A Queer History of the United States (ReVisioning History Book 1)

by Michael Bronski

Moore argues that during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, European society underwent a profound and powerful transformation in which certain minorities, such as lepers, Jews, heretics, witches, “sodomites,” and prostitutes, were stigmatized and persecuted as groups and often physically separated from society. This physical isolation, which took the form of ghettos for Jews and social banishment of lepers, was often the precondition for a wide range of harsh punishments, including death.25 Moore argues that a series of fundamental social changes—including the rapid growth of towns and cities, broad changes in agricultural distribution networks, and a radical shift in how hierarchical power was distributed—created this new set of social classifications. Its purpose was to create clear social and cultural boundaries that would stabilize society by safely containing groups designated as dangerous pollutants. This fear of pollution was less about sex or death than about power and social standing. As Moore notes, “Pollution fear . . . is the fear that the privileged feel of those at whose expense their privilege is enjoyed.”26 The colonists’ seizing of native peoples’ lands was not in self-defense, but for economic gain, resulting in the fairly rapid development of colonial capitalism. In the European mind, the non-gender-normative and non-sexually-normative body—however defined in each period and circumstance—was the dangerous body, the less-than-human body, even the disposa...