The intertwined histories of queerness and slavery remain one of the least explored yet deeply complex facets of the human past. For centuries, the institution of slavery shaped global societies, economies, and identities, but in many of these retellings, the experiences of queer individuals those whose gender identities or sexual orientations did not conform to dominant norms have been largely erased or ignored. To examine the queer history of slavery is not merely to uncover isolated stories of same-sex desire or gender nonconformity but to question how power, oppression, and resistance were shaped by sexual and gender identities within a system designed to commodify and control human bodies.
Queerness and Enslavement in the Atlantic World
During the transatlantic slave trade, millions of Africans were forcibly transported to the Americas, subjected to unspeakable violence, and denied their humanity. This brutal system was built upon total domination over the enslaved body, which included control over sexuality. Enslaved individuals did not have the liberty to form families or intimate relationships by their own choosing, and yet queer expressions persisted despite, and sometimes because of, the pressures imposed by slavery.
Sexual Control and Coercion
One of the most powerful tools of the slave system was sexual violence. While much scholarly attention has rightly focused on the sexual exploitation of enslaved women by male slaveholders, queer violence also occurred. Enslaved men were sometimes subjected to rape and humiliation by both men and women, either as punishment or to assert dominance. These acts were not recognized in legal terms as crimes but were rather forms of discipline and dehumanization.
Enslaved people had no legal personhood, so their sexual identities and relationships whether heteronormative or queer were determined and surveilled by the will of the enslaver. Yet in this hostile environment, resistance took many forms, including the pursuit of queer intimacies that defied the expectations of the dominant order.
Evidence of Queer Lives Among the Enslaved
Historical documentation of queerness among enslaved populations is sparse and often filtered through the biases of colonial or white supremacist perspectives. Still, traces can be found in court records, plantation accounts, and personal narratives.
- In the Caribbean, for example, British colonial administrators sometimes prosecuted enslaved individuals for sodomy, revealing both the existence and criminalization of same-sex acts.
- In parts of Brazil, records suggest the existence of gender-variant individuals among enslaved Africans, including males who presented or lived as women.
- In North America, narratives from formerly enslaved people occasionally allude to relationships that may be interpreted as romantic or sexual between individuals of the same sex.
These examples do not offer a clear or unified image of queer life under slavery, but they do show that it existed complicated, obscured, and often silenced by the violence of the archive.
Queerness as Resistance and Survival
In a world where enslaved individuals were stripped of their identities and families, forging alternative kinship networks became a form of survival. These chosen families often included people of different genders and sexual identities and were based on mutual care rather than blood or reproductive bonds.
Queer practices may also have been expressed through cultural rituals, religious beliefs, or performance. African spiritual systems that included gender-variant deities or same-sex spirit possessions survived into the diaspora. In Haitian Vodou or Cuban Santería, for instance, spirits could possess individuals regardless of gender and temporarily alter their identity, challenging colonial gender binaries.
Post-Emancipation and the Continued Erasure
Even after emancipation, queer people of African descent continued to face intersecting forms of oppression. Freed communities often adopted conservative values in an attempt to claim respectability in a hostile society, which led to the further marginalization of queer individuals within Black communities themselves.
The emergence of state systems of surveillance in the 19th and 20th centuries, including laws against sodomy, cross-dressing, or vagrancy, disproportionately targeted queer people of color. Their histories were further hidden by generations of historians who saw queerness as a modern Western invention, irrelevant to the study of slavery or African diasporic life.
Recent Scholarship and the Queering of Slavery Studies
In recent decades, however, scholars have begun to rethink slavery through a queer lens. Historians, literary theorists, and cultural critics have asked new questions about intimacy, identity, and resistance. This has included the examination of:
- Same-sex desire and relationships in enslaved communities
- The role of gender nonconformity in African and diasporic cultural traditions
- The sexualization of racial difference by white enslavers
- The formation of queer kinship beyond biological ties
These approaches have helped broaden the understanding of what resistance looked like under slavery and how queer experiences intersected with race, gender, and class under oppressive regimes.
Challenges in Recovering Queer Histories
Despite progress, uncovering the queer history of slavery remains fraught with difficulty. The archival silence due to both destruction and disinterest means that many stories will never be told. Moreover, historians must navigate the ethical challenge of interpreting queerness in the past without imposing modern identities on people who lived in entirely different cultural frameworks.
Nonetheless, the search is worthwhile, not only to honor the lives of those who lived under slavery but to better understand how systems of power operate across time. The erasure of queer voices from the history of slavery reflects broader patterns of exclusion that continue today.
Reclaiming Queer Memory in Public History
Today, efforts are being made to incorporate queer perspectives into museums, memorials, and classrooms. From academic conferences to creative projects, artists and scholars are collaborating to illuminate the lives of those once considered unworthy of record. This is part of a broader effort to make history more inclusive and reflective of the diversity of human experience.
Reclaiming this history is also a political act. In a world where anti-LGBTQ+ laws and ideologies are gaining ground in many places, it is crucial to remember that queerness has always existed even in the darkest corners of human history. To tell the queer history of slavery is to assert the dignity, agency, and resilience of those who lived outside the margins of accepted norms.
Why It Matters Today
The question of ‘whither the queer history of slavery’ is not merely about the past it is about the present and future of historical understanding. This history challenges assumptions, complicates narratives, and demands that we look more closely at how race, sexuality, and power have been constructed over time. In doing so, it opens the door for a richer, more truthful accounting of the human story one that includes all of us, in our full diversity.