Reading Response 2: Social And Historical Context Of Ideas

Reading Response 2-Somerville
Name
Institution
Date
Key idea(s) in Scientific Racism and the Emergence of the Homosexual Body
Somerville (1994) argued that sexuality is racialized and race is also sexualized, and the two are not separate aspects of identity, but rather the attributes should be seen together. While there have been interests in the use of medical and psychological interventions targeting the gays and lesbians, they have been ineffective. The scientific constructions of racism as well as the white and black bodies emerged almost the same time. Queer studies have increasingly focused on the construction of race and sexuality as part of identify. In 19th century western societies, sexual acts constituted identity, and homosexuality was seen to be out of the norm more than the modern society.
People understanding of sexuality and identity have depended on the historical moments since the 19th century. Medical discourse, including the work of physicians, psychiatrists and sexologist have been crucial to explain the historical argument of sexual identify (Somerville, 1994). In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century there was engagement on the issue of sexuality, and science was sanctioned to reveal answers about bodies (Somerville, 1994). Views about homosexuality changed during the time with medical explanations highlighting a homosexuality were deviant sexual choice, while the gender and sex roles were based on the mainstream white middle-class gender ideologies.
Somerville (1994) pointed out that sexologists racialized sexual ambiguity in the nineteenth and twentieth century. One of the ways through which they achieved this is by comparing anatomies, and this is especially female reproductive anatomy and genitalia as they sought to categorize bodies depending on the norms of sexuality. It is no surprise that black women were compared to lesbians because of myths about their genitalia (Somerville, 1994). In trying to distinguish...