C. Todd White:
This ground-breaking collection includes thirteen essays from historians sociologists, and anthropologists who discuss transgendered females and same-sex desire among women in Asia, Latin America, Native North America, and Africa. Offering compelling evidence against the commonly accepted notion that non-Western women are generally passive victims of male domination and compulsory heterosexuality, these essays on lesbian desire in ancient and modern India, butch-femme social types in Indonesia and Peru, and the lesbian movement in Mexico dispel the myth that same-sex female desire is rooted in Western neo-imperialist culture. These illuminating studies look past the ethnocentric categories in which sexuality, identity, and culture are often considered.
Contents
1. Introduction
by Saskia E. Wieringa and Evelyn Blackwood
2. Sapphic Shadows: Challenging the Silence in the Study of Sexuality
by Evelyn Blackwood and Saskia E. Wieringa
Part 1: Indigenous Histories, Colonial Legacies
3. The Politics of Identities and Languages: Lesbian Desire in Ancient and Modern India
by Giti Thadani
4. Lesbians, Men-Women, and Two-Spirits: Homosexuality and Gender in Native American Cultures
by Sabine Lang
Part 2: Erotic Intimacies and Cultural Identities
5. “What's Identity Got to Do with It?” Rethinking Identity in Light of the Mati Work in Suriname
by Gloria Wekker
6. Let Them Take Ecstasy: Class and Jakarta Lesbians
by Alison J. Murray
7. Women in Lesotho and the (Western) Construction of Homophobia
by Kendall
Part 3: Doing Masculinity: Butches, Female Bodies, and Transgendered Identities
8. Tombois in West Sumatra: Constructing Masculinity and Erotic Desire
by Evelyn Blackwood
9. Desiring Bodies or Defiant Cultures: Butch-Femme Lesbians in Jakarta and Lima
by Saskia E. Wieringa
10. Negotiating Transnational Sexual Economies: Female Mahu and Same-Sex Sexuality in “Tahiti and Her Islands”
by Deborah A. Elliston
Part 4: Nationalism, Feminism, and Lesbian / Gay Rights Movements
11. How homosexuality Became “Un-African”: The Case of Zimbabwe
by Margrete Aarmo
12. Women's Sexuality and the Discourse on Asian Values: Cross-Dressing in Malaysia
by Tan beng hui
13. Sexual Preference, the Ugly Duckling of Feminist Demands: The Lesbian Movement in Mexico
by Norma Mogrovejo
Recipient of the 1999 Ruth Benedict Award by the Society of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists.
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