Editing Human sexuality (section)

=== Sexuality, colonialism, and race ===
European conquerors/colonists found sexuality out of their norm about 1516 when [[Vasco Núñez de Balboa]], a Spanish explorer, discovered indigenous people in Central America with different sexual practices. Balboa found some indigenous men {{clarify|text=dressed up as women,|reason=It is unclear whether this means dressed in what the indigenes considered female attire or means dressed in what Balboa considered female attire.|date=April 2020}} resulting in him feeding forty of these men to his dogs for having different sexual practices. In North America and the United States, Europeans have used claims of sexual immorality to justify discrimination against racial and ethnic minorities.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Dictionary of American History|last=Turner|first=William B.|publisher=Charles Scribner's Sons|year=2003|location=New York, NY|pages=328–333}}</ref>{{full citation needed|date=January 2020}}

Scholars also study the ways in which [[colonialism]] has affected sexuality today and argue that due to [[racism]] and [[slavery in the United States|slavery]] it has been dramatically changed from the way it had previously been understood.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3KBFhDytERkC|title=Women of Color and Feminism|last1=Rojas|first1=Maythee|date=2009|publisher=Seal Press|isbn=978-1-58005-272-6|edition=1st|ref=https://books.google.com/books?id=3KBFhDytERkC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false}}</ref>

In her book, ''Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Gender, Race, and Morality in Colonial Asia'', Laura Stoler investigates how the Dutch used sexual control and gender-specific sexual sanctions to distinguish between the rulers from the ruled and enforce colonial domination onto the people of Indonesia.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Gender, Race, and Morality in Colonial Asia|last=Stoler|first=Ann|publisher=University of California Press|year=2002}}</ref>

In America, there are 155 native tribes that are recorded to have embraced [[two-spirit]] people within their tribes, but the total number of tribes could be greater than what is documented.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Changing Ones: Third and Fourth Genders in Native North America|last=Roscoe|first=Will|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|year=1998}}</ref>  Two-spirit people were and still are members of communities who do not fall under Western gender categories of male and female, but rather under a "third gender" category.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Wilson|first=Trista|date=2011|journal=American Indian Law Review|volume=36|issue=1|pages=161–188|issn=0094-002X|jstor=41495705|title=Changed Embraces, Changes Embraced? Renouncing the Heterosexist Majority in Favor of a Return to Traditional Two-Spirit Culture}}</ref> This system of gender contradicts both the gender binary and the assertion that sex and gender are the same.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|title=Becoming Two-Spirit: Gay Identity and Social Acceptance in Indian Country|last=Gilley|first=Brian|publisher=University of Nebraska Press|year=2006}}</ref> Instead of conforming to traditional roles of men and women, two-spirit fill a special niche in their communities.

For example, two-spirited people are commonly revered for possessing special wisdom and spiritual powers.<ref name=":0" /> Two-spirited people also can take part in marriages, either monogamous and polygamous ones.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Living the Spirit: a Gay American Indian Anthology|last=Roscoe|first=Will|publisher=St. Martins Press|year=1988}}</ref> Historically, European colonizers perceived relationships involving two-spirited people as homosexuality, and therefore believed in the moral inferiority of native people.<ref name=":0" /> In reaction, colonizers began to impose their own religious and social norms on indigenous communities, diminishing the role of two-spirit people in native cultures.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Jacobi|first=Jeffrey|date=2006|title=Two Spirits, Two Eras, Same Sex: For a Traditionalist Perspective on Native American Tribal Same-Sex Marriage Policy|journal=University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform}}</ref> Within reservations, the Religious Crime Code of the 1880s explicitly aimed to "aggressively attack Native sexual and marriage practices".<ref name=":0" /> The goal of colonizers was for native peoples to assimilate into Euro-American ideals of family, sexuality, gender expression, and more.<ref name=":0" />

The link between constructed sexual meanings and racial ideologies has been studied. According to Joane Nagel, sexual meanings are constructed to maintain racial-ethnic-national boundaries by the denigration of "others" and regulation of sexual behavior within the group. She writes, "both adherence to and deviation from such approved behaviors, define and reinforce racial, ethnic, and nationalist regimes".<ref name=Nagel>{{cite journal |author=Nagel, Joane |date=August 2000 |title=Ethnicity and Sexuality |journal=Annual Review of Sociology |volume=26 |pages=107–133 |doi=10.1146/annurev.soc.26.1.107|s2cid=145064276 |url=https://semanticscholar.org/paper/ddb5a444cf727ad2f8209449dc14839ad38d025a }}</ref><ref name=Nagel2>{{cite journal|author=Nagel, Joane |year=2001 |title=Racial, Ethnic, and National Boundaries: Sexual Intersections and Symbolic Interactions |journal=Symbolic Interaction |volume=24 | issue = 2  |pages=123–139 |doi=10.1525/si.2001.24.2.123}}</ref> In the United States people of color face the effects of colonialism in different ways with stereotypes such as the Mammy, and Jezebel for Black women; [[Stereotypes of East Asians in the United States|lotus blossom, and dragon lady]] for Asian women; and the "spicy" Latina.<ref name="Mammy Jezebel and Sistahs on Racism.org">{{cite web|last1=Yarbrough|first1=Marilyn|last2=Bennet|first2=Crystal|title=Mammy Jezebel and Sistahs|url=http://racism.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1277:aawomen01a&catid=72&Itemid=215|website=Race, Racism and the Law!|publisher=racism.org|access-date=30 November 2015|ref=http://racism.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1277:aawomen01a&catid=72&Itemid=215}}</ref> These stereotypes contrast with standards of sexual conservatism, creating a dichotomy that dehumanizes and demonizes the stereotyped groups. An example of a stereotype that lies at the intersection of racism, classism, and misogyny is the archetype of the “[[welfare queen]].” Cathy Cohen describes how the "welfare queen" stereotype demonizes poor black single mothers for deviating from conventions surrounding family structure.<ref>{{Citation|chapter=Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens|date=2005|pages=21–51|publisher=Duke University Press|doi=10.1215/9780822387220-003|isbn=9780822336297|title=Black Queer Studies|s2cid=48259239|chapter-url=https://semanticscholar.org/paper/dfe95a5259e4f128f476dc444f07ae6e5369753b|last1=Cohen|first1=Cathy J.}}</ref>