Race and sexuality in contemporary society

Race and Sexuality

The Booysen rape case is quite enlightening since it uncovers legal suppositions of how before the law was subject to mediation by race and more particularly over determined by interception of blackness and femaleness properties. There were prohibitions of interracial marriages as well as sexual relations as found in the post emancipation legislation of the U.S. South. The cape slave emancipation came up in an era where there existed marked competing definitions of race. A study of more cases after the emancipation indicates that there was a limit when it came to the women's experience of freedom. Most of the authors in time have generally being concerned with elusive myths that concern white women as being victims of black rapists as opposed to ways through which colonialism had created conditions that authorized the pervasive rape of black women by white men. The Booysen case suggest the centrality of sexuality to creation of various colonial identities as well as exposure of implicit assumptions of gender, race and class that informed colonial rule.in the course of the nineteenth century people of color that had been freed from slavery and some working class whites as well as their descendants were seen to be falling under racial classification of colored (Scully,1997).

This racial identification in the nineteenth century brought about the intersection of ideas regarding gender, sexuality and class identity.in the Booysen case, the color identity of the victim Anna Simpson and meaning which was drawn to her identity within the context of her rape is only understood if an analysis of the multilayer colonial and metropolitan histories whereby sexuality, gender, race and class became referents to each other at the same time being discrete categories of every day lives as well as historical analysis. The Booysen case clearly brings out race as an issue of great importance .the existing racial prejudices in the nineteenth century shows how much rape victims especially those of color had a difficult time in finding justice. The intimacies between the whites and blacks seen in the nineteenth century bring out a suggestion of different aspects of these transnational intimacies (Scully,1997).

We will examine the transnational intimacies by focusing on a transnational town in Caribbean Costa Rica. Here foreign women became involved in sexual tourism as well as long-term romantic relationships with the local men that led to them staying longer or even returning for repeat visits. These predominantly female white foreign tourists had their travels linked to the local heterosexual relationships within the area. Costa Rica as a global tourist destination is constructed along ethnic and gendered lines when it comes to sexuality and tourism .the female tourists, a group of sexualized, gendered, racialized, national subjects affect local practices of sex, sexuality and gender through the embodied relations. Just like in other places in the world the presence of foreign women who have economic, racialized power have a profound influence on how the local men negotiate subjectivities and masculine identities ( Frohlick,2003).