Colonialism functioned as an all-male training ground for masculinity
Evidence
The colonies thus were male clubs of a kind, at once the laboratory, factory, and stable of white men’s making, their fantasies forcibly serviced by the local population, men and women of color alike. Colonization in effect was about European men teaching their like to be men, to do men’s work, to exercise power and to serve country, king (no doubt preferably), and God (undoubtedly masculinized). — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 51
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the themes in Things Fall Apart about masculinity and imperial rule being fused, and to Achebe’s Okonkwo.
Related
- Colonial governance positioned white men as executors and white women out of the colonies (similarity 0.80)
- Colonial feminization of subject men aimed at effeminizing and disempowering them (similarity 0.79)
- Colonial rhetoric weaponized other men’s sexism to justify cultural erasure (similarity 0.79)
- Colonial warfare gave men new dominance over previously matriarchal societies (similarity 0.79)
- Winning over women gave colonial power over men and destructured culture (similarity 0.79)
- Colonial governance positioned subjects through intertwined racial and gendered classification. (similarity 0.78)
- Colonial power was symbolically encoded as masculine mastery over a feminized land (similarity 0.78)