"Argentina Formally Recognizes Nonbinary People, a Latin American First"
”Argentines no longer have to be identified as female or male on their national identity documents, the latest step in President Alberto Fernández’s push for gender equality.”
"Judge Temporarily Blocks Arkansas Ban on Health Treatments for Transgender Youth"
”The decision came in response to an American Civil Liberties Union challenge to a first-in-the-nation law enacted by Republican state legislators in April.”
"Wisconsin Parents Can Now Use Gender Neutral Language on Birth Certificates"
”New parents in Wisconsin can now choose gender neutral language on their baby’s birth certificate, with the option to ditch “mom” and “dad” for the much more modern and gender-inclusive “parents.””
"Mississippi Has Officially Asked the Supreme Court To Overturn Roe v. Wade"
”The Mississippi anti-abortion law that the court will be examining in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization bans abortions after 15 weeks of gestation without exceptions for rape or incest. The bill was signed into law in 2018 but has not been enacted due to it being declared unconstitutional by lower courts.”
Abby Minor, "Beyond Choice"
”Liberalism cannot simply be extended to the uterus. Reproductive justice requires a vision of the social body.”
Adam Mars-Jones, "Good Activist, Bad Activist"
”A London Review of Books article on Sarah Schulman’s latest book, Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-93.”
Article Spotlight
Desiree Abu-Odeh, Shamus Khan, and Constance A. Nathanson. “Social Constructions of Rape at Columbia University and Barnard College, 1955–90.” Social Science History 44, no. 2 (2020): 355–79. doi: 10.1017/ssh.2019.49.
Sex on college campuses has fascinated scholars, reporters, and the public since the advent of coeducational higher education in the middle of the nineteenth century. But the emergence of rape on campus as a public problem is relatively recent. This article reveals the changing social constructions of campus rape as a public problem through a detailed examination of newspaper reporting on this issue as it unfolded at Columbia University and Barnard College between 1955 and 1990. Adapting Joseph R. Gusfield’s classic formulation of public problem construction, we show the ways police and other judicial and law enforcement authorities, feminists, university faculty, student groups, university administrators, and health professionals and institutions have struggled over ownership of how the problem should be defined and described, attribution of responsibility for addressing the problem, and prescriptions for what is to be done. Our findings show how beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the simultaneous swelling of the women’s liberation movement and the exponential integration of women into previously male-dominated institutions of higher education and medicine catalyzed the creation of new kinds of knowledge, institutions, and expertise to address rape and sexual violence more broadly on college campuses. New actors—feminists and health professionals—layered frames of gender and health over those of crime and punishment to fundamentally transform how we understand rape on campus, and beyond.
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Episode Spotlight
In the 1960s and early 1970s many Americans believed that rape was a rare and violent act perpetrated by outsiders and sociopaths. Popular culture taught men that women needed to be tricked or coerced into sex, and psychiatrists accused rape victims of secretly inviting their attacks. Susan Brownmiller’s best-selling book Against Our Will shattered these myths about sexual violence. Informed by the broader feminist anti-rape movement, Against Our Will portrayed rape as a systemic, pervasive, and culturally sanctioned act of power and intimidation. Yet even as Brownmiller provided a framework for naming sexual violence as a mechanism of patriarchy, she also minimized the importance of race and denied the ways that rape accusations have long justified the criminalization and murder of men of color. At a moment when #MeToo has brought about yet another national reckoning with sexual violence and male power, Brownmiller’s book, its legacy, and the contexts that produced the anti-rape movement of the 1970s demand re-examination.
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Books
