Randolph Trumbach's Analysis

Randolph Trumbach's essay, Sex, Gender and Sexual Identity in Modern Culture: Male Sodomy and Female Prostitution in Enlightenment London, questions why male sodomites and female prostitutes were awarded similar social status in this period. Trumbach investigates this question through an analysis of the effects that Enlightenment thought had on the gender/sex system. Trumbach utilizes police documentation, hospital manuscripts, written laws, and his own previous research concerning the sexual relationships between men during this time period. Through this investigation Trumbach comes to argue that prostitutes and male sodomites were regulated in society both socially, and politically (under the law), to more clearly define the lines that separated, …show more content…
He argues that the creation of sodomites and prostitutes as socially less than was to distinguish men and women in a way that could not be turned over through gender equality. This distinction was successfully argued through the ways society regulated prostitution and condemned sodomites. Furthermore, not only does the evidence Trumbach provides effectively support his argument, it highlights the incorrect modern view of homosexuality being historically viewed as unnatural. He states that the negative view of male sexual desire for other men is actually due the Enlightenment ideas that triumphed individuality and equality. This illustrate this our perception of homosexuality is actually a socially constructed idea created to maintain male social dominance during a time of growing equality. His argument is extremely important to the greater study of sexuality because it undermines the arguments of natural and unnatural sexual desires and behaviors being biologically proven. Effectively calling into question the current gender/sex system that has begun to be challenged as a socially constructed form of