A WEEKLY ROUNDUP OF SEXUALITY, HISTORY AND CURRENT EVENTS

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Carys Afoko, "Serena Williams’s treatment shows how hard it is to be a black woman at work"
"We only see a fraction of the discrimination high-profile athletes such as Williams experience on a daily basis. Any woman who works knows that you have to develop a pretty thick skin to handle the dozens of small instances of everyday sexism. That showing authentic human emotion risks you being labelled 'hysterical'."

Kasandra Brabaw, "3 Experts on What's Missing From the Consent Discussion"
"We talk to three leaders in sexual education—Bethany Saltman, who co-wrote Antioch's Sexual Offense Prevention Policy in the 1990s, Ted Bunch, the co-founder of the violence prevention organization A Call To Men, and Bianca Laureano, foundress of the Women Of Color Sexual Health Network—about the evolution of consent, what's missing in mainstream conversations about consent, and what the next steps are to make consent unambiguous to all."

Arthur C. Brooks, "Couples Therapy for the Catholic Church"
"To an outsider, this might seem like a crisis involving sexuality and celibacy. It’s not. From the predation to the cover-up, this is a crisis of betrayal, much like that between spouses—an apt and common metaphor to describe the relationship between the clergy and laity."

Rebecca Fishbein, "Susan Collins Now the Proud Owner of 3,000 Coat Hangers"
"Activists have sent Senator Susan Collins approximately 3,000 coat hangers ahead of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation vote, not that that’ll stop him from ascending his judicial throne and swapping out birth control for sugar pills."

Gillian Frank, "Life Before Roe: The Story of a 'Back-Alley Abortionist'"
"Blaine performed illegal abortions during the 1960s and early 1970s before the Supreme Court legalized abortion. As abortion laws changed, so did Blaine’s business tactics and the language he used to market his services. More than this, Blaine’s career spotlights the varied dangers American women faced before and after legalization."

Michael Gorman, "Conversion therapy ban coming to Nova Scotia"
"Nova Scotia will move to ban conversion therapy — a widely discredited and controversial treatment designed to change a person's sexual orientation or gender identity."

Prachi Gupta, "Migrant Parents Are Refusing Reunification With Their Children in a Devastating Attempt to Keep Them Safe"
"The fight for justice for immigrant families in detention has taken another heartbreaking turn: According to the American Civil Liberties Union, migrant parents forcibly separated from their children by the the Trump administration are so scared about conditions in their home countries that, in an effort to help their kids remain in the United States, they are refusing reunification."

Wera Hobhouse, "The criminalisation of upskirting is good news—but it’s just a start"
"There remain a myriad of instances where the law simply does not protect those who, devastatingly, fall victim to vile acts that should be classed as sexual offences. The government must not limit this review. It must be wide-ranging, and close in on the loopholes in the law."

Euan McKirdy, "'People are afraid': Gay caning stokes fear in Malaysia's LGBT community"
"The punishment of the two unnamed women took place Monday morning in Terengganu, a state to the east of the capital, Kuala Lumpur, according to rights campaigner Thilaga Sulathireth. The state is governed by Sharia law."

Robinson Meyer and Ashley Fetters, "Victorian-Era Orgasms and the Crisis of Peer Review"
"There is absolutely no evidence that Victorian doctors used vibrators to stimulate orgasm in women as a medical technique, asserts the paper, written by two historians at Georgia Tech. 'Manual massage of female genitals', they write, 'was never a routine medical treatment for hysteria'."

Anna Nemtsova, "Gay Men Targeted In Brutal Homophobic Attack In Kiev Speak Out"
"A gang of young men viciously set upon a group of gay friends in Ukraine's capital, stabbing one with such force he required surgery. The gang has yet to be charged with any crime."

Manveena Suri, "India's LGBT community reacts to Section 377 gay sex ruling"
"'What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet', Misra said, borrowing a phrase from Romeo and Juliet, as he overturned the colonial era Section 377."

Harriet Tatham, "Sex and relationship education for women with intellectual disabilities the 'ignored curriculum'"
"A relationships program designed by women with intellectual disabilities, for women with intellectual disabilities, is the first of its type to deliver the sex education many missed out on, as it was presumed they wouldn't need it."

Article Spotlight

Lauren Jae Gutterman. "Saving Jeannace June Freeman: Capital Punishment and the Lesbian as Victim in Oregon, 1961–1964." Journal of the History of Sexuality 27, no. 1 (2018): 134-173. https://muse.jhu.edu/.

"Based on a close examination of the coverage of Freeman's case in more than three hundred articles, editorials, and letters published in ten of Oregon's daily newspapers, this article will demonstrate that it was not despite but in part because of her unconventional gender presentation and her homosexuality that Freeman came to be seen as a victim undeserving of execution and capable of reformation. In some ways, this argument challenges what we know about lesbians and criminal justice. Scholars such as Lisa Duggan and Lynda Hart have demonstrated that since the late nineteenth century, the figure of the masculine lesbian has been imagined as posing a violent threat to white, heterosexual, patriarchal society. Journalists and legal scholars have also documented the discrimination that homosexuals and women who transgressed gender and sexual norms faced within the criminal justice system throughout the twentieth century, particularly in capital cases. Considering that the early 1960s marked a high point of hostility against gays and lesbians in the United States and that butch women were regularly portrayed in the media and in popular culture as threatening and dangerous, we might expect that the public would have had nothing but loathing for Freeman."

Call for Papers

Suffrage at 100: Women and American Politics Since 1920
Submission Deadline: September 15, 2018

"This collection will map out the last 100 years of this lengthy struggle, focusing on efforts to recognize, appreciate, and cultivate women’s civic engagement since the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. Our purpose is not celebratory. Instead, we seek to trace the uneven road to suffrage and public office women of different backgrounds and means experienced after 1920. We also intend to expose the institutional barriers and masculinist conceptions of leadership that women in politics have faced and continue to tackle. Women have exhibited considerable democratic imagination within and outside the traditional channels of electoral politics. Melding gender, social, cultural, and political history, this collection seeks to capture examples of women acting together and on their own within and outside electoral and governmental channels to claim a political presence, enlist state action, and create alternative services and solutions. In doing so, we use this historic centennial to make visible the determined presence of women in politics since 1920, while also calling attention to the ways these women have and continue to be written out of history"

Please send article abstracts of 500 words and a CV by September 15, 2018 to: Stacie at staranto@ramapo.edu or Leandra at lrzarnow@central.uh.edu. We also welcome questions and comments at those email addresses.

Episode Spotlight

In the 1980s and 1990s, the San Francisco Metropolitan Community Church wrestled with profound questions: What does it mean to minister a gay church when so many in the congregation are dying from AIDS-related complications and grieving the recently dead? How do you have faith during an epidemic? And what does it mean to participate in communion in a community ravaged by a plague?

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A WEEKLY ROUNDUP OF SEXUALITY, HISTORY AND CURRENT EVENTS

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Grace Brown, "Myanmar's LGBT community find freedom at spirit festival"
"Every summer, this part of central Myanmar hosts the cross between a traditional religious gathering and gay pride festival, which has become a key event for the LGBT community in a country where those who do not conform to traditional gender ideas are often shunned and "homosexual acts" remain illegal."

Phillippa Carnemolla, "Sex, technology and disability—it’s complicated"
"My research into inclusive design explores how design can—intentionally or unintentionally—exclude marginalised or vulnerable people, as well as how design can ensure that everyone is included. "

Sara Clemence, "The Gender Divide in Preschoolers' Closets"
"I buy my daughter boys’ pants because even in an age of female fighter pilots and #MeToo, boys’ clothes are largely designed to be practical, while girls’ are designed to be pretty."

"Documentary about women in science puts gender issues under the microscope"
"For women who have made science their career, there is seemingly no scientific explanation to explain the work challenges they face solely because of their gender."

"Drag Queen Story Hour Sparks Protests in Conservative Towns"
"In Lafayette, Louisiana, west of New Orleans, the president of the local public library board resigned amid debate over plans to hold 'Drag Queen Story Hour'. Mayor Joel Robideaux has indicated he may seek to cancel the Oct. 6 program."

Jeffrey S. Flier, "As a Former Dean of Harvard Medical School, I Question Brown’s Failure to Defend Lisa Littman"
"This week’s controversy surrounding an academic paper on gender dysphoria published by Brown University assistant professor Lisa Littman—brought on by the post-publication questioning of Dr Littman’s scholarship by both the journal that published it, PLOS One, and Brown’s own School of Public Health—raises serious concerns about the ability of all academics to conduct research on controversial topics."

Jason Horowitz, "Pope Francis’ Accuser Turns Up the Pressure With More Accusations"
"The archbishop who accused Pope Francis of covering up a cardinal’s sexual misconduct has escalated his offensive with new, detailed accusations that put increasing pressure on a pontiff who the archbishop and his supporters say has misled the faithful and should resign."

"Nebraska Catholic Diocese Rocked by Old Abuse Allegations"
"As a new wave of abuse scandals rock the Roman Catholic church, critics say the Diocese of Lincoln is now paying the price for its unwillingness to change and lack of transparency."

Shahla Khan Salter, "We're Queer Muslims And Allies Marching At Pride For Those Who Can't"
"For members of a Muslim community where the traditional ulema, or religious leadership, still frowns upon homosexuality, marching at Pride as queer Muslims and their allies have been doing in Ottawa for several years now (and as queer Muslims and their allies have done in other Canadian cities, in the U.K., France, Italy, the U.S. and elsewhere) is an act of religious and political rebellion."

Lauren Sandler, "To Solve America's Sexism, Make Workplaces More Like Iceland's"
"For the past nine years, the World Economic Forum’s gender equality index has deemed Iceland the best place on earth to be a woman. Early this year, it became the first nation to require employers to prove they are paying women equal wages for equal work, fining business that fail to do so."

"Unmarried mother denied widowed parent benefits after partner's death wins landmark Supreme Court case"
"An unmarried mother has won a Supreme Court battle to access widowed parent's allowance for her bereaved children."

"Why are so many teenage girls appearing in gender clinics?"
"The study has attracted heavy criticism. Some is reasonable. Though it is a solid first attempt to describe a recently observed phenomenon, it is qualitative rather than quantitative, and relies solely on interviews with parents, not children."

Article Spotlight

Alison Lefkovitz, "Men in the House: Race, Welfare, and the Regulation of Men's Sexuality in the United States, 1961-1972," Journal of the History of Sexuality 20, no. 3 (2011): 594-614. https://muse.jhu.edu/

"Substitute parent laws, also known as "man in the house" laws, introduced one of the most calculating means of exploiting black men's sexuality to solve the problem of black women's dependence. Before 1961, states were free to make distinctions between the deserving and undeserving poor however they saw fit, based on a suitable home clause in the 1935 Social Security Act establishing Aid to Dependent Children. Aid to Dependent Children, which was renamed Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) in 1962, was a federal program that depended on state governments to distribute welfare funds. In many states, a woman and her children could easily be prevented from being added to or else purged from the welfare rolls on the basis of the mother's sexual immorality. Increasing numbers of states adopted these types of laws to protect themselves from what they perceived as an onslaught of women and children clamoring for aid."

