Understanding how the Europeans of the early modern period conceived of the gender binary—and how they connected gender plurality to racial and religious difference—can help us see how the rhetoric of difference continues to be mobilized today. As we read early modern texts, we might ask:  

• What do representations of racially othered figures—such as the Jewish man, the Black man, the Black woman, the Muslim, the Turk, the circumcised man, the eunuch, or the Amazonian—reveal about racial, religious, and gender variance?  

• Is Othello, the Black “Moor” of Venice, the same gender as the white Iago?  

• Why and how does Captain Ward of A Christian Turned Turk change in terms of his masculine virility after he converts to Islam and gets circumcised?  

• Does Viola’s desire to become a eunuch in Twelfth Night suggest a wish to transition into a new, distinct gender that is neither man nor boy?  

When we understand gender, racial, and religious difference as interlocking structures, we can begin to denaturalize the supposed ubiquity of biological race and the gender binary.