Cultural Convergence: The Historic Influence of Race, Gender, Ethnicity and Sexuality
Mid-nineteenth century Americans followed accepted ideas about race and gender. In her 2003 book Race, Ethnicity, and Sexuality, Joane Nagel notes that in cases of inter-racial rape, black men were usually executed, while white men seldom even stood trial. In modern-day America, gender and sexuality are also governed by accepted modes of behavior, which gain unity from principles of nationalism in a diverse, multi-ethnic society like the United States. Feminists and homosexuals are treated as “un-American, and are “potential sources of disloyalty (because) their commitment to gender and sexual equality raises doubts about the strength of their allegiance to the nation” (Tastsoglou, 2004). These two examples illustrate Nagel’s assessment of how race, gender, ethnicity and sexuality converge, and the socio-cultural factors that have gone into constructing these concepts.
Nagel argues that perspectives on race, ethnicity and sexuality, while differing significantly, actually describe “a similar set of themes linking them to one another across time and space” (Nagel, 2003, 31). Nagel uses an intentionally broad spectrum of source material, ranging from the official (census data) to the anecdotal (personal accounts). In chapter one, Nagel is concerned with the subjects of sexuality and gender in order to show that even in within specific national boundaries, these socio-cultural lines of separation can express diverse attitudes toward the roles that men and women play, and should not play, within society. Nagel cites America’s involvement in the Vietnam War in order to make a point about sexuality and gender, and the ways in which they may clash.
Late in the war, pacifists set up coffee houses near military bases so that military personnel could hear opposing viewpoints on the war, and to try and convince GIs to protest the draft and America’s war policy. Nagel quotes a non-commissioned officer, who told a reporter that “We aren’t fighting and dying so these goddam pansies can sit around drinking coffee” (Nagel, 2003, 30). The use of the word “pansies” is instructive, because it reflects a socio-cultural norm related to the “the masculinist character of war,” and the “heterosexual, heteronormative nature” of masculinity associated with patriotism and other American “social virtues” (Nagel, 2003, 30). At the same time, the enemy’s men were seen as unmanly, even sub-human. Nagel uses this example to show how sexualized and ethnic assumptions reinforce a nation’s identity and what is considered acceptable behavior based on culture-based gender roles.
In Vietnam, American GIs operated in a “gendered, sexualized battle theatre,” facing men from other cultures who held their own ideas about gender (Nagel, 2003, 29). Notions of race and ethnicity were at the center of this ideological conflict and a clash of race-based ideas about superiority. It is interesting to note that the gender “double standard” transcends international boundaries. In Vietnam, American soldiers engaged in sexual liaisons with Asian women in subversive ways and places, in brothels and bars throughout the region. GIs may have routinely referred to the native peoples of Southeast Asia as “gooks” or “slopes,” but this did not keep them from having sex with Asian women. Furthermore, it is interesting that Eurasian children, the offspring of these sexual encounters, were stigmatized in Asia and the United States.
In chapter two, Nagel further expands on ethnosexuality. Traditionally held notions of sexuality, and about culture-based assumptions concerning physical attraction, became more complicated after the shifting of borders that took place after the downfall of the Communist world. Nagel describes a situation that raised ethnic tensions between Russians and Turks after the fall of the Soviet Union eased travel restrictions between the two countries. Increased contact between the Russians and Turks showed that dark, Muslim Turkish men had a sexual preference for pale, white Russian women, a situation that “conforms to the traditional positive associations of whiteness in Turkish Islamic culture” (Nagel, 2003, 37). The backlash in Turkey, where white women were portrayed as inferior, filthy and immoral, did not stop Muslim men from pursuing Russian women. This created ethnic hatred among Turkish women. Nagel concludes that ethnicity is a changeable aspect of society, is defined in social terms and is “sexually loaded” (Nagel, 2003, 38).
Nagel’s point is that ethnic boundaries “are both constituted by and constitutive of sexual boundaries” (Nagel, 2003, 56). Contributing to this normative social construct is “performativity,” which refers to the ways in which hegemonic social roles are affirmed and reaffirmed by daily, automatic acts that imply “tacit approval” of the gender roles and consequent acts of males and females (Nagel, 2003, 52). One reason that people respond so strongly when these norms are violated (such as when ethnosexual relations created tension between Turks and Russians), is that these norms are intuitive. Because they are “felt” rather than intellectualized, they tend to produce intense, even violent reactions, particularly when they are seen to be caused by “foreigners.”
In chapter three, Nagel explains the reactions that Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci recorded when they encountered native women in the new world. These Euro-centric descriptions, and the sexual interaction that took place between Indian females and European explorers, are similar to the double-standard exhibited by American GIs during the Vietnam War. Columbus generally wrote in praise of the natives, but Vespucci found them disgusting and depraved. However, both considered native women to be sexually attractive, and their crews clearly concurred, having freely engaged in sexual intercourse with the native women. This convergence of ethnicity (defined here as including nationality) and sexuality is typical of the highly sexualized nature of European conquest. In fact, sexual terminology is often associated with exploration and conquest, (i.e. the “rape of the West,” “virgin territory,” and so forth). As happened in Vietnam, whites claimed moral superiority while at the same time taking sexual advantage of native females.
America’s ethnosexual identity is tied to early European attitudes toward the new world and its people, whom they regarded as little more than slave material. Nagel writes that the Europeans’ attitude toward native peoples has always been part of the “American national identity” and has continued to inform America’s ethnic/racial attitudes. The United States’ emergence as a commercial and military superpower has encouraged Americans to see their success as proof of their naturally “indomitable” spirit. The prevailing image of “the Indian” remains as “a signifierof American conquest” and as proof that the country’s destiny as a civilizing force has been fulfilled. America, as much as any other country, is a place where the currents of history and the convergence (and conflict) of ethnic, racial and sexual concepts have formed a distinctive society.
Bibliography
Nagel, J. Race, Ethnicity and Sexuality (2003). New York: Oxford University Press.
Tastsoglou, E. “’Race, Ethnicity, and Sexuality.’ Intimate Intersections, Forbidden Frontiers. Journal of Sociology (Online). May-June 2004. Available from http://www.cjsonline.ca/reviews/racethsex.html. (Accessed 9 November 2012).
