is impossible to think with any clarity By detailing the relationships between stigma- political weaknesses. This has been most evident Because of his emphasis on the ways that Most radical thought about sex has been The new scholarship on sex has brought a Of these five, the most important is sex neg– 106 GAYLE S.RUBIN T H I N K I N G SEX: NOTES FOR RADICAL THEORY”
that sex is inherently sinful. It may be redeemed if This culture always treats sex with suspicion. What I call the fallacy of misplaced scale is a Modern Western societies appraise sex acts alone at the top of the erotic pyramid. Clamoring Individuals whose behavior stands high in this Extreme and punitive stigma maintains some The old religious taboos were primarily 107 around qualities of erotic experience.39
Medicine and psychiatry multiplied the cate- Psychiatric condemnation of sexual behav- Popular culture is permeated with ideas that All these hierarchies of sexual value – reli- much the same ways as do ideological systems Figure 10.1 diagrams a general version of the Figure 10.2 diagrams another aspect of the All these models assume a domino theory of Most systems of sexual judgment – religious, 108 GAYLE S.RUBIN ” T H I N K I N G S E X : N O T E S F O R R A D I C A L T H E O R Y ” 109
THE CHARMED CIRCLE Heterosexual THE OUTER LIMITS Damned Sexuality
Homosexual Promiscuous Commercial Casual In public With manufactured objects Figure 10.1 The sex hierarchy: the charmed circle vs. the outer limits
He ro xu
Ho
m ex l In re tio hi Ca al Non- No PornoaraDhv . Pornography 110 GAYLE S.RUBIN
“GOOD” SEX “BAD”SEX Unmarried heterosexual couples Masturbation Lesbians in the Dar Heterosexual “The Transvestites Fetishists For money Wors Best
Figure 10.2 The sex hierarchy: the struggle over where to draw the lime
instance, heterosexual encounters may be sub- As a result of the sex conflicts of the last This kind of sexual morality has more in ual acts by the way partners treat one another, It is difficult to develop a pluralistic sexual Most people find it difficult to grasp that This notion of a single ideal sexuality charac- THINKING SEX: NOTES FOR RADICAL THEORY” terizes most systems of thought about sex. For Progressives who would be ashamed to dis– Empirical sex research is the one field that Much political writing on sexuality reveals something that exists rather than as something SEXUAL TRANSFORMATION
As defined by the ancient civil or canonical codes, (Michel Foucault46)
In spite of many continuities with ancestral The writings of nineteenth-century sexology 111 the ideologies which interpret it, and its charac- Homosexuality is the best example of this Nor was the sixteenth-century sodomite a The New Guinea bachelor and the sodomite The relocation of homoeroticism into these industrialization. As laborers migrated to work Areas like these acquired bad reputations, Prostitution has undergone a similar met– GAYLE S. RUBIN 112 T H I N K I N G SEX: NOTES FOR RADICAL THEORY” | 113
tories. The legal persecution of both popula– Besides organizing homosexuals and prosti– SEXUAL STRATIFICATION
An entire sub-race was born, different – despite (Michel Foucault53)
The industrial transformation of Western ship. The construction of modern systems of Sex law is the most adamantine instrument of Sex law is harsh. The penalties for violating have become repeat felons for having engaged in Sex law is not a perfect reflection of the Obscenity laws enforce a powerful taboo The anti-obscenity laws also form part of a governing the location and operation of “adult” Whatever one thinks of the limitations of Marx himself considered the capitalist mar– The law is especially ferocious in maintaining GAYLE S.RUBIN 114 THINKING SEX: NOTES FOR RADICAL THEORY’
The primary mechanism for insuring the Adults who deviate too much from conven– The only adult sexual behavior that is legal in and heterosexual partners and regardless of Laws like these criminalize sexual behavior The state also upholds the sexual hierarchy 115 forms of prejudice. At their worst, sex law and Although the legal apparatus of sex is stag- In her marvelous ethnographic study of gay Though this situation has changed a great Public officials and anyone who occupies a perverts of all kinds from seeking such posi– The expansion of the gay economy in the last Families play a crucial role in enforcing In addition to economic penalties and strain GAYLE S.RUBIN 116 “THINKING SEX: NOTES FOR RADICAL THEORY”
protection from unscrupulous or criminal behav– Sex is a vector of oppression. The system of SEXUAL CONFLICTS
The moral panic crystallizes widespread fears and (Jeffrey Weeks61)
The sexual system is not a monolithic, omnipo– Sexual ideology plays a crucial role in sexual there are constant skirmishes. Recurrent battles The legal regulation of sexual conduct is In addition to the definitional and legal wars, Dissident sexuality is rarer and more closely According to the mainstream media and
117 popular prejudice, the marginal sexual worlds Information on how to find, occupy, and live Migration is expensive. Transportation costs, For poorer kids, the military is often the Once in the cities, erotic populations tend to territory. Churches and other anti-vice forces For most of this century, the sexual under– Gay pioneers occupied neighborhoods that In San Francisco, unbridled construction of GAYLE S. RUBIN 118 “THINKING SEX: NOTES FOR RADICAL THEORY” millionaire contracters are not. The specter of Downtown expansion affects all the territo– The most important and consequential kind of Because sexuality in Western societies is so The system of sexual stratification provides themselves, and a preexisting apparatus for Moral panics rarely alleviate any real prob– It is always risky to prophesy. But it does not Feminist anti-pornography ideology has A great deal of anti-porn propaganda implies 119 perverts commit sex crimes, not normal people. The use of S/M imagery in anti-porn dis- Feminist rhetoric has a distressing tendency The right wing opposes pornography and has hunt would make any appreciable contribution An AIDS panic is even more probable. When Whatever happens, AIDS will have far- AIDS is both a personal tragedy for those GAYLE S.RUBIN 120 “THINKING SEX: NOTES FOR RADICAL THEORY” 121
of the Equal Rights Amendment would make it It is bad enough that the gay community THE LIMITS OF FEMINISM
We know that in an overwhelmingly large number (J. Edgar Hoover70)
In the absence of a more articulated radical between feminism and sex is complex. Because The anti-pornography movement and its texts This discourse on sexuality is less a sexology forms. The picture of human sexuality that In addition, this anti-porn rhetoric is a mas- Similarly, erotic minorities such as sado- Finally, this so-called feminist discourse and sexual militants has mixed records on both The anti-pornography movement and its Whenever there is polarization, there is an GAYLE S. RUBIN 122 THINKING SEX: NOTES FOR RADICAL THEORY” 123
position that is not yet fully formed, I want to The emergent middle is based on a false In political life, it is all too easy to mar– In contrast to cultural feminists, who simply homosexuality. That is, homosexuality, sado– The second part of the “moderate” position As I mentioned earlier, a great deal of sex law This is not the case for most other sexual both participants were capable of consent, both Adult incest statutes operate in a similar In a famous S/M case, a man was convicted far fewer injuries than most sports. But the Sodomy laws, adult incest laws, and legal The “brainwash theory” explains erotic Psychology is the last resort of those who 124 GAYLE S. RUBIN “THINKING SEX: NOTES FOR RADICAL THEORY” what she calls “sado-masochism” is alienated, The position which defends the political Whichever feminist position on sexuality – In the English language, the word “sex” has In an earlier essay, “The Traffic in Women,” I we know it – gender identity, sexual desire and “The Traffic in Women” was inspired by the Particularly from the eighteenth century onward, The development of this sexual system has In contrast to my perspective in “The Traffic in 125 reflect more accurately their separate social exist- Catherine MacKinnon has made the most There is an instructive analogy in the history In the early days of the contemporary wom- The relationship between feminism and a the extent that these overlap with erotic strat– In the long run, feminism’s critique of gender It is a mistake to substitute feminism for CONCLUSION
these pleasures which we lightly call physical Like gender, sexuality is political. It is organized The legislative restructuring that took place GAYLE S.RUBIN 126 THINKING SEX: NOTES FOR RADICAL THEORY” nities formed. It became possible to be a male The repression of the 1950s was in part a The current right-wing sexual counter- In Western culture, sex is taken all too seri– If sex is taken too seriously, sexual persecution power, but their persecution upholds a system The 1980s have already been a time of great ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This paper owes a great deal to many people. Its roots A NOTE ON DEFINITIONS
I want to clarify the use in this essay of terms such as 127 encompass the many jobs of the sex industry. Sex N O T E S
1 Demetrius Zambaco, “Onanism and Nervous 2 Linda Gordon and Ellen Dubois, “Seeking 3 G. J. Barker-Benfield, The Horrors of the Half- 4 Sarah Senefield Beserra, Sterling G. Franklin and 5 Ibid: 113–17. op. cit.: 83. Walkowitz’s entire discussion of the 7 Walkowitz, “Male Vice and Feminist Virtue”: 8 Beserra et al., op. cit.: 106–7.
9 Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Preliminary 10 Estelle B. Freedman, “‘Uncontrolled Desire’: 11 Allan Berube, “Behind the Spectre of San 12 D’Emilio, op. cit.: 46–7; Allan Berube, personal 13 John Gerassi, The Boys of Boise (New York: 14 Allan Berube, personal communication; 15 The following examples suggest avenues for GAYLE S. RUBIN 128 “THINKING SEX: NOTES FOR RADICAL THEORY” It would be of great interest to know exactly 16 “Chicago is Center of National Child Porno 17 For more information on the “kiddie porn 18 “House Passes Tough Bill on Child Porn,” San 19 George Stambolian, “Creating the New Man: A Livingstone,” Clothed With the Sun 3: 1 (May 20 Paul H. Gebhard, “The Institute,” in Martin S. 21 Phoebe Courtney, The Sex Education Racket: 22 Pavlov’s Children (They May Be Yours) (Los 23 Norman Podhoretz, “The Culture of Appease– 24 Alan Wolfe and Jerry Sanders, “Resurgent Cold 25 Jimmy Breslin, “The Moral Majority in Your 26 Rhonda Brown, “Blueprint for a Moral Amer– 27 James Barr, Quatrefoil (New York: Greenberg, 28 This insight was first articulated by Mary Mcin– 29 Bert Hansen, “The Historical Construction of 30 Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society; 31 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, (New 129 32 A very useful discussion of these issues can be 33 Claude Lévi-Strauss, “A Confrontation,” New 34 Foucault, op. cit.: 11. Society: 9. Control,” San Francisco Chronicle (October 13, 38 Susan Sontag, Styles of Radical Will (New York: 39 See Foucault, op. cit.: 106–7. and Statistical Manual of Mental and Physical 41 Note 1992: Throughout this essay I treated 42 Alfred Kinsey, Wardell Pomeroy, and Clyde 43 John Gagnon and William Simon, Sexual Devi- 44 Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex,
(2 vols), (New York: Random House, 1936). to appeal to scientific authority, not to claim 46 Foucault, op. cit: 43. York: McGraw-Hill, 1981); Raymond Kelly, 48 Caroline Bingham, “Seventeenth-Century Atti– 49 Stephen O. Murray, “The Institutional Elabora– 50 For further elaboration of these processes, see: 51 Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society.
130 GAYLE S.RUBIN THINKING SEX: NOTES FOR RADICAL THEORY” 52 Vice cops also harass all sex businesses, be these 53 Foucault, op. cit.: 40. drisse (New York, Harper & Row, 1971): 94. ber 5,1981). This article is a superb summary of 56 Bessera et al., op. cit.: 165–7. ody West Matthews and Elizabeth R. Gatov 58 1992: For a wonderful history of the relation– 59 Esther Newton, Mother Camp: Female Imperso– 60 D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: 61 Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society: 14. Vindication of Moral Liberty (Cupertino, CA: 63 I have adopted this terminology from the very 64 See Spooner, op. cit.: 25–9. Feminist anti-porn 65 “Pope’s Talk on Sexual Spontaneity,” San 66 See especially Walkowitz, Prostitution and
Victorian Society, and Weeks, Sex, Politics and 61 Moral Majority Report (July 1983). I am 68 Cited in Larry Bush, “Capitol Report,” Advo– 69 1992: The literature on AIDS and its social 70 Cited in H. Montgomery Hyde, A History of 71 See for example Laura Lederer (ed.), Take Back 72 Kathleen Barry, Female Sexual Slavery (Engle– 73 Sally Gearhart, “An Open Letter to the Voters in 131 and the separation of sex from emotional 74 Julia Penelope, op. cit. Sexuality and the Last Wave of Feminism,” 76 Pat Califia, “Feminism vs. Sex: A New Con- Some Thoughts on Sexuality,” Processed World 77 Lisa Orlando, “Lust at Last! Spandex Invades 78 Ellen Willis, Beginning to See the Light: 146. I 79 See, for example, Jessica Benjamin, “Master and 80 1992: The label “libertarian feminist” or “sex– As I have explained in this essay and else– GAYLE S. RUBIN 132 THINKING SEX: NOTES FOR RADICAL THEORY” of sexual behavior need to be analyzed in con– I doubt anyone would call Marx a liberal or 81 B. Ruby Rich, op. cit.: 76. Samois, Coming To Power; Pat Califia, “Femi– 83 1992: A recent example of dismissive ideology 84 Lisa Orlando, “Power Plays: Coming to Terms 85 Taylor v. State, 214 Md. 156, 165, 133 A. 2d 86 Bessera, Jewel, Matthews and Gatov: 163–5. See 87 “Marine and Mom Guilty of Incest,” San 88 Norton: 18. 58 Cal. Rptr.439,447(1967). 513–514, 58 Cal. Rptr. at 447. Fucking: Getting Lost in Lesbian S & M,” 92 Benjamin, op. cit.: 292, but see also 286, 93 Barbara Ehrenreich, “What Is This Thing 94 Gayle Rubin, “The Traffic in Women,” in 95 Rubin, “The Traffic in Women”: 166. Method and the State: An Agenda for Theory,” 98 Catherine MacKinnon, “Feminism, Marxism, 99 1992: MacKinnon’s published oeuvre has also 100 Colette, The Ripening Seed, trans, and cited in 101 John Lauritsen and David Thorstad, The Early 102 D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communi– 133 F·OR Dean Spade
In the past five years or so, increasing numbers of people I know have
started talking about and practicing polyamory. Oueer and trans people in
the communities I participate in have been spending more time discussing
this idea and generating analyses about it’ Many people still recite the
common judgment: “That can’t work, u but as many of us live consistently
” with identities and practices that we1ve been told our whole lives cannot resist the “common sense” we inherit about race, class1 gender, and sexual-
ity in our culture.
28 For Lovers and Fighters
I do not find it a stretch to see how interrogating the limits of monog-
amy fits into the queer, trans, feminist, anticapitalist1 anti-oppression
politics that most of my personal and political practice is focused on.
When I think about this topic, I often start with feminism, where so many
of my first political inquiries came up during my teens. I’m always heart-
ened to think about the antiromantic propaganda of the I 970s feminist
movement. One piece that comes to mind is a poster-a photo of a man
and a woman walking hand in hand through a park on a beautiful fall day
with pies smashed on both their faces-with text underneath saying some-
thing about killing the romance myth. 1 have several very pulpy, flexible,
strong, romantic bones in my body, but I’ve always been delighted by this
antiromance politics (especially in light of recent claims to heteronormative
family structure and traditional symbols and ceremonies of heterosexual
1’love” by gay-marriage proponents). 2
It was a relief to me to find out in my teens that there were feminists
mounting a critique of romance. I saw how the myth of heteromonoga-
mous romance lined up to fuck women over-to create a cultural incen-
tive to enter the property arrangements of marriage, to place women in
a subordinated position in the romantic dyad, to define women’s worth
solely in terms of success at finding and keeping a romance, to brainwash
women into spending all their time measuring themselves against this
norm and working to change their bodies, behaviors, and activities to meet
the requirements of being attractive to men and suitable for romance. I see
this myth as both personally damaging to people-in that it creates unre-
alistic expectations about ourselves and each other and causes us to con-
stantly experience insecurity-and also politically damaging, because it’s a
giant distraction from our resistance, and it divides us (especially based on
29 Dean Spade the fucked-up self-fulfilling stereotypes about how women compete with
each other). Sadly, although the usual tropes are focused on heterosexual
romance, much of this gets carried into queer communities as well and
surrounds our approaches to sex, love1 and romance to varying degrees.
It’s important to have a critique of the myth of romance that looks at how
damaging it is to us in our personal lives, and how it is designed to fuel
social arrangements, codified in law, that were invented to subordinate
women and make them the property of men.
I also think about this in terms of capitalism in the sense that capital-
ism is always pushing us toward perfection, manufacturing ideas of the
right way to be a man or a woman-or a mother or a date or whatever-that
people cannot fulfill. The goal is that we’ll constantly strive-usually by
buying things-to fill this giant gap of insecurity that is created. You can
never be too rich or too thin (greed) or rich enough or thin enough (inse-
curity). Capitalism is fundamentally invested in notions of scarcity, encour-
aging people to feel that we never have enough so that we will act out
of greed and hoarding instincts and focus on accumulation. Indeed, the
romance myth is focused on scarcity: There is only one person out there
for you! You need to find someone to marry before you get too old! The
sexual exclusivity rule is focused on scarcity, too: Each person has only a
certain amount of attention or attraction or love or interest and if any of it
goes to someone besides his or her partner, partner must lose out. We don’t
generally apply this rule to other relationships-we don’t assume that having
two kid;, means loving the first one less or not at all, or having more than
one friend means being a bad or fake or less-interested friend to our other
friends. We apply this particular understanding of scarcity to romance and
love, and most of us internalize that feeling of scarcity pretty deeply.
ao For Lovers and Fighters This gets to another central point for me. One of the things I see in
thinking about this stuff is how lots of people I know are really awesome,
but then show their worst sides, their worst behaviors, to the persons they
date. To that person, they will be overly needy or dependent, or dominat-
ing, or possessive, or jealous, or mean, or disrespectful, or thoughtless. I
have seen that tendency in myself as well. It makes sense. So much inse-
curity surrounds the romance myth and the world of shame in which sexu-
ality is couched in our culture that we can become our monstrous selves
in those relationships. I also see people prioritizing romantic relationships
over all else-ditching their friends, putting all their emotional eggs in
one basket, and creating unhealthy dynamics with the people they date
because of it. It becomes simultaneously the most important relationship
and the one in which people give free rein to their most insecure selves.
One of my goals in thinking about redefining the way we view rela-
tionships is to try to treat the people I date more like I treat my friends-
to be respectful and thoughtful and have boundaries and reasonable
expectations-and to try to treat my friends more like my dates-to give
them special attention, honor my commitments to them, be consistent,
and invest deeply in our futures together. In the queer communities rm
in, valuing friendship is a really big deal, often coming out of the fact that
lots of us don’t have family support and thus build deep supportive struc-
tures with other queers. We are interested in resisting the heteronormative
family structure in which people are expected to form a dyad, marry, have
kids, and get all their needs met within that family structure. A lot of us
see that as unhealthy, as a technology of postindustrial late capitalism
that is connected to alienating people from community and training them
to think in terms of individuality, to value the smaller unit of the nuclear
a1 Dean Spade family rather than the extended family. 3 Thus, questioning how the status
and accompanying behavior norms are different for how we treat our
friends versus our dates, and trying to bring those into balance, starts to
support our work of creating chosen families and resisting the annihilation
of community that capitalism seeks.
In recent years, polyamory has become an increasingly important
topic of discussion and analysis in trans communities that I am a part of.
In many ways, it makes sense that this would be an area of emergent resis-
tant practices in communities resisting gender norms and breaking gender
rules. In loosening our ties to the gender binary, our ideas about being
proper men and women often loosen, too. As our previously strict ideas
about our own genders fall away, at the same time, we can become more
experimental with gender and sexual orientation. So people who’ve always
seen themselves in a very particular role-like, say, butch lesbian-and are
now questioning that gender association and starting to disconnect biol-
ogy from gender and think about gender expression more fluidly, might
find themselves interested in sexual experimentation with people of differ-
ent genders as well. I’ve seen a lot of people who transitioned from lesbian
identity to trans man, or trans masculine identities wanting to experiment
with fag identity, or to screw other trans people or non-trans men. A part
of this is about beginning to feel new resistant threads of queer sex in
new ways-seeing your body in new ways and feeling like you can do
more things with it and then decide what those things mean to you. This
is certafnly not true for all trans people, but I have often seen it happen.
For people living on the outskirts of traditional gender, being per-
ceived as different genders at different times-and coming to find out
how subjective gender assignment is and how fleeting membership in
a2 For Lovers and Fighters any gender role can be-can generate new feelings of experimentation
and increased independence and pleasure. Suddenly, this thing that has
always been a given in our culture-that all people are either male or
female their whole lives, and that this difference is inscribed by 11nature 11
in our very genes-falls away when some people perceive you as a woman
and others as a man and when gender starts to come apart in pieces: hair,
chest, clothing, walk, voice, gesture, etc. Even for trans people who even-
tually arrive at a stable male or female identity that fits certain traditional
gender norms, many still have their image of gender1s stability strongly
disrupted by the experience of changing gender and navigating the world
from a new standpoint. Others, like myself, who occupy a gender position
that defies traditional expectations of either gender and, therefore, get
interpreted different ways for different reasons, constantly experience the
instability of gender and usually have a lot of funny and scary stories to
tell about the fluidity of perception.
For some people, sex is a place where gender roles get confirmed,
and having sex with people and having them perceive you and treat
you according to the gender roles you are expressing can be a really
wonderful and affirming feeling. When I was first coming out as trans,
it meant the world to me to be able to explore my gender by having sex
with people who wanted to engage in gender play and who respectfully
saw me as I saw myself. For people who are experimenting with how
they think about or express their own gender, wanting to have different
kinds of sex with different kinds of people can be a significant part of
that learning process.
In the communities I’m in, this has resulted in lots of interesting dis-
cussions. For couples with one person beginning to identify as trans, it can
33 · ,ng that the two members of the couple can have sexual- . – or1en a 10n
the other partner-like a couple with the non-trans woman identifying as
a lesbian and a femme and her trans boyfriend identifying as a fag. For
some people, too, this has encouraged them to open their relationships
50 that both members can get the experimentation they want, allowing
them to keep being together in ways that work for them and that they
really love. For other people I know, who don’t have a primary partner,
polyamory means getting lo be pervy and dirty with all the people who
appeal to them without having to be judged or considered a player or
a liar. For people socialized as female, this can be incredibly important.
We are raised to think that sexual pleasure is not for us, that to seek out
pleasure is to be a slut, that we should be less sexual than men, that sex
is a service you give to attain commitment and family structure from men.
Moving past that, owning sexual pleasure and being allowed to seek it out
is a radical act for everyone in our shame-filled culture, but particularly for
people raised as women who are told to be sexy (for others to consume)
but not pleasure-seeking. Radical pro-sex feminists carved out these ideas
in the 1980s, and I see them echoed in the desire of the communities Jim
in to embrace sexual freedom and experimentation.
This issue of experimentation and different kinds of affirmation that
come from sex also gets to our politics about identity. Shitty liberal culture
tells us to be blind to differences among people, and stupid romance
myths t~ll us love is blind. But for folks who have radical politics and
recognize that identity is a major vector of privilege and oppression, we
know that love and sex and culture are not blind to difference but rather
that difference plays a major role in sex and romance and family structure.
34 For Lovers and Fighters We also understand that experiencing and acknowledging the identities
we live in and are perceived in is important, and finding community with
other people who are like us can be empowering and healing. For that rea-
son, a lot of us may want to experiment in those ways, too. For instance, we
may be in a relationship we think is great, but then want to have an expe-
rience outside that relationship with someone who shares a characteristic
with us that our partner doesn’t, whether that be race, language, age, class,
background, ability, trans identity1 or something else. Our radical politics
tell us we don’t have to pretend that those things don’t matter, and that we
can honor the different connections we get to have with people based on
shared or different identities. If we love our partners and friends, it makes
sense that we would want them to have experiences that are affirming or
important for them in those ways, and not let rules of sexual exclusivity
make us into barriers for each other’s personal development.
A lot of the things I’m writing here get to the basic notion of what
we think loving other people is about. Is it about possessing them, finding
security in them, having all our needs met by them, being able to treat
them however we want and still have them stick around? I hope not. What
I hope love is-whether platonic, romantic, familial, or communal-is the
sincere wish that another person have what they need to be whole and
develop themselves to their best capacity for joy or whatever fulfillment
they’re seeking.
As a jealous person, I’m interested in building love and trust with
people that does not hinge on sexual exclusivity, because part of my
jealousy, and maybe part of the jealousy implied in the cultural drama
repeatedly portrayed on TV of 11 the other woman,” “the affair,” and the
heart-crushing trust-violating meaning placed on sex outside a relationship,
as Dean Spade comes out of the fact that desire always exceeds any container-and we
all know that from experiencing our own desire. No matter how much we
love and want and adore and are hot for our partners, we also experience
desire outside that dyad, and the myth of romance (there1s one person
out there for each of us-find them, love them, buy things with them, and
you’ll be happy forever), which is drilled into all of us from birth till death,
makes this knowledge terribly threatening. So the point, for me, becomes
recognizing that commitment and love and interest in someone else’s well-
being does not necessarily include a deadening of all sexual desire for
other people, or trying to unlearn the belief that it does. The point for me
is to create relationships based on deeper and more real notions of trust.
So that love becomes defined not by sexual exclusivity, but by actual
respect, concern, commitment to act with kind intentions, accountability
for our actions, and desire for mutual growth.
And yet, despite everything I’ve expressed here, I also have serious
concerns about the push for polyamory among my friends. Sometimes I
see it emerging as a new sexual norm and a new basis for judgment and
coercion. In some circles I’m in, it has become the only “radical” way
to be sexual. Those who partner monogamously, or who just don’t get it
on a lot, are judged. I also see, perhaps more frequently, the poly norm
causing people to judge themselves harshly when feelings of jealousy
come up. Having any feelings at all, and especially admitting them, is
discouraged in our culture. We are encouraged to be alienated from our-
selves and others, to cure ourselves of bad feelings through medication
and happiness are the norm while anything other than that is either some
kind of personal failure or chemical imbalance. This results in a lot of
36 For Lovers and Fighters repressed feelings. Many people in the communities Jim in, especially
people who have lived through sexual violence and people raised as
women in our rape culture, have a hard enough time identifying for
ourselves what is okay with us when it comes to sex-what we want, what
is a violation, what our real feelings are-and feeling entitled to express
them. We certainly don’t need more messages that tell us that our feel-
ings related to sex and safety are wrong.
I’ve been disturbed to see dynamics emerge in which people create
the new poly norm and then hate themselves if they cannot live up to it.
If they are not perfect at being nonjealous, nonthreatened, and totally
delighted by their partners’ exploits immediately, then they have some-
how failed. I have felt this way myself. Frustrated at how my intellect can
embrace this approach to sex and yet my emotional reaction is some-
times enormous and undeniably negative. At times, this has become a
new unachievable perfection I use to torture myself, and I’m embarrassed
even to admit to friends how awful I feel when overcome by jealousy. I1ve
also become increasingly distant from partners as I’ve tried to hide these
shameful and overwhelming feelings.
This doesn’t seem like the radical and revolutionary practice I had
hoped for. In fact, it feels all too familiar, like the other traumas of growing
up under capitalism: alienation from myself and others, constant insecurity
and distrust and fear, self-hatred and doubt and inadequacy. I do not have
a resolution for this dilemma. I only have hopes, for myself and others,
and lots of questions. How do I recognize the inadequacy of the romance
myth while acknowledging its deep roots in my emotional life? How do
I balance my intellectual understanding with my deep-seated emotional
habits/expectations? It seems like the best answer to all of this is to move
a1 Dean Spade forward as we do in the rest of our activism, carefully and slowly, based on
our clearest principles, with trust and a willingness to make mistakes. The
difficulty of having open relationships should not be a reason not to try it,
but it should be a reason not to create new punishing norms in our com-
munities or in our own minds. We 1ve done difficult things before. We’ve
struggled with internalized oppressions, we’ve chosen to live our lives in
ways that our families often tell us are impossible, idealistic, or dangerous,
and we get joy from creatively resisting the limits of our culture and politi-
cal system-which are both external and part of our own minds.
One thing I have figured out for myself in the past few years is that
this is a pretty slow process for me. Whenever l 1ve tried to dive into poly-
amory with various partners, I’ve felt terrible and often ended up losing
my ability to be with them because of how awful I’ve felt about my own
jealousy. I hate the feeling of having a double standard and being a mon-
ster. So now I’m trying to figure out how to have relationships that are not
based on sexual exclusivity, but also in which I can be comfortable admit-
ting what is going on for me and not pushing myself to be somewhere I’m
not-going slow enough to figure out what works and what doesn’t. It’s not
easy and ifs still pretty mysterious to me.
Sometimes while riding the subway I try to look at each person and
imagine what they look like to someone who is in love with them. I think
everyone has had someone look at them that way, whether it was a lover, or
a parent, or a friend, whether they know it or not. Ifs a wonderful thing, to look at someone to whom I would never be attracted and think about what
looking at him or her would feel like to someone who is devouring every
part of his or her image, who has invisible strings that connect to every part
of his or her body. I think this fun pastime is a way of cultivating compas-
as For Lovers and Fighters s10n. It feels good to think about people that way and to use a part of my
mind that is traditionally reserved for a tiny portion of people I’ll meet in
my life to appreciate the general public. I wish I could think about people
like this more often. I think it’s the opposite of what our culture teaches us
to do. We prefer to pick people apart to find their flaws. Cultivating these
feelings of love or appreciation for random people, and even for people
I don’t like, makes me a more forgiving and appreciative person toward
myself and people I love. Also, it’s just a really excellent pastime.
I do not have a prescription for successful relationships, and I don’t
think anyone should. The goal of most of my work is to remove coercive
mechanisms that force people to comply with heteronormative gender and
family norms. People often get confused and think that I and other trans
activists are trying to erase gender and make everyone androgynous. In
fact, that sounds a little boring to me. What I want to see is a world in
which people do not have to be criminalized, or cast out of their family, or
cut off welfare, or sexually harassed at school, or subjected to involuntary
mental healthcare, or prevented from getting housing because they orga-
nize their gender, desire, or family structure in a way that offends a norm.
I hope we can build that vision by practicing it in our own queer and
activist communities and in our approaches to ourselves. Let’s be gentle
with ourselves and each other, and fierce as we fight oppression.
39
sxully explicic teats, videos, and picues, in print and ondlne—-what s purport-
In the back room of a discreetly furuished apattment in a quiet San fran-
late a polirical conomy of sexual pracrice and desires. By detaling the relarionship
My argument is that the global restrucuring of capicalit produicton ad ink hair and wrious eye.Smiling fighidy, she shrugs when I ak her how the sesion
|with her dienc we
tade have emanated fron corporcare-fueled consunption,An increaue in tourism|lotr of cine alking before we had swx.In the end, we went oer [tinmel by about
and butines tave, and the ymbkoclk reationship berwsen infonnarion techmnolo-
gics xnd the prlvatiratio.of comrgErcial consump(ion.’Ar the sme time,the rise in
of sxual labor.For many xecors of the popuaxion,these shifshave resulec
ket ir well poled to aris
bemuemeat that for the majoriy of her cien pool—dtucared, profesional me
sncid historians such as Judith Walkowitz{1980,Rudt Rosen (1982),and Burbara
|1ot ed tor vy ongar al. The rue or ageacate,commercalie potitution
in the West emerged only witht modern-industrial capiralism and its auendaut fea
Patl:fantosy Image,and the Onmerce of intima(y
tures in the laee19th ceeury: urbAnization,the epansion of wg labo, and de
dions bought with them new culrual dcologiet of gencle( and sexuliry. and iew
ymboik bouadane beos putihcendprare uicuigueder Deghbothood, or relocated to indoor busineses in the cirys suburban periphery’
producedl a “double standard” it sexual rchations,didotomizitni womcn slong class In similat hichioin,the number of licensed masge parlors in the cigy overall wat
lines.While white,bougeois, marrid woaen practiced sxual resttaint in the pr-
men In, the public sphee as wage bores and sexually avaiable prosxicures.4By th conplete lack of concern by the polic, despite cbeir intcnse focus upou the prosi
thercby cousritue—Ndhe social problem of modern prosritution.
commertse were sel-organized,0cesional exchanget in which women traded yxual
havors during linited period of hardship. Pemoderm prottiurion was small io scaele.
fequentdy premied on barter, and generally rook phase withla the particip机ts’owm
on their ftrees, ic is importnt to note that,in coatrast to ooral refoau movementr
[tityf_gofitue.During the Progesive Era in the United Seatey,red-light dl-
trics were ofhcialy shut dowIR and the sex trade was crininalzed,bur( this dld nol
ptosite (but Hot her male custome) as a criminal outsider. Instead, xsociations
instad dhanged its predominant form: the subreranean wodd of stcct protitution,with the iage ot a dangrious and gritty underwould were damaticaly excerbated
along with is classie paraphermali—he pimp, the police omee, the protitute asand prosituts mow had to cope wlth the added sigrma of criminaliry..
thar are in fuct nuch mesvietthan tis simple categorination permits. Protoypi.
|day as the dotnimant mode of commercial sexual exchwnge in many impoerished
inner city. The termts、nevertheles,apture something imporcant in terms of larnge
tianer eclipig. the fonms that preceded them. The conumik tranformations of recent deades have rexrtuctred the social grogme
The gobalizd, bhre opitulist cm of the late 20ch and carly 21sr cenurist has
|tconomy has spawned a lucrative raic in women ad children from Asia.Afia.
underword” of inodern prostution, while the commercialitarion of sxual service
aew global conomic (calities live been 3ighiicant to dhe vereiopment of thie sk For example,in San Fraicisco, by the late1990s the nine-square-block area
of dhe City that had houed dhe city’s prinary Krec prostinttion surols for ower75 ings (what we migh( thimk of as the subjective contours of marke intimac
and emotionally contained exchange of cushfor ruad rleaeATwi
the City’s 17 legat strip cubs Many of the wery same woaen and moen who had
jo drunoo pnaA Aguopou3(uo05wsutn arul bqp 0f sppol
和urursm reuopepl)uppdsqne popunog
1o s8utpo pMepsa’poupepuJup apIA
(aCApdnd Jo sfioypPl Tmx*s34 urMux
uosap m邛p ou 5(3u]·1o par wuogdap
|up 1sMo0等snUrwjprpuru0 pue tpo1 aomyd saq(sis?ns 40 pporq) suoprspu’euou antaud ur)sqinqs Supunouni
对[良om soAre pun sonpoud pna
Part l北:Fantasy,Imape,and the(ommere of Intknal
even for money would theyfuck him.Buc I did,pousI made him fel really;
Ineeded soocoae to make me eel good, and that’s what you did.What you
|waat to be abte to ofer that. Aud so what I’ve learned how to do is to kook
|from the carth,coming tp my feet and comung our to them.So theygat love.
In apparent conthast to indoor sex workers’acounrs of the premniun their cdi-
|nor the Inevitable ouccome of a raditiooaist Madonal/whore doublke sandaurd.
contained commnerctal sexual encounters.As such,they provide us with a coucrere
Imechanlal sx act a)d hrom an uiboundel,private-sphere ronanic entanglement.
They oberved that the cliens in sheic udy emphasized thac dhc warmth and 所iend.
art 贴:Fantasy lmage, and the GOmmerce of Intimac
sisrcaty citical of sex workers who are dock wadher,”‘too rushed and puthy”
serves a cnuil debmiting funcion phat foilitates——amher than inbibir- er from within a padignm of ronantic loye dhat ia prcemised vpon mouogamous
tay of uthentic intcrperonl connection.
| crs of Blcminghani prostiuces demand what i known in the rmde as tband rdief,”
afer explaining to me tha( be sudied and wotked al the tinc,and consequenty
chan would be satisfying ouelf aone.”This dient reveals an underlying eroric pata-
digrn thax ispiemised on the dscrete sexual encounter and thus compatibke with th
rhythuns of his individually orienred daily life.Increasingy, what is cue for hin i
also ttse foroxher men lik
hurying out as soon as the custoner li finished.
gese an absolurist,teleological model of hisrory. What is crucial o reognize aboul
but ake their place (however comforcably or ucolforably) alonglde. As with she
reries of couomic,familal, and sexual (rnntfomariony ushcred in by nodernity;
|culet and behaviors in the Uhited Stites, nearly15 percent of thoe surveyed saied
|that they believe sex should be for pocreation only”Depite the evideng fhilty of
tndividuals.AN present, thete is a ferce polilcl truggk being waged in the Unled
Sate berween the ‘old”and hnew rgimes of urtimecy,which has crysualized mot
believe they cen hawe no-trigr-ttadhed ses. whlch is why they pay.The
rather pay than get it for free.
and Reproductive Rights
campaign for birth control was born. Its proponents were called radicals and they were
subjected to the same mockery as had befallen the initial advocates of woman suffrage.
“Voluntary motherhood” was considered audacious, outrageous and outlandish by those
who insisted that wives had no right to refuse to satisfy their husbands’ sexual urges.
Eventually, of course, the right to birth control, like women’s right to vote, would be more
or less taken for granted by U.S. public opinion. Yet in 1970, a full century later, the call for
legal and easily accessible abortions was no less controversial than the issue of “voluntary
motherhood” which had originally launched the birth control movement in the United
States.
necessary—is a fundamental prerequisite for the emancipation of women. Since the right of
birth control is obviously advantageous to women of all classes and races, it would appear
that even vastly dissimilar women’s groups would have attempted to unite around this
issue. In reality, however, the birth control movement has seldom succeeded in uniting
women of different social backgrounds, and rarely have the movement’s leaders popularized
the genuine concerns of working-class women. Moreover, arguments advanced by birth
control advocates have sometimes been based on blatantly racist premises. The progressive
potential of birth control remains indisputable. But in actuality, the historical record of this
movement leaves much to be desired in the realm of challenges to racism and class
exploitation.
the early 1970s when abortions were at last declared legal. Having emerged during the
infancy of the new Women’s Liberation movement, the struggle to legalize abortions
incorporated all the enthusiasm and the militancy of the young movement. By January,
1973, the abortion rights campaign had reached a triumphant culmination. In Roe v. Wade
(410 U.S.) and Doe v. Bolton (410 U.S.), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a woman’s right
to personal privacy implied her right to decide whether or not to have an abortion.
of color. Given the racial composition of the larger Women’s Liberation movement, this was
not at all surprising. When questions were raised about the absence of racially oppressed
women in both the larger movement and in the abortion rights campaign, two explanations
were commonly proposed in the discussions and literature of the period: women of color
were overburdened by their people’s fight against racism; and/or they had not yet become
conscious of the centrality of sexism. But the real meaning of the almost lily-white
complexion of the abortion rights campaign was not to be found in an ostensibly myopic or
underdeveloped consciousness among women of color. The truth lay buried in the
ideological underpinnings of the birth control movement itself.
dangerously superficial appraisal of Black people’s suspicious attitudes toward birth control
in general. Granted, when some Black people unhesitatingly equated birth control with
genocide, it did appear to be an exaggerated—even paranoiac—reaction. Yet white abortion
rights activists missed a profound message, for underlying these cries of genocide were
example, had been known to advocate involuntary sterilization—a racist form of mass
“birth control.” If ever women would enjoy the right to plan their pregnancies, legal and
easily accessible birth control measures and abortions would have to be complemented by
an end to sterilization abuse.
urgency? They were far more familiar than their white sisters with the murderously clumsy
scalpels of inept abortionists seeking profit in illegality. In New York, for instance, during
the several years preceding the decriminalization of abortions in that state, some 80 percent
of the deaths caused by illegal abortions involved Black and Puerto Rican women.1
Immediately afterward, women of color received close to half of all the legal abortions. If
the abortion rights campaign of the early 1970s needed to be reminded that women of color
wanted desperately to escape the back-room quack abortionists, they should have also
realized that these same women were not about to express pro-abortion sentiments. They
were in favor of abortion rights, which did not mean that they were proponents of abortion.
