Aren't such historical and cross-cultural contrasts particularly relevant in understanding the "psycho-sexual" as explananda? The anti-abortion ideology with which we are familiar did not exist before the mid-19th century, according to Kristin Luker. Anti-abortion activism today isn't unique to the United States, but it is practically non-existent in some nations; and, where it exists, it is stronger in some -- for instance, in the United States -- than others. Given historical and cross-cultural differences, one might look to causes other than "psycho-sexual impulses" in explaining wide-ranging views about abortion.
Lynching, too, is a historically specific phenomenon:
***** The Origins and History of Lynching
The term "lynch" originated because of the activities of Colonel Charles Lynch. Lynch was a Colonel during the Revolutionary War who tried and punished the "Tories" after the was with no legal jurisdiction. Lynch was a wealthy plantation owner from Virginia who headed up an extralegal court. This "court" took the law into it's own hands and did not give the accused the right to trial.
Lynchings did not always involve the death of the accused. Before 1850, which is when lynching took an extremely violent turn, the victim was beaten. After the 1850s the victims were treated with more brutality, and eventually the term lynching took on the the meaning we now associate with it -- killing without legal cause. After the Reconstruction era more and more lynchings began to occur. During this time several black people were burned at the stake or hanged in the name of justice, justice in the mob's point of view anyway.
In 1890, lynch mobs took another brutal step; they began dismembering their black victims and selling their body parts for souvenirs. An onlooker could buy a piece of dries bone for twenty-five cents, a dried piece of the victim's liver for a dime, or a whole finger or toe for a dollar; the public lynchings drew in large crowds, eventually a huge recreational activity where entire families would come out to watch. Railway companies would offer special rates and times to the crowds who wanted to view the lynchings. Newspapers publicized the events offering dates and times for some lynchings. There were even postcards depicting the bodies of lynched victims....
If someone were to ask you what these victims were charged with, you would probably answer murder or rape. Murder or rape would be true in some cases, but sadly this was not always the case. Lynching victims were accused with a wide variety of charges most of which were not deserving of death; the victims were lynched for arguing with white shopkeepers, or not addressing a white man with respect. Some victims wee lynched for trying to get a job that was "above" their social standing.
<http://www.berea.edu/ENG/chesnutt/classroom/lynching.html> *****
Given the historical evolution of lynching, it seems to me to make more sense to regard political reactions against increasing black political self-assertion (first slave revolts and then Black Reconstruction), rather than white men's "psycho-sexual impulses," as what made lynching an enforcement mechanism of white supremacy (which lynching wasn't initially) and made it more brutal and frequent. Also, Ida B. Wells and other anti-lynching activists always emphasized that only a minority of the lynched were even accused of rape. One historical document asserts that "In only 16.6 per cent of lynchings, they argued, were lynch victims accused of rape" ("The Anti-Lynching Crusaders: The Lynching of Women," [1922], NAACP Papers, Part 7: The Anti-Lynching Campaign, 1912-1955, Series B: Anti-Lynching Legislative and Publicity Files, 1916-1955, Library of Congress [Microfilm, Reel 3, Frames 570-73], <http://womhist.binghamton.edu/lynch/doc7.htm>). The majority of victims were black political activists, labor organizers, and other "uppity" blacks: "Although rape is often cited as a rationale, statistics now show that only about one-fourth of lynchings from 1880 to 1930 were prompted by an accusation of rape. In fact, most victims of lynching were political activists, labor organizers or black men and women who violated white expectations of black deference, and were deemed 'uppity' or 'insolent.' Though most victims were black men, women were by no means exempt" (<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/till/peopleevents/e_lynch.html>). Given these facts, it obfuscates the cause and reality of lynching to use the "psycho-sexual" impulses as explanans.
At 9:47 AM -0800 3/30/03, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> > Is gender identification in itself a cause of sexual anxieties?
>
>What do you mean, itself? Apart from any context? There is no such
>thing. But it is explantorily relevant to such anxieties in many
>contexts.
It can be, but how exactly? That's what needs to be explained.
At 9:47 AM -0800 3/30/03, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>This is a verbatim quote from piece on Rawls and the family, so you
>know that I know this. But as a matter of fact I think the first
>question has almost always been, is it a boy.girl? People in
>premodern times knew that most of their kids weere not going to
>survive and therefore(as Boswell and others document) they didn't
>care so much for them. Be that as it may. Are you seriously
>suggesting that people didn't notice gender, that it wasn't
>important to them, for millenia until class society arrived?
You are conflating sex with gender.
At 9:47 AM -0800 3/30/03, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>I really don't see what child abandonment (which Boswell does NOT
>particularly tie to infant health) had to do with anything.
I'm simply saying that gender assignment wasn't the topmost concern of parents upon the birth of a child in premodern societies; its ability to survive, and parents' and other kins' ability to support it, were. Obsession with gendering children as soon as possible is a late modern phenomenon.
At 9:47 AM -0800 3/30/03, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>psychosexual factors have a lot of explanatory power
You've yet to present an example of such "psycho-sexual" explanations that work better than other explanations.
At 9:47 AM -0800 3/30/03, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>true and informative explanations
If a white man says that he killed a black man because he suspected that the black man had raped a white woman, that may be true and informative and also goes some way to explain his individual motive and/or pretext as he understood himself. Is that the sort of explanation of the "psycho-sexual" that we are seeking here -- the kind that matters to some degree in a court of law? Or do you think that "psycho-sexual" explanations can be useful social theories as well? -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://solidarity.igc.org/>