Dangerous Intercourse

In Dangerous Intercourse, Tessa Winkelmann examines interracial social and sexual contact between Americans and Filipinos in the early twentieth century via a wide range of relationships—from the casual and economic to the formal and long term. Winkelmann argues that such intercourse was foundational not only to the colonization of the Philippines but also to the longer, uneven history between the two nations. Although some relationships between Filipinos and Americans served as demonstrations of US "benevolence," too-close sexual relations also threatened social hierarchies and the so-called civilizing mission. For the Filipino, Indigenous, Moro, Chinese, and other local populations, intercourse offered opportunities to negotiate and challenge empire, though these opportunities often came at a high cost for those most vulnerable.

Drawing on a multilingual array of primary sources, Dangerous Intercourse highlights that sexual relationships enabled US authorities to police white and nonwhite bodies alike, define racial and national boundaries, and solidify colonial rule throughout the archipelago. The dangerous ideas about sexuality and Filipina women created and shaped by US imperialists of the early twentieth century remain at the core of contemporary American notions of the island nation and indeed, of Asian and Asian American women more generally.

Tessa Winkelmann is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

A welcome pioneering work...Winkelmann should be commended for curating a unique cohort of primary sources, some of which have not yet been mined by historians, including court cases, memoirs, newspapers, fiction, colonial papers, and archives, producing arguably the first major work on the history of gender and sexuality in the U.S. colonial period in the Philippines.

Naoko Shibusawa, Brown University, author of America's Geisha Ally:

Tessa Winkelmann's astute attention to the overlooked subject of sexuality and race in the US-colonized Philippines offers us a more nuanced analysis of how the United States functioned as a liberal empire. Dangerous Intercourse should become a classic in the field of US imperial history.

Vicente L. Rafael, University of Washington, author of Motherless Tongues:

With pathbreaking insights into 'American mestizos' and a deft exploration of archival sources that sustains its critique of postcolonial theories of colonial intimacy, Dangerous Intercourse is an important addition to studies of gender, sexuality, and race in the colonial Philippines.