‘위험한 관계’: 미국 이민자 남성의 정신질환과 섹슈얼리티, 1890년～1930년

Abstract

This essay takes mental illness as an analytic tool to explore male immigrants’ sexual experiences in America at the turn of the twentieth century. It focuses on immigrant men’s sexual “delusions,” in which they “imagined” intimate relationships with mostly white American women. This intriguing topic of research reveals the process by which male immigrants’ sexuality―sexual experiences and expressions―became not only a deviant act but also a tangible disease leading to mental hospital commitment and later deportation. Relying on the authority of legal and medical knowledge at immigration stations and mental hospitals, American society tried to locate, treat, and eliminate dangerous sexuality of male immigrants. This essay draws on contemporary reports on prison and hospital commitments, newspaper articles, deportation files from immigration stations (New York and California), and the Stockton State Hospital commitment registers (California) to reconstruct the experiences of male immigrants with alleged sexual “delusions” and reexamine the ways in which their racial and national differences shaped their encounters with American institutions.