When Black and Latina women resort to abortions in such large numbers, the stories they
tell are not so much about their desire to be free of their pregnancy, but rather about the
miserable social conditions which dissuade them from bringing new lives into the world.
slave women refused to bring children into a world of interminable forced labor, where
chains and floggings and sexual abuse for women were the everyday conditions of life. A
doctor practicing in Georgia around the middle of the last century noticed that abortions
and miscarriages were far more common among his slave patients than among the white
women he treated. According to the physician, either Black women worked too hard or
an early stage of gestation … All country practitioners are aware of the frequent complaints of
planters (about the) … unnatural tendency in the African female to destroy her offspring.2
never considered how “unnatural” it was to raise children under the slave system. The
previously mentioned episode of Margaret Garner, a fugitive slave who killed her own
daughter and attempted suicide herself when she was captured by slavecatchers, is a case in
point.
slave”—and pleaded to be tried for murder. “I will go singing to the gallows rather than be
returned to slavery!”4
occurrences during slavery? Not because Black women had discovered solutions to their
predicament, but rather because they were desperate. Abortions and infanticides were acts
of desperation, motivated not by the biological birth process but by the oppressive
conditions of slavery. Most of these women, no doubt, would have expressed their deepest
resentment had someone hailed their abortions as a stepping stone toward freedom.
abortions provided a viable alternative to the myriad problems posed by poverty. As if
assumption reflected the tendency to blur the distinction between abortion rights and the
general advocacy of abortions. The campaign often failed to provide a voice for women who
wanted the right to legal abortions while deploring the social conditions that prohibited
them from bearing more children.
1970s has made it absolutely necessary to focus more sharply on the needs of poor and
racially oppressed women. By 1977 the passage of the Hyde Amendment in Congress had
mandated the withdrawal of federal funding for abortions, causing many state legislatures
to follow suit. Black, Puerto Rican, Chicana and Native American Indian women, together
with their impoverished white sisters, were thus effectively divested of the right to legal
abortions. Since surgical sterilizations, funded by the Department of Health, Education and
Welfare, remained free on demand, more and more poor women have been forced to opt for
permanent infertility. What is urgently required is a broad campaign to defend the
reproductive rights of all women—and especially those women whose economic
circumstances often compel them to relinquish the right to reproduction itself.
itself. As early as 1844 the United States Practical Receipt Book contained, among its many
recipes for food, household chemicals and medicines, “receipts” for “birth preventive
lotions.” To make “Hannay’s Preventive Lotion,” for example,
without soap, immediately after connexion.5
1000 parts. Immerse the glands in a little of the mixture.… Infallible, if used in proper time.6
not until the issue of women’s rights in general became the focus of an organized movement
that reproductive rights could emerge as a legitimate demand. In an essay entitled
“Marriage,” written during the 1850s, Sarah Grimke argued for a “… right on the part of
woman to decide when she shall become a mother, how often and under what
circumstances.”7 Alluding to one physician’s humorous observation, Grimke agreed that if
wives and husbands alternatively gave birth to their children, “… no family would ever
have more than three, the husband bearing one and the wife two.”8 But, as she insists,
“… the right to decide this matter has been almost wholly denied to woman.”9
well-known “emancipated marriage” of Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell took place. These
abolitionists and women’s rights activists were married in a ceremony that protested
women’s traditional relinquishment of their rights to their persons, names and property. In
agreeing that as husband, he had no right to the “custody of the wife’s person,”10 Henry
Blackwell promised that he would not attempt to impose the dictates of his sexual desires
upon his wife.
eventually became the central idea of the call for “voluntary motherhood.” By the 1870s,
advocating voluntary motherhood. In a speech delivered in 1873, Victoria Woodhull
claimed that
suicide; while the husband who compels it, commits murder, and ought just as much to be
punished for it, as though he strangled her to death for refusing him.11
woman’s right to abstain from sexual intercourse within marriage as a means of controlling
her pregnancies was associated with Woodhull’s overall attack on the institution of
marriage.
within the organized movement for women’s political equality. Indeed, if women remained
forever burdened by incessant childbirths and frequent miscarriages, they would hardly be
able to exercise the political rights they might win. Moreover, women’s new dreams of
pursuing careers and other paths of self-development outside marriage and motherhood
could only be realized if they could limit and plan their pregnancies. In this sense, the
slogan “voluntary motherhood” contained a new and genuinely progressive vision of
womanhood. At the same time, however, this vision was rigidly bound to the lifestyle
enjoyed by the middle classes and the bourgeoisie. The aspirations underlying the demand
for “voluntary motherhood” did not reflect the conditions of working-class women, engaged
as they were in a far more fundamental fight for economic survival. Since this first call for
birth control was associated with goals which could only be achieved by women possessing
material wealth, vast numbers of poor and working-class women would find it rather
difficult to identify with the embryonic birth control movement.
suffered a significant decline. Since no contraceptive innovations had been publicly
introduced, the drop in the birth rate implied that women were substantially curtailing their
sexual activity. By 1890 the typical native-born white woman was bearing no more than
four children.12 Since U.S. society was becoming increasingly urban, this new birth pattern
should not have been a surprise. While farm life demanded large families, they became
dysfunctional within the context of city life. Yet this phenomenon was publicly interpreted
in a racist and anti-working-class fashion by the ideologues of rising monopoly capitalism.
Since native-born white women were bearing fewer children, the specter of “race suicide”
was raised in official circles.
proclamation that “race purity must be maintained.”13 By 1906 he blatantly equated the
falling birth rate among native-born whites with the impending threat of “race suicide.” In
his State of the Union message that year Roosevelt admonished the well-born white women
who engaged in “willful sterility—the one sin for which the penalty is national death, race
suicide.”14 These comments were made during a period of accelerating racist ideology and
of great waves of race riots and lynchings on the domestic scene. Moreover, President
Roosevelt himself was attempting to muster support for the U.S. seizure of the Philippines,
the country’s most recent imperialist venture.
was promoting race suicide? The President’s propagandistic ploy was a failure, according to
a leading historian of the birth control movement, for, ironically, it led to greater support
forefront those issues that most separated feminists from the working class and the poor.”15
route to careers and higher education—goals out of reach of the poor with or without birth
control. In the context of the whole feminist movement, the race-suicide episode was an additional
factor identifying feminism almost exclusively with the aspirations of the more privileged women
of the society. Second, the pro-birth control feminists began to popularize the idea that poor
people had a moral obligation to restrict the size of their families, because large families create a
drain on the taxes and charity expenditures of the wealthy and because poor children were less
likely to be “superior.”16
Julia Ward Howe and Ida Husted Harper reflected the suffrage movement’s capitulation to
the racist posture of Southern women. If the suffragists acquiesced to arguments invoking
the extension of the ballot to women as the saving grace of white supremacy, then birth
control advocates either acquiesced to or supported the new arguments invoking birth
control as a means of preventing the proliferation of the “lower classes” and as an antidote
to race suicide. Race suicide could be prevented by the introduction of birth control among
Black people, immigrants and the poor in general. In this way, the prosperous whites of
solid Yankee stock could maintain their superior numbers within the population. Thus class-
bias and racism crept into the birth control movement when it was still in its infancy. More
and more, it was assumed within birth control circles that poor women, Black and
immigrant alike, had a “moral obligation to restrict the size of their families.”17 What was
demanded as a “right” for the privileged came to be interpreted as a “duty” for the poor.
coined and popularized—it appeared as though the racist and anti-working-class overtones
of the previous period might possibly be overcome. For Margaret Higgens Sanger came from
a working-class background herself and was well acquainted with the devastating pressures
of poverty. When her mother died, at the age of forty-eight, she had borne no less than
eleven children. Sanger’s later memories of her own family’s troubles would confirm her
belief that working-class women had a special need for the right to plan and space their
pregnancies autonomously. Her affiliation, as an adult, with the Socialist movement was a
further cause for hope that the birth control campaign would move in a more progressive
direction.
of recruiting women from New York’s working women’s clubs into the party.18 The Call—
the party’s paper—carried her articles on the women’s page. She wrote a series entitled
“What Every Mother Should Know,” another called “What Every Girl Should Know,” and
she did on-the-spot coverage of strikes involving women. Sanger’s familiarity with New
York’s working-class districts was a result of her numerous visits as a trained nurse to the
poor sections of the city. During these visits, she points out in her autobiography, she met
countless numbers of women who desperately desired knowledge about birth control.
nurse to New York’s Lower East Side convinced her to undertake a personal crusade for
birth control. Answering one of her routine calls, she discovered that twenty-eight-year-old
asked the attending physician to give her advice on birth prevention. As Sanger relates the
story, the doctor recommended that she “… tell (her husband) Jake to sleep on the roof.”19
expression of absolute despair. We simply looked at each other, saying no word until the door had
closed behind the doctor. Then she lifted her thin, blue-veined hands and clasped them
beseechingly. “He can’t understand. He’s only a man. But you do, don’t you? Please tell me the
secret, and I’ll never breathe it to a soul. Please!”20
Margaret Sanger says, she vowed to devote all her energy toward the acquisition and
dissemination of contraceptive measures.
superficial cures; I resolved to seek out the root of evil, to do something to change the destiny of
mothers whose miseries were as vast as the sky.21
with the Socialist party—and the campaign itself was closely associated with the rising
militancy of the working class. Her staunch supporters included Eugene Debs, Elizabeth
Gurley Flynn and Emma Goldman, who respectively represented the Socialist party, the
International Workers of the World and the anarchist movement. Margaret Sanger, in turn,
expressed the anti-capitalist commitment of her own movement within the pages of its
journal, Woman Rebel, which was “dedicated to the interests of working women.”22
Personally, she continued to march on picket lines with striking workers and publicly
condemned the outrageous assaults on striking workers. In 1914, for example, when the
National Guard massacred scores of Chicano miners in Ludlow, Colorado, Sanger joined the
labor movement in exposing John D. Rockefeller’s role in this attack.23
movement did not enjoy a long life. While Socialists and other working-class activists
continued to support the demand for birth control, it did not occupy a central place in their
overall strategy. And Sanger herself began to underestimate the centrality of capitalist
exploitation in her analysis of poverty, arguing that too many children caused workers to
fall into their miserable predicament. Moreover, “… women were inadvertently
perpetuating the exploitation of the working class,” she believed, “by continually flooding
the labor market with new workers.”24 Ironically, Sanger may have been encouraged to
adopt this position by the neo-Malthusian ideas embraced in some socialist circles. Such
outstanding figures of the European socialist movement as Anatole France and Rosa
Luxemburg had proposed a “birth strike” to prevent the continued flow of labor into the
capitalist market.25
building an independent birth control campaign, she and her followers became more
susceptible than ever before to the anti-Black and anti-immigrant propaganda of the times.
Like their predecessors, who had been deceived by the “race suicide” propaganda, the
advocates of birth control began to embrace the prevailing racist ideology. The fatal
birth control campaign.
movement was hardly a fortuitous development. Eugenic ideas were perfectly suited to the
ideological needs of the young monopoly capitalists. Imperialist incursions in Latin America
and in the Pacific needed to be justified, as did the intensified exploitation of Black workers
in the South and immigrant workers in the North and West. The pseudo-scientific racial
theories associated with the eugenics campaign furnished dramatic apologies for the
conduct of the young monopolies. As a result, this movement won the unhesitating support
of such leading capitalists as the Carnegies, the Harrimans and the Kelloggs.26
an article published by Margaret Sanger in the American Birth Control League’s journal, she
defined “the chief issue of birth control” as “more children from the fit, less from the
unfit.”27 Around this time the ABCL heartily welcomed the author of The Rising Tide of Color
Against White World Supremacy into its inner sanctum.28 Lothrop Stoddard, Harvard
professor and theoretician of the eugenics movement, was offered a seat on the board of
directors. In the pages of the ABCL’s journal, articles by Guy Irving Birch, director of the
American Eugenics Society, began to appear. Birch advocated birth control as a weapon to
immigration or by overly high birth rates among others in this country.29
compulsory sterilization laws and that thousands of “unfit” persons had already been
surgically prevented from reproducing.30 Margaret Sanger offered her public approval of
this development. “Morons, mental defectives, epileptics, illiterates, paupers,
unemployables, criminals, prostitutes and dope fiends” ought to be surgically sterilized, she
argued in a radio talk.31 She did not wish to be so intransigent as to leave them with no
choice in the matter; if they wished, she said, they should be able to choose a lifelong
segregated existence in labor camps.
acquired the same racist edge as the call for compulsory sterilization. In 1939 its successor,
the Birth Control Federation of America, planned a “Negro Project.” In the Federation’s
words,
result that the increase among Negroes, even more than among whites, is from that portion of the
population least fit, and least able to rear children properly.32
Federation’s proposal suggested that Black people should be rendered as vulnerable as
possible to their birth control propaganda. “We do not want word to get out,” wrote
Margaret Sanger in a letter to a colleague,
straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.33
associated with eugenic ideas. It had been robbed of its progressive potential, advocating for
people of color not the individual right to birth control, but rather the racist strategy of
population control. The birth control campaign would be called upon to serve in an essential
capacity in the execution of the U.S. government’s imperialist and racist population policy.
movement. Had they done so, they might have understood why so many of their Black
sisters adopted a posture of suspicion toward their cause. They might have understood how
important it was to undo the racist deeds of their predecessors, who had advocated birth
control as well as compulsory sterilization as a means of eliminating the “unfit” sectors of
the population. Consequently, the young white feminists might have been more receptive to
the suggestion that their campaign for abortion rights include a vigorous condemnation of
sterilization abuse, which had become more widespread than ever.
Montgomery, Alabama, was a scandal worth reporting that the Pandora’s box of
sterilization abuse was finally flung open. But by the time the case of the Relf sisters broke,
it was practically too late to influence the politics of the abortion rights movement. It was
the summer of 1973 and the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortions had already been
announced in January. Nevertheless, the urgent need for mass opposition to sterilization
abuse became tragically clear. The facts surrounding the Relf sisters’ story were horrifyingly
simple. Minnie Lee, who was twelve years old, and Mary Alice, who was fourteen, had been
unsuspectingly carted into an operating room, where surgeons irrevocably robbed them of
their capacity to bear children.34 The surgery had been ordered by the HEW-funded
Montgomery Community Action Committee after it was discovered that Depo-Provera, a
drug previously administered to the girls as a birth prevention measure, caused cancer in
test animals.35
mother revealed that she had unknowingly “consented” to the operation, having been
deceived by the social workers who handled her daughters’ case. They had asked Mrs. Relf,
who was unable to read, to put her “X” on a document, the contents of which were not
described to her. She assumed, she said, that it authorized the continued Depo-Provera
injections. As she subsequently learned, she had authorized the surgical sterilization of her
daughters.36
brought to light. In Montgomery alone, eleven girls, also in their teens, had been similarly
sterilized. HEW-funded birth control clinics in other states, as it turned out, had also
subjected young girls to sterilization abuse. Moreover, individual women came forth with
equally outrageous stories. Nial Ruth Cox, for example, filed suit against the state of North
Carolina. At the age of eighteen—eight years before the suit—officials had threatened to
discontinue her family’s welfare payments if she refused to submit to surgical
sterilization.37 Before she assented to the operation, she was assured that her infertility
would be temporary.38
eugenics. Under the auspicies of the Eugenics Commission of North Carolina, so it was
learned, 7,686 sterilizations had been carried out since 1933. Although the operations were
justified as measures to prevent the reproduction of “mentally deficient persons,” about
5,000 of the sterilized persons had been Black.39 According to Brenda Feigen Fasteau, the
ACLU attorney representing Nial Ruth Cox, North Carolina’s recent record was not much
sterilized in North Carolina were Black and approximately 35% were white.40
South Carolina had been the site of further atrocities. Eighteen women from Aiken, South
Carolina, charged that they had been sterilized by a Dr. Clovis Pierce during the early
1970s. The sole obstetrician in that small town, Pierce had consistently sterilized Medicaid
recipients with two or more children. According to a nurse in his office, Dr. Pierce insisted
that pregnant welfare women “will have to submit (sic!) to voluntary sterilization” if they
wanted him to deliver their babies.41 While he was “… tired of people running around and
having babies and paying for them with my taxes,”42 Dr. Pierce received some $60,000 in
taxpayers’ money for the sterilizations he performed. During his trial he was supported by
the South Carolina Medical Association, whose members declared that doctors “… have a
moral and legal right to insist on sterilization permission before accepting a patient, if it is
done on the initial visit.”43
government. At first the Department of Health, Education and Welfare claimed that
approximately 16,-000 women and 8,000 men had been sterilized in 1972 under the
auspices of federal programs.44 Later, however, these figures underwent a drastic revision.
Carl Shultz, director of HEW’s Population Affairs Office, estimated that between 100,000
and 200,000 sterilizations had actually been funded that year by the federal government.45
During Hitler’s Germany, incidentally, 250,000 sterilizations were carried out under the
Nazis’ Hereditary Health Law.46 Is it possible that the record of the Nazis, throughout the
years of their reign, may have been almost equaled by U.S. government-funded sterilizations
in the space of a single year?
would assume that Native American Indians would be exempted from the government’s
sterilization campaign. But according to Dr. Connie Uri’s testimony in a Senate committee
hearing, by 1976 some 24 percent of all Indian women of childbearing age had been
sterilized.47 “Our blood lines are being stopped,” the Choctaw physician told the Senate
committee, “Our unborn will not be born … This is genocidal to our people.”48 According
to Dr. Uri, the Indian Health Services Hospital in Claremore, Oklahoma, had been sterilizing
one out of every four women giving birth in that federal facility.49
one of the HEW pamphlets aimed at Indian people, there is a sketch of a family with ten
children and one horse and another sketch of a family with one child and ten horses. The
drawings are supposed to imply that more children mean more poverty and fewer children
mean wealth. As if the ten horses owned by the one-child family had been magically
conjured up by birth control and sterilization surgery.
Native American, Chicana, Puerto Rican and Black women continue to be sterilized in
disproportionate numbers. According to a National Fertility Study conducted in 1970 by
Princeton University’s Office of Population Control, 20 percent of all married Black women
have been permanently sterilized.50 Approximately the same percentage of Chicana women
through federally subsidized programs were Black.52
special government policy that can be traced back to 1939. In that year President
Roosevelt’s Interdepartmental Committee on Puerto Rico issued a statement attributing the
island’s economic problems to the phenomenon of overpopulation.53 This committee
proposed that efforts be undertaken to reduce the birth rate to no more than the level of the
death rate.54 Soon afterward an experimental sterilization campaign was undertaken in
Puerto Rico. Although the Catholic Church initially opposed this experiment and forced the
cessation of the program in 1946, it was converted during the early 1950s to the teachings
and practice of population control.55 In this period over 150 birth control clinics were
opened, resulting in a 20 percent decline in population growth by the mid-1960s.56 By the
1970s over 35 percent of all Puerto Rican women of childbearing age had been surgically
sterilized.57 According to Bonnie Mass, a serious critic of the U.S. government’s population
policy,
of 19,000 monthly were to continue, then the island’s population of workers and peasants could be
extinguished within the next 10 or 20 years … (establishing) for the first time in world history a
systematic use of population control capable of eliminating an entire generation of people.58
emerge with unmistakable clarity. In Puerto Rico the presence of corporations in the highly
automated metallurgical and pharmaceutical industries had exacerbated the problem of
unemployment. The prospect of an ever-larger army of unemployed workers was one of the
main incentives for the mass sterilization program. Inside the United States today, enormous
numbers of people of color—and especially racially oppressed youth—have become part of
a pool of permanently unemployed workers. It is hardly coincidental, considering the Puerto
Rican example, that the increasing incidence of sterilization has kept pace with the high
rates of unemployment. As growing numbers of white people suffer the brutal consequences
of unemployment, they can also expect to become targets of the official sterilization
propaganda.
before. Although the Department of Health, Education and Welfare issued guidelines in
1974, which were ostensibly designed to prevent involuntary sterilizations, the situation has
nonetheless deteriorated. When the American Civil Liberties Union’s Reproductive Freedom
Project conducted a survey of teaching hospitals in 1975, they discovered that 40 percent of
those institutions were not even aware of the regulations issued by HEW.59 Only 30 percent
of the hospitals examined by the ACLU were even attempting to comply with the
guidelines.60
practices. As a result of this law passed by Congress, federal funds for abortions were
eliminated in all cases but those involving rape and the risk of death or severe illness.
According to Sandra Salazar of the California Department of Public Health, the first victim
of the Hyde Amendment was a twenty-seven-year-old Chicana woman from Texas. She died
as a result of an illegal abortion in Mexico shortly after Texas discontinued government-
become the only alternative to the abortions, which are currently beyond their reach.
Sterilizations continue to be federally funded and free, to poor women, on demand.
Puerto Rican, Black, Chicana and Native American women. Their cause has not yet been
embraced by the women’s movement as a whole. Within organizations representing the
interests of middle-class white women, there has been a certain reluctance to support the
demands of the campaign against sterilization abuse, for these women are often denied their
individual rights to be sterilized when they desire to take this step. While women of color
are urged, at every turn, to become permanently infertile, white women enjoying
prosperous economic conditions are urged, by the same forces, to reproduce themselves.
They therefore sometimes consider the “waiting period” and other details of the demand for
“informed consent” to sterilization as further inconveniences for women like themselves.
Yet whatever the inconveniences for white middle-class women, a fundamental
reproductive right of racially oppressed and poor women is at stake. Sterilization abuse
must be ended.
-1}
Double Wedding” and “Love in the Caribbean,” the Ilews
headlines read. 1 The local event in Soslla had become national
news. Two white English female tourists met-and soon
emony. They married two months after they had first met at th~ all-
inclusive hotel in Soslla where the men worked and the womenJiad
been guests. The marriage ceremony took place after the men had
been refused entry into England. Even though the men had tourist
visas and all the necessary paperwork, when they landed at Heath-
row, English immigration officials detained them, questioned them
separately; and decided that they were so young, at eighteen years
old, that they might have the intention of overstaying their tourist
visas and looking for work. But it was also on the lssue oflove-and
its implausibility-that the officials denied the Dominican men en-
trance. “The authorities concluded that it was not reasonable that
two young English women, with less than rs days to get to know the
men, would have sent two tickets to visit England, with no othe
(Victoria r994: 45). If officials reasoned that they were not really in
love, they must have seen the men as pretending or peiforming being
in love.2
the media led with the story, and neighborhood gossip in Soslla
picked up on this event. The wedding became symbolic of how the
Dominican Republic sells itself through tourism. “There is no way
the men love these women,” gossiped both Dominicans and foreign
residents alike living in Sosl.la. “These guys are sankies, they want
visas; that’s. it.” By characterizing the men as sankies-essentially
male sex workers-Sosllans assumed the men were in the relation-
ships solely for material gain. This assumption is clear in a cartoon
from a now-defunct Dominican satirical magazine that lampoons
t
1;
c·
l’Mjrn, que /(J much:!clw de
allibid,1de ban a comms,1/su
epe/;icu/o de /Jaile’
DOMINICAN MAN 1: American, look, it’s “monkey waist” that I’m giving!
\j,
·.BJ ~;{
ture of the Dominican men in featuring in the secon.d frame one of
the English women’s mothers crying “Cuidado con Jos Sand Key
Pants Kids!” (Be careful with the san.ky-pankies!]. It is just as illustra-
tive of the presumed naivete of the English tourists, who are por-
trayed as initially rejectirtg the advances of the predatory sanky-
pankies. This cartoon, and the media frenzy in general that sur-
rounded the tourists’ relationship with the Dominican men, inspires
myriad questions: Why did these weddings grab national attention?
Why were so many Dominicans embarrassed by it? Why are rela-
tionships in Soslla between Dominicans and foreigners, particularly
tourists, questioned, doubted, and sometimes even laughed at? \Vhy
were the men portrayed as san.ky-pankies? And most strikingly; why
were these relationships dismissed as mere performances oflove and
not seen as the “real thing?”
the context of Soslla as “sexscape” as driven by romance and emo-
tional needs rather than strategy and .financial needs (marriage por
residencia or for a visa).3 Unlike Linda-Anne Rebhun’s research on
love in Caruaru, Brazil, where the people she interviewed “ex-
pressed confusion over the nature of love and about the changes
they had seen during their lifetimes in the definitions oflove” (1999:
n), in my interviews with Sosllans they regularly echoed one an-
other’s descriptions of relationships based on “real love.” Rebhun
aptly expresses just how difficult it is to do research on love because
of the “slippery nature” of emotions; “now conscious, now uncon-
scious, now openly expressed, now indirectly expressed, and always
manipulated” (1999: u). 4
ships were rooted in emotion or which grew out of strategy; rather,
I am interested in analyzing why Sosllans drew the conclusions they
did about other people’s relationships. I cannot possibly mea:sure
“real love” in one relationship or another or guess precisely what
motivates individuals. My aim is to make sense of why Sosllans
described others’ relationships as “real” or not. Of course, when sex
workers and resort workers told me their own relationships were
based on strategy and not on emotion, it took me out of the guess-
tog game. Elena, for example, laughed when I asked if she was in
love with the German man (not JU.rgen) whom she married in the
spring of 2001; “You know how it is. It’s not love. My children and
to keep in mind the various motivations that could shape self-
reporting on love. Positing love could make Sosllan sex workers
appear foolish. No matter what they feel for their foreign boyfriends,
these women have an incentive to portray themselves as not naive
enough to actually fall in love.
marriage par amor, I only rarely heard sex workers describe having
experienced this kind of emotion-driven love as opposed to strategy·
driven love. (Nanci’s love story that I tell here is unusual.) Rather, sex
workers’ descriptions of what they want in relationships-in mar-
riage or in consensual unions with either foreign or Dominican
men-do not center on emotions but on the concern for better
treatment in the household (greater gender equity), sexual fidelity,
and financial security. For Soslla’s sex workers, choosing to “fall in
love” with one man over another is a rational process with serious
material consequences. Contrary to the notion of “falling in love” as
a kind of elation that comes with losing control of one’s senses or
wits, for these women being in love-or pretending to be in love-
requires alertness, savvy, and determination. Rebhun comments on
this idea that in the United States “we tend to believe that sentiment
is genuine only if it is spontaneous; conventi0I1al, required, manipu-
lated sentiment seems false … and its falseness morally reprehen-
sible.” But, continues Rebhun, “deliberation and requirement are as
much a part of emotion as spontaneity” (Rebhun 1999: 29-30).
the Dominican community in Soslla that have emerged alongside
the growth of the tourist and sex-tourist trades. 5 Specifically; I focus
on how resort workers (men and women) and sex workers try to par-
lay their access to foreign tourists into marriage proposals and visa
sponsorships At the discos, bars, and beaches, it is possible for any
Dominican to meet-and perhaps to marry-a foreigner. Domini·
can resort workers, in particular, have many opportunities to spend
time with tourists. Love takes on multiple meanings in this tourist
setting, and marriage has specific uses. Marriage in a tourist econ-
omy-especially in an internationally known sex-tourist destina-
tion-often has nothing to do with emotion-driven love or romance.
though they might describe having experienced emotion-driven
love, they chose to marry individuals as a strategy to get ahead
(progresar). They use the discourse and practices of romantic love to
secure marriage proposals for a visa. After all, why waste a marriage
certificate on romantic love when it can be transformed into a visa?’
trade as a first step to marriage and greater .financial security. Ka-
mala Kempadoo writes about migrant Colombian and Dominican
women who work in the sex trade in Curai;ao’s Campo Alegre I
Mirage whoSe work with clients might develop into “close and
intimate” relationships that tead to marriage. Women also might
pay to acquire Dutch citizenship by marrying, which means that
migrant women could stay and work legally as sex workers in Cura-
i;ao or travel to Europe without restriction (1998). Sylvia Chant and
Cathy Mcilwaine also write about the sex trade as a possible route to
marriage~and sometimes to migration-between Europeans and
Filipina women. Much like the perceptions Dominican sex workers
maintain of life in Europe, Filipina sex workers also perceive a better
life for themselves and their children in Europe. And like their Do-
minican counterparts, these Filipina women are locked out of op-
portunities for legal migration (1995: 248).
tionships that start out as transactional (by one or both parties) can
transform into something else entirely. In the sex trade, in particular,
the line between love and money can become “very fuzzy;” as Yos
Santasombat has observed in relationships bet\veen Thai sex workers
and farang men (white-skinned Westerners) (1992: 15-17, cited in
Hamilton 1997), In fact, many sex workers and resort workers in So-
sUa hope for romantic love even while they doubt the “authenticity”
of the relationships around them. No relationship between foreign-
ers and Dominicans escapes scrutiny. In this context of transnational
desires and economic ambitions, these relationships become fodder
for the gossip mill. “So are they really in lover is a common response
by both Dominicans and foreign residents living in Soslla when they
hear about a relationship bet\veen a Dominican and a foreigner. The
possibility of love for migration is almost immediately mentioned,
and then either waved away or confirmed. In fact when stories of the
double wedding hit the newsstands, Sosllans (both Dominicans and
foreign residents) had a field day.6 Comments flew about how plain
cled the men were. Quite simply, I could find no one-in either the
Dominican or foreign-resident communities-who believed these
relationships were our of emotion-based love on the Dominican
men’s part. Like the British immigration officials, SosUans did not
believe that these relationships (at least on the men’s part) could be
the “real clung.” Rather, Sosllans understand-indeed expect-that
many relationships beginning in their town are strategic perfor-
mances on the part of Dominicans. Their love-skepticism emerges
from Sosllans’ knowledge that, in Arlie Hochschild’s (1983: ix) lan-
guage, “active emotional labor” is involved-indeed demanded-in
jobs at hotels, bars, and nightclubs. Hochschild sharply observes that
“simply having personality does not make one a diplomat, any more
than having muscles makes one an athlete”; along these lines, if we
focus simply on the exchange of sex for money (or goods) in Soslla,
we will miss “a sense of the active emotional labor involved in the
selling” (1983: ix). SosUans know that many sex workers and resort
workers are hard at work selling romance along with the other goods
With much of any tourist experience relying on fantasy, Edward
tive space[s]” calls attention to the performative aspects of tourist
encounters. He writes, “The touristic borderzone is like empty
space, an empty stage waiting for performance time, for the au-
dience of tourists and for the native performers” (1999: 158). Tourists
on vacation often engage.in behavior and activities they would never
engage in at home, such as paying for sex or, as Deborah Pruitt and
Suzanne LaFont observed in Jamaica, having cross-racial relation-
ships (1995). When I interviewed male tourists in Soslla, they often
told me that they never had paid for sex at “home,” but since they
were on vacation they thought, “why not?” Chant and Mcilwaine
also found that some foreign men-who had not intended at the
outset to pay for sex-buy sex in Cebu’s bars in the Philippines
because of “peer pressure.” One man boasted to his friends, for
example, that he had bought five women in one night (1995: 225). In
encounters between locals and foreign tourists, locals often have
more practical goals-such as laying the groundwork to receive
money wires from tourists once they return to Europe-and might
need to “perform” for tourists to achieve them, whereas foreign
for the production of intimacy, pleasure, and emotional comfort.
They have become, in a way, sites of capitalist production and con-
sumption (with Dominicans possibly supplying sex and/ or “roman-
tic love” for foreign consumers), which can result in inequalities,
discomfort, and sometimes even violence. Sexual exchanges across
interracial and international borders can reinforce existing racial
hierarchies and inequalities. Karen Kelsky’s research with “yellow
cabs,” for example, suggests that sexual exchanges not based on
money can also reinforce racial hierarchies and inequalities. The
term yellow cabs refers to young, single Japanese women who spend
their savings on “erotic adventure with a variety of non-Japanese
men” in places such as tourist resorts in Hawaii or US. military bases
in Japan. Although these women might seek to have sex with these
non-Japanese men, they will not marry these men, because of ideas
of “racial purity. “
for Dominic;ms to resist such racial hierarchies as well as inequalities
based on geitder, class, and citizenship. For example, the strategizing
of Dominican women within Sosll.a’s sex trade sometimes has eco-
nomically advantageous results. Some clients have paid for the edu-
cation of their “girlfriend’s” children (as Ji.irgen did for Elena’s
daughter; see the Introduction) or have helped sex workers get a
fledgling business off the ground (such as a clothing store or hair
salon). In these cases, sex in a_ postcolonial context, much like in a
colonial Context, can be used as a “vehicle to master a practical
world (to achieve privileged schooling, well-paying jobs in the civil
service, or access to certain residential quarters)” (Stoler 1997b: 44).
Because any use of sex between black local women and white for-
eign men in a postcolonial context is a “crucial transfer point of
power, tangled with racial exclusions in complicated ways” (Stoler
1997b: 44, on Fanon 1967: 63), today’s sex trade is inextricably linked
with a violent colonial history for Hispaniola’s women. In the rela·
tionships between sex tourists and sex workers, there are similarities
to the relationships b( ·ween the colonizer and the colonized. I do
not mean to suggest, however, that Dominican sex workers (or
resort workers) are “enslaved” but want to underscore that they
stand to lose more-materially-than love gone awry.
omy tries to parlay access to foreign tourists into marriage proposals
(Dominicans and foreign residents) and Dominicans outside of
Sost’ia brand as “sank.ies” a wide range of men who do not trade
their bodies for money. For example, young, good-looking Domini-
can men who have migrated to work in Soslla’s hotels, bars, and
beaches often are glibly referred to or derided as sankies.
Male
held by the two young men who married in the double wedding-
often are talked about as sankies. 10 By referring to male resort
workers as sanky-pankies, Sosllans see these men as prostituting
themselves as well as sacrificing love for migration. The term is now
loosely used throughout the Dominican Republic to refer to Domin-
ican men who hit on tourist women-especially women older than
Female resort workers, too, undergo public scrutiny and risk
Sost’ia, as Sosllans know that most of the women who clean, wait-
ress, and cook in the hotels and other tourist businesses are from
Soslla, Puerto Plata, and other nearby towns. SosUans also know
that women who enter the sex trade are not from Soslla but migrate
from towns throughout the island (to protect their families left
behind). However, to Dominicans outside ofSosUa, women’s claims
of working in Soslla’s hotels and restaurants can appear as “cover
stories” for working in the sex trade. In fact, most of the sex workers
I interviewed concealed their participation in the sex trade from
their families and neighb?rs by creating “cover stories” about work-
ing in SosUa’s tourist hotels and restaurants.
“Headaches” for Dominicans Wishing to Migrate
suggest relationships between foreign tourists and Dominicans are
por residencia result from the virtual impossibility of leaving the
island legally without family members to sponsor migration. Re-
sponses to an Internet posting to the message board of a Dominican
electronic newspaper in English, Dominican One, underscores just
how difficult it is for Dominicans to enter the United States. Arnold
queried, “Hi, I would like for my Dominican girlfriend to visit me in
the United States for rwo weeks some time in the next year. How
invitation letter and she needed to get a passport. How hard is this
and any headaches anyone here· foresees?” (31 March 2000). Two
responses explained it would take a near miracle for Arnold’s girl-
friend to obtain a tourist visa: “No, no headaches. It just won’t
happen!Jesus Christ could not get a visa ifhe were Dominican! Tha1
is about how difficult it is” (3r March 2000); and “Hahahahaha-
hahahahahahaha” (2 April 2000, from within the Dominican Re-
public). A third response hinted that the Dominican girlfriend might
overstay her visa and that Arnold should not trust her motivations:
“Want some good advice from someone who knows, don’t bring her
to the U.S. ‘You will be sorry,’ move to the Dominican Republic with
her instead” (2 April 2000). Arnold’s innocent question revealed him
to be a novice about the difficulties facing Dominicans who want to
travel or migrate to the United States.
might feign love and use marriage-or are perceived as feigning love
and using marriage-as a way to get off the island demands a brief
discussion of the island’s migration history. The past few decades
of migration from the Dominican Republic to New York and the
transnational cultural and economic flows between the two places
(Georges 1990; Grasmuck and Pessar 1991; Guarnizo 1994) have in·
formed a diasporic mentality in the Dominican Republic. There is
little doubt that families with relatives in New York have benefited as
one of Eugenia Georges’s (1990: 196) informants sums up: “In the
Dominican Republic there are three kinds of people: the rich, the
poor and those who travel to New York.” And of course, there is a
fourth group: families who rely on remittances sent from family
members abroad. 11
following the isolationist years under the dictator Trujillo (from 1930
to 1961), who restricted migration off the island. After Trujillo’s
assassination in 1961, restrictions on migration both in the Domini-
can Republic and the United States loosened. Sherri Grasmuck and
Patricia Pessar argue that following the 1963 revolution, migration
was ”politically induced” by an “extremely unrestrictive immigra-
tion policy favored by the United States” which operated as a
“safety-valve for political discontent” (1991: 31). During these years of
political unrest, Dominican migration to the United States increased
from 900 immigrants on average annuaily, to 9,000 a year (Pessar
disillusioned, or fearful, after socialist Juan Bosch was overthrown
by a U.S.-backed military coup in 1963. Out-migration to the United
States significantly increased and complemented the model of eco-
nomic development of the newly elected president, Balaguer, during
his presidency of 1966 to 1978. (Leader of the Reformist Party, Bal-
aguer was reelected in 1986 and remained in office until 1996.) Hurt
by the Balaguer government’s policy of keeping food prices ar-
tificially low, rural producers migrated to urban centers, where un-
employment grew. Out-migration to the United States continued at
an average rate of 12,000 a year during this period (Grasmuck and
Pessar 1991). Following the deterioration of the national economy
after 197 4, and a rise in landlessness from the splintering of many
smallholdings, both migrant and nonmigrant households experi-
enced economic insecurity (Safa 1995a). Migration permitted many
families to hold on to a “middle-level status,” while other non-
migrant families fell into poverty in the midst of a troubled econ-
Without ties to New York or elsewhere, economic mobility is
just getting by and surviving. Low salaries are an obstacle to mobil-
ity for all classes, other than for the wealthy. Schoolteachers and
office workers, for example, earn under 4,000 pesos a month (U.S.
