UNI101Y1 Chapter Notes -British Empire, Virilization, White Supremacy
Document Summary
Imperial british, french, or dutch women experienced colonial society differently than men because they were both subordinates because they were women but also a privileged imperial group because they were european. The very categories of colonizer and colonized were secured through forms of sexual control that defined the domestic arrangements of europeans and the ways they identified their own culture. Colonial authority was constructed on the premise that europeans in the colonies made up a separate and easily identifiable entity with common interests, culture, biological attributes, etc. But there were major conflicts in the colonies between colonizers, ex. between lower- class whites and capitalists, between bureaucrats and planters, etc. It was thus difficult to identify who the real europeans were. The europeans identified the colonies as sexually other and deviant, although these descriptions really provided an outlet for their own fantasies. Sexual prescriptions by class, race, and gender became central to the politics of the colonies.