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A Brief History of the Anthropology of Sexuality, And A Brief History of the political and social upheavals of the times Anthropology of Sexuality, and (Lyons and Lyons 2004:119). This is Theory in the Field of Women’s Sex especially true of the Victorian attitude of discovery, in which upper-class men sat Work down in their studies or set out on ships to collect and analyze information about sexual Sophie Maksimowski practices in exotic climates. Spawning cultural evolutionist models, the purpose of Introduction these exploits was to gain a better Since the Enlightenment, Western understanding of the path of progress within discourse has employed reason as a tool in European civilization through knowing the prevailing over irrationality through the Other – the savage at the bottom of the pursuit of scientific fact over fiction. As evolutionary chain from whence we came. theorists such as Michel Foucault (1980) Thus, to know ourselves and understand our argue, the dawn of scientific professions and human nature, we must understand our specifically the medicalization of the body former Other self. enabled the production of discourses on These early first-contact accounts sexual deviance and normality, justifying the were merely a starting point in the need for regulation and control of the sexual production of discourse on sexuality as a body, and the criminalization of non- tool to conscript bounded groups of people conformity by the state. Foucault theorized to serve historically defined goals in the that the ultimate representation or production of knowledge. Lyons and Lyons manifestation of such power is the self- apply the term conscription to the regulating, conforming individual. The use of public and academic discourse as a tool deployment of data about sexual for the construction of sexual bodies, discourses and practices among identities, practices and communities ‘Others’ within discourses of politically and historically situates them in a power, morality, pleasure and manner that reifies categories, creating therapy in the metropolitan people within them as objects for control, as cultures where anthropological well as subjects for community and disunity. texts have predominately been However, Marshall Sahlins (2002) on produced and read. Conscription Foucault wrote that power in this sense may imply the reaffirmation of comes from above and below; as it existing social hierarchies or it constructs and embodies us, individuals can may involve what Marcus and potentially harness this power for other Fischer (1986) call ‘cultural purposes through resistance to counter critique’ (2004:18). hegemonic discourse and its (re)production. Carole Vance (2005) also writes that Thus, conscription is a diachronic process, marginal groups who do not fit within the entailing forces of power and inequality, and dominant discourse are able to “create their the privileging of certain voices over others own subcultures and worlds of meaning” through dialogue formation: the author- (26). itative ethnographic account. It can be As numerous authors have noted, positive in its Othering, viewing processes “[m]uch writing on the history of of colonization as assimilative toward the anthropology occurs as though the discipline sexual behaviours of peoples. It can also existed in a social vacuum” ignoring the demonstrate sexual difference in the Recognizing the ambiguity of the term sex practices and customs that serve beneficiary worker as an individual whose work may purposes in some cultures, such as two- not entail heterosexual intercourse, given the spirited individuals in First Nations cultures, limitations of space, this one aspect of sex who often act as community mediators or work is generally what I will refer to in this healers occupying both gender fields. paper. Taking such a simplistic definition of Negative conscription is exemplified in the the term sex worker in this way does not racialization of primitive sexuality, a process adequately grant space to GLBTQI (gay, in which early anthropologists like Mead lesbian, bi, trans, queer, and intersexed) sex and Malinowski were complicit. Ethno- worker voices, yet it complies with graphic accounts also demonstrate that mainstream understandings of what sex has conscription can be more ambiguous: come to be defined as: an invented term with questioning the basis of sexual fact is the a typically heterosexual (though also male manner in which the same ethnographic data homosexual) understanding of implied can and has been used to support both penetration. negative and positive conscription of peoples to specific categories and discourses Victorian discourses on sexuality (Lyons and Lyons 2004:18-19). Regardless Foucault wrote that in the nineteenth of their use, conscription and discourse century, public discourse about sexuality creation are largely a means for was effectively used essentialism, and the representation of difference; they are tools to delineate …to bring the sexual behaviour boundaries of what things are and what they of women, children, patients, cannot be. This essentialism can be strategic church members, and private in its exotification, as a tool for the political citizens under the control of representation of identity to gain access to agents of authority (husbands, community or rights. doctors, teachers, courts) but Rousseau (1991:xiii) writes that the also to aid in the legitimation of purpose of theory is “to reinvigorate that authority by providing, as a historical studies” through the critique of the major justification of the paradigms and discourses that produced hierarchy upon which it was them. In this essay, I seek to apply the above based, evidence of a dangerous conceptualizations of discourse, and sexual depravity among the discourses of sexuality, to female sex work. lower ranks (Foucault 1980, in This essay will focus on predominately cis Lyons and Lyons 2004: 52). females following the continuum of Western discourses on sex, sexuality and prostitution His use of discourse in this sense implies since before the Victorian era. Trans refers that discourse is a means through which to individuals whose gender and biological power becomes rationalized and enacted sex cannot be conflated, while cis is a upon the individual. Discourse determined categorical representation of women whose “where and when it was not possible to talk biological sex aligns with the socially about such things in which circumstances, accepted gender role they perform (The among which speakers, and within which Peak, October 2011). In this paper, I use the social relationships” (Foucault 1980, in term prostitute in a historical sense and sex Lyons and Lyons 2004: 55). How discourses worker in a more contemporary context. are conceived and perceived is historically 1 determined, and discourses change through- who suffered from a biologically-determined out human history as does culture. predisposition to immoral and lewd sexual In the eighteenth century, European behavior (Foucault 1980; Rousseau 1991; society needed to talk about sex in order to Truong 1990). All these aspects of Victorian sanction what is normal and morally society set as the preferred standard a allowed, and to control sexual practice. monogamous Christian family that practices Publications on the dangers of masturbation sex as reproduction. and the immorality of contraception served Early anthropological discussion of this purpose. Further, laws against sexuality in the Victorian era silenced prostitution and homosexuality between female voices and privileged the voices and consenting adults acted to police deviant sexual concerns of middle-class male persons and prevent the spread of Europeans. The discourses on sexuality that immorality and disease to non-deviant emerged from these dialogues were then families. Medicalized discourse in the later applied to contemporary topics such as the nineteenth and early twentieth century institution of marriage or slavery and the naturalized the status of the middle-class debate between polygenesis and monogeneis heterosexual, problematizing other-sex lust - of whether savages and civilized as perversion, along with masturbation, and Europeans belonged to the same human the use of contraception (Foucault 1980; species (Lyons and Lyons 2004). Weston Freedman and D’Emilio 2005; Katz 2007; (2011) argues that this “search for a missing Lyons and Lyons 2004). This discourse link” between primitives and apes “cannot served to control citizens and bring them be understood apart from the concomitant under the authority of the state and its search for a rationale for domination” (15- institutions. Under this discourse, “the 16). Early anthropologists explored human Victorian concept of the ‘true’ mechanically sexuality at a distance during this period, linked biology with psychology” as studying exotic sexual practices of other far- “anatomy equaled psychology” (Katz away peoples in order to better understand 2007:33). The ‘normal’, married human sexuality. Lyons and Lyons (2004) heterosexual was never the object of study, write that through these discourses, “the as they were legitimate and did not need to Other or the primitive [was] conscripted in be studied and fixed (Foucault 1980). the service of pressing contemporary Foucault (1980) theorized that we have concerns, whether or not that conscription repressed sexuality, but that it has been used [was] expressly acknowledged” (55). as a key tool in constructing identity around Early anthropologists such as Maine a powerful discourse, defining normal and and Morgan viewed
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