$333.00). Consequently, many professionals with university degrees
consider themselves both middle class and part of los pobres at the
same time. A social worker identified with two classes simulta-
neously: “My wife, a schoolteacher, and I have been working as
professionals for twenty years. But do we own a house? Or a car? We
Dominicans work until we die.” He also recounted his parents’
downward mobility: “My parents, who own a butcher shop, are old
and should not· be working. But they work every day, my father
cutting meat and my mother stuffing sausage. They used to be
middle class, but now with prices rising every day they are pobres.”
cooking gas, and gasoline continued to rise-while salaries remained
the same. Two events in the spring of 2003-the collapse of a bank,
Baninter, and the cost of hosting the Pan American Games-exacer-
bated an already deteriorating economy. Baninter’ s main owner,
Ramon Baez Figueroa, was arrested for allegedly running a “bank
within a bank” for more than a decade. The bank is reported to have
the process, the peso has depreciated dramatically and the country’s
credit rating has bee1_1 downgraded (Economist:June 14, 2003). iz In the
midst of rising prices and a falling peso, the Dominican government
(under President Hipolito Mejia) spent $175 million to host the Pan
American Games in August 2003. Even though the Dominican gov-
ernment banned protests, demonstrators took to the streets to pro-
test against the millions spent on athletic fields and facilities (Gon”
zalez August 8, 2003= 1). As the Rev. Rogelio Cruz led a demonstration
carrying the “torch of hunger” through Santo Domingo’s poorest
neighborhoods, the security chief for the games declared his troops
would “rip the heads off” or “break the necks” of any protesters
while President Hipolito Mejia said he should be beaten (Gonzalez
August 10, 2003:n).
stacles to legal migration off the island, it becomes clear why Domini-
can migrants in Soslla, most of whom do not receive remittances
from family overseas, work so hard to establish transnational rela-
tionships with the tourist population. These transnational romantic
ties act as surrogate family migration networks to access a middle-
class lifestyle and its accompanying security. Without family mem-
bers in New York or e-lsewhere to sponsor their legal migration, Do-
minicans who seek to migrate need other means of getting fuera. 13
Manfage to citizens of other countries is one surefire strategy.
minicans consider the workers in several occupations as under suspi-
cion for “performing” at being in love with tourists for money and
visas: male sanky-pankies, male resort workers and activity direc-
tors, female resort workers, and female sex workers.
at being in love with tourists were the sanky-pankies. Those first
called sankies, in the mid-198os, were young men in their late teens
and early twenties who worked on the beach renting jet skis, beach
chairs, umbrellas, and the like. Their trademark was bleached dread
locks, as well as tanned and toned bodies. Sankies were known for
SosUa’s tourism development, many of the female tourists were
French Canadian and Canadian. These men did not work for cash, as
did female sex workers, but for gifts, meals, and other expenses at
the discretion of the female tourists. Much like the “romance tour-
ism” Pruitt and LaFont describe between Jamaican men and tourist
women which unfolds through a “discourse of romance and long-
term relationship” (1995: 423), sankies’ skills often included treating
the tourist women as “girlfriends.” Romantic dinners, moonlight
strolls, and lessons in dancing merengue at the nightclubs can be
part of encounters between tourist women and sankies. But money
also changes hands. French Canadian female tourists have described
giving their Dominican “lovers” money ( even though they did not
ask for any) and clothes, as well as paying for meals and drinks
(Herold et al. 1992). Female tourists do not perceive that they are
“paying” for sexual services, however; they recount that “they fell in
love with the men and the men fell in love with them” (Herold et. aL
1992: 8). Similarly, Jacqueline Martis observed that men working in
the sex trade in Saint Martin or Curac;ao (with female tourists)
were jockeying to “hook up ‘\vith a woman who would take care of
them and take them away from the island.” They, like the sankies,
“wanted to think of themselves as having a romantic liaison, not as
prostituting” and thus referred to themselves as “players” (1999:
cessful at marrying female tourists and migrating to Canada. So-
sllans report that most of these marriages ended in divorce, after the
men received their citizenship. Today, there are a few high-profile
men-allegedly some of the “original” sankies-who have remrned
from Canada. Now, in their late thirties and early forties, their profit-
able (and capital-intensive) motorcycle rental and beach equipment
businesses stand as examples of what one can achieve through mar-
riage and migration off the island.
and the difficulties they face in order to do so, it is easy to see why
SosUa’s foreign tourists are a gold mine. Contact with foreigners
distinguishes Soslla’s employment opportunities from those in other
parts· of the country. The actual jobs might be the same-waiting
]I-
,,sc
3(f~ -,,,
meet foreign tourists is a fringe benefit of working in the tourist
sector, an investment of sorts, in the employees’ future. The job of
activity director, coveted by young Dominicans who seek either
sho:rt-or long-term relationships with foreigners, perhaps best epito-
mizes the sexual or romantic promise of Soslla. Usually young,
energetic men (although there are some activity directors who are
women) with self-taught skills in several languages, activity direc-
tors organize events for hotel guests, such as exercise classes, dance
contests, and volleyball tournaments. Their reputation for romantic
and sexual entanglements with female hotel guests is why Sosllans
often call them sankies. As mentioned earlier, the two young Do-
minican men involved in the double wedding were both activity
directors. One of the English women recalled how her soon-to-be
husband greeted her and other guests with whom she was having a
drink: “Hi. My name is Pablo and my job is to make your vacation
fun” (Victoria 1994: 44).
positions are, take advantage of willing young Dominicans, Some
activity directors work for no wages during their “trial period,”
which might last a month or longer. The offers for dinner and
nightclubbing, as well as gifts (some even continue to receive gifts
from abroad long a·fter tourists have returned home), showered
on them by hotel guests give them the opportunity to elect to work
for free and even continue to endure low wages later on. A Domini-
can manager at one of the largest all-inclusive hotels on the north
coast smiled when I asked about the activity directors. “They have
more contact with the guests than other staff,” he said and laughed.
“Thus, they are privileged.” Norberto, the other young activity di-
rector who married in the double wedding, described getting many
visa promises from hotel guests. But when, at the end of their
vacation, the two English women promised that they would send
airplane tickets so that Pablo and Norberto could come to En-
gland and meet the two women’s families, Norberto “did not have
many illusions because there are many who say the same thing,
but then nothing happens.” “But,” he added, “when I saw the
ticket had arrived, I was convinced this thing was serious” (Victoria
1994: 44).
erto Plata, where he lived with his family, to begin working in the
Ii
1;
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r
ij
Pf,
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SosUa. “We are the heart of the hotel,” he explained, “Without us, it
would die; we keep the guests happy.” Hugo has met a lot of women
while working at the hotel: “We meet people all day. They come to
us for everything, so we meet a lot of women from all over the
world. I have many girlfriends in lots of countries. They send me
things and come back on their vacations to visit me.” This close
contact (.an pay off. Hugo married a woman from England whom
he met when she was a guest staying at the hotel. However, “things
did not work out.” “My wife,” he complained, “always wanted to
know where I was going whenever I left the house.” To make
matters worse, he could not find a job. After living in England for
nine months, he returned to the Dominican Republic. Now di-
vorced, he is disillusioned with both living overseas and marriage.
He is happy to be back at the hotel, meeting “a variety of women”
who “spend their money on me.”
grate off the island. Unlike his coworkers, he knew firsthand how
difficult it is for Dominicaris who are not fluent in English to live and
to work in Europe. “You know everyone wants to go fuera-that’s
what I thought a few years ago. But it’s a lie; it’s not easy there. Sure
you can make a lot more money there, if you can find a job.” Hugo,
like the female sex Workers who have lived in Europe (whose stories
I recount in chapter 6), has no more fantasies about life fuera. Yet it
is unclear what caused him greater unease: marriage and monog-
amy or the experience of migration. “I don’t want to be married-I
can’t go home to one woman in the house. I need to be free and
loose, Dominican men are machista; we don’t like to be reined in.”
Some migration scholars have documented threats to men’s author-
ity in the household through the migration process (Kibria 1993;
Pessar 1996). Since men and women experience migration differ-
ently (Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994), marriage to foreign citizens presents
even greater challenges during the migration process (a dynamic I
analyze further in chapter 6).
Charamicos clutching a pocket German-Spanish dictionary wher-
ever she went. Having it with her at all times functioned as a marker
of prestige, allowing her to show off her envied ties to Europe. ‘Tm
weeks to live with a German man I met here,” she elaborated. She
also was in the Cod tel office at least once a day, sending or receiv-
ing faxes or telephoning Germany. She was able to pay for the calls
with the money her German client-turned~boyfriend wired to her.
Months later, she was still in town, running around making arrange~
ments by fax and phone as urgently as if she were leaving the next
day. Some of her coworkers dismissed her preoccupation with going
to Germany as folly. Ani had known her for years, since they had
worked together in a bar in Boca Chica. 1~ “She was the same there-
determined to get to Europe. She only sought out clients she
thought could get her there.” Ani laughed, “But look, she’s still here.
It does not work that way-it is not easy.”
meeting foreign men, why do Dominican women such as Consuelo
try so hard to do so? Soslla as a tourist enclave operates much as
urban spaces have in step migration. Consuelo, for example, sees
migration to Soslla as the first step toward marrying a foreign tour.
ist, the only legal way she knows to obtain a visa to travel overseas.
Without family in New York, women have a greater chance to get
overseas by marrying a tourist than they do of obtaining a visa-
legally-to the United States. In some ways, hanging out in the
tourist bars in Soslla is a better use of their time than waiting in line
at the U.S. Consulate in Santo Domingo. Marrying a tourist can be
seen as hitting the jackpot. This, in part, is why so many women
who have never worked before in the sex trade decide to do so in
Soslla. Carla, a sex worker, illuminates why SosU:a draws women
from throughout the country: “We come here because we dream of
a ticket.” But without a visa, Dominicans cannot use the airplane
ticket Cada describes;
noticeably absent from female sex workers’ and female resort work-
ers’ discussions of the “ideal” relationship with foreign tourists. Se.'{
workers and resort workers are looking for hombres serios, not the
loves of their lives. Fidelity, financial security, and a good future for
their children characterize the tops of their wish lists. This is not to
say that they do not also hope for romance. One Valentine’s Day the
tourist bars were abuzz with a striking mix of commercial and
romantic desires. The sex workers were wishing one another a
find romance that evening. Some had gone to the hair salon earlier
in the day, while others put on their best outfits and took more time
than usual with their makeup. One sex worker, who had stopped
going to the bars because at the time she had been receiving large
money wires from a client in Europe, reappeared to celebrate Valen-
tine’s Day. She explained that she wanted to hang out with her
friends and maybe fulfill her dreams of”romance.”
was rare because, in sex workers’ narratives, economic imperatives
usually outweigh romantic dreams. There is an expected tradeoff of
emotion-driven love for financial mobility. Both sex workers and
resort workers candidly admit that they sacrifice romantic love for a
better future. Mari, for example, has used both waitressing and the
sex trade (when she was younger) to meet foreign men. As a wait-
ress she met and married a German man and lived in Dlisseldorf for
a year and a half. Surprisingly, she returned to Sostla because she
hated Germany and, as she put it, did not “love him.” Back in Soslla,
this time working in promoci6n (passing out flyers to tourists for
clubs and restaurants), she met a Dutch man, in his fifties. Sti
then “take the train to Holland.” I reasoned that since she had opted
to leave Germany and return to the Dominican Republic, it was
possible that she was looking for romantic love, not just a visa to live
in Europe. After all, she had expressly said she did not love her
German husband. I was wrong. She and Elena shook their heads,
frustrated by my naivete and carefully spelled out for me that Mari
did not love either of these men. These relationships, they made
dear, “are not really about love.” Rather, «they are about thinking of
your family and your future.” Because the Dutch man appeared to
have more resources than the German man, along with the fact that
he treated her well, Mari believed he would make a better husband.
(In the Conclusion I recount what happened when her German
husband showed up in Soslla.)
boyfriend-the man she “really loved” -on the eve of her departure
for Germany to marry a German man who had been a client. When
I dropped by the next morning to wish her well before she left for
Germany, her Dominican boyfriend was still asleep- Stepping out-
German boyfriend had been paying for), she explained she could not
lie about her feelings for her soon-to-be husband: “No, it’s not love.”
Yet with images of an easier life for her and her two daughters
compelling her to migrate, she put love aside-at least temporarily.
She went to Germany, married, brought her girls over, and settled
into a new life.
Andrea as living out their dreams, her marriage was far from ideal.
Four years later she was still in Germany, but she was trying to get a
divorce. Much like Mari, Andrea had met another German man who
had a Getter job-and more money. They planned to marry as soon
as her divorce came through. I found out about Andrea’s new pur-
suit from her cousin in Sostla, to whom she sends money every
month. Her cousin was puzzled when I asked if Andrea was in love
with her new boyfriend. “This new guy has more money:” For
Andrea, who wanted her children to grow up in comfort aild to get a
good education, love takes a backseat to financial concerns. Besides,
a network of female family members, such as this cousin and her
two children, depend on Andrea to send remittances. ill this sense,
her successful performance of being in love is directly tied to her
family obligations. After all, she was lucky enougtl to get off the
island. Now she is expected to (and willingly does) help out the
other single mothers in her family, her parents, and her good fi.iends,
including Elena. She has even sent new sneakers, jeans, and belts to a
circle of her closest friends (all sex worker~). With so many expecta-
tions and demands on Andrea, there is considerable pressure on her
to keep her relationship afloat, no matter what.
why Andrea’s friends, while sporting new fashions from Germany,
perpetuate the .fiction that marriage in Europe is without significant
conflict. However, as 1 recount in chapter 6, life in Europe can be
isolating for Dominican sex workers. Yet stories of women’s migra~
tion, such as Andrea’s, still manage to persuade women into think”
ing that tourists will be their ticket off the island. Like Dominican
migrants’ sanitized nan ..ttives during the early years of migration to
New York, so too migration to Europe by sex workers has been
greatly romanticized. Because migrating to Europe is a relatively
new phenomenon, not many former sex workers such as Mari, or
myths and gossip of an easy and fantasy-filled life alla. Instead, sex
workers and resort workers imagine lives-of material comfort for
themselves and, in the case of the sex workers and female resort
workers, for their children.
the island-or at least in receiving money wires-is keeping in con-
tact with clients who are back home in Europe. Faxes and telephone
calls are the primary ways they communicate. And Codetel has
assumed a starring role in the unfolding drama of these relationships.
At the Codetel office in Los Charamicos, accordion files contain
received faxes filed under first or last names or a slew of other
identifying characteristics. There are faxes for “Juana at Hotel P,.>.ra-
iso” or for “Carmen at the Anchor.” The senders might have met the
recipients at these places or believe that these women work there all
the time. Usually written in English or broken Spanish, these faxes
document that romantic/ sexual encounters are a by-product of So-
sU.a’s tourist trade.15 lndeed, some days the files are literally bursting
with faxes. Judging by one of the customer bases for fax services one
is most likely to see inside the Codetel office in Los Charamicos-
groups of young Dominican sex workers teasing one another about
their “boyfriends” -sex tourism generates a good portion of the
faxes in the files. 16 ln contrast, the Codetel branch on the other side of
the beach, in El Batey, is filled mainly with foreigners: tourists phon-
ing home and residents sending personal or business-related faxes
(they have phones in their homes). Cell phone use is on the rise, and
during my visits to the nightclubs in 2003, cell phones were a visible
accessory-nearly everyone (men and women) sported one on his or
her person. Whether the phones work is another thing entirely;
many SosUans buy minutes for their phones through phone cards,
rather than keep ongoing accounts.
workers receive usually convey some kind of news: when to pick up
a money wire or details about the men’s return visits to SosUa. It is
not possible to receive incoming calls at Codetel, so sometimes
transnational “couples” use faxes to arrange times that the women
by the men) or to arrange times that men will call the women at a
neighbor’s house.17 Some sex workers have become adept at cap~
italizing on the communication resources available to them, and, as
a result, novices at navigating this transnational terrain come to
them for advice. 18 Sex workers who are liter-ate, and have a proven
track record of receiving money wires or faxes from clients, are at
the top of this hierarchy. Elena, for example, has given out a lot
of advice, and she has even helped compose letters and faxes for
women who were uncertain about what to do with the addresses,
fax numbers, and telephone numbers clients gave them. She helped
Carmen write a letter to a Belgian client who had sent her a money
wire and then abruptly stopped corresponding with her. Carmen
came to Elena because, at the time, Elena was living with Jilrgen
and was experienced, indeed successful, at transnational courting.
Elena’s advice was simple and centered on Carmen’s performance of
“love”: “You have to write that you love him and that you miss him.
Write that you cannot wait to see him again. Tell him you think
posed· the following letter that I helped her translate into English (his
English was better than his Spanish):
I have been thinking of you every day and have been waiting
I still want to see you.
ble, a fax number where I can reach you.
very much. I wait to hear from you. I hope you come to visit
again very soon.
Since women always can enlist the help of more literate friends,
courting. Sensing which men are not already married and are likely
to continue corresponding and to return for future vacations (the
most certain first step to receiving an invitation to visit Europe or
Canada), often proves a more valuable-and elusive-skill. While
sorting through all the pictures and letters of her European clients,
Nanci, for example, commented on which ones seemed the most se-
rious about keeping in touch. She pronounced several too “young”
and thus not likely to follow through on the relationships. Nanci had
honed her ability to detect which transnational suitors were worth
pursuing during her four years in Soslla. She had been receiving
money wires on and off from five or six European men at the same
time. Her many and varied transnational ties were envied and diffi-
cult to replicate, yet many tried. Stashed away in a spare pocket-
book, Nanci kept a bundle of letters and faxes. 20 She also had
photos-photos of the men back home and photos of her with the
men during their vacations in Soslla. Taped to her wall were photos
of at least fifteen different foreign men. Several of them had returned
to SosUa to see Nanci and expressed interest in bringing her to
Europe and marrying her (in chapter 6 I recount her experience of
marrying one of these foreign men and moving to Germany).
tional dating cannot easily predict their European clients’ actions (or
inaction). Yet some seem to assess better than others the characters
letter, kept a German client’s business card·,among her valuables.
Even though he promised he would fax her, he had not responded to
the numerous faxes she sent him. Nevertheless, Nora dung to the
card as if it were a winning lottery ticket. She could not seem to
throw it away. In contriist, many of her coworkers quickly move on
to cultivating new relationships when faced with their clients’ lack of
communication.
cles to migration from one country to another; marriage also se-
cures migrants’ futures once they are in new countries. In the Span-
ish movie Flores de otro mundo (Flowers from another world [1999)),
for example, an Afro-Dominican woman works in Madrid for four
years as a domestic, during which time she is often stopped on the
street by the police. Without the right papers, she explains to her
Spanish boyfriend with whom she and her children are living, she
cannot get a ·good job. An outsider, especially someone whose dark
skin makes her unable t{ conceal her “otherness,” cannot, she cries,
“break into the circle.” The only solution is a wedding. Although
this woman eventually falls in love with her Spanish boyfriend, and
he with her, she initially moves in with him to bring her children to
Spain from the Dominican Republic and to begin the application
process for Spanish residency. Love was not on her agenda; her
children were her only concern. As she put it, “It doesn’t matter
what happens to me.”
that are popular migration destinations in the United States (New
York City; Los Angeles, Boston, and cities in Texas), demonstrated
the central role marriage plays in many migrants’ settlement strat-
egieS.21 Fearing that new punitive immigration legislation would
prevent them from obtaining citizenship in the future, thousands
lined up for licenses and wedding ceremonies. Witnessing this mar-
riage frenzy, a reporter for the New York Times questioned the new-
lyweds’ motivation:
few days, with young men and womerr of foreign origin being
r
f
t
hearts or their wallets that are going pitter-pat. The reason for
this is simple: at marriage bureaus across town, there are sud-
denly crushing ·lines of couples looking to· sprint down the aisle.
No one can swear why this is happening. But common sense
suggests that illegal immigrants by the thousands are racing to
marry American citizens in the hope-a misguided hope, some
experts caution- that they can stave off deportation after a tough-
ened immigration law goes into effect on April r. (Haberman
were not for love but for residency. I spoke with a Dominican
woman in New York who had overstayed her tourist visa and paid
$5,000 to a Dominican-born man with U.S. citizenship to marry her.
“It’s a lot of money, but it’s the only way I can stay here.” The cere-
mony itself was bittersweet: “I was very depressed going through
the ceremony. It was sad to have such a special ceremony with
someone you do not love. But I need my papers for my daughter’s
future.” As a single mother, she is lonely and hopes one day to
marry a man for love. But for now, she has a husband solely for
documentation purposes. He has kept his end of the agreement by
showing up for the ceremony and their meetings with immigration
officials. Her cousin was not so lucky: a Puerto Rican man disap-
peared shortly after she paid him $2,500 (a down payment on his
$5,000 fee) to marry her. These two cousins in New York are in the
position to “buy” a marriage and thus secure their legal status in the
migration process. Unlike sex workers and resort workers in SosUa,
when these cousins pursued marriage strategies, there was no hope
or pretense of emotion-driven love or romance on their part or on
the part of the men they were marrying. Their performances oflove
were only for the INS.
tunity to get off the island are banking on the outcome that their
marriages and migration will translate into mobility for them and
their families. Because sex workers have been traveling to Europe to
live with European boyfriends only over the past ten to twelve years,
this migration por residencia is still a relatively new phenomenon. It
remains to be seen how many of these relationships last. These
Dominican women and European men may or may not formally
together. Stories abound of the failed marriages of men gossiped
about as sankies who married Canadian women and migrated to
Canada in the early and mid-198os. Some of these men’s pasts have
become legendary-inspiring young men to hang out at their busi-
nesses-particularly since they are so visibly successful (especially in
the business of renting motorcycles, a particularly macho enter~
prise). Their performances of love paid off. Similarly, the double
wedding might have caused snickering and raised eyebrows over the
authenticity of the Dominican men’s emotional commitment to
their English wives, but Sosllans also acknowledged that these men
were “very lucky.” \;\Tith their marriage certificates to English cit-
izens, they were sters closer to migrating-legally-to Europe.
~j
‘:-‘.
n
The exact number is not known. I have seen a range of estimates; Richard
names because they have been interviewed and identified by name many times
I am grateful to Sylvie Papernik, Otto’s daughter, who generously shared her
‘4
15 The. U.S. Department of State reported the 1998 labor force to be 2,889,000
see de Moya et a!. (1992). ,,
The following examine this theme of the “dangers” female sex workers rep·
ll
Human Rights, and Labor 2000).
jobs in the Dominican Republic.
Cabarere.
group.
(1994: 43).
Butlerian sense, however, I would be suggesting that there is no “original.”
Below I further explore this idea of distinguishing the “real thing” from false,
Catherine Lutz (1988: 145) summarizes James Averill’s (1985) description oflove
Catherine Lutz writes about the attachment of local meanings to emotion in
6 The November 1994 double wedding also was widely publicized in the British
Karen Kelsky explains that the term yellow cab was “allegedly coined by Ameri·
Angela Gilliam (2001) and Susanne Thorbek (2002a, 2002b) examine the rela·
to 33 pesos.
of communication between sex workers and their clients. Since literacy is low
19 For more on letter writing benveen clients and sex workers, sec Hello My Big,
girls” in Bangkok (Walker and Ehrlich 1992).
The leading source countries for spouses of U.S. citizens in fiscal year 1994, for
number of spouses of U.S. citizens admitted from the Dominican Republic
have been handled well in women-and-migration research. Studies such as
York and Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo’s (1994) on Mexican migration have
shown that decisions about which member(s) of a household migrates where,
when, and how are a function of power dynamics in the household. This is
income-pooling “black box,” this body of research reveals the household as a
household, see Blumberg (1991), Dwyer and Bruce (x988), Whitehead (1984),
2 Jose Itzigsohn (2000) also includes migrant remittances on this list of growth
6
in :woo. The average growth rate for Dornin:ican women in the work force
from r995 to 2000 was 3.4 percent, compared to 2.2 percent for men (Baez 2000:
In 2000 it was estimated that a family of five requires 5,400 pesos a month for
Women working in free-trade zones are subject to constant discrimination,
inclnding low wages and sexual harassment by supervisors (Organization of
tests are widespread in the factories, in spite of national laws prohibiting them
(Htun 1996). Oxfam also cites abuses such as forced overtime, repression of
unions, sterilization certificates, and insufficient bathroom breaks or work
recesses as rampant throughout the free-trade zones (Hernandez Medina
previously accounted for half of the quota from the Caribbean Basin, forced
many men out of work. Sugar export revenues declin1c.d from U.S.$555 million
(Economist 2000).
as who earns it and what they earn. Members ofhouseholds not only act with
greatly affect household members’ well-being, especially children’s. Patricia
Engle (1995) found that women’s abiliry to attend to children’s immediate
have that control, children’s nutrition levels are higher. Mercedes Gonzalez de
la Rocha found that among the working class in Mexico, for example, women
wages, keeping the rest fur their own expenses (1994).
study of women piecemeal workers’ households in Mexico City. Benerla and
members will receive an elementary education as well as that girls help with
.,substitute mother(sJ for younger brothers and sisters.” Their research calls
girls’ educational levels, and their future work trajectories (1987: 84)_
college without help from her daughter’s grandparents.
or sons, can go on” (Gonzalez de la Rocha 1994: 16I).
though throughout my fieldwork I made a point of appearing to not judge the
women’s decisions on any level, I urged Maribel to stay out of the bars. ! had
not given this advice to any sex worker before, nor have I since.
My Mother Wlto Fathered Me (1957) remains one of the most well-known works
on women in the Caribbean. In this dassk study on Jamaican families, house·
hold composition, and conjugal unions, Clarke examined both single-parent
households as well as what she called grandmother and great-grandmother
households.
crease in recent decad’c’s, with r9.6 percent of households headed by women in
The United Nations reports that 25 percent of Dominican households -are
headed by women (United Nations Statistics Division 2000).
Author(s): Jillian Hernandez
Source: NWSA Journal, Vol. 21, No. 3, Latina Sexualities (Fall, 2009), pp. 63-90
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20628195
Accessed: 13-06-2019 23:08 UTC
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On Chonga Girls and Sexual-Aesthetic Excess
tough, and crass young woman, the hypervisible figure known as the
“chonga” is practically invisible in feminist scholarship. This paper
examines the meanings associated with the chonga identity and the emer
gence of visual representations of chongas in order to understand how
these bodies produce and reflect discourses about Latina girls’ sexuality,
ethnicity, and class. I argue that the sexual-aesthetic excess of chonga
bodies complicates dichotomies of “good” versus “bad” girls and signi
fies non-normative politics that trouble the disciplining of behavior and
dress for girls of color. I offer sexual-aesthetic excess as a concept in order
to theorize modes of dress and comportment that are often considered
“too much”: too ethnic, too sexy, too young, too cheap, too loud.
that I administered to South Florida residents and analyses of related
visual representations. The questionnaire responses illustrate the mean
ings associated with the chonga identity and reflect the discursive field
in which images of these young women circulate. The chonga images
and questionnaire responses inform each other, as there is a recursive
relationship between social discourse and visual production.
sexual-aesthetic excess
with a “v” neckline. My shoes were vintage style bone white peep-toe
heels. Half of my hair was streaked with chunky blonde highlights at
the time and it was flat-ironed straight. I had thick black eyeliner on and
brick-red lipstick. This was how I was dressed on the day a student told
me, “Miss, you look like a Bratz doll.” My initial response to the comment
was that of everyone else in the room, laughter, and I enjoyed following the
girls’ jovial, yet intense debate over whether this was an accurate descrip
tion. However, I found myself thinking about this characterization of me
later that evening, “Was it a joke? Do I really look like one of those tacky
dolls? She must have been kidding …”
Juvenile Detention Center along with the GisMo artist collective that
day. As an art teacher, I felt my style reflected my eclectic tastes. I did
not associate myself with the “type” of woman who would look like a
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miniskirts marketed to young girls. Why was I interpreted as such? Why
was this comparison so objectionable to me? As a girl of Cuban and Puerto
Rican descent raised in the Latina/o enclaves of West New York, New
Jersey, and Miami, Florida, I “knew” what Bratz-type women looked like.
They did not look like me. I came from a middle-class family, attended a
private Catholic elementary school, and was college educated. They, on
the other hand, were girls who hung out on the street, did not do well in
school, and dressed in clothes that were cheap and too revealing.
she qualified through my make-up, heels, form-fitting clothes, and high
lighted hair, prompted me to examine my unacknowledged biases toward
the Latina women my mother trained me not to emulate. Many of the
girls I worked with in the detention center and other institutions such as
drug rehabilitation centers could be perceived as exemplifying this “bad”
subjectivity, yet I found through the powerful artwork they produced in
plexity, and creative negotiation of a culture in which they are marginal
ized by gender, race, class, and ethnicity. I also learned of my own social
proximity to them via appearance. If the girls thought I looked like a Bratz
doll, who is to say that men who harassed me as I walked the streets of
Miami, or the older women who disdainfully looked at me when I was a
pregnant nineteen-year-old, have not viewed me in the same way? Other
than perhaps my thick-rimmed glasses, does anything separate me from
such women as my body navigates social spaces?
My “Bratz doll” conversation with the girls took place while a discourse
Web media. Chongas have been compared to Bratz dolls because of their
style of dress and “heavy” application of make-up.1 Often described by
Latinas/os in South Florida as a low-class, slutty, tough, and crass young
woman, the hypervisible figure known as the chonga is practically invis
ible in feminist or cultural studies scholarship. This paper examines the
emergence of visual representations of chongas on the Internet, print
media, and contemporary visual art in order to understand how these
chonga bodies produce and reflect discourses about Latina girls’ sexual
ity, ethnicity, and class. I argue that the sexual-aesthetic excesses found
in these representations complicate dichotomies of “good” versus “bad”
girls and also express non-normative politics that trouble the disciplining
of behavior and dress for girls of color.
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that I administered to South Florida2 residents in 2008, as well as an inter
rogation of visual representations of chongas. The questionnaire responses
illustrate the meanings associated with chonga identity and reflect the
discursive field in which images of these young women circulate in South
Florida. The chonga images and questionnaire responses inform each
other, as there is a recursive relationship between social discourse and
visual production. This two-pronged methodology provides a context for
situating the chonga figure that is just emerging in scholarship.
ation here, as I examine visual media that mobilize the term “chonga”
in addition to works that do not, yet whose subjects “fit” the discursive
framework of the figure via sartorial style. I will conduct visual analyses
of the widely-viewed YouTube video, Chongalicious, artist Luis Gispert’s
Cheerleaders photographs, and the GisMo artist collective’s multi-media
installation “Miss, You Look Like a Bratz Doll.”
Cheerleaders, and “Miss, You Look Like a Bratz Doll” other than their
representations of “chonga-esque” young women. These works are three
distinct instances of representation with dissimilar audiences and produc
ers. I will examine how the production, circulation, and reception of these
images have varying political valences.
cal role visual representations play in organizing social relations in the
United States in her statement, “The stakes are indeed high?the bodies of
women, people of color, and sexual minorities signify reproductive futures
and new morphologies of the family and American national identity”
(13). Latina/o cultural and communications studies scholars also focus
on visual representations due to the material ramifications of the biopoli
tics Shimizu identifies (Foucault 1978; Briggs 2002; Calafell and Delgado
2004). They demonstrate how representations of Latinas structure social
relations in the United States by fashioning an exotic, “tropicalized” other
in response to ongoing panic over Latina reproduction and immigration
(Aparicio and Ch?vez-Silverman 1997; Mendible 2007; Gutierrez 2008).
Celia Cruz, Jennifer Lopez, and Salma Hayek. This article contributes
to scholarship on representations of Latina bodies in visual culture by
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by a well-known actress or music performer. The chonga figure warrants
examination as it is an emerging “icon” that is producing and circulat
ing discourses about Latina young women (Molina Guzman and Valdivia
2004).
Latinas are often portrayed as “disorderly bodies” that are emotionally and
sexually excessive. In “Disorderly Bodies and Discourses of Latinidad in
the Elian Gonzalez Story,” she describes the “visual excess” that marked
the news coverage of Marisleysis Gonzalez, the aunt of Elian Gonzalez, a
young Cuban boy who was at the center of a high-profile immigration and
custody case in 2000. Molina Guzman (2007) notes how the “excesses” the
nails, and form-fitting clothes marked her as a brown, unlawful body that
did not fit the framework of a “proper” U.S. subject. The mobilization of
minority status of Cuban Americans and helped to frame them as “bad,”
disorderly subjects who held impassioned demonstrations on the streets
of Miami following the decision to return Elian to Cuba.
in visual culture are measured against an imagined (white/middle class)
construct of U.S. citizenship. Latina bodies are read as out of control and
used against the communities they “represent.” Efforts to counter these
constructions in Latina/o communities is an internalization of technolo
gies of discipline that center on policing women’s bodies (Foucault 1977).
As Latinas, are we hoping, as I did, not to be confused with those “other”
women?
versity can too easily lead us to strive toward self-restricting normalcy
or the impossible constraints of sexual purity” (5). I focus on the sexual
aesthetic excess that marks the chonga body and propose that rather than
critique visual representations of these young women for reproducing
negative stereotypes, we read them as indexing ethnic pride, personal
confidence, and non-normative sexuality. I offer sexual-aesthetic excess
as a concept in order to theorize styles of dress and comportment that are
often considered “too much”; too ethnic, too sexy, too young, too cheap,
too loud.
productive performance of perversity. In her study The Hypersexuality
of Race: Performing Asian/American Women on Screen and Scene, she
focuses on representations of Asian/American women in pornography,
independent/mass-market films, and theater. Describing her theoretical
approach, Shimizu (2007) notes,
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establish a different identity along with established sexual images so as to
expand racial agendas beyond the need to establish normalcy and standardiza
tion. To engage hypersexuality as a politically productive perversity pays atten
tion to the formulations of sexual and racial identity that critique normative
scripts for sexually and racially marginalized subjects. (21)
visual media from popular discourses surrounding Jennifer Lopez’s ass to
more dated representations of voluptuous dancers balancing fruit on their
heads (Barrera 2002; Mendible 2007). Through engaging chonga images,
I demonstrate the need for a reevaluation of hypersexual representations
in order to trouble academic work that aims to “empower” girls of color
by disassociating them from harmful stereotypes to the point that their
sexual agency becomes effaced and viewed as primarily dictated by males
and mainstream culture. My conceptualization of agency here draws from
anthropologist Laura Ahearn’s (2001) definition of it as the “sociocultur
ally mediated capacity to act” (112). Sexuality cannot be divorced from
social context, yet it must be recognized that girls play various roles in
framing the meanings associated with their sexual identities and practices.
Chola
Chusma
Chocha
Chula
Chonga
nas/os, index female sexuality. Roughly translated, in order, they denote
a street girl (“homegirl”), loud/gossipy/lower-class woman, vagina (or
“pussy”), “cute chick,” and slut/thug girl. Their lexical similarities point
to gender and class inscriptions that are articulated and reproduced through
everyday speech in Latina/o communities. Such terms interpellate spe
cifically marked bodies in primarily urban locations (Miami, New York,
Chicago, Los Angeles). To employ the Althusserian (1971) term, women
whose dress and behavior are interpreted as sexual and low/working class,
are hailed, literally (in everyday social interaction, for example, “Oye/
Hey mami!”) and discursively, as representative of these marginalized or
“bad” subjectivities.
chusma identity as antithetical to “standards of bourgeois comportment”:
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Cuban culture, for instance, being called chusma might be a technique for
the middle class to distance itself from the working class; it may be a barely
veiled racial slur suggesting that one is too black; it sometimes connotes
gender nonconformity. In the United States, the epithet chusma also connotes
recent immigration and a general lack of “Americanness,” as well as excessive
nationalism?that one is somewhat over the top about her Cubanness. The
sexuality of individuals described as chusmas is also implicated. The proto
typical chusma’s sexuality is deemed excessive and flagrant?again, subverting
conventions. (182; emphasis in original)
Cuban-American community, is in many ways a younger version of the
chusma, or the chusma-as-teenager.
her essay, “Re-Imagining Chicana Urban Identities in the Public Sphere,
Cool Chuca Style,” Rosa Linda Fregroso (1999) describes the absence of
young women interpellated by these terms in feminist scholarship,
the figure of the pachuca, chola, or homegirl is inadvertently overlooked as an
agent of oppositional practices, despite her notable contribution to the politics
of resistance. (78)
tions of Munoz (1999) and Fregroso (1999), in addition to Shimizu’s (2007)
readings of productive perversity, as they look beyond the negative con
notations of racialized sexual subjectivities to uncover non-normative
politics.
realm of popular discourse in South Florida through the YouTube video
Chongalicious, which presents a characterization that resonates in this
area. The work was posted on the site www.youtube.com on April 1, 2007,
and tallied almost one million views within several months (over four mil
lion to date). Chongalicious parodied the 2006 song Fergalicious by pop
The video was created by Latina teens, Mimi Davila and Laura Di
the Aventura area of North Miami-Dade on a night in which they were
hanging out at Davila’s house.3 The girls neither anticipated nor initially
worked toward garnering widespread attention. What would have just been
a silly faux music video circulating among a group of friends for laughs
now has the potential of entering popular culture in the era of YouTube.
The viral circulation of videos from inbox to inbox and social networking
site to social networking site spurs the creation of “everyday” celebrities.
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ously move their behinds to electronic beats as they enact the sexual-aes
thetic excess of the chonga script. The clothing that serves as their “cos
tumes” consist of a basketball jersey worn as a form-fitting mini-dress, a
one-piece spandex short jumper, metallic gold flip flops and plastic mesh
slippers with sequined flowers, worn with white cotton ankle socks. The
girls wear large hoop earrings and dark red lipstick. Their hair is wrapped
in buns worn high atop their heads and the bottom portion of their hair
runs down to their shoulders in waves.
they then turn to face the viewer and begin to perform the Chongalicious
song with animated hand gestures and simulated thick, generic, Latina/o
accents. A schoolmate recorded the performance in the interior of Davila’s
home and outdoors in a housing complex. The work emulates the genre of
the music video through the emphasis on the girls’ dancing and montage of
varied scenes edited to synchronize with the song. An attempt is made to
screen the domestic space, with limited success, by framing the perform
ers against plain white walls. The majority of the shots are close-ups and
capture scenes of the girls looking into mirrors while styling their hair and
make-up, using glue for gel and Sharpie pens for lip liner, flirting with a
young man on the street, pushing each other around, and sloppily eating
pizza and smearing it over their mouths. These hyperbolic, slapstick paro
dies serve to convey the chonga’s over-indulgent nature and “excessive” or
trashy application of beauty products. The performers speak in the “voice”
of chongas and address the viewer/camera with a confrontational attitude
throughout the work. This is a sample of the lyrics they perform in unison:
They always starin’ at my booty and my panty line
You could see me, you could read me
Cuz my name is on my earrings
Girls got reasons why they hate me
Cuz they boyfriends wanna date me
Chongalicious
But?/ aint promiscuous
And if you talkin’, trash, I’ll beat you after class
I blow besos?muuuuaaah!4
I use my Sharpie lip line
And ain’t no other chonga glue her hair like mine
Chongalicious
chongas as sexualized, antagonistic toward other girls, violent, and hyper
visible (“You could see me, you could read me”). In a later segment of the
video, the performers make references to the chonga’s lower-class status
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flea market for $2.99.5
and television outlets in South Florida. It was featured in a news segment
by the internationally broadcast Spanish-language network Univision and
the song the girls performed in the video frequently rotated on Miami’s
urban music station Power 96. Despite its seeming status as a media
generated “sensation,” Chongalicious circulated virally via the MySpace
and Live Journal pages of locals prior to its intensive media blitz. A host
of spin-offs and parodies of the video appeared on YouTube such as Prep
pylicious, Hoochielicious, No More Chongalicious!!!, and Davila and Di
Lorenzo’s sequel video Vm in Love with a Chonga (the number of hits
these videos have attained, in the hundreds of thousands, seem minimal
compared with those of Chongalicious). The coverage on chongas, par
ticularly in Spanish language media, has persisted since 2007. An episode
of the Univision talk show Cristina that featured the Chongalicious per
formers aired in January 2009. Reactions to the YouTube video itself and
the coverage it attracted have ranged from celebration to disgust among
South Florida residents.
in the photographs that appeared in the feature article on Chongalicious
in Miami’s alternative weekly paper The New Times. The front cover fea
tures Davila and Di Lorenzo wearing matching outfits and significantly
1). The use of a plain background signals that the girls are performing,
as they are not embedded in a social context. The bright pink hue of the
backdrop further indexes them as gendered and infantile. Their “fake”
and “immature” personalities are depicted through exaggerated facial
expressions, such as wide-open eyes, and hand gestures that accentu
ate their long acrylic fingernails. In another photograph, they face the
camera as if looking into a mirror and apply make-up while struggling to
hold the beauty products that are spilling out of their arms. In The New
Times story reporter Tamara Lush joins the girls during trips to the mall
and media appearances where they draw attention from passers-by and
receive requests for autographs from teenage fans who recognize them as
parodic characters.
me to develop a questionnaire regarding chongas and the Chongalicious
video that I distributed through the Web via e-mail from my location in
central New Jersey to friends and family members who live in Miami.
Respondents were instructed to submit completed questionnaire forms
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of subjects aided me in recruiting additional participants via e-mail,
Facebook messages, and MySpace posts. For example, my brother, who
at the time the study was conducted was an eighteen year-old senior in a
to participate through his MySpace account. In this way, the circulation
of the survey paralleled that of the Chongalicious video.
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meaning of the term “chonga” and the reception of the Chongalicious
video. In addition to those regarding demographics (gender, race, national
ity, age, and South Florida neighborhood where subjects reside) it consisted
of the following questions: Have you heard the term “chonga” before?
word? Where do you think the word came from? Who uses the term? What
is a chonga?6 Is describing someone as a chonga positive or negative? Have
you ever met anyone who describes themselves as a chonga? Have you
seen the Chongalicious video on YouTube? How did you find out about
it? Did you enjoy it? Do you think the video is a realistic representation
of chongas? Do you think the video was popular?
In some instances, I aggregate responses in order to highlight interesting
points of consensus and divergence among the participant group, yet, I do
not intend for these figures to be interpreted as statistical data. While it is
not possible to present my findings as symptomatic of how most Miam
ians feel about chongas or the Chongalicious video, they provide a window
into the meanings associated with the chonga with regard to sexuality,
gender, class, race, and ethnicity.
respondents reside in Miami-Dade County with a concentration in the
This may present a middle-class bias in my study that excludes poor and
working class subjects who may be labeled as chongas. However, I suggest
that the responses of these middle-class South Floridians can point to how
the chonga identity is perceived and constructed by the dominant culture
of the area. The majority of respondents (26) were female. Twenty-one
participants identified themselves as Latina/o or as a specific nationality
(Colombian, Dominican, etc.); over half of these specified Cuban descent.
were between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four, the eldest respondent
in the sample was thirty-four years of age (eighteen years of age being the
youngest).
they encountered it in school, mostly in middle school/junior high. The
remainder recalled learning it from friends or public discourse in Miami.
