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…
Category: Gender and Sexuality
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….
“What Do Women Want?”: On Female Sexual Research and the Difficulty of Claiming Desire
Botsa Katara // Sigmund Freud once famously claimed that “The great question that has never been answered … and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is, What does a woman want?” (Bergner 15). The answer to this question shall ever be elusive,…
“Young people never are what they were in somebody else’s day.”: Sex Education, Margaret Mead, and History
John A. Carranza // On October 29, 2019, the Austin Independent School District’s Board of Trustees approved a new sex education curriculum that will teach students about gender identity and same-sex relationships, consent and interpersonal relationships, as well as abstinence-plus (abstinence is the best way to avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, but still conveys…
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Health ✪ Part 2: Woman, M.D.
Sarah L. Berry // If you’re a female voter, thank a woman doctor. Without 19th-century female physicians, we might not soon be celebrating the 100th anniversary of suffrage. In 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to earn a Doctor of Medicine degree just as the women’s rights movement kicked off in Seneca Falls, NY….
Derrière(s): Chronos and the Gay Male
Dr. Brian J. Troth // “Le passé est passé. The future is now.” These temporal adages, for all intents and purposes platitudes uttered without much thought, suggest that we are obsessed with moving forward, going so far as to prematurely announce the impossibility that the future has already arrived. Yet we are also apt to…
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Health ✪ Part 1
Sarah L. Berry // Keep your politics out of my uterus. I can’t breathe. My Body, My Choice. Current social justice movements proclaim that not all bodies are free in the twenty-first-century United States. Demonstrators use public spaces to stage die-ins, march on Washington, D.C. and state capitols, and gather support over social media. Founded…
