Book contents
- Gender in American Literature and Culture
- Cambridge Themes in American Literature and Culture
- Gender in American Literature and Culture
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Intimacies
- Chapter 1 The Price of Freedom
- Chapter 2 Post-Reproductive Female Sexuality and the Early American Novel
- Chapter 3 The Effeminate Man in Nineteenth-Century America
- Chapter 4 Rereading Puritan Masculinity through Trans Theory
- Chapter 5 “Unbounded Grief”
- Chapter 6 Rethinking Reproductive Freedom through Transpacific Narratives
- Chapter 7 Slow Emergency
- Part II Aggressions
- Part III New Directions
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 3 - The Effeminate Man in Nineteenth-Century America
from Part I - Intimacies
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 April 2021
- Gender in American Literature and Culture
- Cambridge Themes in American Literature and Culture
- Gender in American Literature and Culture
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Intimacies
- Chapter 1 The Price of Freedom
- Chapter 2 Post-Reproductive Female Sexuality and the Early American Novel
- Chapter 3 The Effeminate Man in Nineteenth-Century America
- Chapter 4 Rereading Puritan Masculinity through Trans Theory
- Chapter 5 “Unbounded Grief”
- Chapter 6 Rethinking Reproductive Freedom through Transpacific Narratives
- Chapter 7 Slow Emergency
- Part II Aggressions
- Part III New Directions
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
During the nineteenth century, “the effeminate man” was frequently named as an object of derision, transforming him into a complete specimen of person well in advance of his still-unborn cousin, the homosexual. Despite this visibility, the effeminate man remains largely absent within recent queer and gender histories. Against such critical neglect, this chapter proposes that the effeminate man occupies a pivotal position within the overlapping genealogies of American literature, feminism, and race. First, he came to be counted among white liberalism’s constitutive castaways. Effeminophobia aimed to a binary sex system that claimed buffered autonomy for men while quarantining femininity – understood as vulnerability to influence – to women. Second, the effeminate man came was seen as excessively white. As whites understood it, exposures to European civilization left the effeminate man enervated. Effeminate men therefore confronted their fellow whites with anxieties about white supremacy’s emasculating influences.
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- Gender in American Literature and Culture , pp. 51 - 65Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021
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