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

"This excellent book focuses on the erotics of power at the time of the initial colonization of the western hemisphere and examines male culture of the period by assessing both Iberian and American attitudes toward transvestism and homosexuality. This highly original work of history, however, never loses sight of the comparative and contemporary implications of its findings. . . . Trexler has mined the documentary record of the period with great caution and sophistication to yield a meticulous exposition of the interpretation the Spaniards and Portuguese placed on the sexual culture they encountered in the new world and the construction of their own sexual behavior and attitudes in this critical early period."—Foreign Affairs