Kink and the Colony: Sexual Deviance in the Medical History of South Africa, c. 1893–1939

Abstract

From the late 19th century onwards, in keeping with the rise of modern medical specialisations, sex was established as a legitimate subject of scientific enquiry. Public interest in sexual health at the Cape was fuelled in part by the panic about epidemics of venereal disease in the wake of the South African War. Local doctors presented sex as a conduit for biological contagion and moral dissolution. Deviant sexuality, in its many manifestations, was unmasked as a source of grave public anxiety and political concern. Sexual defects among children – manifested both corporeally and behaviourally – attracted particular attention among doctors and health officials at the Cape. As exemplars of innocence and purity, and as heirs of colonial power, the health and moral rectitude of white children in the colony was of crucial importance. This article explores the history of sexual deviance at the Cape colony, and later the Union of South Africa. It traces how medical interpretations of sexual perversity among children advanced particular ideas regarding morality, health and hygiene, and examines how these ideas were imbricated in changing concepts of race and nation. My analysis is premised on articles featured in the South African Medical Journal, from its first year of publication in 1893, to the beginning of the Second World War. ‘Kink’ is explored here as both a social and medical metaphor, used by doctors to denote the moral threat posed by sexual deviance, in particular masturbation and sexual precocity. ‘Kink’ serves as an analytical anchor, providing thematic weight to a corpus of medical writings published over the course of half a century. Whereas doctors used the word ‘kink’ to describe social problems, in its contemporary usage the sexual codification is more direct. The archaic and current interpretations of the word are combined here to analyse the social and sexual dimensions of deviance in South Africa's medical history.