Sex and Conquest: Gendered Violence, Political Order, and the European Conquest of the Americas [Hardcover]

Richard C. Trexler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1995

This dazzling book delineates the relation between force and sex in social and political institutions. The story it tells--of biological males who lived as women--forges a link between sexual themes dating from Antiquity and the erotics of much of the violence in today's world. Photos.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 292 pages
• Publisher: Cornell University Press (October 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801432243
• ISBN-13: 978-0801432248
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,190,675 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars sex before the conquest, March 12, 2000

By 

michael hardin (bloomsburg university, pennsylvania) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sex and Conquest : Gendered Violence, Political Order and the European Conquest of the Americas (Paperback)

trexler's study of preconquest sexuality is thorough and thought-provoking. he investigates countless indigenous and spanish sources to come up with a compelling argument that berdaches--indigenous males who cross-dressed and perfomed female sex and social roles--were part of the majority of indigenous cultures. he also demonstrates how those individuals were viewed by their peers and by the spanish, and how the spanish/european fear of homosexuality, specifically "passive" homosexuality, is responsible for the disappearance of the berdache. this book was highly readable for the more novice reader, but incredibly well documented (one hundred pages of notes) for the more academic reader. this book will likely go down as the definitive study on pre-conquest indigenous (homo)sexuality.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not what I thought, October 8, 2010

By 

Jakujin - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Sex and Conquest : Gendered Violence, Political Order and the European Conquest of the Americas (Paperback)

This is a book for you if, only if, you have a fundamental belief in sex as power and very little else. For me it's a dark interpretation of human culture and unwarranted. His theory - incidence of homosexuality has to do with power (and subjection, humiliation) or is primarily to be studied in those terms - is way too blanket across cultures for my trust; he seems to me to treat vastly different cultures as almost equivalent. The evidence he hangs on is often loose, and the fact naively given away in his sentence structure: that is, you can easily read through to: 'although there's not a lot of data on this point, my theory holds'.

Sorry, my skin crawled; I have less negative beliefs. For your guidance, he follows Foucault, he scorns Walter Williams' The Spirit and the Flesh (too happy, too gay. I love this book). He discounts the spirituality, or spiritual significance of the berdache.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not for the open-minded, January 2, 2010

By 

juanote (SLC Ut) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sex and Conquest : Gendered Violence, Political Order and the European Conquest of the Americas (Paperback)

I'll have to admit, I couldn't finish it. He starts from a basic assumption that anything outside of heteronormativity is shameful, that all homosexual actions are rape, and goes downhill from there. I was looking for new information about third genders in ancient societies. This isn't it.