Call for Papers

Suffrage at 100: Women and American Politics Since 1920
Submission Deadline: September 15, 2018

"This collection will map out the last 100 years of this lengthy struggle, focusing on efforts to recognize, appreciate, and cultivate women’s civic engagement since the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. Our purpose is not celebratory. Instead, we seek to trace the uneven road to suffrage and public office women of different backgrounds and means experienced after 1920. We also intend to expose the institutional barriers and masculinist conceptions of leadership that women in politics have faced and continue to tackle. Women have exhibited considerable democratic imagination within and outside the traditional channels of electoral politics. Melding gender, social, cultural, and political history, this collection seeks to capture examples of women acting together and on their own within and outside electoral and governmental channels to claim a political presence, enlist state action, and create alternative services and solutions. In doing so, we use this historic centennial to make visible the determined presence of women in politics since 1920, while also calling attention to the ways these women have and continue to be written out of history"

Please send article abstracts of 500 words and a CV by September 15, 2018 to: Stacie at staranto@ramapo.edu or Leandra at lrzarnow@central.uh.edu. We also welcome questions and comments at those email addresses.

Episode Spotlight

In 1973, CBS cancelled the top-rated sitcom Bridget Loves Bernie after one season. The cancellation came after Jewish religious leaders objected to its positive portrayal of an interfaith marriage.

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A WEEKLY ROUNDUP OF SEXUALITY, HISTORY AND CURRENT EVENTS

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Aurora Almendral, "A Transgender Paradox, and Platform, in the Philippines"
"Dominated by conservative morals taught by the Roman Catholic Church, the Philippines is also one of Southeast Asia’s most tolerant countries toward gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. And lawmakers are taking steps to ensure national legal protections that would penalize discrimination against them."

Faiza Amin, "North America’s first sex-doll brothel opening in Toronto"
"A brothel is set to open in Toronto’s north end, but the sex workers won’t be real women but instead high-tech sex dolls made of silicone."

Tom Batchelor, "'Fake gay': Iraqi man denied asylum in Austria because he was 'too girlish'"
"An Iraqi man has had his asylum application rejected because authorities in Austria claimed he was “too girlish” and they did not believe he was gay. The unnamed 27-year-old was reportedly told by officials his behaviour was 'not authentic'."

Finlay Games, "I Didn't Know I Was Trans Until I Got Sober"
"I am now approaching eight years sober and clean, and it’s been six-and-a-half years since I announced the truth of who I am. This morning I awoke to the familiar feeling of gratitude and possibility."

Adam Levy, "Democrats adopt gender nonbinary language to charter"
"Democratic National Committee members adopted language to their charter and rules Saturday to include gender self-identification and gender nonbinary members."

Eliza Mackintosh and Sheena McKenzie, "Pope Francis speaks to thousands at Sunday Mass in Dublin amid sex abuse scandal"
"Hundreds of thousands of people braved wet and windy weather to attend Pope Francis' Mass at Phoenix Park in Dublin on Sunday, while thousands more gathered in the city center for protests against clerical sexual abuse amid fresh reports the Pontiff ignored allegations stretching back years."

Laurie Marhoefer, "Why the Myth of the 'Gay Nazi' Is Back in Circulation"
"Like all dangerous lies, the myth of the gay Nazi is wrapped around a grain of reality. There was a closeted gay man in the early Nazi Party. He wasn’t a myth, and Hitler had him killed in 1934—in part, ostensibly, because he was gay."

Joan McFadden, "Disability rights activist says people think she doesn’t have sex because she has cerebral palsy — and talks pregnancy and feeling confident in her own skin"
"Diagnosed with cerebral palsy at two years old, disability rights activist Vix Jensen, 26, opens up about the impact the condition has had on her love life."

Lorissa Rinehart, "This Black Woman Was Once the Biggest Star in Jazz. Here’s Why You’ve Never Heard of Her"
"Hazel Scott was a piano prodigy who wowed the worlds of music, TV and film. But when she stood up for her rights, the establishment took her down."

Evan Urquhart, "Facing Bullies and Court Battles, Transgender Kids Head Back to School"
"During August and September, all over the country, kids are heading back to school. It’s a time of both nerves and high hopes for every family, but for transgender and gender-nonconforming kids and their parents, there’s an extra layer of concern."

Florin Zubascu, "Hungary’s plan to ban gender studies sparks international backlash"
"The government’s decision is the first time an EU country has unilaterally barred universities from issuing degrees in a certain subject. Critics say it sets a dangerous precedent for state intervention in other academic subjects."

Article Spotlight

Keely Stauter-Halsted, "The Physician and the Fallen Woman: Medicalizing Prostitution in the Polish Lands," Journal of the History of Sexuality 20, no. 2 (2011): 270-290. https://muse.jhu.edu/

"This article explores the implications of broadening medical authority over prostitutes in the Polish lands at the turn of the twentieth century, focusing on the uneasy symbiosis between physicians and the body of the prostitute in the former's quest for heightened power and social status. Armed with an increased mandate in the fight against the venereal plague, doctors were able to leverage their access to the bodies of urban prostitutes and gain greater social status in the complicated milieu of partitioned Poland. At the same time, the newfound invasive capabilities of the medical profession helped to define all working-class women and female migrants as sexually promiscuous, conflating poverty and prostitution into a single social category. This dynamic reflected a shift in elite attitudes about sexuality and poverty in early twentieth-century Polish-speaking society."

Call for Papers

Suffrage at 100: Women and American Politics Since 1920
Submission Deadline: September 15, 2018

"This collection will map out the last 100 years of this lengthy struggle, focusing on efforts to recognize, appreciate, and cultivate women’s civic engagement since the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. Our purpose is not celebratory. Instead, we seek to trace the uneven road to suffrage and public office women of different backgrounds and means experienced after 1920. We also intend to expose the institutional barriers and masculinist conceptions of leadership that women in politics have faced and continue to tackle. Women have exhibited considerable democratic imagination within and outside the traditional channels of electoral politics. Melding gender, social, cultural, and political history, this collection seeks to capture examples of women acting together and on their own within and outside electoral and governmental channels to claim a political presence, enlist state action, and create alternative services and solutions. In doing so, we use this historic centennial to make visible the determined presence of women in politics since 1920, while also calling attention to the ways these women have and continue to be written out of history"

Please send article abstracts of 500 words and a CV by September 15, 2018 to: Stacie at staranto@ramapo.edu or Leandra at lrzarnow@central.uh.edu. We also welcome questions and comments at those email addresses.

Episode Spotlight

Chances are you’ve never heard of Ruth Wallis, one of the greatest singers, comedians, and performers of sexually suggestive lyrics in the postwar United States. Most of her catalogue remains on vinyl and historians have forgotten her. But from the 1940s until the early 1970s, Ruth Wallis was a bestselling performer and a mainstay at supper clubs and hotels. At a time when it was legally risky for entertainers to sing about sexuality for profit and pleasure, Ruth sold millions of records that used innuendo to playfully hint at a variety of straight and queer sexual pleasures.

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A WEEKLY ROUNDUP OF SEXUALITY, HISTORY AND CURRENT EVENTS

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Samantha Allen, "Maine Voters Could Ban LGBT Conversion Therapy"
"One month ago, Republican Maine Governor Paul LePage became the first in the country to veto a ban on conversion therapy. So far, 13 governors have signed laws prohibiting the practice of trying to change a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity through medical treatment, including six Republicans."

Sabrina Barr, "Parent's Explanation to Child About Non-Binary Gender Goes Viral"
"Just because we’re told by other people that we are something doesn’t mean that it’s true."

Owen Bowcott, "Not enough fish: woman successfully sues dating agency over lack of men"
"Seventy Thirty misled Tereza Burki on true number of male members, judge rules."

Christina Caron, "Transgender Girl, 12, Is Violently Threatened After Facebook Post by Classmate’s Parent"
"A 12-year-old transgender student in a small Oklahoma town near the Texas border was targeted in an inflammatory social media post by the parents of a classmate, leading to violent threats and driving officials to close the school for two days."

Andrea Lo, "Voguing for freedom: Lebanon's LGBTQ fight for equal rights"
"Lebanon is considered more liberal than many other countries in the Middle East—yet equality for the LGBTQ community is still a sensitive topic. Across the capital Beiruit, individuals are exploring different ways for the LGBTQ community to express themselves or fight for their rights."

Tris Mamone, "Until Our Workplaces Are Safe, LGBTQ People Will Be Trapped In The Closet"
"Yet even with the strides that have been made, many queer folks keep their pride private. According to a recent study from the Human Rights Campaign, nearly half of LGBTQ people are still in the closet, specifically in the workplace."

Geir Moulson, "Germany approves 3rd gender option, allows people to register as 'diverse'"
"Germany’s Cabinet on Wednesday approved a third gender option for official records that will allow people to be registered as “diverse,” complying with a ruling from the country’s highest court."

Chitra Ramaswamy, "Ruby Rose’s Batwoman casting prompted celebration, but the backlash tells us a lot about our era"
"After being cast as the gay superhero, Rose deleted her Twitter account amid a barrage of criticism that she is not Jewish or ‘gay enough’."

Caspar Salmon, "Casting Jack Whitehall as a gay Disney character is an act of queer erasure"
"Gay people can act straight convincingly, but the reverse is far trickier – just look at Dominic West dancing in the film Pride."

Harriet Sherwood, "Catholic LGBT group rejected by event pope will attend in Dublin"
"An organisation representing LGBT Catholics around the world has been denied permission for a stall at the World Meeting of Families in Dublin, which Pope Francis is attending on 25 August."

Article Spotlight

Rainer Herrn and Michael Thomas Taylor, "Magnus Hirschfeld's Interpretation of the Japanese Onnagata as Transvestites," Journal of the History of Sexuality 27, no. 1 (2018): 63-100. https://muse.jhu.edu/

"In 1913 Magnus Hirschfeld created what he referred to as the "Wall of Sexual Transitions" for the International Physicians' Congress in London. The first hint of Hirschfeld's intention to internationally communicate his evolving theories of sex and gender, the wall contained images of individuals structured into four quadrants that reflected categories central to Hirschfeld's theories: hermaphrodites, forms of androgyny, homosexuals, and transvestites. Today, this wall has survived only in several photographs that make it difficult to reconstruct all of its original images. This difficulty is exacerbated by the fact that Hirschfeld took his images from a range of sources and contexts: erotica, works of anthropology and medicine, depictions of works of art, and popular publications such as newspapers and magazines. Among the images that can be distinguished, however, are four photos of Japanese onnagata: male actors who played women's roles in Japanese Kabuki theater."

