In an initial post of at least 250-300 words, assess the culturally and historically determined relationships between sexuality and gender as they intersect with social, cultural, religious, racial, ethnic, economic, or political structures. Using Chapter 8 as your launch point for general concepts, use your chosen reading to illustrate one of the following points with reference to a specific historical context. Remember to cite specific examples from the required reading and your chosen scholarly source in your response to ONE of the following points:

How have distinctions and interrelations between sexuality and gender been a subject of scholarly controversy within the field of the history of sexuality? How has the work of Foucault shaped this scholarship? How did the development of feminist, gay, or lesbian studies impact this scholarship? How were ideas about sexuality and gender shaped by religious or spiritual beliefs? How did religious ceremonies or rituals reinforce or define ideas about sexuality? How did Western ideas about sexuality and gender impact contact with non-Western peoples? How did Western appraisal of non-Western sexuality contribute to notions of cultural superiority and inferiority in colonial contexts? How have societies defined deviance or disorder in sexualized terms? What individuals, groups, or institutions sought to define and control sexuality? For what reasons? With what effects? How has the interconnectedness between sexuality and gender affected identity formation? How have efforts to define and defend the legitimacy of sexual and gender identity affected the development of social movements? What forces in society have supported these movements? What forces have challenged these movements? With what rationales? With what outcomes? What are the broader implications of these social tensions? Reflect: Over the past thirty years, the history of sexuality has expanded dramatically as a field of historical inquiry. Just as with other topics, sexuality, like gender, is variable across time and place. While Western concepts of sexuality have dominated the theoretical dimensions of the field, more recent scholarship has sought to examine non-Western contexts, including the ways that colonialism and imperialism shaped the construction of sexualized hierarchies of dominance and inferiority. Ideas about sexuality intersect with gender, shaping and being shaped by the relationships of power existing in social, cultural, religious, racial, ethnic, economic, and political structures.