Unruly Desires Quotes

“Here these men could find a safe space to engage in sexual activity with other men. They could keep scandal from their parents’ doorsteps. They could spend an interval — or perhaps a lifetime — working out internal conflicts concerning their sexuality. A few of the lucky ones would even find a shipmate whose initials they would proudly tattoo in indelible ink on their sun-bronzed biceps.”
― William Benemann, Unruly Desires: American Sailors and Homosexualities in the Age of Sail

“In rejecting the somber uniformity of dress adopted by the majority of American males, in obsessing about the fashionable display of the body — an activity overwhelmingly recognized as the exclusive purview of women — early nineteenth century sailors were delivering body blows to the rigid gender norms of their time.”
― William Benemann, Unruly Desires: American Sailors and Homosexualities in the Age of Sail

“have only given him more than I get in return — a common enough chance in life.”
― William Benemann, Unruly Desires: American Sailors and Homosexualities in the Age of Sail

“The pornography of sadism entered its heyday in the nineteenth century, when ‘the English vice’ became the central convention of English pornography.”26 Deborah Lutz estimates that between 1840 and 1880 an astonishing fifty percent of all pornography centered on flagellation.”
― William Benemann, Unruly Desires: American Sailors and Homosexualities in the Age of Sail

“By associating whipping with uncontrolled emotion and bestiality,” notes Myra C. Glenn, “reformers tacitly explored the connection between corporal punishment and illicit sexuality. An underlying fear of homosexuality probably heightened anxiety about this connection. The existence of homosexual behavior was particularly worrisome to prison and naval reformers.”24 It is difficult to gauge the extent to which, in a pre-Freudian era, observers were aware of the interrelation of pain and sexuality, of the potent psychic interplay of domination and submission, but as Glenn argues, the prevalence of flogging in the all-male environment of American ships perhaps raised warning flags for the reformers, for the same reason that they shied away from a closer examination of spousal abuse.”
― William Benemann, Unruly Desires: American Sailors and Homosexualities in the Age of Sail

“the frequent use of the rod in American classrooms had already unwittingly linked together for many boys the concepts of pain, manhood, respect and desire — to the extent that a whipping for some was even anticipated with pleasure.”
― William Benemann, Unruly Desires: American Sailors and Homosexualities in the Age of Sail

“On 28 September 1850 Senator Hale succeeded in passing a measure abolishing flogging in the United States Navy, by attaching it as a rider to a naval appropriation bill. The voting was split along sectional lines, with the twenty-six yeas coming from senators from northern or border states, and opposition concentrated in the slave-holding south.”
― William Benemann, Unruly Desires: American Sailors and Homosexualities in the Age of Sail

“Reports from thirteen ships were included, listing a total of 802 offences that had resulted in the penalty of flogging. Transgressions ranged from “bad cooking” (twelve lashes) to “calling O’Brian a son of a bitch” (six lashes), urinating in a man’s face (five lashes) to attempting to “double the grog tub” — i.e., getting in line twice for the daily distribution of grog (six lashes). By far the most common offences were drunkenness, fighting and skulking. The”
― William Benemann, Unruly Desires: American Sailors and Homosexualities in the Age of Sail

“In the end Cook’s forced departure from the ship was fortuitous for him. On 5 August 1864, after a voyage of 656 days, the bark Plover struck a reef and sank.”
― William Benemann, Unruly Desires: American Sailors and Homosexualities in the Age of Sail

“Boys were interchangeable at sea but good cooks were difficult to find, so though the black man known only as Cook was flogged for the encounters, he remained on board.”
― William Benemann, Unruly Desires: American Sailors and Homosexualities in the Age of Sail

“Because the men who worked in the galley were performing traditionally feminine work, they were often viewed as acceptable targets for unwanted overtures. When the person of color himself was the sexual aggressor, however, as in some of the cases discussed below, the categories became inextricably jumbled. The intersection of race and homosexuality aboard ship was undoubtedly complex, but the information recorded is unfortunately too brief and scattered to allow for any meaningful analysis of the topic at this time.”
― William Benemann, Unruly Desires: American Sailors and Homosexualities in the Age of Sail

“Also it should be noted how frequently the person involved, either as aggressor or as victim, is a person of color.9 On many occasions the accusations fell on the cook or on his assistant, the steward — two positions frequently filled by African Americans.10 On whaling ships the assailant or the victim is frequently Portuguese. Cooks and stewards “became the special objects of torture and harassment as sailors reaffirmed their maleness by maligning the masculinity of these glorified maidservants.”
― William Benemann, Unruly Desires: American Sailors and Homosexualities in the Age of Sail

“Each person who signed on for a voyage was assigned a “lay” or share in the net profits. Someone with a 1/160th lay stood no chance of becoming rich (whaler James W. DeGrass earned $43 for three years spent at sea), but the value of his share was pegged to the overall profit on barrels gathered in, so each man’s labor resulted in a measurable number of coins in his own pocket.5 Every man on the ship, then, had a pecuniary interest in having the voyage continue free of conflicts.”
― William Benemann, Unruly Desires: American Sailors and Homosexualities in the Age of Sail

“For some sailors the cultures of North Africa, with their pragmatic accommodation of homosexual desire, provided a more attractive alternative to anything then provided by the United States.”
― William Benemann, Unruly Desires: American Sailors and Homosexualities in the Age of Sail