Call for Papers

Suffrage at 100: Women and American Politics Since 1920
Submission Deadline: September 15, 2018

"This collection will map out the last 100 years of this lengthy struggle, focusing on efforts to recognize, appreciate, and cultivate women’s civic engagement since the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. Our purpose is not celebratory. Instead, we seek to trace the uneven road to suffrage and public office women of different backgrounds and means experienced after 1920. We also intend to expose the institutional barriers and masculinist conceptions of leadership that women in politics have faced and continue to tackle. Women have exhibited considerable democratic imagination within and outside the traditional channels of electoral politics. Melding gender, social, cultural, and political history, this collection seeks to capture examples of women acting together and on their own within and outside electoral and governmental channels to claim a political presence, enlist state action, and create alternative services and solutions. In doing so, we use this historic centennial to make visible the determined presence of women in politics since 1920, while also calling attention to the ways these women have and continue to be written out of history"

Please send article abstracts of 500 words and a CV by September 15, 2018 to: Stacie at staranto@ramapo.edu or Leandra at lrzarnow@central.uh.edu. We also welcome questions and comments at those email addresses.

Episode Spotlight

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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Close Encounters from The Guardian's "Sex when you're asexual"
"Jords has always known he was asexual, but his partners have struggled to understand. Can you compromise over your sexuality for the sake of companionship?"

 

A WEEKLY ROUNDUP OF SEXUALITY, HISTORY AND CURRENT EVENTS

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Gwen Benaway, "When it comes to health care, transphobia persists"
"I suppose I should have predicted that transphobia would follow me into every aspect of my life, but I naively assumed that having the correct name and gender on my health card would protect me."

Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt, "‘My Dark Secret’: Orthodox Women Reveal Their Abortion Stories"
"[T]here is one group of women for whom abortion is an especially fraught decision — women in religiously conservative communities, and particularly, women of the Orthodox Jewish community."

Sadie Dingfelder, "The Crane Who Fell in Love with a Human"
"Early one summer morning, as rain is misting the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, a middle-aged man is courting a crane."

Sara Gregory, "How Queer Comics Are Confronting Rape Culture"
"Trauma and triumph have always been source material for queer performers. The difference now is that people with power are starting to pay attention: men, heterosexuals, cisgender people, white people—even the holy trinity of cishet white men."

Henry Samuel, "'I will not tolerate this': Video of street attack on student by sex harasser shocks France"
"Describing the unknown man’s behaviour as 'unacceptable', Ms Laguerre wrote: 'It happens every day, everywhere and I don’t know a single woman who doesn’t have a similar story'."

Harriet Sherwood, "Recognition at last for Gentleman Jack, Britain’s ‘first modern lesbian’"
"She was a 19th-century pioneer in many fields: business, travel, mountaineering. But 178 years after her death, Anne Lister is best known for her string of female lovers, with their erotic encounters explicitly chronicled in a coded diary stretching to 27 volumes."

Michael Stahl, "The Renegade Fashion Guru Who Wants to Change the Way We Think About Gender"
"A 30-year veteran of the commercial retail industry, Smith dreamt up The Phluid Project while on an excursion of self-discovery in South America. As a gay man who struggled with his identity throughout most of his life, he fancies the store as his chance to give back to the nonbinary and LGBTQ communities, to cultivate a place for people — anyone — to simply be themselves."

Isabella Steger and Sookyoung Lee, "South Koreans are tired of bad sex education—and bad sex—in the #MeToo era"
"Long before #MeToo took off, three South Korean teachers knew the country had a gender problem."

Maxwell Strachan, "The Secret History Of Gay Hollywood Finally Gets Its Movie"
"A new documentary tells the story of Old Hollywood's inescapable closet through the eyes of a man once known as the 'Pimp to the Stars'."

Article Spotlight

Scott De Orio, "The Invention of Bad Gay Sex: Texas and the Creation of a Criminal Underclass of Gay People," Journal of the History of Sexuality 26, no. 1 (2017): 53-87. https://muse.jhu.edu/

"Texas was an especially key battleground because of the particular character of the state’s political culture. Like the better-known gay meccas of New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, Austin, Dallas, and Houston also fostered vibrant traditions of gay activism. What was perhaps unique to Texas, however, was that gay activists had to reckon with an especially intense backlash from conservatives in the battle against the state’s sodomy law. Unlike the twenty-nine other states that had decriminalized anal and oral sex between consenting adults in private by 1979, conservative groups in Texas had succeeded in 1974 in passing a new law that decriminalized heterosexual sodomy but left what the statute called “homosexual conduct” a crime. Ultimately, activists had to fight two and a half decades longer than in most other states to get the Texas sodomy law invalidated for gay sex, too. It was this peculiar nature of Texas’s political culture—which included both a vibrant gay movement and exceptionally robust conservative opposition to gay rights—that made the state the origin of the court case that ultimately led to the reform of sodomy laws nationwide."

Call for Papers

Suffrage at 100: Women and American Politics Since 1920
Submission Deadline: September 15, 2018

"This collection will map out the last 100 years of this lengthy struggle, focusing on efforts to recognize, appreciate, and cultivate women’s civic engagement since the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. Our purpose is not celebratory. Instead, we seek to trace the uneven road to suffrage and public office women of different backgrounds and means experienced after 1920. We also intend to expose the institutional barriers and masculinist conceptions of leadership that women in politics have faced and continue to tackle. Women have exhibited considerable democratic imagination within and outside the traditional channels of electoral politics. Melding gender, social, cultural, and political history, this collection seeks to capture examples of women acting together and on their own within and outside electoral and governmental channels to claim a political presence, enlist state action, and create alternative services and solutions. In doing so, we use this historic centennial to make visible the determined presence of women in politics since 1920, while also calling attention to the ways these women have and continue to be written out of history"

Please send article abstracts of 500 words and a CV by September 15, 2018 to: Stacie at staranto@ramapo.edu or Leandra at lrzarnow@central.uh.edu. We also welcome questions and comments at those email addresses.

Episode Spotlight

In the 1970s, Evangelical women published bestselling marriage manuals. These books encouraged millions of American women to have active and exciting sex lives. They also insisted that in order to find happiness, a woman must submit to her husband's divinely ordained authority.

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The United States of Anxiety's "These 'Witches' Are Empowering the Next Generation"
"[G]roups like Brujas, a radical youth collective in New York City, is using art, politics and skateboarding to reject these traditional ideas of America. Brujas, which means witches in Spanish, is part of a new generation of revolutionaries who are unafraid to blur the lines between culture and activism. They are all for disrupting the patriarchy, trans-liberation and prison abolition — and are doing it unapologetically."

 

A WEEKLY ROUNDUP OF SEXUALITY, HISTORY AND CURRENT EVENTS

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Jenna Amatulli, "Instagram Removes Post For Women Of Color To Mourn Nia Wilson For ‘Hate Speech’"
"Rachel Cargle attempted to create a "safe space for black and brown women to come together to grieve" the fatal stabbing of the 18-year-old. It was shut down."

Ben Chapman, "Groping, touching and sexual assault 'part of culture' of British workplaces, major study finds"
"Sexual harassment 'widespread and commonplace' but the government and employers are failing to tackle the problem, MPs say."

Meagan Flynn, "Stanford swimmer Brock Turner appeals sex assault conviction, says he only intended 'outercourse'"
"The long-shot legal argument had three California 6th District Court of Appeal justices scratching their heads, according to multiple accounts of the hearing."

Jasmine Garsd, "Feminism Gets A New Platform In Argentina"
"An Argentinian daytime talk show, known for stoking fights among scantily clad cabaret dancers, broke format and suddenly invited nuanced conversations about feminism, sexual harassment and abortion."

Aimée Grant Cumberbatch, "Refusing To Move For Men Is An Example Of Feminism, So Here's Why I'm Taking A Stand Against Pavement-Hogging"
"In my opinion, pounding the pavement can actually be an example of feminism, and this is why I'm no longer moving out of men's way whenever they walk towards me. Let me explain."

Sally Hines, "Trans and feminist rights have been falsely cast in opposition"
"Anti-trans feminism needs to be called out for being exclusionary, writes Sally Hines, a professor at the University of Leeds."

Carol Kuruvilla, "50 Years Later, Many U.S. Catholic Women Still Ignore Vatican’s Contraception Ban"
"While the 50th anniversary of 'Humanae Vitae' is a cause for celebration in some Catholic circles, it’s also an occasion that succinctly encapsulates the growing fissure between the American Catholic hierarchy and lay Catholic women."

Laura McInerney, "The overhaul of sex education is a win for curriculum-by-tabloid"
"The rebranded subject is ‘relationship (and sex) education’. Sex is now reduced to a bracket. Are they having a laugh?"

Carter Sherman, "Massachusetts Has Executed More Women for Witchcraft Than it's Elected to Congress"
"Sure, the Salem witch trials kind of skew the numbers, but still — not a great look."

Jessica Valenti, "What Feminists Can Do for Boys"
"While women protest, run for office and embrace the movement for gender equality in record numbers, a generation of young, mostly white men are being radicalized into believing that their problems stem from women’s progress."

Article Spotlight

Elise Chenier. "Love-Politics: Lesbian Wedding Practices in Canada and the United States from the 1920s to the 1970s." Journal of the History of Sexuality 27, no. 2 (2018): 294-321. https://muse.jhu.edu/ 

 Wedding ceremonies, which, among lesbians in Canada and the United States, were common only among butches and femmes and studs and fishes (parallel identities in the black community), were one of the ways lesbians asserted a public feeling of love, and in the 1970s it was transformed into a political claim not for equality as normative political subjects but for equal standing with heterosexual citizens as non-normative queers. When Sandy and June wed, they followed a decades-old practice of transforming romantic, illicit love into a theory of justice. They practiced "love-politics."

Call for Papers

Suffrage at 100: Women and American Politics Since 1920
Submission Deadline: September 15, 2018

"This collection will map out the last 100 years of this lengthy struggle, focusing on efforts to recognize, appreciate, and cultivate women’s civic engagement since the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. Our purpose is not celebratory. Instead, we seek to trace the uneven road to suffrage and public office women of different backgrounds and means experienced after 1920. We also intend to expose the institutional barriers and masculinist conceptions of leadership that women in politics have faced and continue to tackle. Women have exhibited considerable democratic imagination within and outside the traditional channels of electoral politics. Melding gender, social, cultural, and political history, this collection seeks to capture examples of women acting together and on their own within and outside electoral and governmental channels to claim a political presence, enlist state action, and create alternative services and solutions. In doing so, we use this historic centennial to make visible the determined presence of women in politics since 1920, while also calling attention to the ways these women have and continue to be written out of history"

Please send article abstracts of 500 words and a CV by September 15, 2018 to: Stacie at staranto@ramapo.edu or Leandra at lrzarnow@central.uh.edu. We also welcome questions and comments at those email addresses.

Episode Spotlight

In 1973, CBS cancelled the top-rated sitcom Bridget Loves Bernie after one season. The cancellation came after Jewish religious leaders objected to its positive portrayal of an interfaith marriage.

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On Being's "This is Your Brain on Sex"
"Anthropologist Helen Fisher explores the biological workings of our intimate passions, the brew of chemicals, hormones, and neurotransmitters that make the thrilling and sometimes treacherous realms of love and sex."

