A closer look

Queering the Atlantic World

How did exploring and settling in the Americas influence Europeans’ understanding of gender and sexuality?

by Sandra Slater, College of Charleston

Beginning in the fifteenth century, West Africa, the Caribbean, the Americas, and Europe became culturally and economically connected in new ways. For the next two centuries, exploration, colonization, and the slave trade led to unprecedented interactions among people and accelerated the exchange of ideas and goods within the Atlantic world. Scholars have recently begun to study how this period of change also created “queer” spaces: that is, spaces in which gender identities deviated from the expectations of “normative” society in ways not easily defined and always mutable. As part of broader transformations within both Indigenous and European societies, contemporary understandings of how to perform gender and of the complicated terrain of same-sex desire and intimacy also changed. At the points of contact or conflict between European, African, and Indigenous populations, gender norms and expectations had the potential to destabilize, leading to disagreements about acceptable identities and sometimes violent confrontations with those deemed deviant or problematic. In this way, the entire early modern Atlantic world functioned as a queer space in which cultures and peoples engaged one another across a vast landscape of identity and meaning.

Indigenous World Views Under Attack

Indigenous societies embraced a spectrum of sexualities and gender as naturally occurring and, in some cases, as evidence of magical and divine gifts. “Two-spirits,” or individuals who embodied and performed pursuits contrary to their biological sex, existed within almost all Native communities in North America. A designation largely based on one’s choice of occupation, men and women who identified as two-spirits lived unbothered in their communities and took partners as they chose. Blessed by divinity with the capacity to embody elements of both genders, Native societies celebrated two-spirits, and in some societies, they occupied sacred spaces of spirituality. Few drawings or texts record Indigenous perspectives from this period; however, surviving documents from Europeans demonstrate how the visibility of nonbinary individuals, fully integrated into Native communities, upset European expectations and norms.

Unable to fit Indigenous practices within European frameworks, most Europeans vilified these individuals as “sodomites” or “hermaphrodites,” the latter an outmoded categorization of intersexed peoples. Vasco Núñez de Balboa, a famed Spanish conquistador, wrote about his encounters with “men dressed as women and practicing sodomy” in De Orbe Novo, a 1516 account of traveling throughout Central and South America. Balboa recalled that upon meeting “two-spirits,” he “quickly [threw] some forty of these transvestites to the dogs,” believing that murdering Indigenous people would protect European masculinity and gender and sexual norms.

“Balboa Throws Indians . . . to the Hounds”

Girolamo Benzoni, a merchant from Milan, spent fifteen years in the Americas in the mid-16th century. In 1565 he published an account of his travels, Historia del Mondo Nuovo. His book, which included vivid descriptions of the cruel and violent ways that Spanish explorers abused Indigenous people, was reprinted many times. In 1594, Theodor de Bry included this image in his reprinted account of the Benzoni’s travels. De Bry was an engraver from Belgium who published hundreds of images depicting European voyages to the Americas. Yet de Bry never traveled to the Americas himself; instead he relied on his imagination and the accounts and drawings produced by other Europeans. Even though not based on firsthand observation, de Bry’s illustrations played an important role in shaping Europeans’ views of America’s Indigenous people, the landscape, and the presence of Europeans in the Americas. De Bry titled this image “Balboa throws a number of Indians, who committed the sin of sodomy, to the hounds.” It was meant to depict the reactions of Vasco Núñez de Balboa and other Spanish explorers to nonbinary Indigenous people.

Source: Original translation of the title for this illustration: "Valboa throws some Indians, who had committed the terrible sin of sodomy, to the dogs to be torn apart." Copper engraving illustration from Collected Travels in the East Indies and West Indies (Collectiones peregrinationum in Indiam occidentalem), vol. 4: Girolamo Benzoni, Americae pars quarta. Sive, Insignis & admiranda historia de primera occidentali India à Christophoro Columbo (Frankfurt am Main: T. de Bry, 1594). Translated book title: "America, Part Four. Distinguished and admirable history of Western India, Discovered for the first time by Christopher Columbus in the year 1492. Written by Jerome Benzoni from Milan, Who having lived there for fourteen years, Diligently observed everything. Additions to almost every chapter, not including comments, Also treat the idolatry of those populations. Also added is a map of those regions. All illustrated with elegant images copper engraved by Theodor de Bry from Liege, Citizen of Frankfurt."