The connection articulated between exposure to the word “chonga” and
the middle-school setting points to the negotiation of identity that often
takes place in adolescence. Molding an identity can sometimes employ
a negative process of defining oneself via the recognition of who one is
not (Pascoe 2007; Bettie 2003). Respondents to the chonga questionnaire
described how the function of the term was to identify, exclude, and deride
“bad” subjects.
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Connections to other words were proposed in response to the question
regarding the provenance of “chonga,” among them associations to the
Chicana girls known as cholas. Links of the term to Afro-Cuban spiritual
practices were also forged. One respondent posited that it could have
derived from the syncretic religion, Santeria. Another offered more specifi
cally that the root of the word “chonga” might be found in Chango, the
name of a male Yoruba deity whose Santeria icon is the Catholic Saint
Barbara. These racial associations suggest the status of the chonga as an
“other” Cuban-American identity that is often disavowed by elite Cubans
through its connection to marginalized subjects such as Afro-Cubans and
African Americans via the chonga’s adoption of hip-hop culture (De La
Torre 2001).
six who stated that “chonga” primarily circulates in teenage circles.
Other groups noted for use of the term included Cubans, Puerto Ricans,
Dominicans and people “under 40.” An additional six participants sug
gested that “chonga” circulates among homosocial groups of women in
the antagonistic mode of drawing attention to and mocking the girl identi
fied as such (“Girls that hate on each other,” “Mainly females describing
other females,” “Everyone who wants to offend someone else, mainly a
girl”). Several respondents noted that the word is used by people who do
not identify as chongas, or who were chongas prior to being “preppy.”
Beyond its classed white connotations, “preppy” in Miami denotes an
upper-class, non-black Latina/o that lives in an exclusive area of Miami
such as Coral Gables.
one as a chonga is negative, with others proposing that it is context spe
cific. One respondent suggested that the chonga’s negative connotation
is due to the fact that it “melds all the bad Hispanic stereotypes into one
quality of the word stems from its deriding and exclusionary function.
who describe themselves as chongas. Several indicated that this was rep
resentative of a phase in their own life or that of a friend. In addressing
the question, “Have you ever met anyone who describes themselves as a
chonga?” one subject responded, “Yes, myself, in the mirror along with
all of my adolescent friends.” An eighteen-year-old subject wrote, “My
best friend, lol, she used to be the biggest chonga till she met me and my
friends.”7 The portrayal of the chonga as juvenile may stem from the view
that it is an identity that is passed through and sheds with maturity and
social/class mobility.
fied as chongas made sweeping and assertive proclamations such as “no
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describes themselves as a chonga] . . . but sadly they are blinded,” one
even went as far as declaring, “If I did [encounter a self-described chonga]
Fd slap them.” The majority of respondents attributed little to be desired
in the chonga role. She is framed as an identity antithetical to the efforts
American culture. Like an embarrassing cousin one is reluctant to intro
duce to friends, the chonga is not a figure to be associated with, as she
loudly speaks her broken English and wears all the “right” commodity
items (jewelry, trendy clothes) the wrong way. The deployment of the
term, and the attendant laughter it induces, can enable Latina/o teens to
distance themselves from her hypersexual, hyperethnic, and under-class
inscription.
a chonga?” Twenty-nine out of thirty-one participants provided vividly
detailed descriptions of a young urban female’s style of dress. She was
described as wearing ill-fitting clothes that were either too baggy or too
tight, applying an excessive amount of gel to her hair, donning large
gold hoop earrings engraved with her name in cursive lettering, using
heavy eye and lip liner, and gaudy amounts of jewelry. Chongas were
largely described as Latinas. Several respondents proposed that there are
also white chongas (a pop culture figure like Fergie could fit into this
framework due to her mode of dress). Study subjects situated chongas in
Sweetwater, Westchester, Cutler Ridge, and Kendall. Her class status was
also articulated through descriptions of where and what she consumes.
Respondents stated that she eats large amounts of fast food and shops
at flea markets, U.S. Tops, and D’or?establishments that sell juniors
clothing at bargain prices.
“skimpy” or “hoochie” style of dress and assertions that “they aren’t
homebodies” and “chill with a lot of guys.” These descriptions of chonga
sexuality recently proliferated through “I Love Chongas,” a 2009 song by
South Florida hip-hop performer KC Chopz that has rotated on the Power
96 radio station. The male performer professes his “love” for the figure
through the chorus:
I danced my ass off and had this chonga completely naked
Real tight jeans and hoop earrings
Chinese slippers are my thing
Went out with three, woke up with ten
Left Hialeah straight to Weston
Man I love chongas
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descriptions of their clothing, which are freighted with signifiers of class
and ethnicity. Her body is read through the lens of sexual-aesthetic excess.
recent refugees (recall Munoz’s description of the hyperethnic chusma).
She was framed by some respondents as being “loud,” “crass,” and able
to master neither English nor Spanish, thus speaking “Spanglish.” Other
subjects described chongas as “non-intellectual” and apathetic about gain
ing skills and bettering themselves through education. The characteristics
attributed to chongas are tinged with failure. She fails at acculturating, not
being able to speak English “correctly” or without a Latina accent. Her
flaunting visibility is perceived as foolish, as “they are not aware of how
ridiculous they look in public.” She also falls short of convincingly pro
jecting a hip-hop-inspired attitude of toughness, as one respondent stated,
she is a “girl that’s fake and acts like she’s from the ghetto” or a “wannabe
ghetto Hispanic chick” who “tries to talk like they’re from New York
but never quite achieves the tone.” Davila and Di Lorezno articulate the
chonga’s aspirations for thugdom in the Chongalicious lyric, “g-to the h-to
the-e-t-t-o girl you ghetto.”
sexual, and lower class stems from stereotypical views regarding urban
girls of color that have been circulating in the dominant culture and elite
circles of Latinas/os for decades (Taylor, Veloria, and Verba 2007). The New
Times story on the Chongalicious video has reinforced this view. Reporter
Tamara Lush makes efforts to articulate to the reader how unlike chongas
Davila and Di Lorenzo really are. Lush notes,
than the moody, curious girls they really are . . . They have noticed that guys
like them better as chongas, a fact that makes them more than a little depressed.
Both girls get plenty of looks from guys as they walk down the street in their
chonga wear?but not, for example, when they are sitting in their AP English
class, wearing sweatshirts, jeans, and glasses. (30-31)
tura in her report, an area of Miami-Dade County replete with “luxury”
high-rise condominium developments and a large mall with exclusive
stores and boutiques. When describing how the girls came up with the
idea for the video she recounts the story of how they conversed about the
“chonga-like” outfits worn by girls in the school cafeteria and secures
this admission from Davila, “We were kinda making fun of them.”8 In
Lush’s framework, the roles of chonga and intelligent young woman are
mutually exclusive. Davila and Di Lorenzo are applauded for their clever
parody and are protected from the negative ramifications of embodying
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intelligence, modest form of dress, and upper-class lifestyle.
Tube. Ten noted that they heard about it from friends. The remainder
learned of it through the radio (with some specifying the Power 96 radio
station), TV, and the Web, particularly MySpace comments and Live Journal
entries. When asked if they enjoyed their viewing twenty subjects stated
that they had, overwhelmingly because it made them laugh. Those who did
not enjoy the video found it “annoying,” “stupid,” and a “waste of time.”
Fourteen subjects suggested that the video was a realistic depiction of
chongas, the remaining participants stated that it was “exaggerated.” Most
participants (22) proposed that the video was popular. The most recurrent
reasons provided for its positive reception were its accuracy of representa
tion and reflection of Miami culture. One subject explained that the girls
The New Times reporter’s attempts to normalize the creators of Chon
In a thread on the New Times Chongalicious article on the blog site
posted a comment on June 15, 2007 that read,
shit? This makes me want to move away from here so bad. They’re your stereo
typical ghetto Hispanics who cause uproar for attention. They call themselves
“Chongas,” I call them ignorant.
tion to Miami as place, as she describes how the sensation generated by
Chongalicious makes her want to relocate. If the chonga is to be so dis
avowed, why did many other South Floridians celebrate and enjoy their
performance? In “Exploring Dora: Re-embodied Latinidad on the Web,” a
study on the discourse surrounding the image of the Latina Nickelodeon
cartoon character Dora the Explorer, communications scholars Susan J.
Harewood and Angharad N. Valdivia (2005) state,
nies the Web, its representations, and its participants, the body follows the nar
rative, repeatedly reinserting itself as a way of enforcing and policing boundaries
about ethnicity and mainstream culture. Dora reminds us of the impossibility
of leaving the body behind in any kind of form of popular culture because
people are always bringing the body back into discussion and embodying the
representational, which itself embodies dominant tropes of ethnicity. (86)
erated pleasure in viewers through the recognition enabled by Davila and
Di Lorenzo’s performance. Viewers were reminded of the embodied young
women they encounter in their everyday lives and by extension, Miami as
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like 2 Live Crew typified the city in the 1990s. Like chongas, the controver
sial group did not project normative bourgeois roles. The hedonistic nature
of their music spoke to the materialistic identity of the city as a tropical
playground for the rich and famous that has been celebrated by popular
performers such as Will Smith and P. Diddy. However, where 2 Live Crew
is perceived as providing a cultural space for men and women to openly
engage in sexual discourse, the chonga’s sexuality is framed as immature
and humorous. She succeeds only in arousing laughter.
porary art world. The works that launched the career of Cuban-American
artist Luis Gispert were a series of photographs entitled Cheerleaders
(2000-2002). The works feature a cast of multiracial young women don
ence chonga style such as large gold earrings, acrylic nails, stylized pony
tails, and athletic shoes. The young women enact scenes ranging from the
fantastical to the mundane such as posing in luxury vehicles or floating
in air as if in a trance. The poses of the subjects often cite canonical art
historical narratives such as Mary mourning the body of Jesus. The Cheer
leaders series was most recently on view at the Museum of Contemporary
Art in Miami in a critically acclaimed retrospective of Gispert’s work that
ran from April through June 2009.
series, Gispert references contemporary artist Bruce Nauman’s well
known photograph Self-Portrait as Fountain (1967-1970). Nauman’s Self
Portrait as Fountain is a play on art historical conventions of statuesque
male nudes. Often described as a reference to Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain
of 1917, Nauman playfully conflates his body with an object by capturing
himself unclothed and spewing a stream of water from his mouth. Unlike
Nauman, Gispert uses the body of a young woman to execute the parodic
gesture in Untitled (Chain Mouth, a.k.a. Muse Ho) instead of his own.
which her make-up, hair, and costume are styled situates her in the dis
course of sexual-aesthetic excess attributed to chongas. It is worth noting
that Gispert grew up in Cuban-American enclaves in Miami, where he
likely encountered “chonga” discourse. Where Nauman emits a thin jet
of water from his mouth in Self-Portrait as Fountain, the female figure in
Untitled expels a long, thick, phallic gold chain. The sexual athleticism
on display is reinforced by the cheerleader uniform, which symbolizes a
“type” of girl that is usually framed as being, like the chonga, sexually
available, immature, surrounded by men, and hostile toward other girls.
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makes her seem otherworldly and goddess-like, but the tattoos that ring
her arm and belly button situate her in contemporary culture. The tattoos,
coupled with the frosty blue eye shadow she wears, which is considered
out of step with current conventions of taste and style, further signifies
her as a “trashy” subject. The uniform that clothes the figure makes the
quasi-mythical scene anachronistic. The lack of a contextualizing back
ground in the photograph leaves the eye to wander ceaselessly around her
body. Enticed and guided by the ornaments, the viewer, like her, is visually
arrested by the body.
Gispert’s cheerleaders divorces them from a social milieu and indexes
them as “types” on view. The New Times employed a similar approach in
their photographs of the Chongalicious performers in character, which are
captured against an empty background. These images represent chongas
as spectacles and stock characters.
from Yale’s Master of Fine Arts program, was ripe for commodiflcation by
the art world. In The Miami Herald article “Homecoming: Luis Gispert
Returns to His Miami Roots as a Major Art World Player” published in
2007, reporter Tom Austin introduces Gispert to the reader by recount
ing the unpredictable success of the Cheerleader series. Austin explains
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Whitney Biennial, then bought by the Whitney and used in a Biennial
advertising campaign.” The chonga images successfully “branded” Gispert
as an up-and-coming artist from the city that typifies Scarf ace action and
hip-hop bling. He has since exhibited work at the Royal Academy of Art in
London, PS1 Contemporary Art Center, and Guggenheim?Bilbao, among
other prestigious venues. The appeal of the chonga-esque girl as a symbol
of Miami facilitated the success of the artist, which the city lauds in turn
through the “local success story” discourse expressed in the article in
order to highlight its cultural cachet.
sumed in the context of “ghetto-fabulous” portrayals of Miami that are
successfully mobilized in mainstream culture through video games such
as Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. The pleasure garnered from the chonga’s
idolized visual representation, however, does not seem to be echoed in
South Floridians’ descriptions of her corporeal presence in their day-to-day
encounters in the city, for which she is derided.
ers as “bad” representations; rather, they function here in contrast to the
depiction of chonga-esque young women in the work of the GisMo collec
tive. I am withholding such critique due to the unreliability and unknow
ability of representation as described by Shimizu (2007), who holds that
visual media are limited in their capacity to fully capture subjects and
social experiences as the creative process involves complex negotiations
of meaning making among those involved. Among other methodologies,
Shimizu (2007) illustrates this unknowability and unreliability through
interviews with Asian/American actresses who play stereotypical roles
in works such as Miss Saigon. Shimizu (2007) describes how the actresses
exhibit agency through making subtle changes in the narrative via their
real-time performances (gestures, cadences) and illustrates how feminist
Asian/American artists explore “taboo” or “non-normative perverse”
roles such as “whores” and “druggies” (20). Shimizu’s (2007) work sug
gests that the models in Gispert’s works may have had some influence in
how they were portrayed, and would further recognize that perhaps the
Cheerleader and Chongalicious images could be, or have been, affirming
to girls who are hailed by the chonga script.
fied with chongas in their youth, were born and raised in the ethnic South
Florida enclave of Hialeah-Miami Lakes, a largely working-class Cuban
exile community. In Miss, You Look Like a Bratz Doll (2007), GisMo
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interaction that occurred during GisMo’s workshop with girls at the
suggested that I looked like a Bratz doll. Bratz dolls have a representational
affinity to chongas, as Lush noted in the Chongalicious New Times story,
“Bratz Dolls?the sexy-eyed, thick-lipped toys that have names like strip
pers (Jade, Roxxy, Valentina)?are chongalike in appearance” (20). Despite
the view circulating in the media and among many feminist mothers that
Bratz are bad role models (which I posit stems in part from concern over
white girls adopting lower-class and racialized expressions of sexuality),
the multiracial dolls are a fitting point of reference for GisMo’s project,
as they sartorially embody the aesthetics employed by many teen girls
of color in areas like Miami, New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
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sioned everyday scenarios for their
tyftc A? * \ bition I curated for the Bas/Fisher
** ******* Invitational alternative art space in
with Incarcerated Girls.9
images of themselves that the stu
dents transformed into fictional
characters with accompanying nar
ratives (figures 3, 4, 5). The girls
used markers and colored pencils
to design hairstyles, clothing, and
In “Candy Girl,” the figure of Jes
sica Gispert is transformed into a
sexy character preparing to go on
accentuated cleavage and belly bulge), and strappy black heels. Other
characters are more modestly dressed in dark, “Gothic” inspired styles.
In some works the girls portrayed the figures with wit and attitude, as in
the pieces where the phrases “Don’t dislike me get like me” and “I know
I’m fine what about you?” are colorfully emblazoned on the artist’s bodies
and coupled with imaginative hairstyles (figures 7 and 8).
narratives. The photographs, which were later arranged into an album by
the JDC girls, were displayed in the exhibition as if they were situated
in the bedroom of a Miami teen (figures 9 and 10). Visitors could sit at a
bureau and view the girls’ original drawings, review the pictures in the
album, and listen to popular music on headphones. The artists state,
those we held close to our hearts. This almost insignificant space served as a
sanctuary for daydreaming, reminiscing, and recollecting our thoughts. Where
our bureaus were our altars?our slambooks were our bibles. In them we kept
record of our friends, styles, and the minutia of everyday adolescent life. The
girls at the detention center don’t get to have a bureau full of picture frames
or photo albums housing their adolescent memories. In Miss, You Look Like a
Bratz Doll we have collaborated with the girls to create a collective album of
fictional Miami characters.10
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and embellishing the album, they celebrated images of the artists look
ing bored at school, going to family parties, and modeling. In one section
of the album, the girls gave the artists the names “Sam” and “Toni” and
depicted them wearing trendy, alternative-rock inspired outfits (figure
11). The images capture the characters going to their lockers and pho
tographing themselves with a digital camera. The JDC girls hand-wrote
and used stickers to add phrases such as “BFF” (best friends forever) and
“girlfriends” to the “Sam-n-Toni” scrapbook page.
the girls depicted in Miss are undermined by the conformity of the
scantily dressed characters they crafted to hypersexual, mainstream,
male-identified standards of attractiveness by looking like chongas or
“hoochies.”11 However, my aim is to mine the political potential of these
sexual-aesthetic excesses. As sociologist Julie Bettie (2003) observes in her
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who employed the “chola” style in middle school before adopting a less
stylized, yet still ethnically and sexually marked mode of dress:
culture worked, whether by intent or not, as a strategy to reject the prep ver
sion of schooling but, despite appearances, were not necessarily designed to
culminate in a heterosexual relationship. Some of the girls whose feminine
performance appeared the most sexualized were actually the least interested in
heterosexual relations, marriage, or children. Despite what appeared to be an
obsession with heterosexual romance, a “men are dogs” theme was prevalent
among them. They knew men could not be counted on to support them and any
children they might have, and they desired economic independence.
And so their girl culture was less often about boys at all than about sharing
(64)
series, who seem to perform in a vacuum, the “chongas” in GisMo’s
specificity of social context, reinforced by the manner in which the work
difficult to categorize and fix. This form of refusal, however, does not
entail conforming to a normative position relative to a persistently white,
sexually modest, and middle-class standard of “healthy” girlhood in the
tions of girls of color through the articulation of their specific, contingent,
and varying subjectivities.
such as the Urban Girls anthologies place emphasis on how they resist
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the harmful negative typologies that circulate about them. Yet I am loathe
to stress their subversion and resistance as if they should be ashamed of
being loud, sexual, aggressive, and lower/working class, if that is how they
view themselves. I have used works like the Urban Girls anthologies as
resources and recognize that they address issues that the predominant
girls7 studies discourses on white, middle-class subjects do not. However,
girls7 scholars need to engage the question of who becomes excluded in
frameworks regarding healthy girlhood and stereotype resistance.
usually have images of sexualized, sullen, or angry white young women
on their covers.12 Contrastingly, yet equally problematic, the covers of the
Urban Girls anthologies present images of girls that have literally been
“white-washed.77 The cover of the first anthology edited by Bonnie J. Ross
Leadbeater and Niobe Way in 1998 features a young African American
girl dressed in white and smiling as she is bathed in sunlight. In Urban
Girls Revisited (2007), a group of girls of color wearing white shirts pose
together and smile. The design of the cover has altered the photograph
so that it is tinged with a grainy light lavender color. These book cover
images reinforce notions of “good77 and “bad” girls. White girls are framed
as needing a “rescue77 that will return them to normalized bourgeois sub
jectivity as they are starting to engage in sexual and aggressive behavior
due to the “toxic” gendered representations found in popular culture.
Girls of color, who have been historically characterized as hypersexual in
the dominant culture, are framed as being in need of an image makeover
in order to be perceived as “good77 subjects who are unlike stereotypes.
a chonga-esque girl on its cover? Or would her image work best in selling
books on “troubled77 girls? What is the message we send to girls who do
not conform to normative bourgeois conventions of dress and behavior?
Shimizu7s (2007) project calls on feminist and critical race scholars to
complicate approaches to stereotype analysis as many critiques of sexual
representations of women can “unconsciously get caught up in an agenda
of moralism and propriety” (18).
bodies signify a politics that undermines sexual policing and conveys
indifference toward portraying an assimilated white bourgeois subjectiv
ity. The chonga is not shamed into invisibility by her low-class status
or ethnic identity. Akin to a camp Butlerian (1990) parody, the chonga7s
de-naturalized visibility is a citation of gender, class, and racial/ethnic
signifiers, from her faux-gold jewelry, gelled-straight hair, and synthetic
nails to the imitation designer clothes she buys at the flea market. Yet
scholars have not found ways to explore the potential of her politics the
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girls7 positive exploration of their bodies and pleasures (Foucault 1978).13
Rutgers University and an independent curator. Her research interests
include contemporary art, sexualities, and girls7 studies. Ms. Hernandez
previously worked as Curatorial Associate at the Museum of Contempo
rary Art in Miami where she created the Women on the Rise! outreach
program for teenage girls. Send correspondence to jillhern@eden.rutgers
.edu.
Gerson, Anahi Russo Garrido, Anel Mendez V?squez, Edgar Rivera Colon, Ariella
Rotramel, and the reviewers for their insightful critiques and suggestions. The
publication of this essay would not have been possible without the creative work
produced by the girls at the Miami-Dade County Juvenile Detention Center and
the artists of GisMo, Crystal Pearl Molinary and Jessica Gispert.
did not center on the term or identity of “chonga.” I am using their identifica
tion of me as someone who looks like a “Bratz” doll, a figure who is parallel
to a chonga in style and also compared to chongas by the Miami weekly paper
The New Times, as a point of departure for examining the process of catego
rizing women through these identities. The debate the girls had regarding the
description of me centered primarily on the “accuracy” of the comparison,
they did not make comments that suggested this was a “negative” labeling. In
fact, quite a few of them considered it a compliment. It is also worth noting
that the chonga discourse that emerged in the culture began via the Internet,
a technology to which the girls in the detention center have limited, if any,
access.
“Miami,” “Miami-Dade,” and “city” denote the wider Miami metropolitan
area, as distinguished from the “City of Miami,” an incorporated municipal
ity within the larger Miami-Dade County jurisdiction (which is composed of
multiple municipalities).
and Laura Di Lorenzo of Venezuelan-Italian descent.
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
person in this question.
trend-4242.phtml, accessed on April 28, 2008.
tured work that women artists created with JDC girls through the Museum
of Contemporary Art’s Women on the Rise! outreach program that I created
in 2004. The museum worked with the JDC girls through a partnership with
the Girls Advocacy Project, Miami.
(2006), Rachel Simmon’s Odd Girl Out (2003), James Garbarino’s See Jane Hit
(2006), and Aggression, Antisocial Behavior, and Violence among Girls (2004),
edited by Martha Putallaz and Karen L. Beirman.
ity” here in order to reject the notion that girls’ “free” expression of sexuality
a “truth” about them. Bodies and pleasures is a plural conception that resists
the fashioning of fixed subjectivities defined via sexual identities and prac
tices, as making these “knowable” can lead to the formation of normalizing/
disciplining constructs.
30: 109-37.
an Investigation).” In Lenin and Philosophy, 127-86. London: Verso.
cultural Representations of Latinidad. Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College and
University Press of New England.
a Major Art World Player.” The Miami Herald, October 14.
Sexualities in History: A Reader, eds. Kim M. Phillips and Barry Reay, 407-20.
New York: Routledge.
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University of California Press.
in Puerto Rico. Berkeley: University of California Press.
New York: Routledge.
Images: Interrogating Americanos.” Critical Studies in Media Communication
21(1): 1-21.
(N)or the Bleached Virgin.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion
69(4): 837-61.
Vintage.
Vintage.
Sphere, Cool Chuca Style.” In Between Woman and Nation: Nationalisms,
Transnational Feminisms, and the State, ed. Caren Kaplan, Norma Alarc?n,
and Minoo Moallem, 72-91. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
What We Can Do About It. New York: Penguin Press.
Reproduction. Austin: University of Texas Press.
ied Latinidad on the Web.” In Girl Wide Web: Girls, the Internet, and the
Lang Publishing.
Daughters from Marketers’ Schemes. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
the Beginning.” Miami New Times, June 14-20.
Film and Culture. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Latina Iconicity in U.S. Popular Culture.” The Communication Review 7:
205-21.
the Elian Gonzalez Story.” In From Bananas to Buttocks: The Latina Body in
Popular Film and Culture, ed. Myra Mendible, 219-41. Austin: University of
Texas Press.
of Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
ior, and Violence among Girls: A Developmental Perspective. New York: The
Guilford Press.
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Building Strengths. New York: New York University Press.
New York University Press.
American Women on Screen and Scene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
New York: Harcourt.
Essays, 275-92. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux.
Girls: ‘We’re Like Sisters?Most Times!'” In Urban Girls Revisited: Building
Strengths, ed. Bonnie J. Ross Leadbeater and Niobe Way, 157-76. New York:
New York University Press.
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p. 64
p. 65
p. 66
p. 67
p. 68
p. 69
p. 70
p. 71
p. 72
p. 73
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p. 88
p. 89
p. 90
Volume Information
Front Matter
Introduction
New Directions in Latina Sexualities Studies [pp. vii-xvi]
Migrant Puerto Rican Lesbians Negotiating Gender, Sexuality, and Ethnonationality [pp. 1-23]
“El Ambiente” According to Her: Gender, Class, “Mexicanidad”, and the Cosmopolitan in Queer Mexico City [pp. 24-45]
Are All Raza Womyn Queer? An Exploration of Sexual Identity in a Chicana/Latina Student Organization [pp. 46-62]
“Miss, You Look like a Bratz Doll”: On Chonga Girls and Sexual-Aesthetic Excess [pp. 63-90]
The Chicana Canvas: Doing Class, Gender, Race, and Sexuality through Tattooing in East Los Angeles [pp. 91-120]
Expressing Latina Sexuality with Vieja Argüentera Embodiments and Rasquache Language: How Women’s Culture Enables Living Filosofía [pp. 121-142]
Breast Cancer: A New Aesthetics of the Subject [pp. 143-165]
The Role of Pap Smears in Negotiating Risk: Latinas’ Perceptions of Trust and Love in Sexual Relationships with Men [pp. 166-190]
Book Reviews
Review: untitled [pp. 191-193]
Review: untitled [pp. 194-197]
Review: untitled [pp. 197-201]
Review: untitled [pp. 202-207]
Review: untitled [pp. 207-209]
Review: untitled [pp. 210-216]
Review: untitled [pp. 216-221]
Review: untitled [pp. 222-224]
Back Matter
Author(s):
Published by: Feminist Studies, Inc.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20459071
Accessed: 02-08-2017 19:47 UTC
Feminist Studies
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American (ized) Whore
them is as easy as drinking water].”
terms. It was the trash culture-degenerate, morally bankrupt, and not
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daughter’s rejection of an idealized notion of Arab womanhood could sig
reaction or an alternative to the universalizing tendencies of hegemonic
tion of Arab women and men. I use the term hegemonic (white) U.S.
nationalism to refer to the official discourses of the U.S. state and corpo
that “at the same time systematically produces sexualized, gendered, and
This article focuses on the narratives of three of the thirty interviewees
American feminist, queer Arab, and/or women of color feminist move
alisms and Arab American cultural nationalisms provides a rich site from
cumscribe Arab American femininities. Their narratives represent histori
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nialist Western feminist approaches that highlight “religion” (Islam) as
formed. Instead, it situates discussions on religious identity within the
American women, but to provide an opportunity to think beyond mis
perceptions and stereotypes. I locate myself in the context of multiple,
rendered me at once “insider” and “outsider,” collaboratively and individ
throughout my field sites as a discursive mechanism for explaining more
“them” that was gendered and sexualized was then a discursive reaction to
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“Americanness.” Both generations were mutually invested in expressing
Americanness absolutely depend on each other to exist-as opposites and
in unison.
My research is based on intensive interviews and participant observation
research participants of Muslim descent, for example, explained that
growing up they understood Islam as part of their cultural identity. Most
nantly of Christian Arabs.
either displaced to the San Francisco Bay area as a consequence of colonial
Bay area in the 1960s in search of economic mobility. Their parents did not
fostered an often reactionary bourgeois reproduction of Arab cultural
identity. Cultural authorities-including parents, aunts, and uncles as well
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culture” alongside a contradictory desire for the “American dream” and
American discourses on gender and sexuality take on particular form
among my research participants, a group of educated, middle-class, young
young Arab American women, this article highlights the processes by
which discourses of Arab cultural re-authenticity and hegemonic U.S.
tion of patriarchal cultural ideals is that San Francisco is home to some of
inspire young people, such as my research participants, who are either
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“true” Arab culture emerged in the context of “regulatory ideals” that
knowing how to give mujamalat (flattery); knowing what you’re supposed
about politics “sooo” much; getting up for an older person; respecting
nections; gossiping and having a good reputation.5
person, being an American,” or “being connected, having family, and
being ‘Arab.”‘ Yet what ultimately distinguished “us” from “them,” or Al
Positioning the feminized subjectivities within my field sites in between
daughter, or Arab virgin vs. American(ized) whore, the discourse of Arab
assumption that if a daughter chooses to betray the regulatory demands
itself to the Amerikan. Jumana, recalling her parents’ reinforcement of this
heterosexual (ethno-religious) endogamous marriage were the key de
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yardstick that policed female subjectivities in cultural nationalist terms.
nationalism and in the context of immigrant nostalgia. Here, an imagined
munal networks in San Francisco, Arab American cultural nationalism
was expressed in terms of an imagined Arab community or people that
context. Among Arab American cultural authorities in San Francisco, the
(Ramallah, Al Salt), economic class, national (Jordanian, Lebanese,
Palestinian, or Syrian), or racialized/ethnic (Arab) group. These categories
regulatory demands of Arab womanhood were often framed as an alter
native to assimilation and Americanization, the cultural discourses that
controlled a daughter’s marriagability simultaneously enabled a family
strategy of assimilation to an appropriate American norm of whiteness
race and class-as capital.
The following narratives epitomize the processes by which discourses on
Orientalism and religion. Together, these narratives highlight three differ
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research participants at the intersections of race and class; religion and sex
structions of Arabness and Americanness in general and shifting construc
American identity” seriously.
Americans. As the DJ mixed hip-hop, reggae, and Arabic beats, Rime
we met, she explained that her parents emigrated to San Francisco
from Jordan in the late 1960s in search of economic opportunity, that
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leak.”6 Rime’s family’s Christian religious affiliation and Omar’s economic
ment” to Rime’s parents and his ironic foreignness reflects the instability
“authentic Arabness” that they left in the homeland and have tried to
recreate in the United States. Here, Omar’s forced presence in Rime’s fami
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beyond the boundaries of a nostalgic “true” Arab culture.
ble, but multiple and overlapping in the context of power, history and the
terms and her perception of a fixed and stable “Arab culture” is disrupted
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communist atheist from a different socioeconomic class, Rime comes to
tween “having family and community” and “being a lonely white CEO
woman” represents the reproduction of idealized notions of selfhood in
the diaspora. As Rime critically receives cultural meanings, she associates
alienation. Yet as Rime’s parents render Omar unacceptable because he
lives in the homeland, lacks money, and lacks Christian values, the fantasy
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collage representing herself as “virgin” (represented by drums, pita
months later, Lulu and I made plans to meet at Cafe Flor, a queer hang
mother would see my sexuality: dirty, sinful, dark. The reason for the
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Arab” she reveals the gaps and fissures within the idea of a unified Arab
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American discourses in San Francisco. Many of my research participants
then, the Al Arab/Al Amerikan boundary is permeable and shifting. As Lulu
American whiteness to tame her sister’s sexuality while they distinguish
queerness, the central marker of her betrayal, underwrites her marginaliza
acceptable, faulty, damaged,” culminate in her family’s attempt to send her
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eties. Yet beyond reinforcing a heterosexual imperative, Lulu’s mother is
heterosexuality, Lulu’s mother seeks to protect Lulu’s father’s honor as
Moreover, the intervention of Lulu’s uncle can be interpreted in terms of
riage) and men are responsible for providing for their families, which
includes their current wives and underage children and may include aged
patriarchy on multiple fronts: it undermines the Arab virgin/American
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veiled victims of misogynist terrorist Arab men or exotic erotic objects
Francisco. It exemplifies the ways that this polarization took on local form
religiously diverse. In addition, religious affiliation alone did not determine
“Arab” identity when she asked her to suppress her lesbian identity. Thus,
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know that on Thursday nights, it was the place to be for ex-hippie yup
Amina belly dancing with nose rings and sequined bikini tops. Sitting
Orient we began our first conversation. As daughters of Arab
Christians, we had parents who similarly believed that emigration to
me her struggles over gender, culture, and identity between and among
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women as simultaneously veiled victim and exotic goddess, coupled with
her mother’s associations of Muslim habits with the terms, “backwards,
dirty, horrible, and uncivilized” and Muslim men with the themes of
misogyny, illustrate the significance of Orientalism to middle-class U.S.
notions of identity and modernity. Her peers reproduce an Orientalist
logic that renders Arab women as requiring Western discovery, interven
Palestinians in Orientalist terms. Here, Ottoman distinctions between
Muslims and Christians are rooted in a framework for organizing social
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At the intersections of Orientalism and Ottoman frameworks for orga
operationalizes Arab cultural re-authenticity in terms of homeland notions
Muslim woman” articulated “as the ultimate victim of a timeless patri
and lesbian identities can be hidden, or conflated with Western or
“American civilized identity,” Mohammed’s identity cannot.
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Christian modernity, and U.S. Orientalism, multiculturalism, and racism.
“Americanness” along multiple axes of power and control; affirms that
“Muslims” are “always more complex than the straightjacket of identity
Walking down the street between one of San Francisco’s largest popula
tions of homeless women and men and the new dot-com yuppies, I did
BIANS FOR BUSH had been crossed out and replaced with the word
“EAT.” As I turned to the wall behind me to find out whether QUEER
ARABS still EXIST[ed], my eyes followed an arrow, drawn in thick black
marker that pointed to the words QUEER ARABS and was connected to
the words, ONE OF MANY PROBLEMS.
Looking closer, I noticed another message superimposed over QUEER
QUEER and ARABS and the letter “S” was added to the beginning of the
word “EXIST.” I re-read it several times before I finally understood that
the words ARABS and SEXIST, implied that ARABS are SEXIST. I thought
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EXIST reinforced the binary construction of “the Arab” as Other.
Similarly, while Rime, Lulu, and Nicole burst the boundaries of hegemon
QUEER ARABS EXIST, I noticed another message, a much smaller message
I am grateful to Suad Joseph, Kent Ono, Ella Maria Ray, Martina Reiker, Minoo Moallem,
the editorial board members of Feminist Studies and the anonymous readers for their con
period of my field research.
process included cutting repetitive words and statements, rearranging the order of
Committee, the Arab Women’s Solidarity Association, the Muslim Students’
Association, Students for Justice in Palestine, and the Arab Cultural Center.
University Press, 1999), 243-64.
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Muslim student groups. Fifteen of the women research participants were Palestinian,
women of Palestinian descent whom I interviewed represent a pattern common with
American community affairs. Nevertheless, immigrants from the Levant (Lebanon,
ment of a series of clubs and community associations. These networks have organized
Cultural Center). Due to their early history of migration to San Francisco, the vari
“Arab American” community often privileges Levantine Arabs, while either excluding
5. Here, I use terms that were reiterated among my research participants to illustrate the
Syrian and Lebanese Arab Americans as more “assimilated” than themselves. Several
factors have produced this “difference.” Historically, Syrian and Lebanese emigrated
“Gendering Citizenship in the Middle East,” in Gender and Citizenship in the Middle East, ed.
Humanities Review 5, no. 1 (1992): 81-92.
12. Minoo Moallem, Between Warrior Brother and Veiled Sister: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Politics
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Lebanon,” Feminist Studies 19 (Fall 1993): 465-86.
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88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
Front Matter
Preface [pp. 7-10]
From Genocide to Justice: Women’s Bodies as a Legal Writing Pad [pp. 11-37]
Afraid to Say [pp. 38-53]
Kahlo’s World Split Open [pp. 54-81]
Two Coins [p. 82-82]
A Song My Mother Sang to Me [p. 83-83]
Envy to My Twin [p. 84-84]
Spike Heels [p. 85-85]
At Eleven, My Granddaughter Loves to Read [p. 86-86]
Arab American Femininities: Beyond Arab Virgin/ American(ized) Whore [pp. 87-111]
The Seafarer [pp. 112-120]
Woman Saved from Salad Spinner [pp. 121-122]
Scars [pp. 123-124]
Pornographic Voice: Critical Feminist Practices among Sri Lanka’s Female Garment Workers [pp. 125-154]
A New Entity in the History of Sexuality: The Respectable Same-Sex Couple [pp. 155-162]
Review: What’s Sex Got to Do with It: Gender and the New Black Freedom Movement Scholarship [pp. 163-183]
The Privet Hedge [p. 185-185]
News and Views [pp. 186-191]
Publications Received [pp. 198-205]
Back Matter
Book Subtitle: Latina Girls and Sexual Identity
Book Author(s): Lorena Garcia
Published by: NYU Press. (2012)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qfhq7.6
Yourself, Protect Yourself
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ized her mother as “old-school Puerto Rican,” at Centro Adelante, where
she was organizing poster-size diagrams for a presentation she was prepar-
ing on safe sex.1 The professionally printed diagrams illustrated female and
male reproductive organs and different birth control and safe-sex methods.
Samantha, along with Carolyn, a young African American woman, had been
training to be a peer health educator at the Chicago Committee on Youth
Health (CCYH). Under the supervision of a CCYH youth coordinator, the
two young women of color led an engaging one-hour workshop on safe sex
for a group of fifteen to twenty young women and men that afternoon. Their
audience, composed mostly of Latina/o youth, listened attentively and asked
pointed questions about access to sexual health resources in the community
and about safe-sex methods. A young man asked where one could obtain an
HIV test and whether parental consent was required for such a test, while
a young woman inquired about parental consent for access to birth control.
With minimal assistance from the youth coordinator, Samantha and Carolyn
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whether she had been nervous during the workshop. She confidently replied,
“I’m just trying to spread some knowledge other teens might want to know
about. Please, especially when a lot of these schools don’t really do a good
job of telling it like it is, they don’t care about what we wanna know or need
to know, just what they think we should know and shouldn’t be knowing and
doing.”
faction with school-based sex education.2 Describing some of her own expe-
riences with sex education in the classroom, the honor roll student stated,
“Everyone is always telling us, like, ‘Knowledge is power,’ this and that. But
when it comes down to it with some things, like sex ed., some teachers are
like, ‘Uh-uh, that’s too much information for you. You only need to know
this.’” School-based sex education, whether abstinence-only or comprehen-
sive, left much to be desired in terms of the knowledge that was imparted to
the Latina girls who shared their experiences with me.
informed by national and local struggles over the meanings and conse-
quences of gender, race, class, and sexual categories.3 The implementation
of sex education has generally been guided by the perceived need to protect
the sexual innocence of youth or to protect youth from the dangers of their
own sexual curiosity. Decisions about which objective to pursue are often
guided by assumptions about race/ethnicity.4 While middle- and upper-class
white youth are often perceived to be in need of intervention to guide them
through their “normally abnormal” hormone-besieged adolescence, youth
of color are typically constructed as always “at risk” and a source of dan-
ger.5 And feminist scholars have pointed to the ways that gender and sexual
inequalities are produced and maintained through sex education lessons.6
Thus, it should not be assumed, as the sociologist Jessica Fields contends,
that all young people encounter sex education curricula in the same manner.7
education experiences in middle school. Their interactions with teachers and
sex educators were tied to various assumptions about Latinas and were cen-
tral to their stories of school-based sex education in middle school. Their
experiences reveal not only how sexism, racism, and the presumption that all
girls are heterosexual structure the content and delivery of school-based sex
education for Latinas girls but also how these young women relate their need
to be informed sexual subjects to their educational plans. Their narratives
indicate that their ability to be academically successful is also an important
component of their crafting of femininity, a process that entails negotiation
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girls’ multiple identities—as U.S. Latinas, as daughters of immigrants and/or
migrants, as students, and as sexual subjects—shapes their understandings
of the role of education in their lives and the importance they assign to their
future success.
abstinence-plus (also called comprehensive sexuality education) and absti-
nence-only-until-marriage (also called abstinence-only). Comprehensive
sex education does cover abstinence but also teaches about contraception,
sexually transmitted diseases, HIV, and abortion. Slightly more than half of
the girls I spoke with described access to this type of sex education. The rest
of the young women were provided abstinence-only education. Abstinence-
only education does not teach about contraception or abortion. When sexu-
ally transmitted diseases and HIV are referenced, it is typically to highlight
the negative consequences of premarital sex.
in this study were or had been at one point Chicago Public Schools (CPS)
students.8 Since the average age of young women at the time of interview was
sixteen, their middle school sex education generally occurred between 1998
and 2002, a period marked by increased federal funding for abstinence-only
programs. Although the Reagan administration had made federal funding
available for abstinence-only sex education beginning in the early 1980s, the
support and promotion of abstinence-only programs intensified in the mid-
1990s. More than $1 billion were channeled to abstinence-only sex education
programs between 1996 and 2006, while federal funds were not made avail-
able for comprehensive sexuality education.9
levels, it was their experiences in the sixth through the eighth grades that
they elaborated upon in great detail.10 During the years, while these young
women were middle school students, the Board of Education of the Chicago
Public Schools did not take an official stance or provide guidelines on sex
education. Thus, it was possible to have variations in the quality and content
of sex education in CPS. However, there were similarities in the girls’ descrip-
tions of their sex education in terms of how they participated in it and who
was designated to teach it. For example, the majority of the girls said that
female and male students generally received sex education together in the
classroom, whether it was comprehensive or abstinence-only sex education.