Radiolab's "Dana"
"When Dana Zzyym applied for their first passport back in 2014, they were handed a pretty straightforward application. Name, place of birth, photo ID -- the usual. But one question on the application stopped Dana in their tracks: male or female? Dana, technically, wasn’t either."

 

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Christina Cauterucci, "Incel Memes Aren’t a Joke"
"Incel culture has flourished online, where like-minded men post unsigned messages on Reddit, 4chan, and incel message boards, describing their most sinister fantasies about worlds in which women are collected like tax dollars and redistributed for sex."

Emily Contois, "I Was Trolled – Here’s Why I’m Turning It into a Teaching Opportunity"
"Food in particular tells us much about gender and power in U.S. society, and gendered online abuse is no exception. It’s not a coincidence that one of the most cited academic papers on the topic of online misogyny by Professor Emma A. Jane is titled 'Back to the kitchen, cunt: speaking the unspeakable about online misogyny'."

Lucy Cotter and Amy Hitchcock, "Line 18: Gender debate sparks bitter divide among trans and feminist groups"
"Transgender activists rubbish claims they cause female spaces to be compromised, while feminists say they want to 'protect girls'."

Hannah Dreyfus, "Harassment Allegations Mount Against Leading Jewish Sociologist"
"Women academics cite long pattern of sexual improprieties at the hands of Steven M. Cohen, who has expressed 'remorse' for his actions."

Ashley Fetters, "Americans Have Some Pretty Vanilla Sexual Fantasies"
"A new book on the science of sexual desire finds Americans are surprisingly romantic and loyal to their partners when they fantasize about sex."

Aura S. Jirau, "Storming Through Research: Historical Production in Post-María Puerto Rico"
"While conditions for historical production were dire before, the storm deteriorated them even further. Research facilities and libraries with meager resources faced flooded buildings and loss of power, putting collections and archives at risk."

"Lebanon: Same-Sex Relations Not Illegal"
"A district court of appeal in Lebanon issued a groundbreaking ruling on July 12, 2018, that consensual sex between people of the same sex is not unlawful, Human Rights Watch said."

Reese Piper, "Secret Life of an Autistic Stripper"
"I've always had trouble reading social cues, but in the strip club, where rules and roles are crystal clear, I finally learned to connect."

Liz Plank, "Should Giving Women Oral Sex be Mandatory for Men?"
"Can a man refuse to go down on a woman and still be someone we all don’t collectively shame into oblivion? Judging by the Twitter reactions to [DJ Khaled's] comments, the answer is a pretty strong and resounding no."

 Anne Thériault, “How Being a Girl Guide Informed My Budding Feminism”
"In a world that seemed as if it was increasingly trying to convince me that women needed men, Guiding was the first place where I realized we could take care of ourselves just fine."

Sally Weale, "Campaigners criticise delay in updating sex education curriculum"
"Campaigners have criticised delays to the introduction of a new sex and relationships curriculum that will now not be made compulsory in schools in England until September 2020."

Joseph Wilson, "It’s Not A Sex-Ed Curriculum, It’s A Health Curriculum, And Our Kids Need It"
"Recently, Ontario’s new Premier, Doug Ford, followed through on one of his campaign promises to repeal the previous provincial government's 'sex-ed curriculum' and reverting to the version that was last updated in 1998. But there is no such thing as a 'sex-ed curriculum'."

Article Spotlight

Rachel Hope Cleves, "Six Ways of Looking at a Trans Man? The Life of Frank Shimer (1826–1901)." Journal of the History of Sexuality 27, no. 1 (2018): 32-62. https://muse.jhu.edu/

Throughout Shimer's life—as she grew up in upstate New York, attended normal school in Albany, moved to frontier Illinois for a teaching job, served as an influential college president, retired to Florida, helped launch the citrus industry, and lived out her final days—she consistently expressed characteristics that those around her understood to be masculine. However, over her lifetime the meaning of that masculinity and, consequently, the meaning of her identity as a woman changed repeatedly. This essay examines the shifting meanings of female masculinity during Shimer's lifetime, drawing attention to gender's historical incoherency in order to situate Shimer's life within trans history. It follows the lead of scholars who have argued that attention to process rather than identity provides the best approach to writing transgender history avant la lettre.

Episode Spotlight

Chances are you’ve never heard of Ruth Wallis, one of the greatest singers, comedians, and performers of sexually suggestive lyrics in the postwar United States. Most of her catalogue remains on vinyl and historians have forgotten her. But from the 1940s until the early 1970s, Ruth Wallis was a bestselling performer and a mainstay at supper clubs and hotels. At a time when it was legally risky for entertainers to sing about sexuality for profit and pleasure, Ruth sold millions of records that used innuendo to playfully hint at a variety of straight and queer sexual pleasures.

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Hysteria's "Freedom Hangover"
"In this episode, we discuss the idea of freedom and reproductive rights, plus a conversation about what’s going on at the U.S. – Mexico border. Then, we answer listener questions in a segment called Dude You Asked and close out the show with recommendations for cool stuff women are doing and making."

Truths be Told's "Hook Ups"
"Lindsay and her guests share their most notable hook up/one-night stand experiences and have an in depth discussion about hook up culture."

Exhibits

"Erotos, the 1993 Series by Nobuyoshi Araki That Saw Sexuality Everywhere"
"Turning his lens to both nature and the manmade world, Araki delineates the glistening sexuality in an open oyster; the curved form of a thick pipe screwed into the wall; an overripe fig; a wilting sunflower."

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Vqueeram Aditya, "In the Fight Against 377, Queer Politics Needs to Move Beyond Privacy"
"We need to also fight the Anti-Trafficking Bill, because once it becomes law, it will effectively criminalise all non-normative sexuality."

BJ Colangelo, "Cleveland Neighborhoods 'Redlined' in the 1930s Are the Same Ones Dealing With Lead, Sexual Assault, Poverty and Poor Internet Issues Today"
"[S]enior research associates with Case Western Reserve University's Begun Center for Violence Prevention Research and Education discovered a correlation in the data related to the legacy of housing segregation and discrimination in Cleveland and the current rates of poverty and crime within the city's neighborhoods."

T. Cooper, "My Adventures at a Camp for Transgender Men"
"Camp Lost Boys offers archery, ropes courses, hiking, swimming, zip lines, horses, biking, campfires—all the usual fare. 'There are spaces for transmasculine people or people masculine of center,' Rocco points out, 'but no other event that caters to men who want to be seen as, read as, and live their lives solely as men.'"

Matthew Dessem, "Michelle Wolf Gets Patriotic for a Red, White, and Blue Salute to Abortion"
"Please enjoy The Break’s 10th Annual Salute to Abortion"

Elaine Edwards, "Hundreds march for better transgender healthcare"
"About 300 people protested in Dublin on Saturday to call for proper healthcare within the State for members of the transgender and non-binary community."

Ashley Fetters, "Finding the Lost Generation of Sperm Donors"
"Tens of thousands of donor-conceived children grew up thinking they'd never know their biological fathers. Now, they have a chance to."

Marsha Gessen, "Martin Duberman on What the Gay-Rights Movement Has Lost"
"In a new book, the historian and playwright Martin Duberman challenges this commonly held view of the triumph of the L.G.B.T.Q. movement. He does it bluntly enough: the book is titled Has the Gay Movement Failed?"

Jeanna Kadlec, "I Found God at Queer Summer Camp"
"I left the evangelical church when I came out as a lesbian. Then I found faith again in the place I least expected."

Eric Levitz, "It’s Normal for the U.S. to Put Corporate Profits Above Babies’ Health"
"But while discouraging the use of baby formula had a clear upside (fewer dead infants), it also had a big drawback — lower profits for the companies that sell the baby formula (that’s contributing to the death of many infants). And the Trump administration ultimately decided that it was more pro-profit than pro-life."

Taylor Lorenz, "Stop Live-Tweeting Strangers Flirting"
"Secretly photographing people or live-tweeting their every word to exploit them for content (and, maybe, viral fame) is gross, but the depths to which Blair and Hardaway sank were particularly troublesome."

Esme Mazzeo, "My Wheelchair Glamour Shoot"
"As a disabled woman, society has always told me I’m not sexy. I decided to prove them all wrong."

Claire Rudy Foster, "Planning My Wedding as a Non-Binary Bride"
"I couldn’t even pick a pronoun. How was I supposed to decide what to wear on the most important day of my life?"

Lucie Shelly, "Is the truth of sex work finally being told in fiction?"
"After centuries of male fantasy, female writers such as Rachel Kushner are revealing the contemporary reality of sex work – a truer picture than the one found in nostalgic historical novels"

Nichole Thompson and Shawn Jeffords, "Ontario Is Going Back To Old Sex Ed Curriculum Next Year"
"Ontario schools will go back to teaching the same sex-ed curriculum they did in the late 1990s this fall after the province's new government announced Wednesday it was revoking an updated version brought in by the previous regime."

Article Spotlight

Jessica Pliley, “Vice Queens and White Slaves: The FBI’s Crackdown on Elite Brothel Madams in 1930s New York City.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 25, no. 1 (January 2016): 137–67.

The FBI began investigating call house prostitution in the fall of 1935, and J. Edgar Hoover announced a nationwide attack on vice rings—criminal networks devoted to profiting off of prostitution—in February 1936. For the remainder of that year newspapers across the country routinely published articles about the FBI’s daring exploits against organized vice and their targeting of the madams—frequently called “vice queens”—who profited from New York City’s sex marketplace.

Hoover’s campaign positioned the FBI as the protector of young women, morality, and public order. FBI rhetoric accentuated the naïveté of the young women while dramatizing the social and sexual perversity of the vice queens. The telling of these stories repeatedly erased the sexual agency of sex workers, and the FBI reinvented them as either victims of unrealistic dreams or victims of greedy and duplicitous employers. 

Episode Spotlight

In the 1970s, Evangelical women published bestselling marriage manuals. These books encouraged millions of American women to have active and exciting sex lives. They also insisted that in order to find happiness, a woman must submit to her husband's divinely ordained authority.

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The Heart's "Ultraslut"
"In this episode, we continue our conversation on gender and femininity and look at what happens when we move out of the heterosexual dating world and into the queer one."

Making Gay History's "Phyllis Lyon & Del Martin"
"Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin were the originals. With six other women, they co-founded the Daughters of Bilitis - the very first lesbian organization in the U.S."

Exhibits

Fernando Carpaneda's "New Portraits"
"Fernando Carpaneda 'New Portraits' is a series of paintings and drawings depicting the beauty and the sensuality of men and women. The work seeks to provoke debates and questions about equality, in the sense of valuing the human being."

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Erin Blakemore, "Gay Conversion Therapy's Disturbing 19th-Century Origins"
"In 1899, a German psychiatrist electrified the audience at a conference on hypnosis with a bold claim: He had turned a gay man straight."

Belinda Brooks-Gordon and Teela Sanders, "Banning sex work advertising online will put sex workers in danger"
"Banning websites would drive commercial sex work underground or back on to the streets, making it harder to detect and prevent crimes against sex workers."

