In the Caribbean, the word "mati" (shipmate) evolved into a term for female lovers, tracing back to erotic bonds formed between women in the sex-segregated holds of slave ships.
While enslaved people could not legally marry, they developed their own commitment rituals and family cultures. Evidence of male-male and female-female bonds appears in various forms:
Early Pennsylvania sodomy laws differentiated punishments based on race, suggesting that same-sex encounters among Black men were a recognized social concern for authorities. Scholarly Interpretations and Intimacy
Recent scholarship emphasizes that sexuality was a "core terrain of struggle" between enslavers and the enslaved.