Sodomy Laws and Gender Variance in Tahiti and Hawai‘i

Abstract

Abstract:In both Hawaiian and Tahitian, the central meaning of mahu denotes gender-variant individuals, particularly male-bodied persons who have a significant investment in femininity. However, in Hawai'i, unlike Tahiti, the word mahu is now more commonly used as an insult against gay or transgender people. The negative connotation of the term in Hawaiian indexes lower levels of social acceptability for mahu identity on O'ahu (Hawai'i's most populous island) as compared to Tahiti. The article argues that these differences are partly due to a historical legacy of sexually repressive laws. The article traces the history of sodomy laws in these two Polynesian societies and argues that this history supports the hypothesis that sodomy laws (in conjunction with such social processes as urbanisation and Christianisation) are partially to blame for the diminished social status of mahu on O'ahu. A different social and legal history in Tahiti accounts for the fact that the loss of social status experienced by Tahitian mahu has been lesser than that of their Hawaiian counterparts.

Privacy, Porn, and Gay Sex Parties: The Carceral Governance of Homosexuality in Indonesia

“…However, technically, when the U.S. sodomy laws were still in place, most states rarely enforced them, as this was seen as "impractical and invasive" to the citizen's private space (Thomas 2017, p. 396), that is, a violation of "private sexual autonomy" (Thomas 2017, p. 396). As some legal and sexuality scholars have observed, the criminalisation of same-sex sexual acts, however, also paved the way for the birth of the homosexual subject in law (Gleeson 2007) and the creation of certain social meanings surrounding homosexuality and/or homosexual acts (Zanghellini 2013). Although laws criminalising same-sex relations/intimacies are not the sole contributor to solidifying the homosexual identity, Aleardo Zanghellini (2013, p. 60) asserts that the nature of law "as an authoritative discourse making claims to truth, and its ability to shape our apprehension of the social and inflect our value judgments" about homosexuality leads us to "engage with law and its legal categories, including beyond the courtroom and police station, and including at the psychic and inter-subjective level of identity construction" (Zanghellini 2013, p. 60).…”

“…It is important to note here that I do not position the Law as the sole contributor in creating and cementing homosexual or gay identity in Indonesia. Instead, following Foucauldian analysis of the production of sexual identity through knowledge apparatus (see Foucault 1978), along with legal scholars' examination of homosexuality and law (Gleeson 2007;Zanghellini 2013), I position the Pornography Law as one of the governance vectors that make homosexuality and/or homosexual acts intelligible to the state and society by codification in statute. As such, although the prosecution of gay people was arguably based on the determination of their activities as public (not private), the deployment of the Pornography Law against gay people, together with the anti-LGBT media environment, has carried consequences for LGBT individuals by making them more visible, intelligible, and thus subject to the state's surveillance and control.…”

Grieving the transgender (assumed-cisgender) child: gendered mourning, the harms of cisnormativity, and the possibilities of creating livable trans futures

“…Hijra faced persecution under British colonization, making non-cisgender expressions of gender a criminal offense (Hinchy 2019). Similarly, anti-sodomy laws were introduced to Hawai'i in the 1850's as a result of "Christianisation" efforts from Christian missionaries (Zanghellini 2013), which were meant to socially and politically harm gender and sexual diversity through the embedment of white cisheteropatriarchy. These losses of both social status and political protections continue to impact the lived experience of gender diverse groups.…”

Pacific Crosscurrents: Modern Meanings of Queer in Hawaiʻi

“…First, we turn to a term that has undergone multiple changes of meaning: māhū. The term māhū is thought to have originated in the Society Islands, from a story where four priests came from Raiatea to Oʻahu(Zanghellini 2013). As the 2014 film Kumu Hina points out, māhū were respected for their embodiment of both masculine and feminine traits and held esteemed positions in ancient Hawaiian society.…”