Karen Crouse and Ben Rothenberg, "At Wimbledon, Married Women Are Still ‘Mrs.’"
"It is a courtesy title [Serena Williams] now shares with Wimbledon champions Mrs. L.W. King, Mrs. J.M. Lloyd and Mrs. R. Cawley. The public knows them as Billie Jean King, Chris Evert and Evonne Goolagong."

Elaine Edwards, "Hundreds march for better transgender healthcare"
"About 300 people protested in Dublin on Saturday to call for proper healthcare within the State for members of the transgender and non-binary community."

Nanlin Fang, "China's first authorized sex educators to break decades of silence"
"Apart from a few experimental lessons launched in a handful of schools in China's larger cities, most schools haven't introduced formal sex education courses, leaving nearly 22% of youths under the age of 19 mostly in the dark."

Nicole Percy and Adam Walsh, "In the #MeToo era, women used as sex slaves by Japanese in WW II are still seen as prostitutes, not victims"
"Despite having issued repeated apologies over the years, the Japanese government's position in 2018 is that there's no evidence the comfort women were taken against their will."

Olesla Plokhill, "Patricia Schiller, prominent sex therapist, dies at 104"
"Patricia Schiller, a Washington sex and marriage therapist who became a leading authority on how doctors, nurses, teachers and members of the clergy could talk about sex in ways that were neither prudish nor judgmental, died June 29 at her home in Palm Beach."

Alina Polianskaya, "Australians may have to give verbal consent ahead of sex under new law"
"People in Australia who want to have sex may need to receive a vocal ”yes” from their sexual partner to establish consent, or the act could be deemed rape, a government minister in New South Wales has proposed."

Emily Thornberry, "Britain cannot stay silent as LGBT rights are rolled back across the world"
"From Poland to Egypt to Trump’s USA, independent judges are the last bulwark against governments who threaten gay rights"

Jasmine Ting, "Six Activists Bring Pride to Moscow"
"Six activists decided to get creative with showing their support for the LGBTQ+ community out in the open in Moscow. They sported the football jerseys for their respective countries, which happened to form the colors of the Pride rainbow."

Michael Waters, "The Tumblr bloggers building a canon of asexual history"
"Academics have long ignored the history of asexuality, so online communities are stepping in."

Episode Spotlight

In 1966, before breast implants were widely available or popular, Jack Feather patented a "spring type breast developer." He made millions of dollars promising women that they could change their bodies and increase their sex appeal.

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Criminal's "The 'It' Girl"
"The story behind the face of New York’s Gilded Age, Evelyn Nesbit."

Nancy's "Peppermint 2020"
"A conversation with drag trailblazer Peppermint, who's making history as the first trans woman to originate a principal role on Broadway in the new Go-Go's-inspired musical Head Over Heels."

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Lauren Christensen, "Revisiting Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex as a Work in Progress"
An impassioned treatise on the female plight under the oppression of a male-dominated work force, this book stirred controversy in Europe and America and solidified her legacy as one of history’s most independent and influential thinkers.

Samantha Cooney, "Worried About Roe v. Wade? These Activists Have Been Coping with Severe Abortion Restrictions for Years"
Justice Anthony Kennedy’s announcement Wednesday that he will retire sparked a social media panic among some women and had them wondering aloud what they could do to protect their reproductive rights in the event that Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion ruling, is overturned.

Jill Filipovic, "America Will Lose More Than Abortion Rights if Roe v. Wade is Overturned"
In 1973, Roe established women’s constitutional right to privacy for an abortion. But for many conservative legal scholars, it is practically canon that no such constitutional right exists. To them, Roe is based on an invented right.

"Film about abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell gets US cinema release"
The crowdfunded true-crime film Gosnell: The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer is cleared to be released, following legal action by a judge portrayed in it.

Gillian Frank, "The Surprising Role of Clergy in the Abortion Fight Before Roe v. Wade"
In May of 1967, as mainline Protestants and Reform Jews called for the liberalization of abortion laws, a group of clergy in New York City founded the Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion (CCS), an international network of clergy that helped women obtain legal and illegal abortions from licensed medical professionals.

Russ Martin, "Monét X Change, Miz Cracker and The Vixen Get Real about Racism and RuPaul’s Drag Race"
Early on in this season of RuPaul’s Drag Race, the drag queen, The Vixen started a vital conversation about how the show’s audience treats queens of color.

Daniel Megarry, "K-Pop’s first openly gay artist MRSHLL on sexuality, representation and his new queer anthem Pose"
The world of K-Pop may be known for the androgyny of its idols and the glitz-and-glam of the big-budget bangers they produce, but the fact remains that queer representation is almost non-existent in largely conservative South Korea.

Joe Pompeo, "'Every bone in my body wants to defend Ali Watkins': Sex, Press Freedom, and the Complicated Case of a Times Reporter"
In the case of a millennial superstar, the paper of record’s characteristic introspection uncovered an ethical minefield in which no one was innocent.

Zoe Whittall, "Let's not lose sight of what a Pride parade really stands for"
"Pride celebrations are not for “everyone.” There’s a reason they are still necessary in 2018, but it’s hard to see in Toronto. The last time I attended the city’s parade I got hit in the head by a sample pack of razors thrown from the back of a flatbed truck. No thanks, Gillette, I don’t want your participation in the revolution."

"Women allowed to take abortion pill at home in Wales"
A decision to allow women to take abortion pills at home in Wales has been welcomed as a "significant" move. Until now they have had to take two trips to clinics to take medication to terminate the pregnancy, sometimes miles from home.

Episode Spotlight

In 1975, two years after Roe v Wade, an all white and mostly Catholic jury convicted Dr. Kenneth Edelin, an African American physician, of manslaughter for performing a legal second trimester abortion. His trial transformed the anti-abortion movement.

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Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness's "How to Cut Suicide Rates Among LGBTQ Youth? with Amit Paley"
Amit Paley is the CEO of the Trevor Project and joins Jonathan to talk about the suicide rates among LGBTQ youth, destigmatizing the conversations around suicide & mental illness, and the importance of the work of The Trevor Project.

Hysteria's "Courts, Civility, and other C words"
In this episode, we meet all six of our bicoastal squad of cohosts to discuss the Anthony Kennedy retirement announcement, as well as civility and other c-words

Documentary

The Trap: American prisons' deadly sex trafficking cycle
The Trap investigates how prisons and jails across the United States have become recruiting grounds for human traffickers, who are targeting incarcerated women and trafficking them out of correctional facilities and into pimp-controlled prostitution. Revealed: how US sex traffickers recruit jailed women for prostitution.

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Jim Bronskill, "Cheers erupt as Federal Court judge approves historic gay purge settlement"
A Canadian federal judge has approved a landmark deal to compensate members of the military and other agencies who were investigated and sometimes fired because of their sexual orientation.

Britni de la Cretaz, "The Hidden Queer History Behind 'A League of Their Own'"
The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League did everything it could to keep lesbians off the diamond. Seventy-five years later, its gay stars are finally opening up.

Andrew M. Davenport, "Putting Enslaved Families’ Stories Back in the Monticello Narrative"
An oral history project deepens our understanding of U.S. history by sharing accounts of the community of slaves owned by Thomas Jefferson.

Josh Einiger, "MTA promises to remove 'Museum of Sex' ads from buses"
Museums visitors Pamela and Jonathan got quite an eyeful. They said they're "just 'friends" who took in an exhibit all about the history of human sexuality. 

Chris Malone, "A Brief History of Little Richard Grappling With His Sexuality & Religion"
 Besides his music, Little Richard has been known for something else throughout his expansive career: his complicated relationship with his sexual orientation, and his faith's effect on it. 

Alex Marshall, "How the National Museum is capturing ‘instant history’ of abortion referendum"
The day after Ireland’s recent abortion referendum, Brenda Malone woke up early, walked to her car and took a stepladder and some wire cutters out of the trunk. Then she started climbing up lampposts and cutting down any campaign posters she could find.

Mary Beth McAndrews, "12 Historic LGBTQ Figures Who Changed the World"
Pride is a time to honor the people who have paved the way for gay rights activism, like Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson.

Donna Minkowitz, "How I Broke, and Botched, the Brandon Teena Story"
The original writer of the Village Voice story that inspired “Boys Don’t Cry” looks back on her reporting — and the huge error she still regrets.

"In Myanmar, sex education comes from smartphones"
Masturbation does not exist in Myanmar—not the practice, which is presumably common enough, but the word itself, which is absent from the government-approved dictionary. When it comes to sex, accepted terms are hard to find.

Charles P. Pierce, "This Is a Fight Over What It Means to Be an American"
The stories come thick and fast now, as the crimes against humanity being committed along the southern border of the country begin to metastasize to other states, drawing them into accessorial conduct after the fact. 

Kyli Rodriguez-Cayro, "How Becoming A Phone Sex Operator Helped Me Heal From Sexual Trauma"
It was my first night as a phone sex operator, and using my nom de guerre, Lolita, I stumbled through half a dozen phone calls, raking in several hundred dollars. I jumped around my studio apartment as I transferred the money to my bank.

Episode Spotlight

Sexing History Episode 5: In the 1970s, Evangelical women published bestselling marriage manuals. These books encouraged millions of American women to have active and exciting sex lives. They also insisted that in order to find happiness, a woman must submit to her husband's divinely ordained authority.

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Criminal's "Lavender Scare"
Helen James grew up in a military family – her great great grandfather fought in the Civil War, her father in WWI, and her uncles in WWII. So when she enlisted in 1952, she felt like she belonged. Shortly after, she realized something was wrong.

Nerdcast's "The woman who connected Castro with the White House"
History forgot Lisa Howard, but we still see the implications of her work today. The story of how one pioneering female journalist used grit, determination and some intimate diplomacy to establish a secret backchannel between the U.S. government and Fidel Castro, altering the course of the Cold War.

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Pam Belluck, "How Universities Deal With Sexual Harassment Needs Sweeping Change, Panel Says"
Years of efforts to prevent sexual harassment in science, engineering and medicine have failed, and universities need to make sweeping changes in the way they deal with the issue, a searing new report by a national advisory panel concluded on Tuesday.

Colin Dwyer, "With Narrow Vote, Argentina Takes Big Step Toward Legalizing Abortion"
It took more than 22 hours of debate, stretching overnight into Thursday morning, but finally Argentina's lower house of Congress has decided: By a 129-125 vote, the Chamber of Deputies passed a bill legalizing abortion before 14 weeks of pregnancy.

Ian Froese, "Nearly 1,300 students victims of sexual offences by school staff over last 2 decades, Canadian study says"
Nearly 1,300 Canadian children have been victims of sexual offences carried out — or alleged to have been carried out — by school employees in the last two decades, according to the Canadian Centre for Child Protection.

Vanessa Gera, "Gay pride parade turnout defies conservative times in Poland"
The capitals of Poland and Romania hosted festive gay pride parades that attracted thousands of people Saturday, as emboldened participants vowed to keep pushing for the eventual freedom to marry the person of their choice.