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in middle school, according to most of the young women.11 But teachers also
figured prominently in the girls’ discussions of their sex education.12 In what
follows, I discuss themes and patterns that cut across both types of sex edu-
cation curricula, allowing us to further understand how inequalities emerge
and are reinforced through sex education in general.
and delivery of both types of sex education curricula. In girls’ descriptions of
their sex education experiences, lessons were crafted around heterosexuality
and heterosexual norms. And heterosexuality was most often discussed in
relation to masculinity and femininity. In other words, masculinity and fem-
ininity were tightly linked to heterosexuality, and femininity was connected
to the good-girl/bad-girl dichotomy within sex education lessons. However,
the institutionalization of heterosexuality via sex education also entailed the
incorporation of racialized gender stereotypes to produce specific lessons for
Latina youth about how they should engage sex education in the classroom
and what kind of sex education information was most relevant to them.
tion experiences, many girls told of interactions with teachers and sex educators
in which students were invited or expected to ask questions but were then dis-
ciplined for their level of engagement with sex education. Much as my friends
and I did when we were middle school students, they characterized their male
peers as “acting foolish,” “not taking it seriously,” or “saying ignorant things.”
Quite often, girls told of incidents in which boys were scolded or disciplined by
teachers for misbehaving during sex education. Girls, on the other hand, were
described as being reprimanded for their active engagement with sex education
in the classroom. In other words, it was possible for female students to be too
interested in learning about sex. Such was the experience of seventeen-year-
old Minerva, whose mother, Carmen, rejected the idea that Minerva was a lost
cause because she was no longer a virgin. Not one to shy away from speaking
her mind, the talkative young woman often made comments that elicited either
laughs or gasps from her peers at Hogar del Pueblo. Raising her arm as she
described doing to ask a sex educator whether it was “true” that the morning-
after pill could prevent pregnancy, Minerva said, “Anyways, she [sex educator]
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‘Now why do you want to know about that, Minerva? You don’t got anything
to worry about if you’re behaving and, anyway, we are out of time.’” Other girls
told of similar exchanges with teachers and sex educators in which their inqui-
ries were met with suspicion, suggesting that they were perceived as “knowing
girls” and therefore assumed to be sexually active because they displayed some
knowledge and/or curiosity about sexuality.13 By publicly questioning Minerva
about the motives behind her inquiry, her teacher communicated to the stu-
dents not only that certain questions were invalid but that they could shift girls
unto the wrong side of the good-girl/bad-girl dichotomy.
prefaced or followed lessons with a statement about the need for girls to be
mindful of their respectability, emphasizing that they should behave like
“good girls” or “young ladies.” A young Puerto Rican with pink-streaked hair
and a small silver hook ring on her eyebrow, seventeen-year-old Imelda, told
me of how her eighth-grade teacher interjected this message during a guest
speaker’s comprehensive sex education presentation:
sonal choice and not letting anyone pressure us, and that when we were
ready we should remember to be safe, and all that, you know? And Mrs.
Damenzo [the teacher] is like, “Yeah, but they shouldn’t be doing it, right?
They should act like young ladies so that the boys will respect them.”
what to do with the information presented to them. Inés, whose mother
slapped her when she found out about her sexual behavior, frustratingly
explained, “I don’t get it, they tell you all about being safe, then turn around
and tell you, ‘But you really don’t need to know this, unless you a hoochie.’”
Teachers and sex educators were never described as warning boys that
their respect was tied to their sexual behavior. These gender-specific mes-
sages implicitly communicated to girls and boys not only that girls were the
intended recipients of sex education but that there are limits to their sex edu-
cation, given that the knowledge sought should reflect sexual modesty.
were fused with perceptions about them as Latina girls. Teachers and sex
educators inscribed the good-girl/bad-girl dichotomy with racialized sexual
stereotypes of Latinas that functioned to specify the kind of “bad girls” they
should avoid becoming (i.e., the pregnant Latina teen or the sexually pro-
miscuous Latina). The majority of young women described interactions with
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“bad girls.” Olivia, who desired to be a social worker, encountered such a les-
son from her seventh-grade abstinence-only sex educator:
waits. Every time I asked a question she didn’t like or whatever, she would
say, “That is not something someone your age should even be thinking
about.” . . . I think I was annoying her ’cause she just said, “Maybe a lot of
girls you know are having sex, but you need to be better than that. When
you ask things like that, it makes people think you are like those girls.”
assumed that they already knew or were acquainted with “those girls,” who
were perceived to be prevalent in students’ neighborhoods. This was seven-
teen-year-old Elvia’s experience. A cadet in her high school JROTC (Junior
Reserve Officers Training Corps) program, Elvia shared how her eighth-grade
sex educator responded to her when she questioned her suppositions about
Latinas: “She got all embarrassed . . . and just said, ‘Well, I’m just telling you
how it is. Numbers don’t lie, there are a lot of teenagers in your community
who are making real poor choices when it comes to sex.’” The mention of
“those girls” and “a lot of teenagers” by these young women’s teachers referred
not to girls or youth in the general sense but specifically to Latina youth.
teachers and sex educators constituted a heterosexualizing process that sup-
ported gender inequalities between boys and girls and among the girls them-
selves. Teachers and sex educators not only presumed that all students were
heterosexual but also invoked a good-girl/bad-girl dichotomy that kept boys’
sexual behaviors invisible and unchecked. Furthermore, this dichotomy was
racialized, in that it both borrowed on and supported the notion that Latinas
are culturally predisposed to fall on the “bad” side of it.14
school-based sex education experiences was the emphasis placed on preg-
nancy prevention lessons. Although these young women were warned not
to be like “those girls,” their narratives suggest that they were still viewed as
a particular type of girl—a Latina teen always at heightened risk for preg-
nancy. Minerva articulated her awareness of how this perception of Latinas
figured into her sex education:
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babies and drop out of school . . . like we all have single moms on welfare
that don’t show us how to be responsible so they talk down to us, like,
“OK, we know that in the Hispanic culture it’s okay for girls to get preg-
nant young and become mothers, but not in American culture, okay?”
educators for often connecting Latina girls’ risk for pregnancy to a “Latino
culture” in which not only were Latinas presumed to be sexually oriented
toward Latino men but also gender relations among them were assumed to
be shaped by a unique machismo system oppressive to women (“machismo”
is commonly conceptualized as a strong and exaggerated sense of mascu-
linity specific to Latinos). Loudly popping her gum every so often as she
thought about my questions, sixteen-year-old Miriam, a self-described “tom-
boy,” recounted with much annoyance such a lesson provided by her sev-
enth-grade sex educator: “[She] started talking about Latino culture and say-
ing that because of machismo, guys were always gonna try to control us and
tell us how many babies to have, and that they were too macho to wear con-
doms.” Experiences such as Miriam’s illustrate how the heterosexual param-
eters of femininity are maintained through gender and race/ethnic-specific
sex education lessons; such lessons depict young Latinos as sexually manipu-
lative and ignorant about condom use and also communicate to young Lati-
nas that their main task as unmarried young women is to develop the skills
necessary to effectively fulfill their sexual gatekeeper role.
larly evidenced in the ways in which information about the Depo-Provera
shot was provided to girls. Some young women related that sex educators
spent a considerable amount of time emphasizing the shot as an effective
form of birth control. Their narratives suggest that sex educators generously
supplied both information and advice about the effectiveness of this particu-
lar birth control option. Sitting cross-legged on a sofa across from me, six-
teen-year-old Maritza remembered how a sex educator introduced “the shot”
to the young women in Maritza’s eighth-grade class:
ain’t gonna spend too much time on condoms ’cause you probably won’t
use them anyway. Guys usually don’t wanna wear them ’cause of all the
machismo and stuff. So if you are gonna have sex, and you really shouldn’t,
then you should wear a condom and at least know about the pill or shot so
you won’t get pregnant.”
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of her friends at Hogar del Pueblo and was a cadet in her high school JROTC
program, told of how the sex educator presented information about Depo-
Provera to her eighth-grade class: “She [the sex educator] said something
like, ‘Too many Hispanic girls feel that having a baby is no big deal, but don’t
believe it . . . the shot is a good way to help you be safe.’ . . . I felt that she
thought we were all pendejas [idiots or stupid], like the shot would be easier
for us since all we worried was about getting pregnant.”
their sex education are informed by the heteronormative designation of
sexual relations and bodies as reproductive. The experiences of Maritza,
Marta, and many other Latina girls reveal that they are assigned hetero-
sexuality but that they are seen as failing to conform to idealized hetero-
normative standards. Their bodies, read through a racial-gender lens, are
interpreted as excessively reproductive. Historically, there have been racial-
ized gender stereotypes about the reproductive decision making of Latinas
in the United States, such as in depictions of them as wanting large fami-
lies and refusing or unable to use birth control. However, scholars have
asserted that Latinas’ sexuality and reproduction have recently received
intense scrutiny entrenched in a larger concern about the immigrant
“invasion.”15 Anti-immigrant discourses and policies have fueled public ste-
reotypes about the “hyperfertility” of Latinas, which inform the develop-
ment of social policies directed at them, particularly at their bodies.16 For
example, there has been controversy surrounding the 1992 FDA approval
of the Depo-Provera injection; among the key issues are the unethical test-
ing of this form of birth control on women of color in developing coun-
tries and the heavy marketing of this form of birth control to women of
color in the United States.17 These scholarly insights on societal perceptions
of and responses to Latinas’ reproduction provide a way to make sense
of the experiences Latina girls encountered regarding the presentation of
birth control information in sex education. And, as the girls’ narratives
indicate, they perceived their sex education to be limited; they attributed
this to racial-gender biases, exemplified by Marta’s statement that the
Depo-Provera shot was emphasized because the sex educators assumed
that all Latina girls “worried was about getting pregnant.” The racialized
heteronormative assumption of Latina bodies as potentially overreproduc-
tive that girls encountered often constrained their access to information,
particularly the knowledge sought by young women who in middle school
were exploring the possibility of identities not defined by heterosexuality,
as I discuss in the next section.
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they had not yet identified themselves as such but that they had an aware-
ness of their emerging sexual identity during this time. Several shared with
me that they had had “crushes” on girls at this age. As Margarita put it, “I
thought this girl in class was nice, but it was such a crush!” Recollecting her
attraction to her middle school friend, the high school senior, whose mother
saw her kissing another young woman, occasionally smiled and laughed out
loud. Similarly, Imelda reflected, “I knew that I liked girls, but I don’t think I
saw myself as a lesbian at that point.” This group of girls often described being
confused during middle school about the feelings they had for other girls.
sex education as a supportive context in which to explore their feelings and
questions. As eighteen-year-old Cristina explained, “I knew I didn’t look at
guys the way I looked at girls, but, hell, no, there is no way the teachers were
gonna wanna hear that!” Cristina, a young Puerto Rican with short, curly
brown hair imagined out loud how teachers would have responded had she
dared asked a question about “getting it on with girls.” Shaking her head at
the possible scenario, she said, “They would’ve been like, ‘You must be crazy!’
and probably just ignore me or call my mom to tell her I wasn’t behaving in
school or something.” With the exception of only one young woman, this
group of girls did not report asking questions during their sex education les-
sons in middle school.
reported venturing to ask a question, albeit anonymously, while in middle
school. Taking a moment to pull back her straight black hair into a pony tail,
she recalled that her eighth-grade teacher instructed the students to write
down their questions so that she could “pick some” to provide to the sex edu-
cator the next day. As the teacher reviewed the questions out loud, she came
upon Linda’s question:
books about lesbian teenagers?!” Shit, I did, but I wasn’t gonna say any-
thing! . . . She got more pissed off and was like, “I don’t know who did it,
but I hope it wasn’t one of you girls, because you should know better than
to act so immature.”
how teachers directed gender-specific comments exclusively to girls about
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tion that girls will assume “femininized responsibility” for helping maintain
order within the classroom.18 However, the dismissal of Linda’s question as
“immature” once again reflects an assumption that all the students were het-
erosexual and reinforces the message that that anything outside of hetero-
sexuality is abnormal.
site in which they felt safe exploring their sexual identity. Like Linda, the
other girls stated that they were “not gonna say anything” that would draw
unwanted attention to their same-sex attractions. To further ensure this,
they also spoke of making efforts to be recognized as “straight” by peers and
school authorities. Eighteen-year-old Barbara, whose mother told family
members that Barbara was too dedicated to her studies to be interested in
boys, recounted how and why she performed a heterosexual femininity in
the eighth grade:
way, the guys would always pick on him a lot, calling him “maricón” [fag].
During a workshop, some of the guys were being smart-asses and said,
“So, Manolo wants to know about having sex with other guys, ’cause he’s
a fag.” Most of the class laughed and the messed-up thing was that the sex
educator ended up laughing, too, even though she told them to be respect-
ful. I didn’t want to be treated that way, so I just acted like I was just a regu-
lar girl, you know, saying that I thought this boy and this boy were cute,
even though I had a crush on a girl in my classroom.
sure to conform to heterosexuality to avoid mistreatment by peers, which
they saw as especially being inflicted upon gender-nonconforming boys.
While a couple of these young women described themselves as also being
gender nonconforming (i.e., “tomboyish”), they still felt compelled to express
desire for boys to deflect their peers’ potential suspicion and thereby avoid
verbal or physical attacks. Barbara’s description of the sex educator’s laugh-
ter at the comments made about Manolo resonates with other studies that
have found that teachers, intentionally or inadvertently, support heteronor-
mativity in both their response and their lack of response to expressions of
homophobia.19
lenge the heteronormativity they encountered in their middle school–based
sex education classes, specifically the virginity pledges presented to them in
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women and men are often asked to pledge to refrain from premarital sex,
typically in the form of signed contracts. A friendly olive-skinned young
Puerto Rican woman, seventeen-year-old Arely related that her seventh-
grade teacher made her stand outside in the hallway during the remainder
of a sex education presentation as punishment for “ripping the virginity
pledge” form that she had been asked to sign by a sex educator. When I asked
her whether she thought this was fair, she responded, “I didn’t care. It’s not
like I really wanted to listen to that bullshit about the only right way to have
sex is when you are married and with a person of the opposite sex. She [her
teacher] never really asked me why I ripped the form. . . . I don’t think she
wanted to know, know what I mean?”
students’ thoughts on the subject matter presented to them (i.e., as being
focused more on having “docile” bodies in the classroom than on taking the
time to find out what provoked the behavior ), but it can also be reflective
of teachers’ lack of training and their discomfort in addressing the needs of
LBGTQ and gender-nonconforming students, especially within an absti-
nence-only sex education context.20 Arely’s challenge to heteronormative
mandates by refusing to sign a virginity pledge may have briefly created an
opportunity to destabilize heteronormativity, but it was quickly shut down
by her teacher’s refusal to engage the “teachable moment” presented by Are-
ly’s contestation. Arely’s interaction with her teacher, along with the narra-
tives of girls who identified as lesbian, reveal that same-sex identities, prac-
tices, and desires remained unacknowledged within sex education, which
reinforced heterosexuality as the norm and assumed that the only significant
identity for Latina/o students was a racial/ethnic identity already rooted in
heterosexuality.21
their access to school-based sex education and for their larger educational
ambitions, which I turn to in the next section, make evident the ways in
which they negotiated their development of themselves as informed sex-
ual subjects in relation to their futures. They expressed a determination
to secure for themselves successful futures, which, for them, was a neces-
sary component of their femininity. Their narratives indicate that they also
sought to claim sexual respectability for themselves through an emphasis
on their educational plans. The importance that Latina girls assigned to
their education and futures was shaped by the complex ways in which their
racial/ethnic, generational, and class identities intersected with their gender
and sexual identities.
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del Pueblo. The hall was usually utilized for the preschool program and
the weekly high school tutoring program, but on this June evening it had
been transformed into a ceremony and reception space for the graduating
seniors of the tutoring program.22 Tucked away on the low shelves lining
the walls were children’s toys and puzzles, and the only remaining evidence
of the preschool program was the children’s summer-themed artwork that
decorated the large windows on the perimeter of most of the hall. The usual
long folding tables and chairs used for the high school tutoring program
had been replaced by rows of festively adorned chairs that raced the small
stage area. Several people were congregated toward the back of the room
near a buffet table of appetizers and beverages that included items such
as empanadas, flautas, guacamole and chips, and agua de horchata (rice
water). Instead of wearing their usual wardrobes of jeans, t-shirts, sweat-
shirts or the school uniform of polo shirt and khakis, almost all of the
youth participants of the tutoring program, whether graduates or not, were
dressed up for the occasion. The pride that the young men and women took
in their outfits was evident in their smiling compliments to each other on
their dress shirts, shoes, ties, blouses, and summer dresses. A few of them
blushed at the flattery but still seemed pleased with it. Many of the gradu-
ates’ parents and siblings were also in attendance. As we waited for the cer-
emony to commence, a projector screen displayed a slideshow of various
activities the youth had participated in over the course of the year. Many
of the images showed them studying, working on computers, or discuss-
ing homework with their mentors. Some pictures illustrated their volunteer
activities and various outings, such as sports games, festivals, and college
visits. Occasionally, there were outbursts of laughter as the youth recog-
nized themselves and their friends in pictures that they had not realized
were being taken at the time.
front of stage to be individually acknowledged. I, along with others who par-
ticipated in the tutoring program as staff, mentors, or students, was pleas-
antly surprised to see Nancy because she had stopped participating in the
tutoring program toward the end of her pregnancy. That she was there with
her family, including her baby boy, indicated that she had managed to gradu-
ate from high school. Her mother and father, both in tears, enthusiastically
applauded for their daughter, clearly very proud of her accomplishment. As
the ceremony came to a close, the director of the organization reminded all
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and told them that, as alumni of the high school tutoring program, they had
a “responsibility” to continue with their educations.
cleanup. Outside I found seventeen-old Jocelyn and Stephanie, who were
waiting for Jocelyn’s older brother to arrive and give them a ride home.
“Next year, it’ll be your turn to graduate,” I told them. “Can you believe you
only have one more year left of high school?!” They both nodded, “For real!
It’s gonna go real fast, I bet!” exclaimed Jocelyn. Stephanie then said, “Did
you all see Nancy’s baby? He’s a lil’ papi-chulo [handsome/cute young man]!”
“Man, I’m glad that Nancy didn’t drop out of school!” Jocelyn added. After a
pause, she continued, “She kinda messed up though. She should’ve waited.”
At that moment her brother arrived, so we were unable to continue our
conversation.
Nancy should have “waited.” I wondered whether she meant that she thought
that Nancy should have waited to have a baby, waited to have sex, or waited
for both? I was trying to make sense of her remark in light of our first inter-
view, during which the tall young woman said that it “annoyed” her when
adults told young people to “wait” until marriage to begin having sex. A few
weeks later, during her second interview, I asked her about it.
about her waiting to have sex?
I mean, she finished high school and that’s all good, but she should’ve
waited and finished college so she can get a good job and then have a
baby.
order in which certain milestones should be achieved in the transition into
womanhood. For instance, Lourdes, a young Mexican with plans to become
an accountant, told me, “I’m gonna graduate, go to college, work and enjoy
my social life first. Then maybe marriage. But I’m gonna be able to take
care of myself and a baby when I have one.” And Annabelle, who wanted
to be a police officer, had this to say about her future plans: “I just gotta do
what I gotta do for me now, know what I’m saying? I’m going to college,
gonna get a job, maybe a car and a house. Then maybe get married. And
have kids. But I need to have my shit together first, I just want to make sure
I’m stable.” Every single girl I spoke with mentioned her intention and her
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school diploma as sufficient to guarantee their future opportunities. Without
prompting, almost all of them formulated in similar order how they wanted
these milestones to play out in their lives, with education and career at the
top of the list.23
tant for their ability to have better life chances, as Rosalba expressed to me
when she shared with me her desire to have a “business-type” career: “I
just want to do things the right way [my emphasis] so that way it ain’t so
hard in life.” In other words, they expressed a belief that, if they pursued
these milestones in the order in which they were “supposed” to, successful
futures would be possible for them. As I became more attentive to how they
described their aspirations, I came to realize that Latina girls’ perspectives
on their pathways to adulthood reflected their attempt to assert some con-
trol over their futures and to shed the stigma of being identified as young
women who were “at risk.” Linda, for example, prefaced her plans to become
a school counselor with this comment: “Most people look at me and other
girls like me and probably just think we ain’t shit and ain’t gonna do noth-
ing with our lives.” Young women constructed their sexual respectability not
only through that which they would not do or become, as I discuss in chap-
ter 4, but also through that which they gained, namely their educational and
career credentials.
significantly informed by their identities as second-generation Latinas. They
saw their educational aspirations as having implications not only for them
as individuals but for their families, as well. For instance, though uncertain
as to the career that she wanted for herself, Margarita insisted that she had
to graduate from high school and go to college “Because my parents never
could do that. They got here and just been working hard. I got a chance to go
to school because of all they’ve been through.” Likewise, Celia stated that she
wanted to attend college to become a nurse:
she’s been bustin’ her ass working at that school cafeteria all these years.
And then, too, when I went to PR [Puerto Rico], I seen how she used to
live, and some of my cousins still live, and I think, it would just be messed
up if I didn’t go to school when I could.
and their sense of transnational ties into their articulation of the place of
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rations, every single girl I spoke with referenced her parents’ im/migration
experiences, and some, like Celia, also pointed to the living conditions and
the lack of opportunities for improvement that faced their relatives in Mex-
ico or Puerto Rico.
selves, but they were daughters of immigrants and/or migrants, and thus
their parents’ immigration and migration experiences had significance for
them, too. According to almost all of them, on various occasions, their par-
ents had shared with them details about the harsh living conditions that
informed their decision to im/migrate to the United States. In the case of
many of the Mexican girls, their parents described the difficulties they had
encountered when they made their way across the U.S./Mexican border as
undocumented immigrants. It is important to note that, with the exception
of two girls, these young Mexican and Puerto Rican women reported that
they could speak and understand Spanish. This bilingual fluency allowed
them to communicate with their parents and other adult family members
and also enhanced their ability as second-generation Mexican and Puerto
Rican girls in the United States to identify with their parents’ homelands.24
Moreover, some girls reported that their families had made trips to their par-
ents’ hometowns for events such as weddings and quinceañeras and for the
holidays. Some of them described spending one or more summer vacations
in Mexico or Puerto Rico visiting relatives without their parents. These expe-
riences therefore were all important to their development of transnational
orientations.
ence.25 Scholars such as the anthropologist Marcelo Suárez-Orozco have
found that immigrant students compare their current circumstances in the
United States to conditions in their country of origin, seeing their current
situation as improving their life opportunities despite the various challenges
they encounter in their new context.26 Furthermore, through interactions
with their parents and also by witnessing their parents’ efforts in working
at one or more physically demanding jobs, these students often develop an
awareness of their parents’ sacrifices as they strive to provide their children
with opportunities. The value that some immigrant students assign to edu-
cation is shaped by this dual frame of reference, through which they come
to see educational advancement as a way to meet their obligation to their
families and to make their parents’ struggles worthwhile. Like their peers
who are immigrants, the second-generation Mexican and Puerto Rican girls
I spoke with also assigned importance to their academic success as a means
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circumstances.27
efforts when speaking about their educational ambitions. Celia did this when
she asserted that it would be disrespectful to her mother if she did not go to
college, given her mother’s struggle to provide financially for her family on a
school cafeteria worker’s wages. Other young women also expressed a sense
of accountability to their mothers when it came to their educational pursuits.
For instance, Minerva said that her mother often expressed how she would
have liked to have a chance to go to school as a young woman, especially when
she saw Minerva doing her homework. In my interview with Carmen, Miner-
va’s mother, she revealed a great desire to go on to college. Because of her
family’s poor economic circumstances in rural Mexico, Carmen was unable
to attend school beyond the sixth grade. According to Carmen, her family
could afford to send only her older brother to school; as the eldest daughter,
she was expected to help out at home with household chores and to care for
younger siblings. She was nearly in tears when she told me, “I was so sad about
that, especially when I would see him [her brother] with his books.” All of the
mothers reported frequently communicating with their daughters about the
value of education, emphasizing, “que se preparan para una carrera (that they
should prepare themselves for a profession).” My interviews with their daugh-
ters confirmed the importance that their mothers assigned to education.
ization among poor and working-class Latina and black women, these
mothers stressed educational success as a way for their daughters to gain
more independence and avoid economic reliance on men.28 While mothers
attempted to restrict their daughters’ movement outside the home to sexually
“protect” their daughters, they did describe being flexible about their atten-
dance at educational activities. One key manner in which many mothers
promoted the importance of an education was by encouraging their daugh-
ters to seek additional educational opportunities at community centers, such
as tutoring or summer enrichment programs. In some cases, the girls’ par-
ticipation in these types of enrichment activities was met with opposition
from other family members. For example, some of the mothers reported
that their daughters’ fathers were worried that the daughters would not be
properly supervised at these places. And some relatives, such as grandpar-
ents, aunts, and uncles, criticized the mothers for permitting their daughters
“demasiado libertad (too much freedom)” outside the home. Yvette told me
that her mother responded to her aunt’s criticism of the time Yvette spent at
Hogar del Pueblo: “She told her [Yvette’s aunt] that this was helping me with
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that when I go to college, my mom could be like, ‘See, I told you so.’” A young
Puerto Rican who always seemed to have neatly manicured nails with inter-
esting designs, such as hearts or imitation jewels, Yvette went on to detail her
plans to become a teacher. As their narratives indicate, some Latina girls felt
that their mothers risked having their parenting skills questioned in allowing
them to participate in educational activities outside of school; they did not
want to let them down.
reference, one grounded in their identities as U.S. Latina youth. Specifically,
as they talked about their desires and plans for their futures, they defensively
rejected stereotypes about them. Lisa, for instance, shared with me that she
was initially wary about the motivations underlying my project. The young
Mexican with dyed-blonde hair and blue contact lenses raised this during
our second interview as she was telling me about her goal to become an ele-
mentary school teacher: “Man, at first, when I saw you around here, I was
like, ‘Oh oh, she’s probably some kind of reporter or something and wants to
talk to us about [shifting to an imitation of a TV reporter] why Latina girls
want to be baby mommas and not finish school.’ I was like, ‘I ain’t talking
to her!’” After we both laughed at her impersonation of a TV reporter and
her first impression of me, Lisa told me, “I wanna be a teacher, like maybe a
sixth-grade teacher. I think that that’s when kids start maybe feeling like just
confused about a lot of stuff. I wanna be the kind of teacher that helps them
believe that they can be whatever they want, no matter all the negative stuff
that people say about them.” I asked Lisa, “Like what kind of negative stuff?”
She replied, “You know! At least for me, I be getting tired hearing all the
time that we’re all gangbangers, or going to jail, having babies, stuff like that.
I’m like, ‘I do good in school,’ and watch, I’m gonna become a teacher and
show people that we all ain’t like that!” Other girls also stressed educational
success as a way to counter notions about who they were as young urban
Latina women, particularly the expectation that they would fail. In line with
the findings of some studies on the educational perspectives and outcomes of
students of color, this group of Latina girls did not associate educational suc-
cess with a desire to “act white.”29 In other words, these young women did not
interpret academic achievement as assimilation into the dominant society, or
what the late educational anthropologist John Ogbu called an “oppositional
stance.”30 Like the second-generation young Caribbean girls that the sociolo-
gist Nancy Lopez interviewed, these young Latinas’ “race-gender” experi-
ences and identities shaped their perspective on education as an important
vehicle for contesting gendered-racial stereotypes about them.31
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tions can be understood as characteristic of the experiences of all young
people as they undergo the process of adolescent development, their narra-
tives demonstrate that we must attend to how young people’s experiences of
adolescence also intersect with other aspects of their identities, such as gen-
der, race/ethnicity, class, and sexuality.32 Drawing attention to young wom-
en’s current constructions and experiences of femininity, some girls’ studies
scholars have asserted that, in the current neoliberal context, a new category
of girl or young womanhood has emerged that is defined by individualiza-
tion, choice, and capacity.33 Citing what they describe as the emergence, in
the 1990s, of a “successful girls’ discourse” that highlights girls’ academic
achievements and advancements as evidence of the weakening of gender
inequality and of girls’ ability to move beyond it, these scholars argue that
this discourse has interfaced with neoliberalism to reproduce a new young
womanhood grounded in disciplinary notions of meritocracy. The sociolo-
gist Jessica Ringrose writes, “Girls’ new found ‘equality’ and power becomes
a meritocratic formula, a signifier, a ‘metaphor’ for the hard work needed to
attain educational and career success.”34 This reconstituted normative femi-
ninity is promoted to girls through their encounters with media and popu-
lar literature and through their educational experiences and is seen as re/
producing the regulation and control of young women—but now it is young
women who are self-monitoring themselves. Thus, these Latina girls’ plans,
particularly the order in which they wanted to pursue key achievements, and
their policing of their sexual behavior and that of other young women from
whom they distance themselves (as I discuss in more detail in chapter 4) may
reflect how they engage with this discourse of success as young women of
color who already cannot afford to fail.
academic success, I wondered what place they thought sex education should
have in their larger educational curriculum. In other words, did young women
perceive sex education to be a central component of their overall education?
When asked about this, all of the young women replied without hesitation that
sex education should be offered in schools. Marta, for instance, had this to say:
“How are we going to know about that [sex education] if not in school? It ain’t
like everyone’s mom or dad talks to them about it, I mean maybe to tell you not
to do it [sex] or whatever, like my mom does sometimes!” Other young women
shared Marta’s perspective on school-based sex education. Yvette insisted:
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later. But you should still learn about it, even if you don’t need to know it
like right this minute. . . . We might not get tested on sex ed like with those
tests we take, like the Iowa Test [Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS)] or what-
ever, but someday we gotta know some stuff about sex ed, too.
stood sex education to be relevant knowledge to which they should have
access in the classroom.
tests in schools—a theme that repeatedly surfaced in my interviews with
young Latinas. I was surprised by how often standardized testing was refer-
enced in narratives about their school-based sex education experiences. An
aspiring artist with a pixie haircut and large hazel eyes, sixteen-year-old Irene
recounted how her seventh-grade teacher pressured her classmates to forgo
their scheduled sex education lesson to allow more time for test preparation:
stuff right now, right? What’s more important to know, stuff about sex or
getting ready for the Iowa Test?” I could tell everyone wanted to say they
wanted to learn more about sex, shit, at least I wanted to! But everyone
was too scared to say something, so nobody said anything and he was like,
“Okay, then, here are a couple of brochures and handouts for you to check
out at home, if you got any questions, just let me know.” He then played
some phony-ass video about this girl who gets HIV and ya, nada más
[that’s it, nothing more].
framed sex education as subject matter disruptive to test preparation:
ming the door and telling us that she needed to let a speaker come talk
to us about sex. . . . She started saying all this stuff about how we weren’t
supposed to be learning about sex in the classroom, that we shouldn’t even
be thinking about perverted stuff like that, and that we were just gonna be
wasting time we needed to get ready for the Iowa Test. I don’t know, she
made us feel like we were doing something wrong for even being curious
about any of it, you know what I mean? And since she stood [remained]
in the classroom when the speaker [sex educator] came, nobody really
wanted to ask anything.
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to school-based sex education was the priority placed on standardized test-
ing preparation, such as for the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS)35 and the
Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT).36 Both Irene’s and Minerva’s
teachers communicated to their students that sex education consumed time
that should be dedicated to test preparation, with Irene’s teacher going so
far as to frame sex education as a choice to his students, a choice that was
ultimately incompatible with their need to perform well on their standard-
ized tests. Teachers, it is recognized, also find themselves under pressure to
ensure that their students perform well on standardized tests.37 The narra-
tives of Irene and Minerva demonstrate that sometimes their teachers had
to make decisions about how much time to allocate for sex education in a
high-stakes testing climate. And Minerva’s experience with her teacher who
openly expressed her opinion that sex education was a “perverted” matter
indicates that sometimes this decision making was informed by teachers’
own attitudes about the usefulness of sex education in the classroom. In such
a context, sex education may be cast as superfluous and not necessary to stu-
dents’ overall educational development.38
their larger education curriculum. As their narratives indicate, they often
emphasized the “need” for students to have this particular knowledge.
When I asked them to elaborate upon why they felt that school-based sex
education was necessary, the majority of them first made sure to preface
their responses as Olivia had when she asserted, “Cause, it ain’t like I’m a
pervert or something, I’m just saying whether people like it or not, it don’t
matter, ’cause some kids do have sex.” Other young women made sure to
point out that their own interest in sex education was not based upon their
sexual desire. Irene, for instance, had this to say: “I don’t want to learn about
sex in school because I’m a freak and shit. I just wanna know what I need
to know to take care of myself and avoid drama. Some people say that to do
that, just don’t have sex. Okay, but what about for those of us who do have
sex? What are we supposed to know?” The “drama” that Irene and other
girls referenced related to the potential negative outcomes associated with
sexual behavior and the impact of such results on their plans for the future.
As they explained why they needed sex education, they always related it
their educational and career ambitions, incorporating a discourse “of not
getting in trouble” or “avoiding drama.” For this group of girls, preventing
an unplanned pregnancy or an STD and avoiding parental detection of their
sexual behavior were seen as particularly critical for their ability to pursue
their educational aspirations.
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not support their plans to leave home for college if they uncovered their
sexual behavior; they feared that their parents might, for example, withhold
financial assistance. Alicia, who switched from using the birth control pill to
the Depo-Provera shot to minimize the chance that her parents would find
about her sexual activities, conveyed this when she outlined her “game plan”
to obtain a four-year college scholarship, telling me, “I just gotta make sure
not to mess it all up now and end up like pregnant or something stupid like
that. I seen too many girls get themselves into drama like that. I ain’t trying
to end up like that.” Alicia, like most of the young women, understood that
her sexuality potentially posed a risk to her plans. In other words, Latina
girls cited their educational and career goals as another reason why they
needed to be vigilant about their sexual respectability—suggesting that their
school identities were also significant for their fashioning of their identities
as sexually respectable young women. These young women did not report
“saying no” to sexual activities as a way to secure these educational achieve-
ments; rather, they emphasized their need to know about safe sex as a way to
protect their ability to continue with their education.
nity to develop themselves as informed sexual subjects. When young women
considered their sex education experiences, they often specified what they
wanted to learn from sex education lessons. For instance, when I asked sev-
enteen-year old Carla why she asked her close girlfriends about using con-
doms, the petite young Mexican, who wore a shiny gold name tag necklace,
explained: “Like they [sexuality education instructors] actually didn’t want
to say any real words. It was interesting because they assumed that we knew
everything there was to know leading up to what they were saying, know
what I mean? Like, to say, ‘use a condom,’ they assumed we knew what it
meant about how to use it.” Similarly, Celia turned to some friends for infor-
mation: “When I first started messing around with him and we were gonna
actually do it [sexual intercourse], it was weird because I really didn’t know
how to bring it up [condom use]. I did, but I remember thinking, ‘Why don’t
they teach you about this in sex ed, you know, the stuff that really happens
and how to handle it?’” As Carla’s and Celia’s comments indicate, girls sought
to learn practical knowledge and skills that would enable them to practice
and negotiate safe sex with partners.
interviewed by the sociologist Lea Hubbard (1999) who said “no to boys” as
a strategy for school achievement, the heterosexual-identified girls I spoke
with did not see it as impossible or irreconcilable to be in a relationship with
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ness.”39 Though some of them characterized their relationship as a roman-
tic/love relationship, in general, most heterosexual-identified girls expressed
some doubts about being able to rely on their male partners for support,
whether financial or emotional, should they experience an unplanned preg-
nancy.40 Of her boyfriend, Jocelyn said, “It ain’t like I’m gonna be believin’
that he’ll be there no matter what. In the end, if I get pregnant I gotta deal
with it, I got no choice. He can walk away like nothing happened ’cause he
ain’t the one pregnant. I ain’t letting no guy keep me from going to college.”
Thus, these girls’ interest in such pragmatic details was also connected to
their understanding of their disadvantaged gendered position in the face of
such a sexual outcome.
was mention of an interest in learning more about their sexual desire and/
or pleasure. Girls’ silence on lessons or queries about their own sexual desire
and/or pleasure is a reflection of their awareness of both the potential for
pleasure and the threat of danger that their desire holds for them, which is
communicated to them within a larger culture “that denigrates, suppresses,
and heightens the dangers of girls’ sexuality.”41 In such a cultural context,
girls often come to understand their ability to be academically successful as
dependent upon their behavior and sexual morality, which for them means
that desire, when imagined, is often interpreted as representing complete loss
of control.42 The girls I interviewed asserted control through their claims to
sexual respectability, which included their knowledge and practice of sexu-
ally responsible behavior. One significant reason why this was important
to them was that it would facilitate their control over their educational and
career aspirations. Knowledge about their own sexual desire and/or pleasure
perhaps was not seen as essential to what they needed to know to protect the
achievements they sought for themselves. With little validation of themselves
as desirous sexual subjects in and outside school-based sex education, girls
who do engage in sexual activities may also find themselves having to pri-
oritize what information is essential to their claims to sexual respectability.
Latina girls’ emphasis on the links between their sexual respectability and
their educational and career achievements are reflective of what the educa-
tional researchers April Burns and María Elena Torre term “anxious achieve-
ment,” which “results in a reordering of the erotic, away from an erotics of
the body as a site of pleasure and the self as sexually desiring, to an erotics of
achievement and material success.”43 While the Latina girls I came to know
did not adhere to a school-sanctioned femininity that deemphasizes the sex-
uality of young women,44 they nonetheless saw themselves as performing a
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chances. This school-oriented femininity allowed space for their sexual
behavior as long as they safeguarded their educational and career aspirations
through their sexual respectability, namely their knowledge and practice of
safe sex, leaving little room for their claims to sexual desire and/or pleasure.
debate about whether abstinence-only or comprehensive sex education is
the most appropriate and effective approach to teaching students about this
subject. All too often in these discussions, we lose sight of the fact that stu-
dents do not encounter similar educational contexts and that their location
in our current racial/ethnic, gender, class, and sexual hierarchies matters for
the quality of their schools and education. We need to remember this when
we consider the purpose and merit of school-based sex education. What are
the lessons we can learn when we ask different groups of young people about
how they experience school-based sex education, what they think of it as
part of their larger educational development, and what they would like to
gain from it?
tivity, sexism, and racism in their sex education simultaneously reproduces,
normalizes, and conceals inequalities, further constructing these girls as
“at risk.” Thus, in this context, Latina youth can be understood to be more
broadly “at risk” of these oppressions, a view that arguably poses greater dan-
ger to them than sex or pregnancy. For instance, one especially troubling les-
son that they are taught is to regard the masculinity of young men in their
communities as a threat; however, they are not invited to critically exam-
ine the larger societal culture (and not just “Latino culture”) that privileges
male sexuality. Latina youth are thus taught that, while they have control of
certain things, such as whether they will or will not get pregnant, they are
also taught that they have no control over disrupting gender inequalities.
