Week Three: The Colonial Experience
I really enjoyed the readings this week, in particular I found Catalina de Erauso’s diary particularly engaging and surprising with it reading like a soap opera at times! What struck me most about Catalina’s story was that she received no punishment when her identity was revealed but instead was honoured by both the Pope and the King. I found this so surprising as even in Europe today queer people are not always accepted by the Catholic Church – in Italy gay marriage is not legal due to the Catholic Church’s controversial influence over the country’s politics. The fact that she was so readily accepted would perhaps suggest that the Church and the King were not aware of her sexuality but only saw her as a woman who had dressed as a man for the sole purpose of serving her country and not as a way of expressing her own gender identity. Furthermore, I was surprised that the highest powers at the time, the State and the Church, both recognised that a woman was capable of doing a...