Kit Gillet, "Same-Sex Marriages Are Backed in E.U. Immigration Ruling"
All European Union countries must recognize same-sex marriage, at least in relation to immigration cases where one partner is a citizen of the bloc, its highest court ruled on Tuesday.

Kathleen Harris, "Trinity Western loses fight for Christian law school as court rules limits on religious freedom 'reasonable'"
A B.C. Christian university has lost its legal battle over accreditation for a planned new law school, with a Supreme Court of Canada ruling today saying it's "proportionate and reasonable" to limit religious rights in order to ensure open access for LGBT students.

Aaron Hicklin, "I was 19, gay and ready to be ‘cured’ by conversion therapy"
Born into a Baptist family, Garrard Conley was sent for conversion therapy to ‘treat’ his sexual identity. As his brave and bracing memoir is adapted into a film, he reveals why he still believes he is ‘one of the lucky ones’.

Jan Hoffman, "Sex and Drugs Decline Among Teens, but Depression and Suicidal Thoughts Grow"
One in seven high school students reported misusing prescription opioids, one of several disturbing results in a nationwide survey of teenagers that revealed a growing sense of fear and despair among youth in the United States.

Hayley Jade, "I’m A Disabled Sex Worker, And This Is What I Want You To Know"
I am living with neurological issues such as anxiety and ADHD, and sex work has given me a profession that makes me feel, for once, that I’m great at my job.

Natasha Lennard, "Law Claiming to Fight Sex Trafficking is Doing the Opposite—By Cracking Down on Sex Work Advocacy and Organizing"
After President Donald Trump signed the packaged Fight Online Sex Trafficking and Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers acts — known collectively as SESTA-FOSTA — into law in April, organizing around sex workers has been reinvigorated with a new urgency.

Maggie Rahr, "Nova Scotia LGBTQ groups condemn conference they say promotes the ideals of conversion therapy — without calling it that"
Two LGBTQ advocacy groups are urging a church to cancel an event taking place at a religious camp in rural Nova Scotia next month, warning it is teaching principles that could put lives at risk.

Episode Spotlight

Chances are you’ve never heard of Ruth Wallis, one of the greatest singers, comedians, and performers of sexually suggestive lyrics in the postwar United States. Most of her catalogue remains on vinyl and historians have forgotten her. But from the 1940s until the early 1970s, Ruth Wallis was a bestselling performer and a mainstay at supper clubs and hotels. 

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Podcasts

The Allusionist's "Queer"
Strange or obtuse; a stinging homophobic slur; a radical political rejection of normativity; a broad term encompassing every and any variation on sexual orientation and gender identity: the word 'queer' has a multifarious past and complicated present. This is just a fraction of it.

Making Gay History's "Paulette Goodman"
Paulette knew what it meant to be different, to be demonized, and to have your life threatened because of who you are. And she brought all that experience to bear in her work with PFLAG (formerly known as Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays).

This American Life's "To Be Real"
Most of the time, we show the world a pretty superficial version of ourselves. "How about that weather?" But this week—people who try to go deeper, to get to something real, in some unexpected places: war, magic and porn.

Exhibits

James Michael Nichols and Gabriela Landazuri Saltos, "22 Incredible Photos Of LGBTQ Pride Celebrations Over The Decades"
Take a trip back in time with these beautiful photos of Pride celebrations over the past several decades.

A WEEKLY ROUNDUP OF SEXUALITY, HISTORY AND CURRENT EVENTS

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Gabrielle Bell, "That’s What I Get For Trying To Find Love On Tinder"
A comic strip from The New Yorker's Daily Shouts section on love and sex in the digital age.

Alex Carp, "Getting Hitched"
A profile of four, out of many, ways to get married.

Jim Downs, "We’re looking at the Masterpiece Cakeshop case all wrong. And so did the Supreme Court"
Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, one of the most visible organizations supporting LGBTQ rights, applauded the Supreme Court’s acknowledgment that “LGBTQ people are equal and have a right to live free from the indignity of discrimination.”

Peter Gajdics, "I experienced ‘conversion therapy’—and it’s time to ban it across Canada"
'Trying to “change” my sexuality had never been a consideration, but then my new psychiatrist told me something new: that my history of childhood sexual abuse had “created” my erroneous belief that I was homosexual.'

Livia Gershon, "Who Gets To Speak Publicly About Sex?"
Frederick Hollick’s case involved not only his controversial sex-positive arguments, but also the question of who should be privy to medical knowledge about sex.

Linda Greenhouse, "How the Supreme Court Avoided the Cake Case’s Tough Issues"
'My concern is with the implications of the court’s unfounded conclusion that Colorado officials expressed such deep “hostility” to religion as to have inflicted an injury of constitutional dimension on a baker who claimed that his religious view against same-sex marriage prevented him from making a celebratory cake for a gay couple.'

Nick Haramis, "Welcome to the Age of the Twink"
Although the origin of the term has been disputed — some trace its history to “twank,” 1920s British slang for a client of gay male prostitutes, while others insist it’s a vulgar riff on the cream-filled Hostess snack — twinks are young, attractive, hairless, slim men.

Kristine Phillips, "Meet Stormy, the exotic dancer (no, not that one) who embraced the power of getting naked"
Stacy Lawrence, better known as Stormy, was one of Louisiana’s most popular exotic dancers, the headliner of a club at the heart of the French Quarter that, for years, bore her name. She was the Stormy in Stormy’s Casino Royale, the “belle of Bourbon Street,” as one magazine described her.

Scott D. Pierce, "FX’s ‘Pose’ puts transgender and gay actors front and center — and all Utahns can relate"
“Pose,” set within the “ball culture” in 1980s New York, is compelling and highly relatable, even to those who are straight and living in, say, Salt Lake City. That’s the genius of the series — it tells the story of minority gay and trans characters in 1987, but in a relatable way.

Rebecca Traister, "Time's Up, Bill"
'Clinton’s feckless replies to questions about #MeToo revealed an unpreparedness that spoke volumes about why men have been able to abuse their power with relative impunity for generations, while the women around them have been asked to pay the price for them over and over and over again.'

Rowan Walrath, "They’re Here. They’re Queer. They’re Scientists."
Riding in on the rainbow wave of Pride Month, 500 Queer Scientists made its debut Monday as part database, part visibility campaign of LGBTQ people in STEM fields. With dozens of smiling queer faces against laboratory and outdoor backgrounds, the campaign—exclusively online at the moment—aims to promote inclusivity in science.

Teddy Wilson, "‘Completely Intentional’: Fake Clinics Outnumber Abortion Providers 10 to 1 in Texas"
For every abortion provider in Texas, there are ten crisis pregnancy centers, or fake clinics staffed by anti-choice activists trying to dissuade people from seeking abortion services.

Episode Spotlight

In 1980, gays and lesbians in the U.S. had no legal right to attend high school prom with a same-sex date. Then Aaron Fricke sued his high school and everything changed.

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Celebrate Pride Month with Radiotopia
Over the years, [Radiotopia has] produced so much audio exploring and celebrating LGBTQ+ issues. This June, celebrate Pride Month with these amazing episodes. Happy Pride!

Earhustle, "Down Low"
Of the thousands of people incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison, no one is openly gay. No one. And only a few people are comfortable enough to talk about LGBTQ life inside.

Reply All, "INVCEL"
How a shy, queer Canadian woman accidentally invented one of the internet’s most toxic male communities.

Exhibits

Nadja Sayej, "Pride Month: The Exhibitions Celebrating LGBT Art in June"
This year, a series of LGBT art exhibitions are popping up, from billboards in Los Angeles to photographs of drag queens.

A WEEKLY ROUNDUP OF SEXUALITY, HISTORY AND CURRENT EVENTS

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Caroline Alphonso, "Fact or fiction: What’s actually in Ontario’s contentious sex-ed curriculum"
Ontario’s sex-ed curriculum is a contentious election issue. Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford said he has heard concerns from many families, and if he becomes premier after the June 7 election, he would scrap it and consult with parents about a more age-appropriate program.

Michelle Boorstein and Sarah Pulliam Bailey, "Southern Baptist Leader Paige Patterson Fired over Handling of Sex Abuse Allegation"
A major Southern Baptist seminary has fired one of the movement’s giants of the last quarter-century, Paige Patterson, after new information came to light regarding how Patterson handled a sexual abuse allegation while he led another institution, the school said in a statement Wednesday night.

Jill Filipovic, "Motherhood is a Political Asset"
A record number of women are running for office this year. A few are Republican, but the vast majority are Democrats. Many of them, like Collier, are banking on a lesson they learned from Donald Trump: Novelty can win, and tribalism gets voters to the polls.

Andrew Giambrone, "LGBTQ People Suffered Traumatic Treatments at St. Elizabeths Hospital for the Mentally Ill"
“This is coercive federal psychiatry. ...This whole idea of LGBT Americans being broken and in need of a cure—religious or psychiatric—is still a pernicious, damaging lie.”

Lauren Gutterman, "Why Queer Teachers Like Stacy Bailey Should Absolutely Have a ‘Gay Agenda’ in the Classroom"
Despite recent gains in LGBTQ rights, most notably the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized gay marriage nationwide, Bailey’s case reveals how desperately all LGBTQ workers and LGBTQ teachers, in particular, need employment discrimination protection. 

Candice Jackson and Matilda Rudd, "Neighbours will broadcast Australian TV's first same-sex marriage between actors David Tanaka and Aaron Brennan"
Neighbours will air the first gay wedding on Australian television in the coming months, after the government legalised same-sex marriage last December.

Georgina Jones, "Wales Is Leading the Way in LGBTQ-Inclusive Sex Education"
It just became one of the first countries in the world to enforce inclusive changes to the curriculum that will be rolled out in 2022.

Laura Kasinof, "In Uganda, Groups Offering Contraception and Family Planning Have Lost Millions in U.S. Aid Thanks to Trump’s Global Gag Rule"
The [global gag rule] prohibits U.S. aid money from going to international organizations that either provide abortions, suggest abortions as a family planning method, or lobby to make abortion legal in foreign countries, even when they do so with non-U.S. funds.

Marissa R. Moss, "Inside Country Radio’s Dark History of Sexual Harassment and Misconduct"
Scores of women looking for radio play and professional opportunities say they've been subjected to harassment during station visits, conventions.

Alexandria Neason, Meg Dalton, and Karen K. Ho, "Sexual Harassment in the Newsroom: An Oral History"
Late last fall, [the Columbia Journalism Review] set out to explore the problem beyond the household names, turning the spotlight on the everyday experiences of (mostly) women in journalism. We asked our readers to tell us their harassment stories.

Harry Sidebottom, "Violence, Rebellion and Sexual Exploitation: The Darker Side of Ancient Rome"
The Roman elite may have prided themselves on their dignity and honour, but - as Harry Sidebottom reveals - the ancient city of Rome was a hotbed of class hatred, racial animosity, religious intolerance and sexual exploitation.

Episode Spotlight

In 1973, CBS cancelled the top-rated sitcom Bridget Loves Bernie after one season. The cancellation came after Jewish religious leaders objected to its positive portrayal of an interfaith marriage.

