Bassam Sidiki // The first chapter of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1981) is entitled “The Perforated Sheet.” Aadam Aziz, a physician in the Kashmir valley in 1915, is summoned by the wealthy local landowner to see his daughter Naseem, who seems to be suffering from a stomachache. When Dr. Aziz steps into the young woman’s…
Category: Gender and Sexuality
Moving ‘Beyond the Bikini’: Exposing the Logics of Pinkwashed Healthcare
Elena Kalodner-Martin // Introduction As of 2017, the leading causes of death for women are heart diseases, lung cancer, chronic lower respiratory diseases, and Alzheimer’s (Center for Disease Control and Prevention). However, public discourse surrounding women’s health and illness often focuses on other conditions, such as breast, ovarian, and cervical cancers, polycystic ovarian syndrome, premenstrual…
Utera-Net as a Means to Revolt
Swati Joshi // The word ornament brings to mind the image of an entity that is stereotypically designated for “embellishment” (Rosenbauer 1947, 222). While analyzing ornaments as beautifying agents, we recall the inseparability of beauty and gaze, and that the object of beauty (whether human or non-human) surrenders to the gaze of the observer. The…
T in the Time of Coronavirus
Diana Rose Newby // Why has COVID-19 killed more men than women? As the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 continues its global spread, infection patterns and fatality rates have prompted this question both among medical experts and in the popular media. As of late April, data confirmed this disparity in multiple regions of the world: in China,…
Literature After the Era of Roe v. Wade
Bojan Srbinovski // “The right of privacy,” writes Justice Harry Blackmun in the majority opinion for Roe v. Wade, “whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action…or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment’s reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to…
Sex, Responsibility, & COVID-19
Dr. Brian J. Troth // In early 2020, the world turns its attention to the novel coronavirus that causes respiratory illness and, in the most malignant of cases, death. A maelstrom of information—of varying levels of veracity—inundates our news feeds everyday. In Ohio, where Governor DeWine has adopted an aggressive approach to containing the spread…
Those Other Sexual Diseases
Brent Arehart // These are strange times that we are living in. Politicians joking about the “beer virus,” social media encouraging social distancing, polls closing in the middle of a primary, dogs being walked by drones—very strange indeed. But it might not be all bad. Self-quarantining means more time at home. More time at home…
Is teenage pregnancy a tragedy of the commons?
Sasheenie Moodley // Garrett Hardin might expect teenage pregnancy to be a ‘tragedy of the commons.’ On the contrary, teenage pregnancy might be an opportunity for communal care. Garrett Hardin (1968) argues that one of the greatest dangers to society is communal property. His “tragedy of the commons” is the notion that the “commons” is…
Selling Sex: Erectile Dysfunction Treatments, Consumption, and Culture
John A. Carranza // In January 2020, Governor Gary Herbert of Utah suspended an HIV prevention campaign that used state-related sexual innuendo on condom packages to promote safer sex. For example, “Don’t Go Bare” was written over a bear’s backside. The issue, at least for Governor Herbert, was the use of taxpayer money that utilized…
Towards an Integral Model of Health: Documenting the Sterilization of Puerto Rican Women
Salvador Herrera // The camera slowly pans up a dry and cracked dirt road before settling on a set of large stone pillars. Each bears the outlines of the Taíno goddess of fertility and water, Atabey. The scene quickly cuts to a woman in labor, with jíbaro-style music playing in the background all the while….
