Brynn Fitzsimmons // “The feminist ideal of women as self-empowered caretakers of their own health and as experts in knowing and defining health has given way to a form of women-centered healthism that shares some features with feminism, but lacks its structural critique and politicized edge” (341). As health humanities scholars, particularly in feminist health humanities, what are we doing to “loosen (the) foundations” (Banner 47) of structural racism within health discourses?
Tag: feminist theory
Embodied Post-colonialism — Part II
Sneha Mantri // In Part 1 of this essay on embodiment and postcolonial theory in VS Naipaul’s The Mimic Men, I looked at the protagonist Ralph’s relationship with his own body, which he progressively erases as the novel wears on. Here, I want to flip the lens outward and examine Ralph’s gaze on the female…
The Then and There of Transmasculine Pregnancy
The first epigraph above is taken from the climactic scene in Thomas Middleton’s play, More Dissemblers Besides Women (1614), in which a Page swoons and calls out for a midwife after rigorous dancing lessons. Cinquepace, the speaker, assumes a miracle, an upside-down world, a strange case, and that a woman must have impregnated the Page—all of which allow for the possibility a young man could be pregnant (5.2.224-29). The audience has more insight into this moment, however. In the first scene of the play, Lactantio recognizes the Page as a former lover in disguise, and the Page informs Lactantio they are “with child” (1.2.142). (Because the Page is given no names other than Page or Antonio in the play, I refer to them throughout this piece with they/them pronouns). Over the course of More Dissemblers Besides Women, the Page waits in vain for Lactantio to marry them, while the other characters perceive the Page as “sweet a breasted page as ever lay at his master’s feet in a truckle-bed” (1.4.100-3). Even after the Page goes into labor, Cinquepace is none the wiser and exits the stage “supporting the Page” (1069).
Two Babies, Two Fathers, One Pregnancy: Superfetation in Myth and Medicine
According to early modern gynecological manuals, superfetation is “a repeated conception”—a rare but real medical phenomenon when a woman who is already pregnant becomes pregnant again. The anonymous author of The English Midwife Enlarged (1682) responds to those who dispute superfetation, explaining that when a woman is “animated with an earnest desire of Copulation,” the “overheated”…
Stranger Things: Maternal Body Horror
Daisy Butcher Femininity, flowers and death have long been interconnected in the myths, folktales and stories that have captivated cultures across the globe. In their beauty and delicacy, plants can be a source of joy, but in their poisonous, thorned, or carnivorous aspects, they can also inspire fear. Nowhere are these two registers so diametrically…
Where are all the female doctors?
The Glass Ceiling in Health and Medicine In recent years, we have become far more aware of professional inequalities across cultures, ethnicities, and gender identities. Scholars and cultural critics have drawn attention to the gender disparity within the medical and health fields. In 2017, the number of female physicians in the United States hovers…
Pursuing difference through biology: gender and the multiplicity of materiality
Kathryn Cai In the Sunday, September 24 issue of the New York Times, a cover story shines a spotlight on men who think that “women are ruining the tech world.” As much-publicized sexual harassment scandals spawn new diversity trainings and initiatives, these men voice opinions that center on their feelings of persecution in a…