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Podcasts

Change Agent, "The Talk"
M's friend says things that really bother M. Racist and homophobic things. He wants to know how to talk to his good friend about the offensive stuff he says, but he doesn't really know how.

Ear Hustle, "The Workaround"
Looking good and feeling good matters just as much on the inside, as on the outside. But in prison, you can't just walk to the barbershop, or stop by the store for the products you need, to accomplish either.

Love Letters, "The Night I Became Roy Orbison"
Meredith explores the healing power of music after a breakup. A lovelorn actress walks into a karaoke bar -- and finally finds peace.

This is Love, "A Private Life"
Nino and Drew kept their relationship a secret for more than 40 years. And then, they decided to do something that forced them into the spotlight.

Exhibits

Berlin: The Eroticism of Things: Collections on the History of Sexuality

Charleston: 30 Americas

Miami: Laura Aguilar: Show and Tell

San Francisco: Queer Past Becomes Present

A WEEKLY ROUNDUP OF SEXUALITY, HISTORY AND CURRENT EVENTS

Film

Sacred Water
"Rwandan legend has it that female ejaculation originates with an ancient queen who experienced earth-shaking orgasm while her husband was away at war, producing enough water to fill enormous Lake Kivu. In Sacred Water individual men and women, teenage girls, and couples discuss women’s orgasms frankly, often with a strong dose of humor. Sacred Water is a refreshing, fun, and honest documentary about sex, relationships, and the particularities of Rwandan sexual culture."

Print

Gail Collins, "How Trump Gets Into Your Bed"
It’s not every day we start our discussion of current events with the president’s sex life. Well, actually, it’s gotten to be pretty frequent.

Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura, "Ireland Abortion Vote: ‘It’s Not a Man’s Issue,’ but Male Turnout Is Crucial"
In contrast to the United States, where male politicians, donors and social commentators have often dominated the abortion issue, many men in this Irish vote are tending to hang back, seeing abortion as a woman’s matter. 

Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael D. Shear, "Trump Rule Would Bar Some Abortion Advice at Federally Funded Clinics"
President Trump’s proposal to impose new abortion restrictions on federally funded family planning programs would bar doctors from advising a woman weighing an abortion about where she could receive one.

Robin Huebner, "'A piece of Fargo history': Site of former abortion clinic, major protests, to be demolished"
Inside the front door of the old house off Main, the clinic's sign remains overhead with "North Dakota Women's Health Organization, Inc." in white letters on a black background.

Jessica Glenza, "How Iowa Anti-Abortion Bill Activists Eye Roe v Wade – and the Supreme Court"
Activists helped legislators pass a law banning abortion after fetal heartbeat is detected – and hope to challenge a landmark ruling.

Ed Kilgore, "Trump Considering ‘Domestic Gag Rule’ to Ban Those Receiving Federal Family-Planning Funds From Mentioning Abortion Services"
First promulgated by Ronald Reagan in 1984, and then routinely revoked by Democratic presidents and reinstated by Republican presidents (including Donald Trump), the rule has been an important source of the anti-abortion movement’s bond with the GOP.

Charles McGrath, "Philip Roth, Towering Novelist Who Explored Lust, Jewish Life and America, Dies at 85"
Philip Roth, the prolific, protean, and often blackly comic novelist who was a pre-eminent figure in 20th-century literature, died on Tuesday night at a hospital in Manhattan. He was 85.

Dave McNary, "Michelle Williams to Star in Underground Abortion Movie ‘This Is Jane’"
Michelle Williams will star in “This Is Jane,” Amazon Studios’ historical drama that follows women who provided abortion services in the years before legalized abortion.

Lisa O'Carroll, "All eyes on Roscommon in Irish abortion vote"
Yes campaign hopes to have closed gap in only county to have voted against same-sex marriage.

Scott W. Stern, "The U.S. Detained 'Promiscuous' Women in What One Called a 'Concentration Camp.' That Word Choice Matters"
For much of the 20th century, the United States government locked women in concentration camps. “Concentration camp” — that isn’t my phrase; it was written by a woman named Billie Smith, in a lawsuit she filed against the government.

Kristin Toussaint, "Project takes NYC’s LGBT history out of the closet, and into the spotlight"
The NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project has found about 400 real places in all five boroughs tied to LGBT history from the 17th century to 2000, and plans to add even more.

Episode Spotlight

In 1975, two years after Roe v Wade, an all white and mostly Catholic jury convicted Dr. Kenneth Edelin, an African American physician, of manslaughter for performing a legal second trimester abortion. His trial transformed the anti-abortion movement.

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Podcasts

All Things Considered, "Before 'Roe v. Wade,' The Women of 'Jane' Provided Abortions For The Women Of Chicago"
In 1971, Winnette Willis was a 23-year-old single mom in Chicago when she became pregnant again. "I was terrified of having another child," she tells Radio Diaries.

Today, Explained, "Ireland's Great Divide"
This Friday, Ireland holds a historic vote that could overturn one of the strictest abortion policies in the world. The race is razor-tight.

Unladylike, "How to Pay for an Abortion"
In the premiere episode of Unladylike, Cristen and Caroline tackle one of life’s most unladylike practicalities: abortion. But even though one in three U.S. women will have an abortion, how much they cost is any uterus' guess...

A WEEKLY ROUNDUP OF SEXUALITY, HISTORY AND CURRENT EVENTS

Film

Double Life: A Short History of Sex in the USSR
 Ināra Kolmane revisits 70 years of Communist power in the Eastern Bloc through the prism of sexuality.

Print

David Kortava, "Dick Leitsch’s Guide to Seventies Gay Slang"
"The octogenarian activist and Advocate writer prepares his archives for the New York Public Library."

Brady McCombs, "Mormon support for gay marriage gradually grows"
"Mormon Alex Landers supports the legalization of gay marriage despite her religion’s opposition for a simple reason: She has LGBTQ friends who she loves and respects, including her best friend who is a bisexual man."

Bea Mitchell, "Ohio woman who claims cabbage juice can ‘cure’ homosexuality faces state probe"
"An Ohio woman who claims that fermented cabbage juice can ‘cure’ or reverse homosexuality is under scrutiny from the state’s attorney general’s office."

"Raúl Castro’s daughter to push for gay marriage in Cuba"
"Mariela Castro, a Cuban lawmaker and daughter of Communist Party chief Raul Castro, says she will push for gay marriage to be included in a constitutional reform process expected to begin in July."

Monica Rhor, "Obituary Project Honors Lives Lost to AIDS, History of Houston’s Gay Community"
"The three paragraphs stopped her cold. There, in black and white, was the news Jacqueline Kiffe had both sought and dreaded for nearly 25 years."

Julie Rodgers, "What I Learned From Gay Conversion Therapy"
"On Saturday, a group of Christians will gather in Washington for the Freedom March, an event that organizers describe as 'a celebration of freedom from homosexuality and transgenderism.'"

Alexandra Schwartz, "The Life Span of a Photographer’s Marriage, One Portrait of His Partner at a Time"
"'I said I’d never marry anybody from my home town or anybody I met in a bar, and I did both,' the photographer Michael Northrup told me recently. 'She pinched my butt, and that was that.'"

Maria Sherman, “Jay-Z’s Mom Gloria Carter Accepts GLAAD Award: ‘I Was Happy, But I Was Not Free’”
"On Saturday night, at the 2018 GLAAD Media Awards in New York City, Jay-Z’s mom Gloria Carter took home a Special Recognition Award for her contribution to her son’s 4:44 track, “Smile,” which concludes with his mother performing spoken word for the song’s outro."

Tim Teeman, "How ‘217 Boxes’ Reveals John E. Fryer, the Man in the Mask Who Changed LGBT Rights Forever"
"The mask that Dr. John E. Fryer wore in 1972 to deliver his speech about what it was like to be a gay psychiatrist to an American Psychiatric Association panel was not in any of the 217 boxes the playwright and director Ain Gordon discovered at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania."

Sam Whiting, "Soni Wolf, Who Founded Dykes on Bikes and Fought to Protect Its Name, Dies"
"Soni Wolf, a founding member of Dykes on Bikes who had been named community grand marshal at the upcoming San Francisco LGBT Pride Parade in June, died before she got a chance to make one last motorcycle ride up Market Street."

Episode Spotlight

In the 1980s and 1990s, the San Francisco Metropolitan Community Church wrestled with profound questions: What does it mean to minister a gay church when so many in the congregation are dying from AIDS-related complications and grieving the recently dead? How do you have faith during an epidemic? And what does it mean to participate in communion in a community ravaged by a plague?

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Podcasts

This American Life, "Gossip"
"This week, Sarah Koenig hosts, as we tackle the thing we all hate to love: Gossip. That's right; we've got rumor, we've got innuendo, and we've got a story of gossipers gone pro."

Nancy, "Lena Waithe's Superpowers"
"We first spoke with Lena Waithe just ahead of Master of None's second season, which featured the groundbreaking episode "Thanksgiving." Kathy checked back in shortly after Lena won an Emmy for writing that episode."

Radiolab, "Patient Zero"
"This hour, Radiolab hunts for Patient Zeroes from all over the map."

A WEEKLY ROUNDUP OF SEXUALITY, HISTORY AND CURRENT EVENTS

Print

Christina Anderson and Richard Pérez-Peña, "Sex Abuse Scandal’s Latest Casualty: The 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature"
"These elements of scandal, by now familiar in the #MeToo era, claimed an unusual casualty on Friday: The Nobel Prize in Literature, the world’s most prestigious accolade for writing."

Tara Isabella Burton, "We’re Talking about ‘Sex Robots’ Now. We’ve Been Here Before"
"It’s 2018 and everybody’s talking about sex robots."

Hermione Hoby, "Karley Sciortino: The Sex Blogger and Slutever Presenter Redefining Sexuality"
"Sciortino—a real-life Carrie Bradshaw—uses humour, parody and satire to open up conversations about sex"

Kay S. Hymowitz, "The Sexual Revolution’s Angry Children"
"At its core, #MeToo represents a rejection of the sixties’ vision of erotic liberation."

Boris Kachka and Devon Ivie, “Junot Díaz’s Accuser Confronted Him Live During a Q&A”
"Before she detailed her allegations of sexual misconduct against Junot Díaz on social media this morning, author Zinzi Clemmons confronted him hours beforehand during a literary festival in Sydney, Australia."

Elizabeth King, "A History-Making Lawsuit Is Fighting Back Against Anti-Abortion Hackers" 
"These days, abortion clinics and associated funds are not only contending with policy challenges, but also with hackers who are trying to disrupt online fundraising."

Sheelah Kolhatkar, "Lauren Bonner, the Face of #MeToo on Wall Street, Is Still Reporting to Work Every Day"
"On February 12th, [Bonner] filed a gender-discrimination lawsuit in federal court against [Steven A.] Cohen, Point72, and the firm’s president at the time, Douglas Haynes, charging them with fostering an environment that is hostile to women and accusing them of paying women less than their male peers."

