Scientific Racism and the Invention of the Homosexual Body

The main idea of the chapter Scientific Racism and the Invention of the Homosexual Body of the book Queering the Color Line by Siobhan B. Somerville showed that people believed that there was a connection between sex and race. Sexologists tried to connect race with the new concept of homosexuality that was brought to attention in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. During those times, people were always trying to classify and locate intellectual and physical differences between difference races, black and white. There was a large part of it that talked about how a white child had the equivalent intelligence level compared to that of an adult black male. From there sexologist took what those scientists said and tried to apply the sexuality to them. A major part that stood out to me was how both African American women and lesbians were found to both have large clitorises. Scientists were trying to find a something that could physically distinguish them as being “abnormal” or “inferior”. Finally, there was a mention of the concept of sexuality being a choice and not biological. I was confused as to whether or not I understood the main idea of the passage correctly. Also, throughout the reading, I was confused as to where they were going with the facts presented and how did they relate to the thesis. Was the main idea that people were unable to find any connection between race and sexuality? Overall, I thought this reading was rather confusing and hard to follow. I felt that there were too many scientists and authors quoted in the chapter that lacked explanation as to what the quotes really meant. I thought it was hard to understand the main thesis of the chapter because it seemed that the topics brought up did not flow together and interconnected to the same idea. I also wish there had been more examples presented like the school girls of different races who sexually experimented with each other. With that example especially, the idea that they were trying to get across became more clear. It was interesting to see how the researcher thought that the girls experienced race as equivalent to gender since they lacked the interaction with males

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