Another risky lesson that they are taught is that survival in and outside their
schools necessitates an adherence to heteronormative imperatives and that
queer subjectivity is not possible within a Latina/o subjectivity. Together,
such lessons contribute to their already vulnerable status as young women of
color in this society.
and career aspirations as they discussed their experiences and expecta-
tions of school-based sex education reveal that they were well aware of their
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ties must not be thinking about their futures, especially African American
and Latina young women, who are already designated as being “at risk.” We
particularly home in on the negative educational and occupational experi-
ences of those young women who encounter an unplanned pregnancy and/
or become mothers to lay out for girls the ways in which expressions of their
sexuality at this point in their lives threaten their futures. But the young Lati-
nas I came to know did not interpret their sexuality as incompatible with
their future plans so as long as they practiced and maintained their sexual
respectability. They did not want to jeopardize their futures and, as sexually
active young women, sought to develop themselves as informed sexual sub-
jects through sex education.
parents and families, their desire to push back against their racialization, and
their desire to secure their futures, they placed importance on their acquisi-
tion of success. And they saw this as possible if they followed a well-organized
plan for their life and achievements. I am proud of them for envisioning such
possibilities for themselves and am excited for their futures, but I also cannot
help wondering if such ambitions will be met with the necessary resources
and opportunities, given the challenges already present in their lives. Sex
education, however, if thought about differently, does have the potential to
enhance their ability to navigate them. I draw upon Jessica Fields and Deb-
orah L. Tolman’s assertion that we work toward teaching young people to
critically engage sexual risk in a way that confronts social inequalities, rather
than operate on the idea that sexual risk can be completely eliminated via
sex education.45 As Fields rightly points out, the development of a liberatory
sex education necessitates that we move beyond a dichotomous approach to
sex education (abstinence-only or comprehensive sex education).46 Similarly,
Michelle Fine and Sara I. McClelland assert that sex education must be situ-
ated within structural contexts and linked to other human rights struggles,
such as that for LGBTQ rights, reproductive rights, and education reform.
In this way, sex education can be part of the process of teaching students to
claim an entitlement to learning the skills necessary to confront and disrupt
the intersecting inequalities that shape their lives.47
ciate the processes by which young women come to negotiate and develop
their identities as students and informed sexual subjects, it is also neces-
sary to understand that their desire for success is also shaped within a neo-
liberal educational context that emphasizes high-stakes testing, the need
for achievement, and individualization. Latina girls’ articulations of their
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they distanced themselves from those young women whom they saw as
not assuming responsibility for their sexual behavior and for their futures.
As the sociologist Angela McRobbie asserts, “The acquisition of qualifica-
tions comes to function then as a gendered axis of social division. Young
women are in effect graded and marked according to their ability to gain
qualifications which in turn provides them with an identity as female sub-
jects of capacity.”48 Though there were many instances in which the girls I
interviewed expressed an awareness and a critique of the structural inequali-
ties they encountered as young women of color, they still pointed to the
role of individual effort in determining one’s success. I contend that Latina
youth are at risk but that the real risk here lies in the fact that they are being
taught a particular lesson about who is to be held accountable for the inequi-
ties in their sexuality education, their general education, and in their social
worlds—that they are the ones who will be held primarily accountable.
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Contexts, Vol. 9, No. 3, pp. 28-32. ISSN 1536-5042, electronic ISSN 1537-6052. © 2010 American Sociological Association.
All rights reserved. For permission to photocopy or reproduce, see http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintinfo.asp. DOI:
10.1525/ctx.2010.9.3.28.
What is most distinctive about UC Santa Barbara is the
lock lips onstage at the 2010 MTV Movie Awards.
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Girls kissing other girls can be a turn-on for men in our cul-
Other women agree that experimentation is part of the
Some women go beyond just liking to make out and admit
in the party scene is that they do it to attract the
attention of men, but there may be more going
on than meets the male gaze.
Obviously, in at least some cases, more is going on here
So, although girls who kiss girls are not “different from
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Lisa M. Diamond. Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women’s Love
and Desire. (Harvard University Press, 2009). A longitudinal study
of women’s shifting sexual behaviors and identities in the contem-
porary United States.
Gender Strategies and Homophobia.” Gender & Society (2007), 21:
145-72. Looks at the sexual constructions adopted by college-
aged women.
(University of California Press, 1997). A sociological study of Amer-
ican lesbian feminist communities in the 1980s.
beth M. Morgan. “’Mostly Straight’ Young
Women: Variations in Sexual Behavior and
Identity Development.” Developmental
Psychology (2008), 44/1:15-21. A psycho-
logical study of U.S. college students’ shift-
ing sexual behaviors and identities.
ties and ‘Authentic’ Heterosexuality
Among Dudes Who Have Sex With
complicates the concept of “men who have sex with men.”
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o
by
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at
th
ew
ak
e
vi
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re
at
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e
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om
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s
or “mostly straight,” but too much physical
attraction or emotional investment crosses over
the line of heterosexuality.
Politics of Sexuality”
Exploring Female Sexuality ( 1 9 8 4 ) ; this revised and extended
Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader (New York: Routledge, 1 9 9 3 )
all other treatments had failed, he had succeeded
in curing young girls affected by the vice of
onanism by burning the clitoris with a hot iron . . .
I apply the hot point three times to each of the
large labia and another on the clitoris . . . After the
first operation, from forty to fifty times a day, the
number of voluptuous spasms was reduced to
three or four . . . We believe, then, that in cases
similar to those submitted to your consideration,
one should not hesitate to resort to the hot iron,
and at an early hour, in order to combat clitora
sexuality may seem to be an unimportant topic,
a frivolous diversion from the more critical
problems of poverty, war, disease, racism, fam–
ine, or nuclear annihilation. But it is precisely at
times such as these, when we live with the
possibility of unthinkable destruction, that
people are likely to become dangerously crazy
about sexuality. Contemporary conflicts over
sexual values and erotic conduct have much in
common with the religious disputes of earlier
centuries. They acquire immense symbolic
weight. Disputes over sexual behavior often
become the vehicles for displacing social anxi–
eties, and discharging their attendant emotional
intensity. Consequently, sexuality should be
treated with special respect in times of great
social stress.
internal politics, inequities, and modes of
oppression. As with other aspects of human
behavior, the concrete institutional forms of
sexuality at any given time and place are
with conflicts of interest and political man–
euvering, both deliberate and incidental. In that
sense, sex is always political. But there are also
historical periods in which sexuality is more
sharply contested and more overtly politicized.
In such periods, the domain of erotic life is, in
effect, renegotiated.
nineteenth century was one such era. During
that time, powerful social movements focused
on “vices” of all sorts. There were educational
and political campaigns to encourage chastity,
to eliminate prostitution and to discourage
masturbation, especially among the young.
Morality crusaders attacked obscene literature,
nude paintings, music halls, abortion, birth
control information and public dancing.2 The
consolidation of Victorian morality, and its
apparatus of social, medical and legal enforce–
ment, was the outcome of a long period of
struggle whose results have been bitterly con–
tested ever since.
century moral paroxysms are still with us. They
have left a deep imprint on attitudes about sex,
medical practice, child-rearing, parental anxi–
eties, police conduct, and sex law.
practice is part of that heritage. During the
nineteenth century, it was commonly thought
that “premature” interest in sex, sexual excite–
ment, and, above all, sexual release, would
impair the health and maturation of a child.
Theorists differed on the actual consequences of
sexual precocity. Some thought it led to insanity,
while others merely predicted stunted growth.
To protect the young from premature arousal,
would not touch themselves; doctors excised the
clitorises of onanistic little girls.3 Although the
more gruesome techniques have been aban–
doned, the attitudes that produced them persist.
The notion that sex per se is harmful to the
young has been chiseled into extensive social
and legal structures designed to insulate minors
from sexual knowledge and experience.
also dates from the nineteenth-century morality
crusades. The first federal anti-obscenity law in
the United States was passed in 1873. The
Comstock Act – named for Anthony Comstock,
an ancestral anti-porn activist and the founder
of the New York Society for the Suppression of
Vice – made it a federal crime to make, adver–
tise, sell, possess, send through the mails, or
import books or pictures deemed obscene. The
law also banned contraceptive or abortifacient
drugs and devices and information about
them.4 In the wake of the federal statute, most
states passed their own anti-obscenity laws.
both federal and state Comstock laws during the
1950s. By 1975, the prohibition of materials used
for, and information about, contraception and
abortion had been ruled unconstitutional. How–
ever, although the obscenity provisions have
been modified, their fundamental constitution–
ality has been upheld. Thus it remains a crime to
make, sell, mail, or import material which has no
purpose other than sexual arousal.5
strata of the law, when elements of canon law
were adopted into civil codes, most of the laws
used to arrest homosexuals and prostitutes
come out of the Victorian campaigns against
“white slavery.” These campaigns produced the
myriad prohibitions against solicitation, lewd
behavior, loitering for immoral purposes, age
offenses, and brothels and bawdy houses.
scare, historian Judith Walkowitz observes that
“Recent research delineates the vast discrepancy
between lurid journalistic accounts and the
reality of prostitution. Evidence of widespread
entrapment of British girls in London and
abroad is slim.”6 However, public furor over
this ostensible problem
ment Act of 1885, a particularly nasty and perni–
cious piece of omnibus legislation. The 1885 Act
raised the age of consent for girls from 13 to 16,
but it also gave police far greater summary juris–
diction over poor working-class women and chil–
dren . . . it contained a clause making indecent acts
between consenting male adults a crime, thus
forming the basis of legal prosecution of male
homosexuals in Britain until 1967 . . . the clauses
of the new bill were mainly enforced against
working-class women, and regulated adult rather
than youthful sexual behaviour.7
as the White Slave Traffic Act, was passed in
1910. Subsequently, every state in the union
passed anti-prostitution legislation.8
shifts in the organization of sexuality took
place. Instead of focusing on prostitution or
masturbation, the anxieties of the 1950s con–
densed most specifically around the image of the
“homosexual menace” and the dubious specter
of the “sex offender.” Just before and after
World War II, the “sex offender” became an
object of public fear and scrutiny. Many states
and cities, including Massachusetts, New
Hampshire, New Jersey, New York State, New
York City and Michigan, launched investiga–
tions to gather information about this menace
to public safety.9 The term “sex offender”
sometimes applied to rapists, sometimes to
“child molesters,” and eventually functioned as
a code for homosexuals. In its bureaucratic,
medical, and popular versions, the sex offender
discourse tended to blur distinctions between
violent sexual assault and illegal but consensual
acts such as sodomy. The criminal justice system
incorporated these concepts when an epidemic
of sexual psychopath laws swept through state
legislatures.10 These laws gave the psycholog–
ical professions increased police powers over
homosexuals and other sexual “deviants.”
erotic communities whose activities did not fit the
postwar American dream drew intense persecu–
tion. Homosexuals were, along with commu–
nists, the objects of federal witch hunts and
purges. Congressional investigations, executive
orders, and sensational exposés in the media
aimed to root out homosexuals employed by the
restrictions on federal employment of homo-
sexuals persist to this day.11 The FBI began
systematic surveillance and harassment of homo-
sexuals which lasted at least into the 1970s.12
own investigations, and the federal witch-hunts
were reflected in a variety of local crackdowns.
In Boise, Idaho, in 1955, a schoolteacher sat
down to breakfast with his morning paper and
read that the vice-president of the Idaho First
National Bank had been arrested on felony
sodomy charges; the local prosecutor said that
he intended to eliminate all homosexuality from
the community. The teacher never finished his
breakfast. “He jumped up from his seat, pulled
out his suitcases, packed as fast as he could, got
into his car, and drove straight to San Francisco
. . . The cold eggs, coffee, and toast remained on
his table for two days before someone from his
school came by to see what had happened.”13
war on homosexuals throughout the 1950s.
Police raided bars, patrolled cruising areas,
conducted street sweeps and trumpeted their
intention of driving the queers out of San
Francisco.14 Crackdowns against gay individ-
uals, bars, and social areas occurred throughout
the country. Although anti-homosexual cru-
sades are the best-documented examples of
erotic repression in the 1950s, future research
should reveal similar patterns of increased har-
assment against pornographic materials, prosti-
tutes, and erotic deviants of all sorts. Research
is needed to determine the full scope of both
police persecution and regulatory reform.15
able similarities to the 1880s and the 1950s. The
1977 campaign to repeal the Dade County,
Florida, gay rights ordinance inaugurated a new
wave of violence, state persecution, and legal
initiatives directed against minority sexual pop-
ulations and the commercial sex industry. For
the last six years, the United States and Canada
have undergone an extensive sexual repression
in the political, not the psychological, sense. In
the spring of 1977, a few weeks before the Dade
County vote, the news media were suddenly full
of reports of raids on gay cruising areas, arrests
for prostitution, and investigations into the
materials. Since then, police activity against the
gay community has increased exponentially.
The gay press has documented hundreds of
arrests, from the libraries of Boston to the
streets of Houston and the beaches of San
Francisco. Even the large, organized and rela–
tively powerful urban gay communities have
been unable to stop these depredations. Gay
bars and bath houses have been busted with
alarming frequency, and police have gotten
bolder. In one especially dramatic incident,
police in Toronto raided all four of the city’s gay
baths. They broke into cubicles with crowbars
and hauled almost 300 men out into the winter
streets, clad in their bath towels. Even “lib–
erated” San Francisco has not been immune.
There have been proceedings against several
bars, countless arrests in the parks, and, in the
fall of 1981, police arrested over 400 people in
a series of sweeps of Polk Street, one of the
thoroughfares of local gay nightlife. Queer-
bashing has become a significant recreational
activity for young urban males. They come into
gay neighborhoods armed with baseball bats
and looking for trouble, knowing that the
adults in their lives either secretly approve or
will look the other way.
homosexuals. Since 1977, enforcement of exist–
ing laws against prostitution and obscenity has
been stepped up. Moreover, states and muni–
cipalities have been passing new and tighter
regulations on commercial sex. Restrictive ordi–
nances have been passed, zoning laws altered,
licensing and safety codes amended, sentences
increased and evidentiary requirements relaxed.
This subtle legal codification of more stringent
controls over adult sexual behavior has gone
largely unnoticed outside of the gay press.
erotic hysteria has been as reliable as the appeal
to protect children. The current wave of erotic
terror has reached deepest into those areas
bordered in some way, if only symbolically, by
the sexuality of the young. The motto of the
Dade County repeal campaign was “Save Our
Children” from alleged homosexual recruit–
ment. In February 1977, shortly before the
Dade County vote, a sudden concern with
In May, the Chicago Tribune ran a lurid four-
day series with three-inch headlines, which
claimed to expose a national vice ring organized
to lure young boys into prostitution and porn–
ography.16 Newspapers across the country ran
similar stories, most of them worthy of the
National Enquirer. By the end of May, a con–
gressional investigation was under way. Within
weeks, the federal government had enacted a
sweeping bill against “child pornography” and
many of the states followed with bills of their
own. These laws have re-established restrictions
on sexual materials that had been relaxed by
some of the important Supreme Court deci–
sions. For instance, the Court ruled that neither
nudity nor sexual activity per se were obscene.
But the child pornography laws define as
obscene any depiction of minors who are nude
or engaged in sexual activity. This means that
photographs of naked children in anthropology
textbooks and many of the ethnographic movies
shown in college classes are technically illegal in
several states. In fact, the instructors are liable
to an additional felony charge for showing such
images to each student under the age of 18.
Although the Supreme Court has also ruled that
it is a constitutional right to possess obscene
material for private use, some child pornog–
raphy laws prohibit even the private possession
of any sexual material involving minors.
ill-conceived and misdirected. They represent
far-reaching alterations in the regulation of sex–
ual behavior and abrogate important sexual civil
liberties. But hardly anyone noticed as they swept
through Congress and state legislatures. With the
exception of the North American Man/Boy Love
Association and the American Civil Liberties
Union, no one raised a peep of protest.17
ography bill has just reached House-Senate
conference. It removes any requirement that
prosecutors must prove that alleged child porn–
ography was distributed for commercial sale.
Once this bill becomes law, a person merely
possessing a nude snapshot of a 17-year-old
lover or friend may go to jail for fifteen years,
and be fined $100,000. This bill passed the
House 400 to l.18
line Livingstone exemplify the climate created
by the child porn panic. An assistant professor
of photography at Cornell University, Living–
stone was fired in 1978 after exhibiting pictures
of male nudes which included photographs of
her 7-year-old son masturbating. Ms. Magazine,
Chrysalis and Art News all refused to run ads
for Livingston’s posters of male nudes. At one
point, Kodak confiscated some of her film, and
for several months, Livingstone lived with the
threat of prosecution under the child pornog–
raphy laws. The Tompkins County Department
of Social Services investigated her fitness as a
parent. Livingston’s posters have been collected
by the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropoli–
tan, and other major museums. But she has paid
a high cost in harassment and anxiety for her
efforts to capture on film the uncensored male
body at different ages.19
victim of the child porn wars. It is harder for
most people to sympathize with actual boy-
lovers. Like communists and homosexuals in
the 1950s, boy-lovers are so stigmatized that it
is difficult to find defenders for their civil
liberties, let alone for their erotic orientation.
Consequently, the police have feasted on them.
Local police, the FBI, and watchdog postal
inspectors have joined to build a huge apparatus
whose sole aim is to wipe out the community of
men who love underaged youth. In twenty years
or so, when some of the smoke has cleared, it
will be much easier to show that these men have
been the victims of a savage and undeserved
witch-hunt. A lot of people will be embarrassed
by their collaboration with this persecution, but
it will be too late to do much good for those men
who have spent their lives in prison.
very few, the other long-term legacy of the Dade
County repeal affects almost everyone. The
success of the anti-gay campaign ignited long-
simmering passions of the American right, and
sparked an extensive movement to compress the
boundaries of acceptable sexual behavior.
with communism and political weakness is
nothing new. During the McCarthy period,
Alfred Kinsey and his Institute for Sex Research
Americans and rendering them more vulnerable
to communist influence. After congressional
investigations and bad publicity, Kinsey’s Rock-
efeller grant was terminated in 1954.20
the Sex Information and Education Council of
the United States (SIECUS). In books and
pamphlets, such as The Sex Education Racket:
Pornography in the Schools and SIECUS: Cor-
rupter of Youth, the right attacked SIECUS and
sex education as communist plots to destroy the
family and sap the national will.21 Another
pamphlet, Pavlov’s Children (They May Be
Yours), claims that the United Nations Educa-
tional, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO) is in cahoots with SIECUS to under-
mine religious taboos, to promote the accep-
tance of abnormal sexual relations, to
downgrade absolute moral standards, and to
“destroy racial cohesion,” by exposing white
people (especially white women) to the alleged
“lower” sexual standards of black people.22
updated these themes, and leans heavily on
linking “immoral” sexual behavior to putative
declines in American power. In 1977, Norman
Podhoretz wrote an essay blaming homosexuals
for the alleged inability of the United States to
stand up to the Russians.23 He thus neatly linked
“the anti-gay fight in the domestic arena and the
anti-communist battles in foreign policy.”24
homosexuality, pornography, abortion, and
pre-marital sex moved from the extreme fringes
to the political center stage after 1977, when
right-wing strategists and fundamentalist reli-
gious crusaders discovered that these issues had
mass appeal. Sexual reaction played a sig-
nificant role in the right’s electoral success in
1980.25 Organizations like the Moral Majority
and Citizens for Decency have acquired mass
followings, immense financial resources, and
unanticipated clout. The Equal Rights Amend-
ment has been defeated, legislation has been
passed that mandates new restrictions on abor-
tion, and funding for programs like Planned
Parenthood and sex education has been slashed.
Laws and regulations making it more difficult
for teenage girls to obtain contraceptives or
lash was exploited in successful attacks on the
Women’s Studies Program at California State
University at Long Beach.
initiative has been the Family Protection Act
(FPA), introduced in Congress in 1979. The
Family Protection Act is a broad assault on
feminism, homosexuals, non-traditional famil-
ies, and teenage sexual privacy.26 The Family
Protection Act has not passed and probably will
not pass, but conservative members of Congress
continue to pursue its agenda in a more piece-
meal fashion. Perhaps the most glaring sign of
the times is the Adolescent Family Life Program.
Also known as the Teen Chastity Program, it
gets some 15 million federal dollars to encour-
age teenagers to refrain from sexual intercourse,
and to discourage them from using contra-
ceptives if they do have sex, and from having
abortions if they get pregnant. In the last few
years, there have been countless local con-
frontations over gay rights, sex education, abor-
tion rights, adult bookstores, and public school
curricula. It is unlikely that the anti-sex back-
lash is over, or that it has even peaked. Unless
something changes dramatically, it is likely that
the next few years will bring more of the same.
1950s in the United States, recodify the relations
of sexuality. The struggles that were fought leave
a residue in the form of laws, social practices, and
ideologies which then affect the way in which
sexuality is experienced long after the immediate
conflicts have faded. All the signs indicate that
the present era is another of those watersheds in
the politics of sex. The settlements that emerge
from the 1980s will have an impact far into the
future. It is therefore imperative to understand
what is going on and what is at stake in order to
make informed decisions about what policies to
support and oppose.
absence of a coherent and intelligent body of
radical thought about sex. Unfortunately,
progressive political analysis of sexuality is
relatively underdeveloped. Much of what is
available from the feminist movement has sim-
ply added to the mystification that shrouds the
subject. There is an urgent need to develop
Paradoxically, an explosion of exciting schol–
generated in these bleak years. In the 1950s, the
early gay rights movement began and prospered
while the bars were being raided and anti-gay
laws were being passed. In the last six years,
new erotic communities, political alliances, and
analyses have been developed in the midst of the
repression. In this essay, I will propose elements
of a descriptive and conceptual framework for
thinking about sex and its politics. I hope to
contribute to the pressing task of creating an
accurate, humane, and genuinely liberatory
body of thought about sexuality.
argument isn’t reasonable. Suppose I granted your
first point that homosexuality is justifiable in
certain instances and under certain controls. Then
there is the catch: where does justification end and
degeneracy begin? Society must condemn to pro–
tect. Permit even the intellectual homosexual a
place of respect and the first bar is down. Then
comes the next and the next until the sadist, the
flagellist, the criminally insane demand their pla–
ces, and society ceases to exist. So I ask again:
where is the line drawn? Where does degeneracy
begin if not at the beginning of individual freedom
in such matters?”
(Fragment from a discussion between two gay
men trying to decide if they may love each other,
explain, and denounce erotic injustice and sexual
oppression. Such a theory needs refined con–
ceptual tools which can grasp the subject and
hold it in view. It must build rich descriptions of
sexuality as it exists in society and history. It
requires a convincing critical language that can
convey the barbarity of sexual persecution.
sex inhibit the development of such a theory.
These assumptions are so pervasive in Western
culture that they are rarely questioned. Thus,
they tend to reappear in different political
contexts, acquiring new rhetorical expressions
but reproducing fundamental axioms,
idea that sex is a natural force that exists prior to
tialism is embedded in the folk wisdoms of
Western societies, which consider sex to be
eternally unchanging, asocial, and transhistor-
ical. Dominated for over a century by medicine,
psychiatry, and psychology, the academic study
of sex has reproduced essentialism. These fields
classify sex as a property of individuals. It may
reside in their hormones or their psyches. It may
be construed as physiological or psychological.
But within these ethnoscientific categories, sexu–
ality has no history and no significant social
determinants.
historical and theoretical scholarship has chal–
lenged sexual essentialism both explicitly and
implicitly. Gay history, particularly the work of
Jeffrey Weeks, has led this assault by showing
that homosexuality as we know it is a relatively
modern institutional complex.28 Many histor–
ians have come to see the contemporary institu–
tional forms of heterosexuality as an even more
recent development.29 An important contributor
to the new scholarship is Judith Walkowitz,
whose research has demonstrated the extent to
which prostitution was transformed around the
turn of the century. She provides meticulous
descriptions of how the interplay of social forces
such as ideology, fear, political agitation, legal
reform, and medical practice can change the
structure of sexual behavior and alter its con–
sequences.30
has been the most influential and emblematic
text of the new scholarship on sex. Foucault
criticizes the traditional understanding of sexu–
ality as a natural libido yearning to break free of
social constraint. He argues that desires are not
preexisting biological entities, but rather, that
they are constituted in the course of historically
specific social practices. He emphasizes the
generative aspects of the social organization of
sex rather than its repressive elements by point–
ing out that new sexualities are constantly
produced. And he points to a major disconti–
nuity between kinship-based systems of sexual–
ity and more modern forms.31
given sex a history and created a constructive
alternative to sexual essentialism. Underlying
ity is constituted in society and history, not
biologically ordained.32 This does not mean the
biological capacities are not prerequisites for
human sexuality. It does mean that human
sexuality is not comprehensible in purely bio-
logical terms. Human organisms with human
brains are necessary for human cultures, but no
examination of the body or its parts can explain
the nature and variety of human social systems.
The belly’s hunger gives no clues as to the
complexities of cuisine. The body, the brain, the
genitalia, and the capacity for language are all
necessary for human sexuality. But they do not
determine its content, its experiences, or its
institutional forms. Moreover, we never
encounter the body unmediated by the mean-
ings that cultures give to it. To paraphrase Levi-
Strauss, my position on the relationship
between biology and sexuality is a “Kantianism
without a transcendental libido.”33
about the politics of race or gender as long as
these are thought of as biological entities rather
than as social constructs. Similarly, sexuality is
impervious to political analysis as long as it is
primarily conceived as a biological phenom-
enon or an aspect of individual psychology.
Sexuality is as much a human product as are
diets, methods of transportation, systems of
etiquette, forms of labor, types of entertain-
ment, processes of production, and modes of
oppression. Once sex is understood in terms of
social analysis and historical understanding, a
more realistic politics of sex becomes possible.
One may then think of sexual politics in terms
of such phenomena as populations, neighbor-
hoods, settlements patterns, migration, urban
conflict, epidemiology, and police technology.
These are more fruitful categories of thought
than the more traditional ones of sin, disease,
neurosis, pathology, decadence, pollution, or
the decline and fall of empires.
tized erotic populations and the social forces
which regulate them, work such as that of Allan
Berube, John D’Emilio, Jeffrey Weeks, and
Judith Walkowitz contains implicit categories of
political analysis and criticism. Nevertheless, the
constructivist perspective has displayed some
in misconstructions of Foucault’s position.
sexuality is produced, Foucault has been vulner–
able to interpretations that deny or minimize the
reality of sexual repression in the more political
sense. Foucault makes it abundantly clear that
he is not denying the existence of sexual repres–
sion so much as inscribing it within a large
dynamic.34 Sexuality in Western societies has
been structured within an extremely punitive
social framework, and has been subjected to
very real formal and informal controls. It is
necessary to recognize repressive phenomena
without resorting to the essentialist assumptions
of the language of libido. It is important to hold
repressive sexual practices in focus, even while
situating them within a different totality and a
more refined terminology.35
embedded within a model of the instincts and
their restraints. Concepts of sexual oppression
have been lodged within that more biological
understanding of sexuality. It is often easier to fall
back on the notion of a natural libido subjected to
inhumane repression than to reformulate con–
cepts of sexual injustice within a more con–
structivist framework. But it is essential that we
do so. We need a radical critique of sexual
arrangements that has the conceptual elegance of
Foucault and the evocative passion of Reich.
welcome insistence that sexual terms be
restricted to their proper historical and social
contexts, and a cautionary scepticism towards
sweeping generalizations. But it is important to
be able to indicate groupings of erotic behavior
and general trends within erotic discourse. In
addition to sexual essentialism, there are at least
five other ideological formations whose grip on
sexual thought is so strong that to fail to discuss
them is to remain enmeshed within them. These
are sex negativity, the fallacy of misplaced scale,
the hierarchical valuation of sex acts, the dom–
ino theory of sexual peril, and the lack of a
concept of benign sexual variation.
ativity. Western cultures generally consider sex to
be a dangerous, destructive, negative force.36
Most Christian tradition, following Paul, holds
performed within marriage for procreative pur–
poses and if the pleasurable aspects are not
enjoyed too much. In turn, this idea rests on the
assumption that the genitalia are an intrinsically
inferior part of the body, much lower and less
holy than the mind, the “soul,” the “heart,” or
even the upper part of the digestive system (the
status of the excretory organs is close to that of
the genitalia).37 Such notions have by now
acquired a life of their own and no longer depend
solely on religion for their perseverance.
It construes and judges almost any sexual prac–
tice in terms of its worst possible expression.
Sex is presumed guilty until proven innocent.
Virtually all erotic behavior is considered bad
unless a specific reason to exempt it has been
established. The most acceptable excuses are
marriage, reproduction, and love. Sometimes
scientific curiosity, aesthetic experience or a
long-term intimate relationship may serve. But
the exercise of erotic capacity, intelligence, curi–
osity, or creativity all require pretexts that are
unnecessary for other pleasures, such as the
enjoyment of food, fiction, or astronomy.
corollary of sex negativity. Susan Sontag once
commented that since Christianity focused “on
sexual behavior as the root of virtue, everything
pertaining to sex has been a ‘special case’ in our
culture.”38 Sex law has incorporated the reli–
gious attitude that heretical sex is an especially
heinous sin that deserves the harshest punish–
ments. Throughout much of European and
American history, a single act of consensual anal
penetration was grounds for execution. In some
states, sodomy still carries twenty-year prison
sentences. Outside the law, sex is also a marked
category. Small differences in value or behavior
are often experienced as cosmic threats.
Although people can be intolerant, silly, or pushy
about what constitutes proper diet, differences in
menu rarely provoke the kinds of rage, anxiety
and sheer terror that routinely accompany differ–
ences in erotic tastes. Sexual acts are burdened
with an excess of significance.
according to a hierarchical system of sexual
value. Marital, reproductive heterosexuals are
below are unmarried monogamous heterosex–
uals in couples, followed by most other hetero–
sexuals. Solitary sex floats ambiguously. The
powerful nineteenth-century stigma on mastur–
bation lingers in less potent, modified forms, such
as the idea that masturbation is an inferior
substitute for partnered encounters. Stable, long-
term lesbian and gay male couples are verging on
respectability, but bar dykes and promiscuous
gay men are hovering just above the groups at the
very bottom of the pyramid. The most despised
sexual castes currently include transsexuals,
transvestites, fetishists, sado-masochists, sex
workers such as prostitutes and porn models, and
the lowliest of all, those whose eroticism trans–
gresses generational boundaries.
hierarchy are rewarded with certified mental
health, respectability, legality, social and physical
mobility, institutional support, and material ben–
efits. As sexual behaviors or occupations fall
lower on the scale, the individuals who practice
them are subjected to a presumption of mental
illness, disreputability, criminality, restricted
social and physical mobility, loss of institutional
support, and economic sanctions.
sexual behaviors as low status and is an effective
sanction against those who engage in them. The
intensity of this stigma is rooted in Western
religious traditions. But most of its contempo–
rary content derives from medical and psychiat–
ric opprobrium.
based on kinship forms of social organization.
They were meant to deter inappropriate unions
and to provide proper kin. Sex laws derived
from Biblical pronouncements were aimed at
preventing the acquisition of the wrong kinds of
affinal partners: consanguineous kin (incest),
the same gender (homosexuality) or the wrong
species (bestiality). When medicine and psy–
chiatry acquired extensive powers over sexual–
ity, they were less concerned with unsuitable
mates than with unfit forms of desire. If taboos
against incest best characterized kinship systems
of sexual organization, then the shift to an
emphasis on taboos against masturbation was
more apposite to the newer systems organized
gories of sexual misconduct. The section on
psychosexual disorders in the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental and Physical Dis-
orders (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Asso-
ciation (APA) is a fairly reliable map of the
current moral hierarchy of sexual activities.
The APA list is much more elaborate than the
traditional condemnations of whoring, sodomy,
and adultery. The most recent edition, DSM-III,
removed homosexuality from the roster of men-
tal disorders after a long political struggle. But
fetishism, sadism, masochism, transsexuality,
transvestism, exhibitionism, voyeurism, and
pedophilia are quite firmly entrenched as psy-
chological malfunctions.40 Books are still being
written about the genesis, etiology, treatment,
and cure of these assorted “pathologies.”
iors invokes concepts of mental and emotional
inferiority rather than categories of sexual sin.
Low-status sex practices are vilified as mental
diseases or symptoms of defective personality
integration. In addition, psychological terms
conflate difficulties of psycho-dynamic func-
tioning with modes of erotic conduct. They
equate sexual masochism with self-destructive
personality patterns, sexual sadism with emo-
tional aggression, and homoeroticism with
immaturity. These terminological muddles have
become powerful stereotypes that are indiscrim-
inately applied to individuals on the basis of
their sexual orientations.
erotic variety is dangerous, unhealthy,
depraved, and a menace to everything from
small children to national security. Popular
sexual ideology is a noxious stew made up of
ideas of sexual sin, concepts of psychological
inferiority, anti-communism, mob hysteria,
accusations of witchcraft, and xenophobia. The
mass media nourish these attitudes with relent-
less propaganda. I would call this system of
erotic stigma the last socially respectable form
of prejudice if the old forms did not show such
obstinate vitality, and new ones did not con-
tinually become apparent.
gious, psychiatric, and popular – function in
of racism, ethnocentrism, and religious chauvin–
ism. They rationalize the well-being of the
sexually privileged and the adversity of the
sexual rabble.
sexual value system. According to this system,
sexuality that is “good,” “normal,” and
“natural” should ideally be heterosexual,
marital, monogamous, reproductive, and non–
commercial. It should be coupled, relational,
within the same generation, and occur at home.
It should not involve pornography, fetish
objects, sex toys of any sort, or roles other than
male and female. Any sex that violates these
rules is “bad,” “abnormal,” or “unnatural.”
Bad sex may be homosexual unmarried, pro–
miscuous, non-procreative, or commercial. It
may be masturbatory or take place at orgies,
may be casual, may cross generational lines, and
may take place in “public,” or at least in the
bushes or the baths. It may involve the use of
pornography, fetish objects, sex toys, or unusual
roles (see Figure 10.1).
sexual hierarchy: the need to draw and maintain
an imaginary line between good and bad sex.
Most of the discourses on sex, be they religious,
psychiatric, popular, or political, delimit a very
small portion of human sexual capacity as
sanctifiable, safe, healthy, mature, legal, or
politically correct. The “line” distinguishes
these from all other erotic behaviors, which are
understood to be the work of the devil, danger–
ous, psychopathological, infantile, or politically
reprehensible. Arguments are then conducted
over “where to draw the line,” and to determine
what other activities, if any, may be permitted to
cross over into acceptability.41
sexual peril. The line appears to stand between
sexual order and chaos. It expresses the fear that
if anything is permitted to cross this erotic
DMZ, the barrier against scary sex will crumble
and something unspeakable will skitter across.
psychological, feminist, or socialist – attempt to
determine on which side of the line a particular
act falls. Only sex acts on the good side of the
line are accorded moral complexity. For
Good, Normal, Natural, Blessed Sexuality
Married
Monogamous
Procreative
Non-commercial
In pairs
In a relationship
Same generation
In private
No pornography
Bodies only
Vanilla
Bad, Abnormal, Unnatural,
Unmarried
Non-procreative
Alone or in groups
Cross-generational
Pornography
Sadomasochistic
te
se
al
os
ua
a
la
ns
p
su
procreative Procreative
Normal, Natural, Healthy, Holy Major area of contest
Abnormal, Unnatural,
Sick, Sinful, “Way Out”
Promiscuous heterosexuals
Long-term, stable lesbian and
gay male couples
Promiscuous gay men at
the baths or in the park
Married
Monogamous
Reproductive
At home
Line”
Transsexuals
Sadomasochists
Cross-generational
lime or disgusting, free or forced, healing or
destructive, romantic or mercenary. As long as it
does not violate other rules, heterosexuality is
acknowledged to exhibit the full range of
human experience. In contrast, all sex acts on
the bad side of the line are considered utterly
repulsive and devoid of all emotional nuance.
The further from the line a sex act is, the more
it is depicted as a uniformly bad experience.
decade, some behavior near the border is
inching across it. Unmarried couples living
together, masturbation and some forms of
homosexuality are moving in the direction of
respectability (see Figure 10.2). Most homosex-
uality is still on the bad side of the line. But if it
is coupled and monogamous, the society is
beginning to recognize that it includes the full
range of human interaction. Promiscuous
homosexuality, sadomasochism, fetishism,
transsexuality and cross-generational encoun-
ters are still viewed as unmodulated horrors
incapable of involving affection, love, free
choice, kindness, or transcendence.
common with ideologies of racism than with
true ethics. It grants virtue to the dominant
groups, and relegates vice to the underprivi-
leged. A democratic morality should judge sex-
the level of mutual consideration, the presence
or absence of coercion, and the quantity and
quality of the pleasures they provide. Whether
sex acts are gay or straight, coupled or in
groups, naked or in underwear, commercial or
free, with or without video, should not be
ethical concerns.
ethics without a concept of benign sexual varia-
tion. Variation is a fundamental property of all
life, from the simplest biological organisms to
the most complex human social formations. Yet
sexuality is supposed to conform to a single
standard. One of the most tenacious ideas about
sex is that there is one best way to do it, and that
everyone should do it that way.
whatever they like to do sexually will be thor-
oughly repulsive to someone else, and that
whatever repels them sexually will be the most
treasured delight of someone, somewhere. One
need not like or perform a particular sex act in
order to recognize that someone else will, and
that this difference does not indicate a lack of
good taste, mental health, or intelligence in
either party. Most people mistake their sexual
preferences for a universal system that will or
should work for everyone.
religion, the ideal is procreative marriage. For
psychology, it is mature heterosexuality.
Although its content varies, the format of a
single sexual standard is continually recon–
stituted within other rhetorical frameworks,
including feminism and socialism. It is just as
objectionable to insist that everyone should be
lesbian, non-monogamous, or kinky, as to
believe that everyone should be heterosexual,
married, or vanilla – though the latter set of
opinions are backed by considerably more coer–
cive power than the former.
play cultural chauvinism in other areas rou–
tinely exhibit it towards sexual differences. We
have learned to cherish different cultures as
unique expressions of human inventiveness
rather than as the inferior or disgusting habits of
savages. We need a similarly anthropological
understanding of different sexual cultures.
does incorporate a positive concept of sexual
variation. Alfred Kinsey approached the study
of sex with the same uninhibited curiosity he
had previously applied to examining a species of
wasp. His scientific detachment gave his work a
refreshing neutrality that enraged moralists and
caused immense controversy.42 Among Kinsey’s
successors, John Gagnon and William Simon
have pioneered the application of sociological
understandings to erotic variety.43 Even some of
the older sexology is useful. Although his work
is imbued with unappetizing eugenic beliefs,
Havelock Ellis was an acute and sympathetic
observer. His monumental Studies in the Psy–
chology of Sex is resplendent with detail.44
complete ignorance of both classical sexology
and modern sex research. Perhaps this is
because so few colleges and universities bother
to teach human sexuality, and because so much
stigma adheres even to scholarly investigation
of sex. Neither sexology nor sex research has
been immune to the prevailing sexual value
system. Both contain assumptions and informa–
tion which should not be accepted uncritically.
But sexology and sex research provide abun–
dant detail, a welcome posture of calm, and a
well-developed ability to treat sexual variety as
to be exterminated. These fields can provide an
empirical grounding for a radical theory of
sexuality more useful than the combination of
psychoanalysis and feminist first principles to
which so many texts resort.45
sodomy was a category of forbidden acts; their
perpetrator was nothing more than the juridical
subject of them. The nineteenth-century homo–
sexual became a personage, a past, a case history,
and a childhood, in addition to being a type of life,
a life form, and a morphology, with an indiscreet
anatomy and possibly a mysterious physiology . . .