"#MuteRKelly Co-Founder On The Moment, Her Movement And Its Momentum "
"Founded late last year by Kenyette Barnes and Oronike Odeleye, #MuteRKelly seeks to draw attention to the artist's controversial past and is pressuring companies to cut ties with him."

Anna Silman, "Junot Díaz Responds to Allegations of Sexual Misconduct and Verbal Abuse"
"[Diaz:] 'I think about the hurt I caused.' Now, several women in the literary world have come forward to describe their experiences on the receiving end of that hurt."

Mike Snider, "Charlie Rose, CBS News Sued for Sexual Harassment by Three Former Women Co-Workers"
"Three former co-workers have filed a sexual harassment suit against Charlie Rose and CBS News."

Paroma Soni, “Do Sex Workers and Their Clients Interact Differently After #MeToo?”
"As #MeToo has sparked debate about boundaries and consent, some say it has excluded a group of people with the most experience in those realms: sex workers."

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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Podcasts

Hidden Brain, "Why Now?"
"On this episode of Hidden Brain, we explore the story through the lens of social science and ask, 'Why Now?'"

Invisibilia, "The Callout"
"Through one incident in the Richmond, Va. hardcore music scene, we chronicle a social media callout and ask what pain can accomplish."

This American Life, "Five Women"
"A different kind of #MeToo story, about several women who worked for the same man. "

A WEEKLY ROUNDUP OF SEXUALITY, HISTORY AND CURRENT EVENTS

Print

Aurora Almendral, "A Transgender Paradox, and Platform, in the Philippines"
"The heavily Catholic country is known for its conservatism, yet remarkably tolerant of its gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people."

Charlie Brennan, "Boulder courthouse up for historic designation for Clela Rorex's same-sex marriage licenses in 1975"
"Already a national historic landmark, the Boulder County Courthouse looming over the Pearl Street Mall is poised to receive further recognition for its association with the first same-sex marriage licenses issued in Colorado and the civil rights struggle for LGBTQ people."

Molly Brookfield, "Why It’s Bad When It’s 'Not That Bad'"
"There is no mathematical equation that will unequivocally prove the seriousness of an accusation of sexual harassment."

Sam Davies, "Sex, disco and fish on acid: how Continental Baths became the world's most influential gay club"
"Mick Jagger, Andy Warhol and Alfred Hitchcock all frequented the decadent New York bathhouse – as did the police who constantly raided it. Its 87-year-old founder, Steve Ostrow, explains how Continental Baths made club culture what it is today."

Crystal N. Feimster, "Ida B. Wells and the Lynching of Black Women"
"The inclusion of black women who were lynched is an important step in the long struggle to acknowledge the violent history of racial and gender inequality."

Mike Holloway, "Lavender Country is a timeless ambassador for LGBTQ rights and social change"
"Lavender Country, was the first openly-gay country album to ever be released." 

Brigit Katz, "Five Things to See at Alabama’s New Memorial to Lynching Victims"
"The memorial, along with a new museum, exposes America’s fraught legacy of racial violence from slavery to lynchings to mass incarceration."

Amy Larocca, "The Closet, Revisited"
"In The Boys in the Band, Zachary Quinto leads an all-star cast of openly gay actors back to the days when being out was career suicide."

Kawai Mikio, "Defending Human Rights in the Porn Industry: A Historical Perspective"
"Reports of human rights abuses in the production of adult-content videos have led to public scrutiny of an industry that, despite its legality, has tended to operate in the shadows. Kawai Mikio, one of a panel of experts tapped to draw up voluntary industry regulations, frames the issue in a broader historical and legal context and makes the case for common-sense solutions."

Louise Pryke, "In ancient Mesopotamia, sex among the gods shook heaven and earth"
"Mesopotamian deities shared many human experiences, with gods marrying, procreating and sharing households and familial duties. However when love went wrong, the consequences could be dire in both heaven and on earth."

Dan Royles, "Race, Homosexuality, and the AIDS Epidemic"
"After decades of medical neglect shaped by racism, homophobia, and a collective indifference toward poverty, Black gay men in the South and across the country continue to die of a disease that for others has long since become a chronic but manageable condition."

Kurt Soller (editor), "Six Times Journalists on the Paper’s History of Covering AIDS and Gay Issues"
"The New York Times had a spotty record of covering the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s — and gay culture in general. Times staffers reflect on the paper’s past, and what we can learn from it today."

Brittany Spanos, "Janelle Monáe Frees Herself"
"Being a queer black woman in America, someone who has been in relationships with both men and women – I consider myself to be a free-ass motherfucker."

Remy Tumin, "Photos of Gynecological Tools From Centuries Past"
“What happened in the past for women is not always that different from now.”

Sui-Lee Wee, "Wanted at Chinese Start-Ups: Attractive Women to Ease Coders’ Stress"
"China’s vibrant technology scene is searching for people like Shen Yue. Qualifications: Must be attractive, know how to charm socially awkward programmers and give relaxing massages."

Jacqueline Williams, "Australian Mining Town Breaks Its Silence About Grim Past of Sexual Abuse"
"This town, officially a city of about 100,000 people, was once the center of Australia’s gold rush, but is now better known as the epicenter of that pedophile ring, in which Catholic clergy preyed on those who depended on them the most — children from Ballarat’s poor, blue-collar neighborhoods."

Episode Spotlight

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Exhibits

Chicago: Keith Haring, "The Chicago Mural"

London: Another Kind of Life: Photography on the Margins

Miami: Dangerous Women: Selections From the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art

New York: Robert Giard, "Particular Voices: Portraits of Gay & Lesbian Writers"

A WEEKLY ROUNDUP OF SEXUALITY, HISTORY AND CURRENT EVENTS

Prom Edition

It's prom season! Because these dances are so meaningful for adults and students, every year proms become a place for social conflicts over sexuality, race, and gender to play out. Proms in many ways reflect dominant values. But they have historically been places where students have challenged the norms of their communities. 

Episode Spotlight

In 1980, gays and lesbians in the U.S. had no legal right to attend high school prom with same-sex dates. Then Aaron Fricke sued his high school and set a powerful series of events into motion.

Print

Lisa Bonos, "Are high school ‘promposals’ cute or too much? Here’s a guide to the trend."

Susanna Heller, "Native teens are using prom to make a statement about indigenous representation"

Colleen Henry, "Homestead prom queen: I didn't win for being transgender, I won for being me"

Erin Jensen and Sara M Moniuszko, "How prom fashion has evolved from ubiquitous gowns to include DIY and gender fluid options"

Avery Matera, "This Student's Prom Dress Was An Homage to Black Icons Like Michelle Obama and Oprah"

Joi-Marie McKenzie, "Prom night turns into a proposal for young couple: 'I was in complete shock'"

Jake Peterson, "NAACP meets with Sarasota school leaders after racially insensitive promposal goes viral"

Associated Press, "LGBTQ teens in West Virginia create state's first 'rainbow' prom"

Mark Price, "Defiant Prom King who wore dress to SC dance says he'll wear one to graduation, too"

Samantha Schmidt, "'It’s just a dress': Teen’s Chinese prom attire stirs cultural appropriation debate"

Jaclyn Schultz, "Prom controversy: gay couple cannot serve as King and King"

Ann Zaniewski, "'Modesty ponchos' to be doled out at Dearborn Divine Child HS prom"

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A weekly roundup of sexuality, history and current events

Print

Toula Drimonis, "The Deadly History of Gender Violence in Canada"
"Canada has a long history of gender-based mass killings; three of its worst mass murders committed in the last 30 years have been motivated by hatred of women."

Colleen Flaherty, "A Natural Attraction?"
"An essay on the 'erotics of mentorship' has set off a debate about whether sexuality has any place in academic relationships."

Sharon Folkenroth Hess, "The Stain of Slavery is Silencing Sexual Violence Against Black and Brown Women"
"With the deck stacked against them, it is no surprise only 17% of black survivors will report their assault."

Janet Golden, "'Weaponized Babies'; or, Damn, Why Didn’t I Think of Using That Term?"
"How come no one thinks of babies, or images of babies, as being weaponized? Babies have been playing in the political arena for a long time."

Alex Hern, "Who are the 'incels' and how do they relate to the Toronto van attack?"
"The Toronto van attack suspect appears to have links to a misogynistic online community for the 'involuntarily celibate.'"

Kristina Killgrove, "Aborted Fetus And Pill Bottle In 19th Century New York Outhouse Reveal History Of Family Planning"
"The archaeological discovery of presumably aborted fetuses in outhouses in New York along with pill bottles and historical records have led researchers to conclude that many 19th century American women had family-planning concerns similar to those of 21st century women."

Hallie Lieberman, "Desexing the Kinsey Institute"
"We cannot focus simply on things like sexual pleasure. We can’t because there’s no funding for it."

Noreen Malone, "'I’m No Longer Afraid': 35 Women Tell Their Stories About Being Assaulted by Bill Cosby, and the Culture That Wouldn’t Listen"
"There are now 46 women who have come forward publicly to accuse Cosby of rape or sexual assault; the 35 women here are the accusers who were willing to be photographed and interviewed by New York."

Molly Ringwald, "What About The Breakfast Club?"
"If attitudes toward female subjugation are systemic, and I believe that they are, it stands to reason that the art we consume and sanction plays some part in reinforcing those same attitudes." 

Caty Simon, "On the Death of Backpage"
"For most of the site’s existence, anyone regardless of identity with $5 to rub together could put up a Backpage ad."

Judith Shulevitz, "Forgotten Feminisms: An Appeal Against 'Domestic Despotism'"
"In this series (of which this essay is the first installment), I will write about forgotten feminisms, early and late, that I think deserve more attention than they’re getting now." 

Ann Snitow, "Talking Back to Patriarchy"
"It is in the interest of women of all generations to invent a complex, resistant, and sexually curious strain in feminist thought and action. History can show us how."

Sarah Young, "Parents Divided Over 'Inappropriate' Sex Education Book for Young Children"
"Alongside detailed explanations, the drawings also depict everything from naked couples lying together to a diagram of the man's penis inside the woman's vagina."

Mary Ziegler, "The Movement That Could Reshape the Abortion Fight"
"For years, personhood proposals seemed unconstitutional and unpopular with voters uncomfortable with absolute bans. But the prospect of new judicial nominations and a transformed Republican Party may have finally given personhood proponents the ingredients to succeed."

Podcasts

99% Invisible, "Miss Manhattan Redux"
"All over New York City, there is a woman in various states of undress, so baked into architecture that we barely even notice her."

DIG, "No Peace, No P*ssy"
"Sex strikes are an effective way for disenfranchised women to make their voices heard but they are a relatively recent phenomenon despite several click-baity articles which argue the contrary." 

Past Present, "Stormy Daniels"
"In this week's episode, Niki and Natalia debate the Stormy Daniels scandal."

Reply All, "No More Safe Harbor"
"Last month, the government shut down backpage.com, a site where people advertised sex with children. We talk to a group of people who say that was a huge mistake.