"Transgender Athletes Face Bans From Girls’ Sports in 10 U.S. States"
”Over the past two years, nine states have enacted laws to bar transgender girls and women from competing in girls’ and women’s sports. Another relied on an executive order for a ban.”
"U.S. Issues First Passport With ‘X’ Gender Marker"
“The country’s first gender-neutral passport was issued to Dana Zzyym, an intersex military veteran who sued the State Department in 2015, according to Lambda Legal.”
"Christian Schools Boom in a Revolt Against Curriculum and Pandemic Rules"
”With public schools on the defensive, is this a blip or a ‘once-in-100-year moment for the growth of Christian education’?”
"Ohio Republicans Are Attempting to Pass an Even More Extreme Version of the Texas Abortion Ban"
”Under the proposed Ohio legislation, lawsuits can be filed against anyone who “knowingly engages in conduct that aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion”—which also applies to paying for an abortion via insurance. Defendants in these suits wouldn’t be allowed to defend themselves with the claim that they believe HB480 is unconstitutional, nor would they be able to rely on a court decision allowing abortion if it was overruled in the future, even if the decision wasn’t overruled until after the abortion was performed.”
Judith Levine, "Abortion Is a Public Good"
”The right to reproductive health and agency is a compelling state interest.”
Joseph J. Fischel, "Pornography’s Contradictions"
”Porn performers and artists possess a unique vision for what labor justice and erotic fulfillment could look like, but they’re fighting uphill against draconian regulation and exploitative work conditions.”
Article Spotlight
Martin Johnes (2021), “Masculinity, Modernity and Male Baldness, c.1880-1939.” Gender & History. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0424.12580
Male baldness was a very common experience but it has rarely been considered by historians of any period or place. This article argues that baldness reveals a precariousness and vanity to masculinity in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain. Baldness limited men's ability to self-fashion their appearance. It made them the target of jokes, marked the fact they were getting older, undermined their looks and, perhaps, made them less attractive to women. There was thus a vigorous market for cures and preventatives. Such products show how deep superstitions and irrational thinking could run, but understandings of the condition were also rooted in the social and cultural conditions of the day. The glamour of Hollywood, a keep-fit culture, growing advertising of male-grooming products and the fading of hat wearing from fashion, all intensified interwar anxieties around baldness. Not everyone worried about baldness, however, and men's feelings about their hair owed much to personality and circumstance. Baldness thus not only reveals the precarious nature of masculinity but also its inconsistent and inherently personal dimensions.
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Episode Spotlight
In the 1960s, the airline industry ramped up its sexualization of stewardesses in order to increase revenues. Decades before the #MeToo movement, flight attendants navigated a workplace in which their employers required them to stay thin, remain unmarried, and squeeze into revealing clothing every day. In the early 1970s, flight attendants organized one of the first campaigns against workplace sexual harassment, assault, and sexual discrimination.
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