The sodomite had been a temporary aberration;
the homosexual was how a species.
forms, modern sexual arrangements have a
distinctive character which sets them apart from
preexisting systems. In Western Europe and the
United States, industrialization and urbaniza–
tion reshaped the traditional rural and peasant
populations into a new urban industrial and
service workforce. It generated new forms of
state apparatus, reorganized family relations,
altered gender roles, made possible new forms
of identity, produced new varieties of social
inequality, and created new formats for political
and ideological conflict. It also gave rise to a
new sexual system characterized by distinct
types of sexual persons, populations, stratifica–
tion and political conflict.
suggest the appearance of a kind of erotic specia-
tion. However outlandish their explanations, the
early sexologists were witnessing the emergence
of new kinds of erotic individuals and their
aggregation into rudimentary communities. The
modern sexual system contains sets of these
sexual populations, stratified by the operation of
an ideological and social hierarchy. Differences
in social value create friction among these
groups, who engage in political contests to alter
or maintain their place in the ranking. Contem–
porary sexual politics should be reconceptu-
alized in terms of the emergence and on-going
development of this system, its social relations,
teristic modes of conflict.
process of erotic speciation. Homosexual
behavior is always present among humans. But
in different societies and epochs it may be
rewarded or punished, required or forbidden, a
temporary experience or a life-long vocation. In
some New Guinea societies, for example,
homosexual activities are obligatory for all
males. Homosexual acts are considered utterly
masculine, roles are based on age and partners
are determined by kinship status.47 Although
these men engage in extensive homosexual and
pedophile behavior, they are neither homo-
sexuals nor pederasts.
homosexual. In 1631, Mervyn Touchet, Earl of
Castlehaven, was tried and executed for sodomy.
It is clear from the proceedings that the earl was
not understood by himself or anyone else to be a
particular kind of sexual individual. “While from
the twentieth-century viewpoint Lord Castleha-
ven obviously suffered from psychosexual prob-
lems requiring the services of an analyst, from the
seventeenth century viewpoint he had deliber-
ately broken the Law of God and the Laws of
England, and required the simpler services of an
executioner.”48 The earl did not slip into his
tightest doublet and waltz down to the nearest
gay tavern to mingle with his fellow sodomists.
He stayed in his manor house and buggered his
servants. Gay self-awareness, gay pubs, the sense
of group commonality, and even the term homo-
sexual were not part of the earl’s universe.
nobleman are only tangentially related to a
modern gay man, who may migrate from rural
Colorado to San Francisco in order to live in a
gay neighborhood, work in a gay business, and
participate in an elaborate experience that
includes a self-conscious identity, group sol-
idarity, a literature, a press, and a high level of
political activity. In modern, Western, industrial
societies, homosexuality has acquired much of
the institutional structure of an ethnic group.49
quasi-ethnic, nucleated, sexually constituted
communities is to some extent a consequence of
the transfers of population brought about by
in cities, there were increased opportunities for
voluntary communities to form. Homosexually
inclined women and men, who would have been
vulnerable and isolated in most pre-industrial
villages, began to congregate in small corners of
the big cities. Most large nineteenth-century
cities in Western Europe and North America
had areas where men could cruise for other
men. Lesbian communities seem to have coa–
lesced more slowly and on a smaller scale.
Nevertheless, by the 1890s, there were several
cafes in Paris near the Place Pigalle which
catered to a lesbian clientele, and it is likely that
there were similar places in the other major
capitals of Western Europe.
which alerted other interested individuals of
their existence and location. In the United
States, lesbian and gay male territories were well
established in New York, Chicago, San
Francisco, and Los Angeles in the 1950s. Sex–
ually motivated migration to places such as
Greenwich Village had become a sizable socio–
logical phenomenon. By the late 1970s, sexual
migration was occurring on a scale so sig–
nificant that it began to have a recognizable
impact on urban politics in the United States,
with San Francisco being the most notable and
notorious example.50
amorphosis. Prostitution began to change from
a temporary job to a more permanent occupa–
tion as a result of nineteenth-century agitation,
legal reform, and police persecution. Prosti–
tutes, who had been part of the general
working-class population, became increasingly
isolated as members of an outcast group.51
Prostitutes and other sex workers differ from
homosexuals and other sexual minorities. Sex
work is an occupation, while sexual deviation is
an erotic preference. Nevertheless, they share
some common features of social organization.
Like homosexuals, prostitutes are a criminal
sexual population stigmatized on the basis
of sexual activity. Prostitutes and male homo–
sexuals are the primary prey of vice police
everywhere.52 Like gay men, prostitutes occupy
well-demarcated urban territories and battle
with police to defend and maintain those terri-
tions is justified by an elaborate ideology which
classifies them as dangerous and inferior unde–
sirables who are not entitled to be left in peace.
tutes into localized populations, the “moderniza–
tion of sex” has generated a system of continual
sexual ethnogenesis. Other populations of erotic
dissidents – commonly known as the “perver–
sions” or the “paraphilias” – also began to
coalesce. Sexualities keep marching out of the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual and on to the
pages of social history. At present, several other
groups are trying to emulate the successes of
homosexuals. Bisexuals, sado-masochists, indi–
viduals who prefer cross-generational encoun–
ters, transsexuals, and transvestites are all in
various states of community-formation and
identity-acquisition. The perversions are not
proliferating as much as they are attempting to
acquire social space, small businesses, political
resources, and a measure of relief from the
penalties for sexual heresy.
certain kinship ties – from the libertines of the
past. From the end of the eighteenth century to
our own, they circulated through the pores of
society; they were always hounded, but not
always by laws; were often locked up, but not
always in prisons; were sick perhaps, but scandal–
ous, dangerous victims, prey to a strange evil that
also bore the name of vice and sometimes crime.
They were children wise beyond their years,
precocious little girls, ambiguous schoolboys,
dubious servants and educators, cruel or maniacal
husbands, solitary collectors, ramblers with
bizarre impulses; they haunted the houses of
correction, the penal colonies, the tribunals, and
the asylums; they carried their infamy to the
doctors and their sickness to the judges. This was
the numberless family of perverts who were on
friendly terms with delinquents and akin to mad–
men.
Europe and North America brought about new
forms of social stratification. The resultant
inequalities of class are well known and have
been explored in detail by a century of scholar–
racism and ethnic injustice has been well docu–
mented and critically assessed. Feminist thought
has analyzed the prevailing organization of
gender oppression. But although specific erotic
groups, such as militant homosexuals and sex
workers, have agitated against their own mis–
treatment, there has been no equivalent attempt
to locate particular varieties of sexual persecu–
tion within a more general system of sexual
stratification. Nevertheless, such a system
exists, and in its contemporary form it is a
consequence of Western industrialization.
sexual stratification and erotic persecution. The
state routinely intervenes in sexual behavior at a
level that would not be tolerated in other areas of
social life. Most people are unaware of the extent
of sex law, the quantity and qualities of illegal
sexual behavior, and the punitive character of
legal sanctions. Although federal agencies may
be involved in obscenity and prostitution cases,
most sex laws are enacted at the state and
municipal level, and enforcement is largely in the
hands of local police. Thus, there is a tremendous
amount of variation in the laws applicable to any
given locale. Moreover, enforcement of sex laws
varies dramatically with the local political cli–
mate. In spite of this legal thicket, one can make
some tentative and qualified generalizations. My
discussion of sex law does not apply to laws
against sexual coercion, sexual assault, or rape. It
does pertain to the myriad prohibitions on con–
sensual sex and the “status” offenses such as
statutory rape.
sex statutes are universally out of proportion to
any social or individual harm. A single act of
consensual but illicit sex, such as placing one’s
lips upon the genitalia of an enthusiastic part–
ner, is punished in many states with more
severity than rape, battery, or murder. Each
such genital kiss, each lewd caress, is a separate
crime. It is therefore painfully easy to commit
multiple felonies in the course of a single eve–
ning of illegal passion. Once someone is con–
victed of a sex violation, a second performance
of the same act is grounds for prosecution as a
repeat offender, in which case penalties will be
even more severe. In some states, individuals
homosexual love-making on two separate occa-
sions. Once an erotic activity has been pro-
scribed by sex law, the full power of the state
enforces conformity to the values embodied in
those laws. Sex laws are notoriously easy to
pass, as legislators are loath to be soft on vice.
Once on the books, they are extremely difficult
to dislodge.
prevailing moral evaluations of sexual conduct.
Sexual variation per se is more specifically
policed by the mental-health professions, pop-
ular ideology and extra-legal social practice.
Some of the most detested erotic behaviors,
such as fetishism and sado-masochism, are not
as closely or completely regulated by the crimi-
nal justice system as somewhat less stigmatized
practices, such as homosexuality. Areas of sex-
ual behavior come under the purview of the law
when they become objects of social concern and
political uproar. Each sex scare or morality
campaign deposits new regulations as a kind of
fossil record of its passage. The legal sediment is
thickest – and sex law has its greatest potency –
in areas involving obscenity, money, minors,
and homosexuality.
against direct representation of erotic activities.
Current emphasis on the ways in which sexuality
has become a focus of social attention should not
be misused to undermine a critique of this prohi-
bition. It is one thing to create sexual discourse in
the form of psychoanalysis, or in the course of a
morality crusade. It is quite another to depict sex
acts or genitalia graphically. The first is socially
permissible in a way the second is not. Sexual
speech is forced into reticence, euphemism, and
indirection. Freedom of speech about sex is a
glaring exception to the protections of the First
Amendment, which is not even considered appli-
cable to purely sexual statements.
group of statutes that make almost all sexual
commerce illegal. Sex law incorporates a very
strong prohibition against mixing sex and
money, except via marriage. In addition to the
obscenity statutes, other laws impinging on sex-
ual commerce include anti-prostitution laws,
alcoholic beverage regulations, and ordinances
businesses. The sex industry and the gay econ–
omy have both managed to circumvent some of
this legislation, but that process has not been easy
or simple. The underlying criminality of sex-
oriented business keeps it marginal, underdevel–
oped, and distorted. Sex businesses can operate
only in legal loopholes. This tends to keep
investment down and to divert commercial activ–
ity towards the goal of staying out of jail rather
than the delivery of goods and services. It also
renders sex workers more vulnerable to exploita–
tion and bad working conditions. If sex com–
merce were legal, sex workers would be more
able to organize and agitate for higher pay, better
conditions, greater control, and less stigma.
capitalist commerce, such an extreme exclusion
from the market process would hardly be
socially acceptable in other areas of activity.
Imagine, for example, that the exchange of
money for medical care, pharmacological
advice, or psychological counseling were illegal.
Medical practice would take place in a much
less satisfactory fashion if doctors, nurses, drug–
gists, and therapists could be hauled off to jail at
the whim of the local “health squad.” But that
is essentially the situation of prostitutes, sex
workers, and sex entrepreneurs.
ket a revolutionary, if limited, force. He argued
that capitalism was progressive in its dissolution
of pre-capitalist superstition, prejudice and the
bonds of traditional modes of life. “Hence the
great civilizing influence of capital, its produc–
tion of a state of society compared with which
all earlier stages appear to be merely local
progress and idolatry of nature.”54 Keeping sex
from realizing the positive effects of the market
economy hardly makes it socialist.
the boundary between childhood “innocence”
and “adult” sexuality. Rather than recognizing
the sexuality of the young, and attempting to
provide for it in a caring and responsible man–
ner, our culture denies and punishes erotic
interest and activity by anyone under the local
age of consent. The amount of law devoted to
protecting young people from premature expo–
sure to sexuality is breath-taking.
separation of sexual generations is age of con–
sent laws. These laws make no distinction
between the most brutal rape and the most
gentle romance. A 20-year-old convicted of
sexual contact with a 17-year-old will face a
severe sentence in virtually every state, regard–
less of the nature of the relationship.55 Nor are
minors permitted access to “adult” sexuality in
other forms. They are forbidden to see books,
movies, or television in which sexuality is “too”
graphically portrayed. It is legal for young
people to see hideous depictions of violence, but
not to see explicit pictures of genitalia. Sexually
active young people are frequently incarcerated
in juvenile homes, or otherwise punished for
their “precocity.”
tional standards of sexual conduct are often
denied contact with the young, even their own.
Custody laws permit the state to steal the
children of anyone whose erotic activities
appear questionable to a judge presiding over
family court matters. Countless lesbians, gay
men, prostitutes, swingers, sex workers, and
“promiscuous” women have been declared
unfit parents under such provisions. Members
of the teaching professions are closely mon–
itored for signs of sexual misconduct. In most
states, certification laws require that teachers
arrested for sex offenses lose their jobs and
credentials. In some cases, a teacher may be
fired merely because an unconventional lifestyle
becomes known to school officials. Moral turpi–
tude is one of the few legal grounds for revoking
academic tenure.56 The more influence one has
over the next generation, the less latitude one is
permitted in behavior and opinions. The coer–
cive power of the law ensures the transmission
of conservative sexual values with these kinds of
controls over parenting and teaching.
every state is the placement of the penis in the
vagina in wedlock. Consenting adults statutes
ameliorate this situation in fewer than half the
states. Most states impose severe criminal pen–
alties on consensual sodomy, homosexual con–
tact short of sodomy, adultery, seduction, and
adult incest. Sodomy laws vary a great deal. In
some states, they apply equally to homosexual
marital status. Some state courts have ruled that
married couples have the right to commit sod–
omy in private. Only homosexual sodomy is
illegal in some states. Some sodomy statutes
prohibit both anal sex and oral-genital contact.
In other states, sodomy applies only to anal
penetration, and oral sex is covered under
separate statutes.57
that is freely chosen and avidly sought. The
ideology embodied in them reflects the value
hierarchies discussed above. That is, some sex
acts are considered to be so intrinsically vile that
no one should be allowed under any circum–
stance to perform them. The fact that individ–
uals consent to or even prefer them is taken to
be additional evidence of depravity. This system
of sex law is similar to legalized racism. State
prohibition of same-sex contact, anal penetra–
tion, and oral sex make homosexuals a criminal
group denied the privileges of full citizenship.
With such laws, prosecution is persecution.
Even when they are not strictly enforced, as it
usually the case, the members of criminalized
sexual communities remain vulnerable to the
possibility of arbitrary arrest, or to periods
in which they become the objects of social
panic. When those occur, the laws are in place
and police action is swift. Even sporadic
enforcement serves to remind individuals that
they are members of a subject population. The
occasional arrest for sodomy, lewd behavior,
solicitation, or oral sex keeps everyone else
afraid, nervous, and circumspect.
through bureaucratic regulations. Immigration
policy still prohibits the admission of homo–
sexuals (and other sexual “deviates”) into the
United States. Military regulations bar homo–
sexuals from serving in the armed forces.58 The
fact that gay people cannot legally marry means
that they cannot enjoy the same legal rights as
heterosexuals in many matters, including inher–
itance, taxation, protection from testimony in
court, and the acquisition of citizenship for
foreign partners. These are but a few of the
ways that the state reflects and maintains the
social relations of sexuality. The law buttresses
structures of power, codes of behavior and
sex regulation are simply sexual apartheid.
gering, most everyday social control is extra-
legal. Less formal, but very effective social
sanctions are imposed on members of “inferior”
sexual populations.
life in the 1960s, Esther Newton observed that
the homosexual population was divided into
what she called the “overts” and the “coverts.”
“The overts live their entire working lives
within the context of the [gay] community; the
coverts live their entire nonworking lives within
it.”59 At the time of Newton’s study, the gay
community provided far fewer jobs than it does
now, and the non-gay work world was almost
completely intolerant of homosexuality. There
were some fortunate individuals who could be
openly gay and earn decent salaries. But the vast
majority of homosexuals had to choose between
honest poverty and the strain of maintaining a
false identity.
deal, discrimination against gay people is still
rampant. For the bulk of the gay population,
being out on the job is still impossible. Gen-
erally, the more important and higher-paid the
job, the less the society will tolerate overt erotic
deviance. If it is difficult for gay people to find
employment where they do not have to pretend,
it is doubly and triply so for more exotically
sexed individuals. Sado-masochists leave their
fetish clothes at home, and know that they must
be especially careful to conceal their real identi-
ties. An exposed pedophile would probably be
stoned out of the office. Having to maintain
such absolute secrecy is a considerable burden.
Even those who are content to be secretive may
be exposed by some accidental event. Individ-
uals who are erotically unconventional risk
being unemployable or unable to pursue their
chosen careers.
position of social consequence are especially
vulnerable. A sex scandal is the surest method
for hounding someone out of office or destroy-
ing a political career. The fact that important
people are expected to conform to the strictest
standards of erotic conduct discourages sex
tions. Instead, erotic dissidents are channeled
into positions that have less impact on the
mainstream of social activity and opinion.
decade has provided some employment alter–
natives and some relief from job discrimination
against homosexuals. But most of the jobs
provided by the gay economy are low-status
and low-paying. Bartenders, bathhouse attend–
ants, and disc jockeys are not bank officers or
corporate executives. Many of the sexual
migrants who flock to places like San Francisco
are downwardly mobile. They face intense com–
petition for choice positions. The influx of
sexual migrants provides a pool of cheap and
exploitable labor for many of the city’s busi–
nesses, both gay and straight.
sexual conformity. Much social pressure is
brought to bear to deny erotic dissidents the
comforts and resources that families provide.
Popular ideology holds that families are not
supposed to produce or harbor erotic non–
conformity. Many families respond by trying to
reform, punish, or exile sexually offending
members. Many sexual migrants have been
thrown out by their families, and many others
are fleeing from the threat of institutionaliza–
tion. Any random collection of homosexuals,
sex workers, or miscellaneous perverts can pro–
vide heart-stopping stories of rejection and
mistreatment by horrified families. Christmas is
the great family holiday in the United States and
consequently it is a time of considerable tension
in the gay community. Half the inhabitants go
off to their families of origin; many of those
who remain in the gay ghettos cannot do so, and
relive their anger and grief.
on family relations, the stigma of erotic dis-
sidence creates friction at all other levels of
everyday life. The general public helps to penalize
erotic nonconformity when, according to the
values they have been taught, landlords refuse
housing, neighbors call in the police, and hood–
lums commit sanctioned battery. The ideologies
of erotic inferiority and sexual danger decrease
the power of sex perverts and sex workers in
social encounters of all kinds. They have less
ior, less access to police protection, and less
recourse to the courts. Dealings with institutions
and bureaucracies – hospitals, police, coroners,
banks, public officials – are more difficult.
sexual oppression cuts across other modes of
social inequality, sorting out individuals and
groups according to its own intrinsic dynamics. It
is not reducible to, or understandable in terms of,
class, race, ethnicity, or gender. Wealth, white
skin, male gender, and ethnic privileges can
mitigate the effects of sexual stratification. A
rich, white male pervert will generally be less
affected than a poor, black, female pervert. But
even the most privileged are not immune to
sexual oppression. Some of the consequences of
the system of sexual hierarchy are mere nui–
sances. Others are quite grave. In its most serious
manifestations, the sexual system is a Kafka-
esque nightmare in which unlucky victims
become herds of human cattle whose identifica–
tion, surveillance, apprehension, treatment,
incarceration, and punishment produce jobs and
self-satisfaction for thousands of vice police,
prison officials, psychiatrists, and social work–
ers.60
anxieties, and often deals with them not by
seeking the real causes of the problems and
conditions which they demonstrate but by dis–
placing them on to “Folk Devils” in an identified
social group (often the “immoral” or “degen–
erate”). Sexuality has had a peculiar centrality in
such panics, and sexual “deviants” have been
omnipresent scapegoats.
tent structure. There are continuous battles over
the definitions, evaluations, arrangements, pri–
vileges, and costs of sexual behavior. Political
struggle over sex assumes characteristic forms.
experience. Consequently, definitions and
evaluations of sexual conduct are objects of
bitter contest. The confrontations between early
gay liberation and the psychiatric establishment
are the best example of this kind of fight, but
take place between the primary producers of
sexual ideology – the churches, the family, the
shrinks, and the media – and the groups whose
experience they name, distort, and endanger.
another battleground. Lysander Spooner dis–
sected the system of state-sanctioned moral
coercion over a century ago in a text inspired
primarily by the temperance campaigns. In
Vices Are Not Crimes: A Vindication of Moral
Liberty, Spooner argued that government
should protect its citizens against crime, but that
it is foolish, unjust, and tyrannical to legislate
against vice. He discusses rationalizations still
heard today in defense of legalized moralism –
that “vices” (Spooner is referring to drink, but
homosexuality, prostitution, or recreational
drug use may be substituted) lead to crimes, and
should therefore be prevented; that those who
practice “vice” are non compos mentis and
should therefore be protected from their self-
destruction by state-accomplished ruin; and
that children must be protected from suppos–
edly harmful knowledge.62 The discourse on
victimless crimes has not changed much. Legal
struggle over sex law will continue until basic
freedoms of sexual action and expression are
guaranteed. This requires the repeal of all sex
laws except those few that deal with actual, not
statutory, coercion; and it entails the abolition
of vice squads, whose job it is to enforce
legislated morality.
there are less obvious forms of sexual political
conflict which I call the territorial and border
wars. The process by which erotic minorities
form communities and the forces that seek to
inhibit them lead to struggles over the nature
and boundaries of sexual zones.
monitored in small towns and rural areas.
Consequently, metropolitan life continually
beckons to young perverts. Sexual migration
creates concentrated pools of potential partners,
friends, and associates. It enables individuals to
create adult, kin-like networks in which to live.
But there are many barriers which sexual
migrants have to overcome.
are bleak and dangerous. They are portrayed as
impoverished, ugly, and inhabited by psycho-
paths and criminals. New migrants must be
sufficiently motivated to resist the impact of
such discouraging images. Attempts to counter
negative propaganda with more realistic infor-
mation generally meet with censorship, and
there are continuous ideological struggles over
which representations of sexual communities
make it into the popular media.
in the marginal sexual worlds is also suppressed.
Navigational guides are scarce and inaccurate. In
the past, fragments of rumor, distorted gossip,
and bad publicity were the most available clues to
the location of underground erotic communities.
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, better
information became available. Now groups like
the Moral Majority want to rebuild the ideologi-
cal walls around the sexual undergrounds and
make transit in and out of them as difficult as
possible.
moving expenses, and the necessity of finding
new jobs and housing are economic difficulties
that sexual migrants must overcome. These are
especially imposing barriers to the young, who
are often the most desperate to move. There are,
however, routes into the erotic communities
which mark trails through the propaganda
thicket and provide some economic shelter along
the way. Higher education can be a route for
young people from affluent backgrounds. In spite
of serious limitations, the information on sexual
behavior at most colleges and universities is
better than elsewhere, and most colleges and
universities shelter small erotic networks of all
sorts.
easiest way to get the hell out of wherever they
are. Military prohibitions against homosexual-
ity make this a perilous route. Although young
queers continually attempt to use the armed
forces to get out of intolerable hometown situa-
tions and closer to functional gay communities,
they face the hazards of exposure, court martial,
and dishonorable discharge.
nucleate and to occupy some regular, visible
constantly put pressure on local authorities to
contain such areas, reduce their visibility, or to
driye their inhabitants out of town. There are
periodic crackdowns in which local vice squads
are unleashed on the populations they control.
Gay men, prostitutes, and sometimes trans-
vestites are sufficiently territorial and numerous
to engage in intense battles with the cops over
particular streets, parks, and alleys. Such border
wars are usually inconclusive, but they result in
many casualties.
worlds have been marginal and impoverished,
their residents subjected to stress and exploita–
tion. The spectacular success of gay entrepre–
neurs in creating a variegated gay economy has
altered the quality of life within the gay ghetto.
The level of material comfort and social elabo–
ration achieved by the gay community in the last
fifteen years is unprecedented. But it is impor–
tant to recall what happened to similar miracles.
The growth of the black population in New
York in the early part of the twentieth century
led to the Harlem Renaissance, but that period
of creativity was doused by the Depression. The
relative prosperity and cultural florescence of
the gay ghetto may be equally fragile. Like
blacks who fled the South for the metropolitan
North, homosexuals may have merely traded
rural problems for urban ones.
were centrally located but run down. Conse–
quently, they border poor neighborhoods. Gays,
especially low-income gays, end up competing
with other low-income groups for the limited
supply of cheap and moderate housing. In San
Francisco, competition for low-cost housing has
exacerbated both racism and homophobia, and
is one source of the epidemic of street violence
against homosexuals. Instead of being isolated
and invisible in rural settings, city gays are now
numerous and obvious targets for urban frus–
trations.
downtown skyscrapers and high-cost condo–
miniums is causing affordable housing to evap–
orate. Megabuck construction is creating
pressure on all city residents. Poor gay renters
are visible in low-income neighborhoods; multi-
the “homosexual invasion” is a convenient
scapegoat which deflects attention from the
banks, the planning commission, the political
establishment, and the big developers. In San
Francisco, the well-being of the gay community
has become embroiled in the high-stakes politics
of urban real estate.
rial erotic underworlds. In both San Francisco
and New York, high investment construction and
urban renewal have intruded on the main areas of
prostitution, pornography, and leather bars.
Developers are salivating over Times Square, the
Tenderloin, what is left of North Beach, and
South of Market. Anti-sex ideology, obscenity
law, prostitution regulations, and the alcoholic
beverage codes are all being used to dislodge
seedy adult businesses, sex workers, and leather-
men. Within ten years, most of these areas will
have been bulldozed and made safe for conven–
tion centers, international hotels, corporate
headquarters, and housing for the rich.
sex conflict is what Jeffrey Weeks has termed the
“moral panic.” Moral panics are the “political
moment” of sex, in which diffuse attitudes are
channeled into political action and from there
into social change.63 The white slavery hysteria
of the 1880s, the anti-homosexual campaigns of
the 1950s, and the child pornography panic
of the late 1970s were typical moral panics.
mystified, the wars over it are often fought at
oblique angles, aimed at phony targets, con–
ducted with misplaced passions, and are highly,
intensely symbolic. Sexual activities often func–
tion as signifiers for personal and social appre–
hensions to which they have no intrinsic
connection. During a moral panic, such fears
attach to some unfortunate sexual activity or
population. The media become ablaze with
indignation, the public behaves like a rabid
mob, the police are activated, and the state
enacts new laws and regulations. When the
furor has passed, some innocent erotic group
has been decimated, and the state has extended
its power into new areas of erotic behavior.
easy victims who lack the power to defend
controlling their movements and curtailing their
freedoms. The stigma against sexual dissidents
renders them morally defenseless. Every moral
panic has consequences on two levels. The
target population suffers most, but everyone is
affected by the social and legal changes.
lem, because they are aimed at chimeras and
signifiers. They draw on the pre-existing dis–
cursive structure which invents victims in order
to justify treating “vices” as crimes. The crim–
inalization of innocuous behaviors such as
homosexuality, prostitution, obscenity, or recre–
ational drug use, is rationalized by portraying
them as menaces to health and safety, women and
children, national security, the family, or civiliza–
tion itself. Even when activity is acknowledged to
be harmless, it may be banned because it is
alleged to “lead” to something ostensibly worse
(another manifestation of the domino theory).64
Great and mighty edifices have been built on the
basis of such phantasms. Generally, the outbreak
of a moral panic is preceded by an intensification
of such scapegoating.
take much prescience to detect potential moral
panics in two current developments: the attacks
on sado-masochists by a segment of the feminist
movement, and the right’s increasing use of
AIDS to incite virulent homophobia.
always contained an implied, and sometimes
overt, indictment of sado-masochism. The pic–
tures of sucking and fucking that comprise the
bulk of pornography may be unnerving to those
who are not familiar with them. But it is hard to
make a convincing case that such images are
violent. All of the early anti-porn slide shows
used a highly selective sample of S/M imagery to
sell a very flimsy analysis. Taken out of context,
such images are often shocking. This shock
value was mercilessly exploited to scare audi–
ences into accepting the anti-porn perspective.
that sado-masochism is the underlying and
essential “truth” towards which all pornog–
raphy tends. Porn is thought to lead to S/M porn
which in turn is alleged to lead to rape. This is
a just-so story that revitalizes the notion that sex
There is no evidence that the readers of S/M
erotica or practicing sado-masochists commit a
disproportionate number of sex crimes. Anti-
porn literature scapegoats an unpopular sexual
minority and its reading material for social
problems they do not create.
course is inflammatory. It implies that the way
to make the world safer for women is to get rid
of sado-masochism. The use of S/M images in
the movie Not a Love Story was on a moral par
with the use of depictions of black men raping
white women, or of drooling old Jews pawing
young Aryan girls, to incite racist or anti-
Semitic frenzy.
to reappear in reactionary contexts. For exam-
ple, in 1980 and 1981, Pope John Paul II
delivered a series of pronouncements reaffirm-
ing his commitment to the most conservative
and Pauline understandings of human sexuality.
In condemning divorce, abortion, trial mar-
riage, pornography, prostitution, birth control,
unbridled hedonism, and lust, the pope
employed a great deal of feminist rhetoric about
sexual objectification. Sounding like lesbian
feminist polemicist Julia Penelope, His Holiness
explained that “considering anyone in a lustful
way makes that person a sexual object rather
than a human being worthy of dignity.”65
already adopted elements of feminist anti-porn
rhetoric. The anti-S/M discourse developed in the
women’s movement could easily become a vehi-
cle for a moral witch-hunt. It provides a ready-
made defenseless target population. It provides a
rationale for the recriminalization of sexual
materials which have escaped the reach of cur-
rent obscenity laws. It would be especially easy to
pass laws against S/M erotica resembling the
child pornography laws. The ostensible purpose
of such laws would be to reduce violence by
banning so-called violent porn. A focused cam-
paign against the leather menace might also
result in the passage of laws to criminalize S/M
behavior that is not currently illegal. The ulti-
mate result of such a moral panic would be the
legalized violation of a community of harmless
perverts. It is dubious that such a sexual witch-
towards reducing violence against women.
fears of incurable disease mingle with sexual
terror, the resulting brew is extremely volatile. A
century ago, attempts to control syphilis led to
the passage of the Contagious Diseases Acts in
England. The Acts were based on erroneous
medical theories and did nothing to halt the
spread of the disease. But they did make life
miserable for the hundreds of women who were
incarcerated, subjected to forcible vaginal exam–
ination, and stigmatized for life as prostitutes.66
reaching consequences on sex in general, and on
homosexuality in particular. The disease will
have a significant impact on the choices gay
people make. Fewer will migrate to the gay
meccas out of fear of the disease. Those who
already reside in the ghettos will avoid situa–
tions they fear will expose them. The gay
economy, and the political apparatus it sup–
ports, may prove to be evanescent. Fear of AIDS
has already affected sexual ideology. Just when
homosexuals have had some success in throw–
ing off the taint of mental disease, gay people
find themselves metaphorically welded to an
image of lethal physical deterioration. The syn–
drome, its peculiar qualities, and its transmissi-
bility are being used to reinforce old fears that
sexual activity, homosexuality, and promiscuity
led to disease and death.
who contract the syndrome and a calamity for
the gay community. Homophobes have gleefully
hastened to turn this tragedy against its victims.
One columnist has suggested that AIDS has
always existed, that the Biblical prohibitions on
sodomy were designed to protect people from
AIDS, and that AIDS is therefore an appropriate
punishment for violating the Levitical codes.
Using fear of infection as a rationale, local right-
wingers attempted to ban the gay rodeo from
Reno, Nevada. A recent issue of the Moral
Majority Report featured a picture of a “typ–
ical” white family of four wearing surgical
masks. The headline read: “AIDS: HOMO–
SEXUAL DISEASES THREATEN AMERI–
CAN FAMILIES.”67 Phyllis Schlafly has
recently issued a pamphlet arguing that passage
impossible to “legally protect ourselves against
AIDS and other diseases carried by homo–
sexuals.”68 Current right-wing literature calls
for shutting down the gay baths, for a legal ban
on homosexual employment in food-handling
occupations, and for state-mandated prohibi–
tions on blood donations by gay people. Such
policies would require the government to iden–
tify all homosexuals and impose easily recogniz–
able legal and social markers on them.
must deal with the medical misfortune of having
been the population in which a deadly disease
first became widespread and visible. It is worse
to have to deal with the social consequences as
well. Even before the AIDS scare, Greece passed
a law that enabled police to arrest suspected
homosexuals and force them to submit to an
examination for venereal disease. It is likely that
until AIDS and its methods of transmission are
understood, there will be all sorts of proposals
to control it by punishing the gay community
and by attacking its institutions. When the
cause of Legionnaires’ Disease was unknown,
there were no calls to quarantine members of
the American Legion or to shut down their
meeting halls. The Contagious Diseases Acts in
England did little to control syphilis, but they
caused a great deal of suffering for the women
who came under their purview. The history of
panic that has accompanied new epidemics, and
of the casualties incurred by their scapegoats,
should make everyone pause and consider with
extreme scepticism any attempts to justify anti-
gay policy initiatives on the basis of AIDS.69
of cases, sex crime is associated with pornography.
We know that sex criminals read it, are clearly
influenced by it. I believe that, if we can eliminate
the distribution of such items among impressiona–
ble children, we shall greatly reduce our fright–
ening sex-crime rate.
theory of sex, most progressives have turned to
feminism for guidance. But the relationship
sexuality is a nexus of the relationships between
genders, much of the oppression of women is
born by, mediated through, and constituted
within, sexuality. Feminism has always been
vitally interested in sex. But there have been two
strains of feminist thought on the subject. One
tendency has criticized the restrictions on
women’s sexual behavior and denounced the
high costs imposed on women for being sexually
active. This tradition of feminist sexual thought
has called for a sexual liberation that would work
for women as well as for men. The second
tendency has considered sexual liberalization to
be inherently a mere extension of male privilege.
This tradition resonates with conservative, anti-
sexual discourse. With the advent of the anti-
pornography movement, it achieved temporary
hegemony over feminist analysis.
have been the most extensive expression of this
discourse.71 In addition, proponents of this view–
point have condemned virtually every variant of
sexual expression as anti-feminist. Within this
framework, monogamous lesbianism that occurs
within long-term, intimate relationships, and
which does not involve playing with polarized
roles, has replaced married, procreative hetero-
sexuality at the top of the value hierarchy. Heter-
osexuality has been demoted to somewhere in the
middle. Apart from this change, everything else
looks more or less familiar. The lower depths are
occupied by the usual groups and behaviors:
prostitution, transsexuality, sado-masochism,
and cross-generational activities.72 Most gay
male conduct, all casual sex, promiscuity, and
lesbian behavior that does involve roles or kink
or non-monogamy are also censured.73 Even
sexual fantasy during masturbation is
denounced as a phallocentric holdover.74
than a demonology. It presents most sexual
behavior in the worst possible light. Its descrip–
tions of erotic conduct always use the worst
available example as if it were representative. It
presents the most disgusting pornography, the
most exploited forms of prostitution, and the
least palatable or most shocking manifestations
of sexual variation. This rhetorical tactic con–
sistently misrepresents human sexuality in all its
emerges from this literature is unremittingly
ugly.
sive exercise in scapegoating. It criticizes non-
routine acts of love rather than routine acts of
oppression, exploitation, or violence. This
demon sexology directs legitimate anger at
women’s lack of personal safety against inno-
cent individuals, practices, and communities.
Anti-porn propaganda often implies that sexism
originates within the commercial sex industry
and subsequently infects the rest of society. This
is sociologically nonsensical. The sex industry is
hardly a feminist Utopia. It reflects the sexism
that exists in the society as a whole. We need to
analyze and oppose the manifestations of gen-
der inequality specific to the sex industry. But
this is not the same as attempting to wipe out
commercial sex.
masochists and transsexuals are as likely to
exhibit sexist attitudes or behavior as any other
politically random social grouping. But to claim
that they are inherently anti-feminist is sheer
fantasy. A good deal of current feminist lit-
erature attributes the oppression of women to
graphic representations of sex, prostitution, sex
education, sado-masochism, male homosexual-
ity, and transsexualism. Whatever happened to
the family, religion, education, child-rearing
practices, the media, the state, psychiatry, job
discrimination, and unequal pay?
recreates a very conservative sexual morality.
For over a century, battles have been waged over
just how much shame, distress, and punishment
should be incurred by sexual activity. The con-
servative tradition has promoted opposition to
pornography, prostitution, homosexuality, all
erotic variation, sex education, sex research,
abortion, and contraception. The opposing,
pro-sex tradition has included individuals like
Havelock Ellis, Magnus Hirschfeld, Alfred Kin-
sey and Victoria Woodhull, as well as the sex
education movements, organizations of militant
prostitutes and homosexuals, the reproductive
rights movement, and organizations such as the
Sexual Reform League of the 1960s. This mot-
ley collection of sex reformers, sex educators,
sexual and feminist issues. But surely they are
closer to the spirit of modern feminism than are
moral crusaders, the social purity movement,
and anti-vice organizations. Nevertheless, the
current feminist sexual demonology generally
elevates the anti-vice crusaders to positions of
ancestral honor, while condemning the more
liberatory tradition as anti-feminist. In an essay
that exemplifies some of these trends, Sheila
Jeffreys blames Havelock Ellis, Edward Carpen–
ter, Alexandra Kollantai, “believers in the joy of
sex of every possible political persuasion,” and
the 1929 congress of the World League for Sex
Reform for making “a great contribution to the
defeat of militant feminism.”75
avatars have claimed to speak for all feminism.
Fortunately, they do not. Sexual liberation has
been and continues to be a feminist goal. The
women’s movement may have produced some
of the most retrogressive sexual thinking this
side of the Vatican. But it has also produced an
exciting, innovative, and articulate defense of
sexual pleasure and erotic justice. This “pro-
sex” feminism has been spearheaded by lesbians
whose sexuality does not conform to movement
standards of purity (primarily lesbian sado-
masochists and butch/femme dykes), by una-
pologetic heterosexuals and by women who
adhere to classic radical feminism rather than to
the revisionist celebrations of femininity which
have become so common.76 Although the anti-
porn forces have attempted to weed anyone
who disagrees with them out of the movement,
the fact remains that feminist thought about sex
is profoundly polarized.77
unhappy tendency to think the truth lies some–
where in between. Ellen Willis has commented
sarcastically that “the feminist bias is that
women are equal to men and the male chauvin–
ist bias is that women are inferior. The unbiased
view is that the truth lies somewhere in
between.”78 The most recent development in
the feminist sex wars is the emergence of a
“middle” that seeks to evade the dangers of
anti-porn fascism, on the one hand, and a
supposed “anything goes” libertarianism, on
the other.79 Although it is hard to criticize a
draw attention to some incipient problems.80
characterization of the poles of the debate,
construing both sides as equally extremist.