Regulating Gender in Colonial Virginia

Regulating Gender in Colonial Virginia

In the seventeenth century, residents of Virginia and other British colonies generally took a less brutal approach to regulating gender and sexuality within their own communities. Rather than the gruesome murders boasted of by Balboa, residents leaned on religious and community customs backed by the power of law to enforce traditional roles and identities for women and men. In 1629, Thomas/Thomasine Hall, a settler in early colonial Virginia, disrupted the social order when questions arose regarding their genitalia and sexual partners. Before coming to Virginia and laboring as an indentured servant on a tobacco farm, Hall had served in the English Army but had also lived and worked as a woman. Once in the colony, Hall unapologetically dressed in both women’s and men’s apparel, seeking sexual partners of both sexes. Rumors swirled, accusing Hall of having sex with an unmarried woman. If Hall was a man, then having sex with women without the status of marriage was an act of criminal fornication. But if Hall was a woman, these acts were not a crime. To settle the matter, Hall was questioned before the General Court of Jamestown. According to the minutes of the General Court, when asked “whether he were man or woeman,” Hall responded that they were both and detailed their history of performing genders as circumstances suited, often based on available economic opportunities. Multiple witnesses testified to Hall’s transgression of gender and sexual norms. Even after the court ordered various community and court officials, including prominent women, to inspect Hall’s genitalia, Hall’s gender remained unclear. Instead of enforcing a single gender upon them, the court ordered that Hall visually identify themselves by wearing masculine clothing with feminine accessories such as an apron and female head covering. Although not convicted of a crime, the court’s punishment marked Hall as an anomaly who would face the shame and condemnation of the community at large.

Punishing Same-Sex Intimacy in Puritan New England

In Puritan New England, colonists generally addressed improprieties through ministerial and community counsel, encouraging public repentance and forgiveness from the local Puritan congregation. Occasionally, they looked to the law to define and enforce gender and sexual norms, including condemnation of “sodomy,” a general category that referred to all “deviant” sex: same-sex sexuality, bestiality (sexual relations with animals), fornication (sexual relations when unmarried), and adultery (sexual relations with someone other than your spouse). In practice, however, prosecution of sodomy focused mostly on cases of same-sex sexuality between those identified as men. Only two instances of same-sex intimacy between women exist in New England court records. In one of these cases, according to court records from Salem, in 1642, a servant, Elizabeth Johnson, was publicly whipped and fined for “unseemly practices betwixt her and another maid.”

In nearby Connecticut, Nicholas Sension was protected by his money and community status. Sension was publicly chastised for his erotic aggressions twice in the 1640s and 1660s; in 1677, he faced criminal charges after the death of his servant, Nathaniel Pond, with whom he was widely suspected of having a sexual relationship. After Pond’s death, Sension became more public in his entreaties to young men and was charged with the crime of sodomy. When the General Court of Connecticut put Sension on trial, multiple witnesses testified about his well-known reputation for seeking same-sex intimacy and the aggressive methods with which he did so. According to the court records, one witness recalled that Sension “took me and threw me on the chest, and took hold of my privy parts.” Several witnesses admitted that Sension paid them to stay silent. However, only one witness had seen an act of sexual penetration; the law required two witnesses to convict someone of a capital crime, such as sodomy, that could result in execution. Instead, Sension was convicted of “attempted sodomy” and his entire estate held in bond under the condition that he cease his transgressions.

Although Indigenous and European views about gender and sexuality varied over time and place, the narratives of Nicholas Sension and Thomas/Thomasine Hall show how gender was malleable and same-sex desire persisted despite social and legal condemnation. Within the rapidly changing Atlantic world, individuals and groups who asserted marginalized identities and sexual passions challenged what was “normal” in colonial society.

Reflection Questions

How did European and Indigenous views of sexual fluidity differ in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries?

How did European colonists attempt to exert control over transgressive bodies? Were they successful?

How does a focus on gender and sexuality change your understanding of the impact of Europeans in the Americas?

Much of the available evidence related to gender and sexuality in the early modern Atlantic world comes from court documents or accounts of elite military and government figures. What are the potential limitations of using this evidence to understand how Indigenous peoples and Europeans thought about and performed gender and sexuality?

Addional Reading

Brown, Kathleen.“‘Changed . . . into the Fashion of Man’: The Politics of Sexual Difference in a Seventeenth-Century Anglo-American Settlement,” in Major Problems of American Sexuality, edited by Kathy Peiss (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company), 80–92.

Godbeer, Richard. Sexual Revolution in Early America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002).

Miranda, Deborah A. (Ohlone-Costanoan Esselen Nation, Chumash). "Extermination of the Joyas: Gendercide in Spanish California." GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 16, no. 1 (2010): 253–84, muse.jhu.edu/article/372454.

Reis, Elizabeth. “Bodies in Doubt: Intersex in Early America,” in American Sexual Histories, edited by Elizabeth Reis (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2012): 11–34.

Slater, Sandra. “The Erotics of Early America,” in The Cambridge Companion to Early American Literature, edited by Bryce Traister (London: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 179–201.

Smithers, Gregory. Reclaiming Two-Spirits: Sexuality, Spiritual Renewal & Sovereignty in Native America. (New York: Beacon Press, 2022).

Related Chapters

A Meeting of Three Worlds: Europe, Africa, and American Colonization, 1492-1680