#  Celibate Sailors, Hairy Chests, and Virgin Lands: Contesting Masculinities in the Americas 

 



**Melanie Perreault**

The collision of English and Native American cultures in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries forced a mutually constructed dialogue in which both sides of the contact attempted to gain power over the other. Through a comparative study of the English experience in Guiana and Virginia, this paper examines the use of gendered discourse to make outsiders both recognizable and inferior. By associating the natives with feminine traits and themselves with masculine characteristics, the English hoped to establish a natural hierarchy with themselves at the top. The natives, however, responded with their own cultural values that challenged the visitors’ masculinity. In the end, the failure of either side to construct the other as feminine and subservient led to increased intercultural friction and escalating violence. **\[WP# 98003\]**