“All that is recorded is the explanation the sailor gave for converting to Islam: he could not continue to live his life according to the tenets preached by Christianity, now that he had found an alternative path that he found more congenial to his wants and needs.”
― William Benemann, Unruly Desires: American Sailors and Homosexualities in the Age of Sail

“Article XI of the treaty with Tripoli ratified by the United States Congress on 10 June 1797 specified: As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, — as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen, — and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.50 This conscious exclusion of the religious aspect of the conflict was extended to private remarks, particularly those pertaining to the prevalence of homosexual activity.”
― William Benemann, Unruly Desires: American Sailors and Homosexualities in the Age of Sail

“Perhaps that distance also “opened up a space” that allowed sailors who were primarily homosexual in orientation to reevaluate their own position vis à vis their country, and to consider embracing a culture that they had been taught to disdain. Sailors who were attractive physical specimens were given a choice early in their captivity: arduous labor or sexual submission. Given what has been discussed regarding the social marginalization of American sailors, given the relaxed attitude toward discreet male-male sexuality aboard ship, given the likelihood that a portion of a ship’s population were endowed with a sexual orientation that inclined them more towards homosexuality, would it not be likely that some of those men might choose a life of sexual servitude to a Muslim master over near certain death working in the quarries or the slave galleys?”
― William Benemann, Unruly Desires: American Sailors and Homosexualities in the Age of Sail

“Without rejecting white privilege, the captives of Barbary were able to gain a critical distance that allowed for a sober reevaluation of one of their country’s most controversial institutions: the enslavement of African Americans. Berman wonders if the captives’ experiences in North Africa “opened up a space in the American cultural imaginary, however slender and provisional, that incorporated marginalized groups into the phantasm of national citizenship.”
― William Benemann, Unruly Desires: American Sailors and Homosexualities in the Age of Sail

“Because most of the captive sailors came from New England, where slavery was not as widespread nor as deeply socially entrenched as it was in the American South, many when they returned home were able to express a kinship with enslaved blacks because of what they perceived as a shared experience of injustice.”
― William Benemann, Unruly Desires: American Sailors and Homosexualities in the Age of Sail

“An 1836 Arabic edition of the classic A Thousand and One Nights included a story of how Abu Nuwas seduced three youths, but when the edition was reprinted in 1930 the offending story was summarily dropped. Modern prudery nearly extinguished a rich tradition of Arabic homoerotic literature. While homosexual activity was ubiquitous in the Ottoman Empire of the nineteenth century, it would be an error to imagine the region as a homosexual paradise. A wide gulf yawned between practice and perception. A man was free to engage in homosexual activity at the hamman or in private, but he was also expected to marry and to produce children.”
― William Benemann, Unruly Desires: American Sailors and Homosexualities in the Age of Sail

“Yet the image of the solitary, debauched and morally depraved sailor appears everywhere in the nineteenth century sources. This is how Jack Tar was commonly perceived.”
― William Benemann, Unruly Desires: American Sailors and Homosexualities in the Age of Sail

“The sailor is a homeless man,” wrote John Harris in 1837. “He usually commences his career in early life, a wayward boy, sent to sea as the last school of reformation left his parents, or seeking it as the element most congenial to his own buoyant and daring spirit. When he has broken away from the family circle, he seldom revisits it, but floats, like a weed torn from its native rock, where wind and wave may bear him.”
― William Benemann, Unruly Desires: American Sailors and Homosexualities in the Age of Sail

“Good and decent worshipers should not be expected to share a pew with someone whose style of living flew in the face of traditional values. No doubt one of the attractions of colportage, and a fundamental reason why so many religious tracts were printed, was that it allowed a caring Christian to stuff a pamphlet in a sailor’s hand and walk away, without requiring any closer contact.”
― William Benemann, Unruly Desires: American Sailors and Homosexualities in the Age of Sail

“When they enter a church, they are known and marked as sailors; they attract the notice of no small part of the congregation; and most of them would sooner face the cannon’s mouth than that thoughtless, supercilious gaze.” Stafford assured his readers that, based on his many conversations with both sailors and sea captains, this undisguised distaste for American mariners was almost universal.”
― William Benemann, Unruly Desires: American Sailors and Homosexualities in the Age of Sail

“For as the example of the sailor hardens and prejudices the heathen, so does the example of worldly-minded and unfaithful Christians harden and prejudice the sailor.”46 This was not a new concern bubbling up from the nationwide social reform and religious revival movements of the 1830s and 1840s.”
― William Benemann, Unruly Desires: American Sailors and Homosexualities in the Age of Sail

“Occasionally a welcoming congregation might coax a sailor towards redemption, but the common attitude of congregants in America’s port cities served only to push the seaman away. “The affecting truth is, that the lives of Christians, in the presence of these men, have often been such as to harden them in sin; and unless there is a change in this conduct, little is to be expected in regard to successful labour among them.”
― William Benemann, Unruly Desires: American Sailors and Homosexualities in the Age of Sail

“When Whitman became better known, he rewrote the story removing much of its overt homoeroticism. He recast it as an abstinence tract, and retitled it “The Child and the Profligate.” Originally however it was known as “The Child’s Champion.”
― William Benemann, Unruly Desires: American Sailors and Homosexualities in the Age of Sail

“Camp sends up flares at the borders of gender, and teases with transgression. It arises because so many homosexuals are forced to live a double life, and in time public performance becomes reflexive and meta, a wink and a nod exchanged between actors on stage, for the most part unnoticed by an uncomprehending audience.”
― William Benemann, Unruly Desires: American Sailors and Homosexualities in the Age of Sail