According to B. Ruby Rich, “the desire for a
language of sexuality has led feminists into
locations (pornography, sadomasochism) too
narrow or overdetermined for a fruitful discus–
sion. Debate has collapsed into a rumble.”81
True, the fights between Women Against Por–
nography (WAP) and lesbian sado-masochists
have resembled gang warfare. But the responsi–
bility for this lies primarily with the anti-porn
movement, and its refusal to engage in prin–
cipled discussion. S/M lesbians have been forced
into a struggle to maintain their membership in
the movement, and to defend themselves against
slander. No major spokeswoman for lesbian
S/M has argued for any kind of S/M supremacy,
or advocated that everyone should be a sado-
masochist. In addition to self-defense, S/M les–
bians have called for appreciation for erotic
diversity and more open discussion of sexual–
ity.82 Trying to find a middle course between
WAP and Samois is a bit like saying that the
truth about homosexuality lies somewhere
between the positions of the Moral Majority
and those of the gay movement.
ginalize radicals, and to attempt to buy accep–
tance for a moderate position by portraying
others as extremists. Liberals have done this for
years to communists. Sexual radicals have
opened up the sex debates. It is shameful to
deny their contribution, misrepresent their posi–
tions and further their stigmatization.
want to purge sexual dissidents, the sexual
moderates are willing to defend the rights of
erotic non-conformists to political participa–
tion. Yet this defense of political rights is linked
to an implicit system of ideological condescen–
sion.83 The argument has two major parts. The
first is an accusation that sexual dissidents have
not paid close enough attention to the meaning,
sources, or historical construction of their sexu–
ality. This emphasis on meaning appears to
function in much the same way that the ques–
tion of etiology has functioned in discussions of
masochism, prostitution, or boy-love are taken
to be mysterious and problematic in some way
that more respectable sexualities are not. The
search for a cause is a search for something that
could change so that these “problematic” eroti–
cisms would simply not occur. Sexual militants
have replied to such exercises that although the
question of etiology or cause is of intellectual
interest, it is not high on the political agenda
and that, moreover, the privileging of such
questions is itself a regressive political choice.
focuses on questions of consent. Sexual radicals
of all varieties have demanded the legal and social
legitimation of consenting sexual behavior. Fem–
inists have criticized them for ostensibly finessing
questions about “the limits of consent” and
“structural constraints” on consent.84 Although
there are deep problems with the political dis–
course of consent, and although there are cer–
tainly structural constraints on sexual choice,
this criticism has been consistently misapplied in
the sex debates. It does not take into account the
very specific semantic content that consent has in
sex law and sex practice.
does not distinguish between consensual and
coercive behavior. Only rape law contains such
a distinction. Rape law is based on the assump–
tion, correct in my view, that heterosexual
activity may be freely chosen or forcibly
coerced. One has the legal right to engage in
heterosexual behavior as long as it does not fall
under the purview of other statutes and as long
as it is agreeable to both parties.
acts. Sodomy laws, as I mentioned above, are
based on the assumption that the forbidden acts
are an “abominable and detestable crime
against nature.” Criminality is intrinsic to the
acts themselves, no matter what the desires of
the participants. “Unlike rape, sodomy or an
unnatural or perverted sexual act may be com–
mitted between two persons both of whom
consent, and, regardless of which is the aggres–
sor, both may be prosecuted.”85 Before the
consenting adults statute was passed in Cal–
ifornia in 1976, lesbian lovers could have been
prosecuted for committing oral copulation. If
were equally guilty.86
fashion. Contrary to popular mythology, the
incest statutes have little to do with protecting
children from rape by close relatives. The incest
statutes themselves prohibit marriage or sexual
intercourse between adults who are closely
related. Prosecutions are rare, but two were
reported recently. In 1979, a 19-year-old
Marine met his 42-year-old mother, from
whom he had been separated at birth. The two
fell in love and got married. They were charged
and found guilty of incest, which under Virginia
law carries a maximum ten-year sentence. Dur-
ing their trial, the Marine testified, “I love her
very much. I feel that two people who love each
other should be able to live together.”87 In
another case, a brother and sister who had been
raised separately met and decided to get mar-
ried. They were arrested and pleaded guilty to
felony incest in return for probation. A condi-
tion of probation was that they not live together
as husband and wife. Had they not accepted,
they would have faced twenty years in prison.88
of aggravated assault for a whipping admin-
istered in an S/M scene. There was no complain-
ing victim. The session had been filmed and he
was prosecuted on the basis of the film. The
man appealed his conviction by arguing that he
had been involved in a consensual sexual
encounter and had assaulted no one. In rejecting
his appeal, the court ruled that one may not
consent to an assault or battery “except in a
situation involving ordinary physical contact or
blows incident to sports such as football, box-
ing, or wrestling.”89 The court went on to note
that the “consent of a person without legal
capacity to give consent, such as a child or
insane person, is ineffective,” and that “It is a
matter of common knowledge that a normal
person in full possession of his mental faculties
does not freely consent to the use, upon himself,
of force likely to produce great bodily injury.”90
Therefore, anyone who would consent to a
whipping would be presumed non compos men-
tis and legally incapable of consenting. S/M sex
generally involves a much lower level of force
than the average football game, and results in
court ruled that football players are sane,
whereas masochists are not.
interpretations such as the one above clearly
interfere with consensual behavior and impose
criminal penalties on it. Within the law, consent is
a privilege enjoyed only by those who engage in
the highest-status sexual behavior. Those who
enjoy low-status sexual behavior do not have the
legal right to engage in it. In addition, economic
sanctions, family pressures, erotic stigma, social
discrimination, negative ideology, and the pau–
city of information about erotic behavior, all
serve to make it difficult for people to make
unconventional sexual choices. There certainly
are structural constraints that impede free sexual
choice, but they hardly operate to coerce anyone
into being a pervert. On the contrary, they
operate to coerce everyone toward normality.
diversity by assuming that some sexual acts are so
disgusting that no one would willingly perform
them. Therefore, the reasoning goes, anyone who
does so must have been forced or fooled. Even
constructivist sexual theory has been pressed into
the service of explaining away why otherwise
rational individuals might engage in variant
sexual behavior. Another position that is not yet
fully formed uses the ideas of Foucault and Weeks
to imply that the “perversions” are an especially
unsavory or problematic aspect of the construc–
tion of modern sexuality.91 This is yet another
version of the notion that sexual dissidents are
victims of the subtle machinations of the social
system. Weeks and Foucault would not accept
such an interpretation, since they consider all
sexuality to be constructed, the conventional no
less than the deviant.
refuse to acknowledge that sexual dissidents are
as conscious and free as any other group of
sexual actors. If deviants are not responding to
the manipulations of the social system, then
perhaps the source of their incomprehensible
choices can be found in a bad childhood,
unsuccessful socialization, or inadequate
identity formation. In her essay on erotic
domination, Jessica Benjamin draws upon psy–
choanalysis and philosophy to explain why
distorted, unsatisfactory, numb, purposeless,
and an attempt to “relieve an original effort at
differentiation that failed.”92 This essay sub–
stitutes a psycho-philosophical inferiority for
the more usual means of devaluing dissident
eroticism. One reviewer has already construed
Benjamin’s argument as showing that sado–
masochism is merely an “obsessive replay of the
infant power struggle.”93
rights of perverts but which seeks to understand
their “alienated” sexuality is certainly prefera–
ble to the WAP-style bloodbaths. But for the
most part, the sexual moderates have not con–
fronted their discomfort with erotic choices that
differ from their own. Erotic chauvinism cannot
be redeemed by tarting it up in Marxist drag,
sophisticated constructivist theory, or retro-
psychobabble.
right, left or center – eventually attains dom–
inance, the existence of such a rich discussion is
evidence that the feminist movement will
always be a source of interesting thought about
sex. Nevertheless, I want to challenge the
assumption that feminism is or should be the
privileged site of a theory of sexuality. Feminism
is the theory of gender oppression. To assume
automatically that this makes it the theory of
sexual oppression is to fail to distinguish
between gender, on the one hand, and erotic
desire, on the other.
two very different meanings. It means gender and
gender identity, as in “the female sex” or “the
male sex.” But sex also refers to sexual activity,
lust, intercourse, and arousal, as in “to have sex.”
This semantic merging reflects a cultural assump–
tion that sexuality is reducible to sexual inter–
course and that it is a function of the relations
between women and men. The cultural fusion of
gender with sexuality has given rise to the idea
that a theory of sexuality may be derived directly
out of a theory of gender.
used the concept of a sex/gender system, defined
as a “set of arrangements by which a society
transforms biological sexuality into products of
human activity.” 941 went on to argue that” Sex as
fantasy, concepts of childhood – is itself a social
product.”95 I did not distinguish between lust
and gender, treating both as modalities of the
same underlying social process.
literature on kin-based systems of social organi–
zation. It appeared to me at the time that gender
and desire were systemically intertwined in such
social formations. This may or may not be an
accurate assessment of the relationship between
sex and gender in tribal organizations. But it is
surely not an adequate formulation for sexual–
ity in Western industrial societies. As Foucault
has pointed out, a system of sexuality has
emerged out of earlier kinship forms and has
acquired significant autonomy:
Western societies created and deployed a new
apparatus which was superimposed on the pre–
vious one, and which, without completely sup–
planting the latter, helped to reduce its
importance. I am speaking of the deployment of
sexuality . . . For the first [kinship], what is perti–
nent is the link between partners and definite
statutes; the second [sexuality] is concerned with
the sensations of the body, the quality of pleas–
ures, and the nature of impressions.96
taken place in the context of gender relations.
Part of the modern ideology of sex is that lust is
the province of men, purity that of women. It is
no accident that pornography and the perver–
sions have been considered part of the male
domain. In the sex industry, women have been
excluded from most production and consump–
tion, and allowed to participate primarily as
workers. In order to participate in the “perver–
sions,” women have had to overcome serious
limitations on their social mobility, their eco–
nomic resources, and their sexual freedoms.
Gender affects the operation of the sexual
system, and the sexual system has had gender-
specific manifestations. But although sex and
gender are related, they are not the same thing,
and they form the basis of two distinct arenas of
social practice.
Women,” I am now arguing that it is essential to
separate gender and sexuality analytically to
ence. This goes against the grain of much contem-
porary feminist thought, which treats sexuality
as a derivation of gender. For instance, lesbian
feminist ideology has mostly analyzed the
oppression of lesbians in terms of the oppression
of women. However, lesbians are also oppressed
as queers and perverts, by the operation of
sexual, not gender, stratification. Although it
pains many lesbians to think about it, the fact is
that lesbians have shared many of the socio-
logical features and suffered from many of the
same social penalties as have gay men, sado-
masochists, transvestites, and prostitutes.
explicit theoretical attempt to subsume sexual-
ity under feminist thought. According to Mac-
Kinnon, “Sexuality is to feminism what work is
to Marxism . . . the molding, direction, and
expression of sexuality organizes society into
two sexes, women and men.”97 This analytic
strategy in turn rests on a decision to “use sex
and gender relatively interchangeably.”98 It is
this definitional fusion that I want to chal-
lenge.99
of the differentiation of contemporary feminist
thought from Marxism. Marxism is probably
the most supple and powerful conceptual sys-
tem extant for analyzing social inequality. But
attempts to make Marxism the sole explanatory
system for all social inequalities have been
dismal exercises. Marxism is most successful in
the areas of social life for which it was originally
developed – class relations under capitalism.
en’s movement, a theoretical conflict took place
over the applicability of Marxism to gender
stratification. Since Marxist theory is relatively
powerful, it does in fact detect important and
interesting aspects of gender oppression. It
works best for those issues of gender most
closely related to issues of class and the organi-
zation of labor. The issues more specific to the
social structure of gender were not amenable to
Marxist analysis.
radical theory of sexual oppression is similar.
Feminist conceptual tools were developed to
detect and analyze gender-based hierarchies. To
ifications, feminist theory has some explanatory
power. But as issues become less those of gender
and more those of sexuality, feminist analysis
becomes misleading and often irrelevant. Fem–
inist thought simply lacks angles of vision which
can fully encompass the social organization of
sexuality. The criteria of relevance in feminist
thought do not allow it to see or assess critical
power relations in the area of sexuality.
hierarchy must be incorporated into a radical
theory of sex, and the critique of sexual oppres–
sion should enrich feminism. But an autono–
mous theory and politics specific to sexuality
must be developed.
Marxism as the last word in social theory.
Feminism is no more capable than Marxism of
being the ultimate and complete account of all
social inequality. Nor is feminism the residual
theory which can take care of everything to
which Marx did not attend. These critical tools
were fashioned to handle very specific areas of
social activity. Other areas of social life, their
forms of power, and their characteristic modes
of oppression, need their own conceptual imple–
ments. In this essay, I have argued for theoret–
ical as well as sexual pluralism.
(Colette100)
into systems of power, which reward and encour–
age some individuals and activities, while punish–
ing and suppressing others. Like the capitalist
organization of labor and its distribution of
rewards and powers, the modern sexual system
has been the object of political struggle since it
emerged and as it has evolved. But if the disputes
between labor and capital are mystified, sexual
conflicts are completely camouflaged.
at the end of the nineteenth century and in the
early decades of the twentieth was a refracted
response to the emergence of the modern erotic
system. During that period, new erotic commu-
homosexual or a lesbian in a way it had not
been previously. Mass-produced erotica became
available, and the possibilities for sexual com–
merce expanded. The first homosexual rights
organizations were formed, and the first analy–
ses of sexual oppression were articulated.101
backlash to the expansion of sexual commu–
nities and possibilities which took place during
World War II.102 During the 1950s, gay rights
organizations were established, the Kinsey
reports were published, and lesbian literature
flourished. The 1950s were a formative as well
as a repressive era.
offensive is in part a reaction to the sexual
liberalization of the 1960s and early 1970s.
Moreover, it has brought about a unified and
self-conscious coalition of sexual radicals. In
one sense, what is now occurring is the emer–
gence of a new sexual movement, aware of new
issues and seeking a new theoretical basis. The
sex wars out on the streets have been partly
responsible for provoking a new intellectual
focus on sexuality. The sexual system is shifting
once again, and we are seeing many symptoms
of its change.
ously. A person is not considered immoral, is not
sent to prison, and is not expelled from her or his
family, for enjoying spicy cuisine. But an individ–
ual may go through all this and more for enjoying
shoe leather. Ultimately, of what possible social
significance is it if a person likes to masturbate
over a shoe? It may even be non-consensual, but
since we do not ask permission of our shoes to
wear them, it hardly seems necessary to obtain
dispensation to come on them.
is not taken seriously enough. There is systematic
mistreatment of individuals and communities on
the basis of erotic taste or behavior. There are
serious penalties for belonging to the various
sexual occupational castes. The sexuality of the
young is denied, adult sexuality is often treated
like a variety of nuclear waste, and the graphic
representation of sex takes place in a mire of legal
and social circumlocution. Specific populations
bear the brunt of the current system of erotic
that affects everyone.
sexual suffering. They have also been a time of
ferment and new possibility. It is up to all of us
to try to prevent more barbarism and to encour–
age erotic creativity. Those who consider them–
selves progressive need to examine their
preconceptions, update their sexual educations
and acquaint themselves with the existence and
operation of sexual hierarchy. It is time to
recognize the political dimensions of erotic life.
go back to my graduate study at the University of
Michigan in the early 1970s, particularly a course on
the urbanization of Europe taught by Charles Tilly in
1973, and courses by Kent Flannery on Near Eastern
pre-history (1971) and Mesoamerican Archeology
(1972). It developed further in a rich conversation
about sexuality, politics, and history that took place
in the San Francisco area in the late 1970s and early
1980s, particularly in the Lesbian and Gay History
Project and a feminist study group on sexuality and
history. Among those participating at various points
in this conversation were Allan Berube, Jeffrey Escof-
fier, Ellen Dubois, Amber Hollibaugh, Mary Ryan,
Judith Stacey, Kay Trimberger, Pat Califia, Martha
Vicinus, Eric Garber, Estelle Freedman, Willie
Walker, Carole Vance, and John D’Emilio. Other
people who contributed insights or information were
Rayna Rapp, Judith Walkowitz, Daniel Tsang, Cyn–
thia Astuto, David Sachs, Ralph Bruno, Kent Gerard,
Barbara Kerr, and Michael Shively. Commenting on
the manuscript at various points were Jeanne Berg–
man, Sally Binford, Lynn Eden, Laura Engelstein, Jeff
Escoffier, Mark Leger, and Carole Vance. I owe
special thanks to Ellen Willis, whose surgically pre–
cise and unerringly brilliant editorial skills were
lavished on this essay, to its immense benefit and
improved clarity. None of these individuals should be
held responsible for my opinions and comments, but
I am profoundly grateful to them all for inspiration,
information, and assistance.
homosexual, sex worker, and pervert. Contrary to
much contemporary usage which restricts “homo–
sexual” to males, I use “homosexual” to refer to both
women and men. If I want to be more specific, I use
“lesbian” or “gay male.” “Sex worker” is intended to
be more inclusive than “prostitute,” in order to
worker thus includes erotic dancers, strippers, porn
models, nude women who will talk to a customer via
telephone hook-up and can be seen but not touched,
phone sex partners, and the various other employees
of sex businesses such as receptionists, janitors, and
barkers. Obviously, it also includes prostitutes, hus-
tlers, and “male models.” I use the term “pervert” as
a shorthand for all the stigmatized sexual orienta-
tions. It used to commonly include male and female
homosexuality as well but as these become less
disreputable, the term has increasingly referred to the
other “deviations.” Terms such as “pervert” and
“deviant” have, in general use, a connotation of
disapproval, disgust, dislike or which I do not share.
I am using these terms in a denotative fashion, and do
not intend them to convey any disapproval on my
part.
Disorders in Two Little Girls,” in Francois
Peraldi (ed.), Poly sexuality, Semiotext(e) IV:
(1981): 31, 36.
Ecstasy on the Battlefield: Danger and Pleasure
in Nineteenth Century Feminist Sexual
Thought,” Feminist Studies 9: 1 (spring 1983);
Steven Marcus, The Other Victorians (New
York: New American Library, 1974); Mary
Ryan, “The Power of Women’s Networks: A
Case Study of Female Moral Reform in Amer-
ica,” Feminist Studies 5: 1 (1979); Judith R.
Walkowitz, Prostitution and Victorian Society,
(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1980);
Judith R. Walkowitz, “Male Vice and Feminist
Virtue: Feminism and the Politics of Prostitution
in Nineteenth-Century Britain,” History Work-
shop Journal, 13 (spring 1982); Jeffrey Weeks,
Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of
Sexuality Since 1800 (New York: Longman,
1981).
Known Life (New York: Harper Colophon,
1976); Marcus, op. cit.; Weeks, op. cit. especially
pp. 48–52; Zambaco, op. cit.
Norma Clevenger (eds), Sex Code of California
(Sacramento: Planned Parenthood Affiliates of
California, 1977): 113.
6 Walkowitz, “Male Vice and Feminist Virtue”,
Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon and its
aftermath (83–5) is illuminating.
85.
Report of the Special Commission Investigating
the Prevalence of Sex Crimes, 1947; State of
New Hampshire, Report of the Interim Com–
mission of the State of New Hampshire to Study
the Cause and Prevention of Serious Sex Crimes,
1949; City of New York, Report to the Gover–
nor on a Study of 102 Sex Offenders at Sing Sing
Prison, 1950; Samuel Hartwell, A Citizen’s
Handbook of Sexual Abnormalities and the
Mental Hygiene Approach to Their Prevention,
State of Michigan, 1950; State of Michigan,
Report of the Governor’s Study Commission on
the Deviated Criminal Sex Offender, 1951. This
is merely a sampler.
The Threat of the Sexual Psychopath in Amer–
ica, 1935–1960,” paper presented at the Annual
Meeting of the American Historical Association,
San Francisco, December 1983.
Francisco,” Body Politic (April 1981); Allan
Berube, “Marching to a Different Drummer,”
Advocate (October 15, 1981); John D’Emilio,
Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities: The Mak–
ing of the Homosexual Minority in the United
States, 1940–1970 (Chicago: University of Chi–
cago Press, 1983); Jonathan Katz, Gay Amer–
ican History (New York: Thomas Y Crowell,
1976).
communication.
Collier, 1968: 14.1 am indebted to Allan Berube
for calling my attention to this incident.
D’Emilio, op. cit.; John D’Emilio, “Gay Politics,
Gay Community: San Francisco’s Experience,”
Socialist Review (January–February 1981).
additional research. A local crackdown at the
University of Michigan is documented in Daniel
Tsang, “Gay Ann Arbor Purges,” Midwest Gay
Academic Journal: 1 (1977); and Daniel Tsang,
“Ann Arbor Gay Purges,” part 2, Midwest Gay
Academic Journal 1: 2 (1977). At the University
of Michigan, the number of faculty dismissed for
alleged homosexuality appears to rival the num–
ber fired for alleged communist tendencies. It
would be interesting to have figures comparing
the number of professors who lost their posi–
tions during this period due to sexual and
political offenses. On regulatory reform, many
states passed laws during this period prohibiting
the sale of alcoholic beverages to “known sex
perverts” or providing that bars which catered
to “sex perverts” be closed. Such a law was
passed in California in 1955, and declared
unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court in
1959 (Allan Berube, personal communication).
which states passed such statutes, the dates of
their enactment, the discussion that preceded
them, and how many are still on the books. On
the persecution of other erotic populations,
evidence indicates that John Willie and Irvin
Klaw, the two premier producers and distribu–
tors of bondage erotica in the United States from
the late 1940s through the early 1960s, encoun–
tered frequent police harassment and that Klaw,
at least, was affected by a congressional inves–
tigation conducted by the Kefauver Committee.
I am indebted to personal communication from
J. B. Rund for information on the careers of
Willie and Klaw. Published sources are scarce,
but see John Willie, The Adventures of Sweet
Gwendoline (New York: Belier Press, 1974);
J. B. Rund, “Preface,” Bizarre Comix 8 (New
York: Belier Press, 1977); J. B. Rund, “Preface,”
Bizarre Fotos 1 (New York: Belier Press, 1978);
and J. B. Rund, “Preface,” Bizarre Katalogs 1
(New York: Belier Press, 1979). It would be
useful to have more systematic information on
legal shifts and police activity affecting non-gay
erotic dissidence.
Ring: The Child Predators,” “Child Sex: Square
in New Town Tells it All,” US Orders Hearings
On Child Pornography: Rodino Calls Sex
Racket an “Outrage,” “Hunt Six Men, Twenty
Boys in Crackdown,” Chicago Tribune (May
16, 1977); “Dentist Seized in Child Sex Raid:
Carey to Open Probe,” “How Ruses Lure
Victims to Child Pornographers,” Chicago
Tribune (May 17, 1977); “Child Pornographers
Thrive on Legal Confusion,” “US Raids Hit
Porn Sellers,” Chicago Tribune May 18,
1977).
panic” see Pat Califia, “The Great Kiddy Porn
Scare of ’77 and Its Aftermath,” Advocate Octo–
ber 16, 1980); Pat Califia, “A Thorny Issue Splits
a Movement,” Advocate (October 30, 1980);
Mitzel, The Boston Sex Scandal (Boston: Glad
Day Books, 1980); Gayle Rubin, “Sexual Poli–
tics, the New Right, and the Sexual Fringe,” in
Daniel Tsang (ed.), The Age Taboo (Boston:
Alyson Publications, 1981). On the issue of
cross-generational relationships, see also Roger
Moody, Indecent Assault (London: Word Is Out
Press, 1980); Tom O’Carroll, Paedophilia: The
Radical Case (London: Peter Owen, 1980);
Tsang, The Age Taboo; and Paul Wilson, The
Man They Called a Monster (New South Wales:
Cassell Australia, 1981).
Francisco Chronicle (November 15, 1983): 14.
Conversation with Jacqueline Livingstone,”
Christopher Street (May 1980); “Jacqueline
1983).
Weinberg (ed.), Sex Research: Studies from the
Kinsey Institute (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1976).
Pornography in the Schools (An Expose) (New
Orleans: Free Men Speak, 1969); Dr. Gordon V.
Drake, SIECUS: Corrupter of Youth (Tulsa,
Oklahoma: Christian Crusade Publications,
1969).
Angeles: Impact Publishers 1969).
ment,” Harper’s (October 1977).
War Ideology: The Case of the Committee on the
Present Danger,” in Richard Fagen (ed.), Capi–
talism and the State in US–Latin American
Relations (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1979).
Motel Room,” San Francisco Chronicle (Jan–
uary 22 1981): 41; Linda Gordon and Allen
Hunter, “Sex, Family, and the New Right,”
Radical America (Winter 1977–8); Sasha
Gregory-Lewis, “The Neo-Right Political Appa–
ratus,” Advocate (February 8, 1977); Sasha
Gregory-Lewis, “Right Wing Finds New Organ–
izing Tactic,” Advocate (June 23, 1977); Sasha
Gregory-Lewis, “Unravelling the Anti-Gay Net–
work,” Advocate (September 7, 1977); Andrew
Kopkind, “America’s New Right,” New Times
(September 30, 1977); Rosalind Pollack Petch-
esky, “Anti-abortion, Anti-feminism, and the
Rise of the New Right,” Feminist Studies 7: 2
(Summer 1981).
ica,” Nation (May 23, 1981).
1950): 310.
tosh, “The Homosexual Role,” Social Problems
16: 2 (fall 1968); the idea has been developed in
Jeffrey Weeks, Coming Out: Homosexual Poli–
tics in Britain from the Nineteenth Century to
the Present (New York: Quartet, 1977), and in
Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society; see also
D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities;
and Gayle Rubin, “Introduction” to Renee
Vivien, A Woman Appeared to Me (Weatherby
Lake, MO: Naiad Press, 1979).
Homosexuality,” Radical History Review 20
(spring/summer 1979).
and Walkowitz,” Male Vice and Female Virtue.”
York: Pantheon, 1978).
found in Robert Padgug, “Sexual Matters: On
Conceptualizing Sexuality in History,” Radical
History Review 20 (spring/summer 1979).
Left Review 62 (July–August 1970). In this
conversation, Lvi-Strauss calls his position “a
Kantianism without a transcendental subject.”
35 See the discussion in Weeks, Sex, Politics and
36 See Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society: 22.
37 See, for example, “Pope Praises Couples for Self-
1980): 5; “Pope Says Sexual Arousal Isn’t a Sin
If It’s Ethical,” San Francisco Chronicle
(November 6,1980): 33; “Pope Condemns ‘Car-
nal Lust’ As Abuse of Human Freedom,” San
Francisco Chronicle (January 15, 1981): 2;
“Pope Again Hits Abortion, Birth Control,” San
Francisco Chronicle (January 16,1981): 13; and
“Sexuality, Not Sex in Heaven,” San Francisco
Chronicle (December 3, 1981): 50. See also note
65 below.
Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1969: 46.
40 American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic
Disorders, 3rd edn (Washington, DC: American
Psychiatric Association).
transgender behavior and individuals in terms of
the sex system rather than the gender system,
although transvestites and transsexuals are
clearly transgressing gender boundaries. I did so
because transgendered people are stigmatized,
harassed, persecuted, and generally treated like
sex “deviants” and perverts. But clearly this is an
instance of the ways in which my classificatory
system does not quite encompass the existing
complexities. The schematic renderings of sex-
ual hierarchies in Figures 10.1 and 10.2 were
oversimplified to make a point. Although the
point remains valid, the actual power relation-
ships of sexual variation are considerably more
complicated.
Martin, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male
(Philadelphia: W B. Saunders, 1948); Alfred
Kinsey, Wardell Pomeroy, Clyde Martin, and
Paul Gebhard, Sexual Behavior in the Human
Female (Philadelphia: W B. Saunders, 1953).
ance (New York: Harper & Row, 1967); John
Gagnon and William Simon, The Sexual Scene
(Chicago: Transaction Books, Aldine, 1970);
John Gagnon, Human Sexualities (Glenview,
ILL: Scott, Foresman, 1977).
45 Note 1992: The intention of this section was not
scientific objectivity for sexology, and certainly
was not to privilege biological models as “tools
[for] social inquiry” (Mariana Valverde,
“Beyond Gender Dangers and Private Pleasures:
Theory and Ethics in the Sex Debates,” Feminist
Studies 15: 2 (summer 1989): 237–54). It was to
suggest that sexology would be a rich vein to
mine for analyses of sexuality, although it never
occurred to me that those who did so would fail
to subject sexological texts to analytic scrutiny.
I did intend the claim that sexological studies
have more direct relevance than the endless
rehashings of Freud and Lacan on which so
much feminist thought on sex has been based.
Such topographies are a bit like European maps
of the world before 1492. They suffer from
empirical deprivation. I am not a believer in
“facts” unmediated by cultural structures of
understanding. However, I do believe that social
science theories which fail to recognize, assim–
ilate and account for the relevant information
are useful primarily as calisthenics. Outside of
mathematics most theory is anchored in some set
of privileged data, and psychoanalytic feminism
is hardly an exception. For an exemplary femin–
ist history of twentieth-century American sexol–
ogy see Janice Irvine, Disorders of Desire
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990).
47 Gilbert Herdt, Guardians of the Flutes (New
“Witchcraft and Sexual Relations,” in Paula
Brown and Georgeda Buchbinder (eds), Man
and Woman in the New Guinea Highlands
(Washington, DC: American Anthropological
Association, 1976); Gayle Rubin, “Coconuts:
Aspects of Male/Female Relationships in New
Guinea,” unpublished MS, 1974; Gayle Rubin,
review of Guardians of the Flutes, Advocate
(December 23, 1982); J. Van Baal, Dema (The
Hague: Nijhoff, 1966); F. E. Williams, Papuans
of the Trans-Fly (Oxford: Clarendon, 1936).
tudes Toward Deviant Sex,” Journal of Inter–
disciplinary History (spring 1971): 465.
tion of a Quasi-Ethnic Community,” Interna–
tional Review of Modern Sociology
(July–December 1979).
Berube, “Behind the Spectre of San Francisco”;
Berube, “Marching to a Different Drummer”;
D’Emilio, “Gay Politics, Gay Community”;
D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities;
Foucault; Hansen; Katz; Weeks, Coming Out;
and Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society.
gay bars, gay baths, adult book stores, the
producers and distributors of commercial
erotica, or swing clubs.
54 Karl Marx, in David McLellan (ed.), The Grun-
55 Clark Norton, “Sex in America,” Inquiry (Octo–
much current sex law and should be required
reading for anyone interested in sex.
57 Sarah Senefeld Beserra, Nancy M. Jewel, Mel–
(eds), Sex Code of California, Public Education
and Research Committee of California (1973):
163–8. This earlier edition of the Sex Code of
California preceeded the 1976 consenting adults
statute and consequently gives a better overview
of sodomy laws.
ship between gays and the United States military,
see Allan Berube, Coming Out Under Fire: The
History of Gay Men and Women in World War
II (New York: The Free Press, 1990).
nators in America (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall, 1972): 21, emphasis in the origi–
nal.
40–53, has an excellent discussion of gay
oppression in the 1950s which covers many of
the areas I have mentioned. The dynamics he
describes, however, are operative in modified
forms for other erotic populations, and in other
periods. The specific model of gay oppression
needs to be generalized to apply, with appro–
priate modifications, to other sexual groups.
62 Lysander Spooner, Vices Are Not Crimes: A
Tanstaafl Press, 1977).
useful discussion in Weeks, Sex, Politics and
Society: 14–15.
discourse fits right into the tradition of justifying
attempts at moral control by claiming that such
action will protect women and children from
violence.
Francisco Chronicle (November 13, 1980): 8;
see also note 37 above. Julia Penelope argues
that “we do not need anything that labels itself
purely sexual” and that “fantasy, as an aspect of
sexuality, may be a phallocentric ‘need’ from
which we are not yet free” in “And Now For the
Really Hard Questions,” Sinister Wisdom 15
(fall 1980): 103.
Society.
indebted to Allan Bérubé for calling my atten–
tion to this image.
cate (8 December, 1983): 60.
sequelae has mushroomed since this essay was
published. A few of the important texts are
Douglas Crimp, AIDS: Cultural Analysis, Cul–
tural Activism (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1988); Douglas Crimp with Adam Rolston, AIDS
Demographics (Seattle Bay Press, 1990); Eliz–
abeth Fee and Daniel M. Fox, AIDS: The Burdens
of History (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1988); Elizabeth Fee and Daniel M. Fox,
AIDS: The Making of a Chronic Disease (Berke–
ley: University of California Press, 1992); Cindy
Patton, Sex and Germs: The Politics of AIDS
(Boston: South End Press, 1985); Cindy Patton,
Inventing AIDS (New York: Routledge, 1990);
Simon Watney, Policing Desire: Pornography,
AIDS, and the Media (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1987); Erica Carter and Simon
Watney, Taking Liberties: AIDS and Cultural
Politics (London: Serpent’s Tail, 1989); Tessa
Boffin and Sunil Gupta, Ecstatic Antibodies (Lon–
don: Rivers Oram Press, 1990); and James Kin-
sella, Covering the Plague: AIDS and the
American Media (New Brunswick: Rutgers Uni–
versity Press, 1989).
Pornography (New York: Dell, 1965): 31.
the Night (New York: William Morrow, 1980);
Andrea Dworkin, Pornography (New York: Per–
igee, 1981). The Newspage of San Francisco’s
Women Against Violence in Pornography and
Media and the Newsreport of New York Women
Against Pornography are excellent sources.
wood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1979); Janice
Raymond, The Transsexual Empire (Boston:
Beacon, 1979); Kathleen Barry, “Sado–
masochism: The New Backlash to Feminism,”
Trivia 1 (fall 1982); Robin Ruth Linden, Darlene
R. Pagano, Diana E. H. Russell and Susan Leigh
Starr (eds), Against Sadomasochism (East Palo
Alto, CA: Frog in the Well, 1982); and Florence
Rush, The Best Kept Secret (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1980).
District 5 and San Francisco’s Gay Community,”
1979; Adrienne Rich, On Lies, Secrets, and
Silence (New York, W W. Norton, 1979): 225.
(“On the other hand, there is homosexual patri–
archal culture, a culture created by homosexual
men, reflecting such male stereotypes as dom–
inance and submission as modes of relationship,
involvement – a culture tainted by profound
hatred for women. The male ‘gay’ culture has
offered lesbians the imitation role-stereotypes of
‘butch’ and ‘femme,’ ‘active’ and ‘passive,’ cruis-
ing, sado-masochism, and the violent, self-
destructive world of ‘gay’ bars”); Judith
Pasternak, “The Strangest Bedfellows: Lesbian
Feminism and the Sexual Revolution,” Woman-
News (October 1983); Adrienne Rich, “Com-
pulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian
Existence,” in Ann Snitow, Christine Stansell,
and Sharon Thompson (eds), Powers of Desire:
The Politics of Sexuality (New York: Monthly
Review Press, 1983).
75 Sheila Jeffreys, “The Spinster and Her Enemies:
Scarlet Woman 13: 2 (July 1981): 26; a further
elaboration of this tendency can be found in
Judith Pasternak, op. cit. Note 1992: These
trends have become much more fully articulated.
Some of the key texts are Sheila Jeffreys, The
Spinster and Her Enemies: Feminism and Sexu-
ality 1880–1930 (London: Pandora Press,
1985); Sheila Jeffreys, Anti-Climax (London:
The Women’s Press, 1990); Lai Coveney, Mar-
garet Jackson, Sheila Jeffreys, Leslie Kay and Pat
Mahony, The Sexuality Papers: Male Sexuality
and the Social Control of Women (London:
Hutchinson, 1984); and Dorchen Leidholdt and
Janice G. Raymond, The Sexual Liberals and the
Attack on Feminism (New York: Pergamon,
1990).
servative Way,” Advocate (February 21, 1980);
Pat Califia, “Among Us, Against Us – The New
Puritans,” Advocate (April 17, 1980); Califia,
“The Great Kiddy Porn Scare of 77 and Its
Aftermath”; Califia, “A Thorny Issue Splits a
Movement”; Pat Califia, Sapphistry (Talla-
hassee, FA: Naiad, 1980); Pat Califia, “What Is
Gay Liberation,” Advocate (June 25,1981); Pat
Califia, “Feminism and Sadomasochism,”
Co-Evolution Quarterly 33 (spring 1981); Pat
Califia, “Response to Dorchen Leidholdt,” New
Women’s Times (October 1982); Pat Califia,
“Public Sex,” Advocate (September 30, 1982);
Pat Califia, “Doing It Together: Gay Men, Les-
bians, and Sex,” Advocate (July 7, 1983); Pat
Califia, “Gender-Bending,” Advocate (Septem-
ber 15, 1983); Pat Califia, “The Sex Industry,”
Advocate (October 13, 1983); Deirdre English,
Amber Hollibaugh, and Gayle Rubin, “Talking
Sex,” Socialist Review (July–August 1981); “Sex
Issue,” Heresies 12 (1981); Amber Hollibaugh,
“The Erotophobic Voice of Women: Building a
Movement for the Nineteenth Century,” New
York Native (September 26–October 9, 1982);
Maxine Holz, “Porn: Turn On or Put Down,
7 (spring 1983); Barbara O’Dair, “Sex, Love,
and Desire: Feminists Struggle Over the Por–
trayal of Sex,” Alternative Media (spring 1983);
Lisa Orlando, “Bad Girls and ‘Good’ Politics,”
Village Voice, Literary Supplement (December
1982); Joanna Russ, “Being Against Pornog–
raphy,” Thirteenth Moon VI: 1 and 2 (1982;
Samois, What Color Is Your Handkerchief (Ber–
keley: Samois, 1979); Samois, Coming to Power
(Boston: Alyson, 1982); Deborah Sundahl,
“Stripping For a Living,” Advocate (October 13
1983); Nancy Wechsler, “Interview with Pat
Califia and Gayle Rubin,” part I, Gay Commu–
nity News, Book Review (July 18, 1981), and
part II, Gay Community News (August 15,
1981); Ellen Willis, Beginning to See the Light
(New York: Knopf, 1981). For an excellent
overview of the history of the ideological shifts
in feminism which have affected the sex debates,
see Alice Echols, “Cultural Feminism: Feminist
Capitalism and the Anti-Pornography Move–
ments,” Social Text 7 (spring and summer
1983).
the Academy,” Gay Community News (May
1982); Ellen Willis, “Who Is a Feminist? An
Open Letter to Robin Morgan,” Village Voice,
Literary Supplement (December 1982).
am indebted to Jeanne Bergman for calling my
attention to this quote.
Slave: The Fantasy of Erotic Domination,” in
Snitow et al.: 297; and B. Ruby Rich, review of
Powers of Desire, In These Times (November
16–22,1983).
ual libertarian” continues to be used as a short–
hand for feminist sex radicals. The label is
erroneous and misleading. It is true that the
Libertarian Party opposes state control of con–
sensual sexual behavior. We agree on the perni–
cious quality of state activity in this area, and I
consider the Libertarian program to repeal most
sex legislation superior to that of any other
organized political party. However, there the
similarity ends. Feminist sex radicals rely on
concepts of systemic, socially structured inequal–
ities and differential powers. In this analysis,
state regulation of sex is part of a more complex
system of oppression which it reflects, enforces
and influences. The state also develops its own
structures of interests, powers, and investments
in sexual regulation.
where, the concept of consent plays a different
role in sex law than it does in the social contract
or the wage contract. The qualities, quantity and
significance of state intervention and regulation
text, and not crudely equated with analyses
drawn from economic theory. Certain basic
freedoms which are taken for granted in other
areas of life do not exist in the area of sex. Those
that do exist are not equally available to mem–
bers of different sexual populations and are
differentially applied to various sexual activities.
People are not called “libertarian” for agitating
for basic freedoms and legal equality for racial
and ethnic groups; I see no reason why sexual
populations should be denied even the limited
benefits of liberal capitalist societies.
libertarian, but he considered capitalism a revo–
lutionary, if limited, social system. The failure to
support democratic sexual freedoms does not
bring on socialism; it maintains something more
akin to feudalism.
82 Samois, What Color Is Your Handkerchief;
nism and Sadomasochism”; Pat Califia, Sapph-
istry.
condescension is this: “The Sadomasochists are
not entirely Valueless,’ but they have resisted
any values that might limit their freedom rather
than someone else’s judgement; and in this they
show themselves as lacking in an understanding
of the requirements of common life.” It appears
in Shane Phelan, Identity Politics: Lesbian
Feminism and the Limits of Community (Phil–
adelphia: Temple University Press, 1989):
133.
with Lesbian S/M,” Village Voice (July 26,
1983); Elizabeth Wilson, “The Context of
‘Between Pleasure and Danger’: The Barnard
Conference on Sexuality,” Feminist Review 13
(spring 1983): especially 35–41.
414, 418. This quote is from a dissenting opin–
ion, but it is a statement of prevailing law.
note 57 above.
Francisco Chronicle (November 16,1979): 16.
89 People v. Samuels, 250 Cal. App. 2d 501, 513,
90 People v. Samuels, 250 Cal. App. 2d. at
91 Mariana Valverde, “Feminism Meets Fist-
Body Politic (February 1980); Wilson, op. cit.:
38.
291–7.
Called Sex,” Nation (September 24, 1983):
247.
Rayna R. Reiter (ed.), Toward an Anthro–
pology of Women (New York: Monthly
Review Press, 1975): 159.
96 Foucault, op. cit.: 106.
97 Catherine MacKinnon, “Feminism, Marxism,
Signs: 3 (spring 1982): 515–16.
Method, and the State: Toward Feminist Juris–
prudence,” Signs 8 (summer 1983): 635.
burgeoned: Catherine A. MacKinnon, Toward
a Feminist Theory of the State (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1989); Cath–
erine A. MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified:
Discourses on Life and Law (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1987).
Hannah Alderfer, Beth Jaker and Marybeth
Nelson, Diary of a Conference on Sexuality
(New York: Faculty Press, 1982): 72.
Homosexual Rights Movement in Germany
(New York: Times Change Press, 1974).
ties; Bérubé “Behind the Spectre of San
Francisco”; Bérubé, “Marching to a Different
Drummer.”
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