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…
Category: Gender and Sexuality
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….
“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…