Added on Historical essay

Stags, Smokers, and Coochies: Adventures in Old-Timey Porn

By Jacqueline Antonovich

Well it’s the day after Valentine’s Day, faithful Nursing Clio readers, and what better way to nurse our romance hangovers than a good, old-fashioned chat about the history of porn. Now, I’m going to let you in on a little secret. I spent a good deal of this past semester looking at lots and lots and lots of porn. In fact, between September and December of 2012, I probably viewed more “pornographic” images than I have in my entire life. This immersion into “adult entertainment” was not something I ever envisioned as being a part of my graduate school journey, but it’s a funny thing where one finds herself on the way to a PhD. Don’t get me wrong, as a historian of gender and medicine, I have seen my fair share of historical lady parts and man bits – just not quite from this perspective. But you see, when acclaimed cultural anthropologist, Gayle Rubin offers a graduate seminar on the infamous Feminist Sex Wars of the 1970s and 80s, you don’t hesitate to jump right into the porn fire.

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A Valentine’s (B)romance: Masculinity, Emotion, and Friendship

By Sean Cosgrove

The bromance has surged in popular culture in recent years to such an extent that you could be forgiven for thinking this a relatively recent concept. Although Wikipedia dates the term ‘bromance’ (only) to the early 90s, Urban Dictionary’s oldest definition is from 2004. The ‘bromantic comedy’ genre (think I Love You, Man, Superbad, or I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry) seems to be the latest incarnation of this trend capturing enormous audience interest. Although the word might be new, however, the concept certainly isn’t.

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A march as the background, a board with pro-equality slogans in the center
Added on Personal Essay

What I Learned in Third Grade

By Tina M. Kibbe

Originally I envisioned this post as a commentary on labels or stereotypes, and how they serve to sort and categorize individuals. We all do it….give labels to people in an attempt to construct an orderly inventory in our minds. However, while they can sometimes be helpful and provide a common vocabulary, labels can often limit our understanding and obstruct our view of the whole individual. I specifically wanted to address labels in relation to gender as a follow up to Ashley Baggett’s excellent post on masculinity and Adam Turner’s awesome post in which he talks about sorting and categorizing people. In the course of my writing, however, an unexpected turn-of-events occurred. I was asked to temporarily teach a third-grade class. So, I decided to look at gender and labels from a different perspective–from a third-grade point-of-view. It turned out to be an excellent source of material and I thought I would share some things I’ve learned from these plain-talking third-graders.

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Why I Love Hedwig and the Angry Inch

By Adam Turner

Today I’ll be focusing specifically on the idea that a person, or a part of a person’s body, can be “ambiguous.” I’d like to start by noting that the word itself is fraught. As I mentioned, it can be both empowering and hurtful depending on how it’s used. The first question is: ambiguous to whom? Is this person ambiguous to themselves? Or are they just ambiguous to the person doing the looking? A person who, like many of us, is trying to sort and categorize the people around them into boxes labeled “male” or “female,” “gay” or “straight,” “black” or “white.” But — and this gets at one of the reasons I love Hedwig, with all its issues — ambiguity does not have to be a problem. Taken up dusted off and worn proudly ambiguity can carve out spaces for human difference in a culture and a history too often resistant to divergence from the “norm.”

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Blog for Choice 2013: Roe at 40 and the Rebranding of Planned Parenthood

By Heather Munro Prescott

Today is NARAL’s annual Blog for Choice day, which falls this year on the 40th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade. One this day, NARAL invites bloggers and activists to get people to talk about reproductive rights online. By participating in Blog for Choice day, we join NARAL’s mission to “let readers and the mainstream media know that a woman’s right to choose is a core progressive value that must be protected.” NARAL’s deliberate decision to retain the word “choice” is quite a contrast to Planned Parenthood’s commemoration of Roe’s 40th anniversary. In advance of this event, Planned Parenthood launched a new campaign, Not in Her Shoes which seeks to move beyond labels in the abortion debate:

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An Age of Innocence: Awkward Adults and Gendered Children

By Sean Cosgrove

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here on NursingClio and up until the other day I had been planning on writing something incredibly exciting (I swear) regarding the history of prostitution. As it often does, however, life happened. The image below rolled across my computer screen and derailed that little nugget in favour of a conversation about our current obsession with the innocence of childhood and the possible impact it has on decisions that we, as adults, make regarding how best to guide children into adulthood. How much does adult-onset awkwardness about the fact that children do have a sexuality and are sexed influence the way we talk about issues relating to sex?

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Happiest Place for Gender Norms

This past December, the world saw another celebrity sex scandal. Suzy Favor Hamilton, the three-time U.S. Olympian, was outed as […]

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Added on Historical essay

Rites and Wrongs: Changing a Ritual from Within

By Elizabeth Reis

The previously obscure ultra-Orthodox Jewish rite of metzitzah b’peh (oral suction) has burst into the news lately and raised critical questions about genital surgery, consent, First Amendment rights, tradition, and the representation of Jews.

I would guess that most Americans, even Jewish-Americans, had never heard of metzitzah b’peh (oral suction) until the recent controversy between ultra-Orthodox Jews and the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. It refers to a custom performed after a circumcision in which a mohel (ritual circumciser) orally sucks the blood away from the baby boy’s penis. To insure the requirement that blood be shed and then hygienically removed (sucking was deemed the best means of achieving this hygiene anciently), metzitzah b’peh became part of circumcisions in the 2ndcentury, according to scholars. Most Jews, even observant Modern Orthodox Jews, have abandoned the practice. But a small minority adheres to and defends it, based on the First Amendment – somewhat surprisingly now on free speech grounds in addition to its religious liberty provisions.

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Beauty and Babies

By Cheryl Lemus

Two nights ago I ran across a story about Farrah Abraham, who set off a firestorm when she posted online that she waxed and tweezed her 3-year-old daughter’s eyebrows because she had what Abraham described as a unibrow. The moment she admitted what she did, people called her insane, ignorant, and labeled her a “bad mother.” Farrah Abraham is known for her appearance on Teen Mom, a show that glorifies teenage motherhood and turns its participants into minor celebrities. Now as a mother myself, I could throw myself into the mix and condemn Abraham for falling victim to the rancid consumer culture that plagues motherhood, but I’ll refrain mainly because I, as well as most mothers, have acquiesced to the rampant consumerism that shapes our opinions, criticisms, and habits of mothering. In fact, when it comes to beauty and clothing, many mothers have become comfortable with our children mirroring our fashion choices. There are many reasons for this, but seemingly since the 1950s middle-class mothers and daughters looking like twins or looking older/younger than they are reflects changing norms regarding girlhood and motherhood. Girlhood and motherhood has become increasingly sexualized, as the pressure to look older or younger has grown.

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A blonde senior woman wearing black robe standing amid a group of people.
Added on Reviews

Gender, Medicine, and Horror, Oh My!

By Carrie Adkins

First of all, a disclaimer: in many ways, American Horror Story is not Nursing Clio material. For starters, the show features haunted houses, alien abduction, demonic possession, and an angel of death; it does not, in short, aim for realism or historical accuracy. The first season offered very little content related to Nursing Clio’s focus on gender and medicine in a historical context, and after just a few episodes, I found it uneven and disappointing. There were, at least, some interesting (and purposefully horrifying) highlights – part of the back story involved an unscrupulous 1920s abortionist, and Jessica Lange did an amazing job playing a very, very, very bad mother – but in general, that season quickly lost its scariness and became ridiculous and repetitive. But oh, the second season!

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