Episode Summary
Empires didn’t just conquer continents—they colonized identity.
This episode unpacks how European colonialism exported a rigid gender binary across the globe, dismantling Indigenous systems of gender and sexuality while dressing patriarchy up as “civilization.” From the witch trials of Europe to the British census in India, from Two-Spirit resistance to modern decolonial feminism, this is the long and brutal story of how gender became empire’s favorite export.
Sources and Reading Suggestions:
What is the Coloniality of Gender?
María Lugones – Toward a Decolonial Feminism (2010)
The Effect of British Colonial Law and Rule on Gender Binaries and Sexual Freedoms
Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí. The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses. University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
Zamora, Margarita. “Abreast of Columbus: Gender and Discovery.” Cultural Critique 17 (1990–91): 127–149.
Spencer-Wood, Suzanne M. “Feminist Theorizing of Patriarchal Colonialism.” (2016). Professor of Anthropology, not archaeologist, oops. Forgive my mistake in the episode. She does work with “Feminist theory in anthropology and archaeology” though.
Foster, Susan Leigh. Colonialism, Gender, and the East. Routledge, 2004.
Dozono, Junko. “Teaching Alternative Indigenous Gender Systems.” (2017).
Chollet, Mona. In Defense of Witches: The Legacy of the Witch Hunts and Why Women Are Still on Trial. St. Martin’s Press, 2021.
Hutton, Ronald. The Witch: A History of Fear, From Ancient Times to the Present. Yale University Press, 2017.
Laurel Clark Shire, The Threshold of Manifest Destiny: Gender and National Expansion in Florida (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016)
Many of these sources should be available with a free jstor account, but if you can’t access them and would like a pdf copy, please feel free to email me at bitchyhistory@substack.com, please reference the episode and articles you are looking to access, even book chapters can be sent on occasion.
Episode Credits
Written & Narrated by: Meredith Walker
Produced by: Bitchy History Media
