Gender – Page 31 – Nursing Clio

People gathering in street, a woman People gathering in street, centering a woman holding the portrait of Savita, a man holding slogans

Added on November 26, 2012 Personal Essay

Motivation for Change in Ireland

By Helen McBride

It’s no surprise that laws concerning family planning have remained within a grey area in Ireland. Following the tragedy of Savita Halappanavar’s death, Amnesty International has called upon Ireland to clean up its act. Halappanavar entered University Hospital, Galway on 21st October due to severe back pain. This back pain was diagnosed as a symptom of a miscarriage, being 17 weeks pregnant at the time. Halappanavar later died on 28th October, the cause being classified as septicaemia. The situation has been explained by Halappanavar’s husband that upon discovering the miscarriage, they repeatedly asked for a medical termination, as Halappanavar was in substantial pain. This request was denied repeatedly over three days. RTE has outlined the timeline of events.

A class room separated by some wooden boards

Added on November 16, 2012 Pedagogy

The Need for Separatism?

By Rachel Epp Buller

Last weekend I attended the 3rd annual Feminist Art History Conference at American University in Washington, D.C. While it was great to be surrounded by scholars with similar research interests, I found myself wondering how much longer we (as feminist scholars) will feel the need for a separate sphere, so to speak.

To be sure, conferences and organizations devoted to women’s histories have performed, and continue to perform, important roles. We offer alternative voices to patriarchal histories, not only recuperating individual women but reexamining through the lens of gender the kinds of histories that are told. We make visible marginalized herstories.

Added on November 12, 2012 Historical essay

What Does Responsibility Have to Do with Reproduction?

By Adam Turner

Genetic counseling, as the previous two posts in this series suggest, has a lot to offer for navigating the tricky decisions things like prenatal testing and preimplantation genetic diagnosis raise. Well, in this post I’d like to make things a little more complicated. Enter the sheer messiness of history. I still believe genetic counseling is the best approach we have right now for helping prospective parents with hard choices, but it has a complicated — and not so distant — past that continues to shape counselors’ ways of interacting with clients.

Poster, yellow background with red house sketching on the left, "I do not refer to myself as a housewife for the reason that I did not marry a house" on the right side

Added on November 9, 2012 Historical essay

Believe it or not there were and are Mormon feminists

By Heather Munro Prescott

During the presidential election there were a number of speculations about Republican candidate Mitt Romney’s views on women, including horror stories circulated about his “shameful” behavior while serving as an elder in the LDS church. This led some to assume that the LDS church as a whole is poisonous for women.

Added on November 5, 2012 Historical essay

Call the Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times Britain in the 1950s

As I watched Call the Midwife, I recalled my own personal memories and relationship with the National Health System (NHS). […]

Added on November 2, 2012 Personal Essay

HPV and the Importance of Planned Parenthood

By Tina M. Kibbe

While doing research for a new project, I was doing some reading about sexually transmitted infections and came across a couple of interesting articles about the HPV vaccine and Planned Parenthood. The article on the HPV vaccine deals with the concern over the vaccination increasing the sexual activity of young women. And the article on Planned Parenthood surrounds the controversy over whether or not the organization would remain part of the state-run Women’s Health Program in Texas. My interest in these articles stems from my research in the gendered aspects of healthcare, particularly in relation to sexual transmitted infections. Also, I am originally from Texas and I think it is inane to restrict access to affordable healthcare resources.

Added on October 31, 2012 Historical essay

When the Personal Really is Historical (and Scary!)

By Jacqueline Antonovich

So, I have pertussis. You may know it better as whooping cough. Believe me, the irony of a gender and medicine historian catching a 19th century disease is not lost on me. It’s hard enough to be a graduate student, a GSI (Graduate Student Instructor), a wife, and a mother of two, but throw in a good old-fashioned Oregon Trail disease, and you’ve got yourself one heck of a semester.

Added on October 26, 2012 Historical essay

Homosexuality the New Norm?

By Sean Cosgrove

Questions in public discourse surrounding the issues of human gender and sexuality seem to revolve around (unchallenged) binaries of female and male, and hetero or homosexual. Now, that they exist in this form currently and shape our lived experience is absolutely true. That they have always existed, however, in the guise(s) that they do now is not, and it can be dangerous to assume the unchanging nature of these constructs when talking, particularly, about social policy.

Added on October 19, 2012 Vagina Week

Are We Stuck in the 1970s?

By Rachel Epp Buller

Having made and studied art for quite a few years now, I find that issues in contemporary culture often lead my mind to wander to art historical references. “Binders full of women,” equal pay for equal work, reproductive rights – it all leads me back to art. For instance, over the centuries we’ve seen a consistent historical pattern of interest among male artists in representing the vagina – Leonardo da Vinci, Gustave Courbet, Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt, Christian Schad, to name only a few (see also TimeOut New York’s recent survey of the vagina in art, heavily populated by male artists). But it’s only in recent decades that women artists have turned to the vagina as subject (object?).

Added on October 18, 2012 Vagina Week

Stop Putting My Vagina in a Binder!

By Cheryl Lemus

Well I have to be honest with you all, unlike most of my fellow Nursing Clio authors, Carrie, Adam, and Ashley, I did not finish Vagina: A Biography. Each and every time I opened the book, with the full intention of reading a chapter, two to three pages in, I dozed off. I did manage, finally, to get through some of the chapters and in the end, I found myself not really caring about the vagina as a goddess. I had one thing in mind when I first started this piece, where I was going to discuss what sort of vagina my vagina wanted to be and then Tuesday night’s debate aired. Well wouldn’t you know it, Romney made the brilliant “binders full of women,” comment (it is has to be up their with “I like trees,” but maybe not), and it made me think about how it connects to Wolf’s book. Throughout history the vagina has been put into neat little categories, binders if you will, that have been used to define, stigmatize, and even defile women. Our vaginas have defined us as sex objects, mothers, weaker employees, and victims, while at the same time branded us emotional, irrational, and fragile. So how does this relate to Wolf, you ask? It’s simple, Wolf wants to place the vagina into another binder labeled “Vagina as Goddess,” and it is another category that in the end, will bite women in the ass. The vagina is NOT a goddess and therefore we are NOT goddesses.

Nursing Clio

Motivation for Change in Ireland

By Helen McBride

The Need for Separatism?

By Rachel Epp Buller

What Does Responsibility Have to Do with Reproduction?

By Adam Turner

Believe it or not there were and are Mormon feminists

By Heather Munro Prescott

Call the Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times Britain in the 1950s

HPV and the Importance of Planned Parenthood

By Tina M. Kibbe

When the Personal Really is Historical (and Scary!)

By Jacqueline Antonovich

Homosexuality the New Norm?

By Sean Cosgrove

Are We Stuck in the 1970s?

By Rachel Epp Buller

Stop Putting My Vagina in a Binder!

By Cheryl Lemus

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