Question In Managing Sexual Behaviors in Colonial North America

QUESTION :

Briefly identify and discuss an interesting/important things you learned from one of this week's chapters. (Remember to include author's last name and specific page numbers you refer to!

THE FOLLOWING SOURCES ARE ALL PROVIDED IN THE FORM OF PDF.

Starting points

Daniel Heath Justice, " Daniel's Take ," extracted from Introduction to Sexuality, Nationality, Indigeneity (special issue of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, co-edited by Daniel Heath Justice, Mark Rifkin, and Bethany Schneider, 16.1-2, 2010).  Justice provides an alternative view on approaching Indigenous experiences and histories; a useful perspective to consider even though most of our readings will represent academic  historiography .

Joane Nagel, “ Sex and Conquest: Domination and Desire on Ethnosexual Frontiers ” (Chapter 3), pages 63-90. As a sociologist, Nagel provides a useful lens as well as a multi-century overview of white mis/understandings and appropriations of Native sexualities.

Histories

Michael Bronski, Chapter 1:  "The Persecuting Society"  (1-18). In addition to a fascinating description of a breakaway, non-Puritan settlement called Merry Mount founded by Thomas Morton, this chapter provides more information/interpretation about Nicholas Sension (also discussed by Godbeer and Rupp), as well as T. Hall, whom Rupp mentions. 

Richard Godbeer,  "Colonial North America (1600s-1700s)"  from Routledge History of Queer America (2018), ed. Don Romesburg (Chapter 1, pages 15-26)

Leila Rupp,  “In the Beginning: Same-Sex Sexuality in Early America”  (Chapter 2), pages 12-36

Beth Hutchison,  13-17th Century Timeline for 370  (background information; clearly a draft, since the entire 15th century is blank)

Some names from the readings who may come up in our discussion: 

What could you add about people mentioned in the readings? You could write a description about one of these people (or someone else who catches your interest) similar to the three which follow and post it to our discussion, along with your thoughts about their significance to understanding sexuality in their time and place or to the history of sexualities more broadly. 

·

· T. Hall

· C. Linck (why do I use initials in place of the first names in the readings for these two people??)

· Nicholas Sension

John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester (1647-1680) was briefly mentioned in Rupp's chapter (page 20); Rochester wrote "missing my whore, I bugger my page"; see  Three Poems by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester  for context, if you like). He lived during a period of conflict between the English upper classes against the controlling, repressive worldview of the Puritans and was part of the court of King Charles II of England. As a courtier and sometime favorite of the king, Rochester's poems illustrate how  libertinism  was a social force elevating pleasure and excess over sober religiosity; this licentious attitude was part of why the Mayflower colonists left England in 1620. Arguably, the two opposing impulses have shaped American views and practices ever since. (Religious conflict came to a head in England as Wars of the Three Kingdoms, 1639-1651. Charles II went into exile after his father, Charles I, was beheaded. A faction of Puritans ruled England from 1649-1660 as which point Charles II was restored to the crown.)  

17th century Puritan minister and Harvard professor Rev. Michael Wigglesworth is mentioned in Bronski (page 11) and Rupp (page 27) this week. Wigglesworth wrote a diary partly in code to obscure his struggles with desires he believed were sinful in his Creator's eyes. Wigglesworth's secret desires were unknown until the code was deciphered centuries later, in the 1960s. 

Merry Mount: This brief excerpt, " A Puritan Heritage, " provides a photo of a page from Michael Wigglesworth's coded diary as well as additional information about a little-known, decidedly not Puritanical, colonial settlement in Massachusetts called Merry Mount founded by Thomas Morton (mentioned by Bronski, 13-14, 16). The records about Morton and Merry Mount demonstrate that although the Puritan worldview (which did in fact endorse sexual pleasure within marriage--the Puritans weren't so very puritanical!) was dominant, additional and conflicting ideas and practices of sexuality existed among European colonists during the same time period and locale.