Susheela, a woman from a small Indian village in western Uttar Pradesh, never imagined the day that she would help deliver a child for an Australian couple. After moving to a modest shanty in Delhi with her husband, Susheela was approached by a representative from a fertility clinic and presented with a newfound opportunity to… Read more →
Category: Undergraduate Writing Series
Eggsploitation Cracked Open
“What’s a few eggs between friends?” Many egg donation advertisements, like the examples here, suggest that it’s nothing at all! However, although the egg donation process is often advertised as simple and pleasant, it is usually the opposite. Advertisements selectively exclude the potential risks of the procedure and instead make the whole process seem appealing…. Read more →
Fear-mongering from Anita Bryant to Houston’s Proposition 1
This post was originally published on February 1, 2016, during Nursing Clio’s Undergraduate Week, when we brought you amazing work written by students at Macaulay Honors College, CUNY. Students wrote their essays as part a “Transgender Issues” course taught by Elizabeth Reis. A man approaches a public women’s restroom. He pushes his way inside, locking himself… Read more →
Finding a Voice: Agency and Trans Issues
It’s Undergraduate Week at Nursing Clio! All this week we are proud to bring you amazing work written by students at Macaulay Honors College, CUNY. Students wrote their essays as part a “Transgender Issues” course taught by Elizabeth Reis. Today we feature an essay by Maggie Wrobleski. It happens every time we meet someone new. We make… Read more →
Pink Brain, Blue Brain: Do Opposites Attract?
It’s Undergraduate Week at Nursing Clio! All this week we are proud to bring you amazing work written by students at Macaulay Honors College, CUNY. Students wrote their essays as part a “Transgender Issues” course taught by Elizabeth Reis. Today we feature an essay by Elyse DeGrazier. New research has recently come out examining sex differences in… Read more →
Femme Fixation and The Male Gaze
It’s Undergraduate Week at Nursing Clio! All this week we are proud to bring you amazing work written by students at Macaulay Honors College, CUNY. Students wrote their essays as part a “Transgender Issues” course taught by Elizabeth Reis. Today we feature an essay written by Lily A. Evans. Anyone with a pulse and the ability to… Read more →
The Resurgence of the Horrific, Harsh, and Ugly Reality of Childhood Diseases: The Inevitable Risk of Forgoing Vaccinations
By Natisha Robb
In “When the Personal Really is Historical (and Scary!),” Jacqueline Antonovich, a gender and medicine historian, described her 21st-century experience with pertussis, a.k.a. whooping cough, an extremely contagious “good old-fashioned Oregon Trail disease” that recently reemerged since its near eradication in the 1970s. While Antonovich suggests a recent surge in the anti-vaccine movement, records unveil a history fraught with ongoing controversy. Before vaccinations became a childhood rite of passage, every family knew someone who lost a child to a now vaccine-preventable disease. Yet despite the magnitude of casualties from smallpox, measles, polio, rubella, diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis in populations lacking herd immunity, vulnerable communities did not always welcome vaccination campaigns with open arms.
A Tale of Two Diseases: ADHD and Neurasthenia
Consider two diseases: Disease A and Disease B. Children with Disease A are described as being “excitable” and “precocious,” at risk of being “overstimulated.” Thus, they are unable to balance “academic, intellectual, and physical growth.” [Schuster, 116] Children suffering from Disease B, on the other hand, are “active, restless, and fidgety” and have difficulty “sustaining attention to tasks, persistence of effort, or vigilance.” [Barkley, 57] At first glance, the symptoms of the two diseases in children seem oddly similar. Yet these are two wildly unique diseases that have never overlapped in time.
The Trouble with Transcendence: Is Defying the Gender Binary the New Racial Passing?
By Mallory Nicole Davis
In 2010, Thomas Araguz III, a Texas firefighter died on the job, leaving behind his two children and transgender wife, Nikki.[1] The couple was legally married because although the state of Texas only recognizes heterosexual marriages, the state will validate a transgender union if the trans partner’s identification documents dictate that s/he is the opposite legal sex of the spouse.[2] However, when Nikki sought survivor benefits after her husband’s unexpected death, Thomas’ family launched a case against Nikki, stating that Thomas did not know his wife was transgender. The suit argued that Nikki wrongfully deceived her husband, while lobbying for the nullification of their marriage and subsequently, Nikki’s request for spousal benefits. The case was complicated further by the prosecuting attorney’s interrogation of a deposition taken from Thomas in a separate court case—a battle over custody of his two sons with his ex-wife—in which he stated that he did not know that Nikki was transgender.[3] In response to the scrutinizing of her late husband’s statement, Nikki insisted that Thomas lied during his deposition and pretended to be unaware of her transgender status in order maintain custody of his two small children. Nikki stated, “At the time, Thomas and I thought it was in the best interest of our children to lie. They were the center of (our) lives”.[4] Whether Nikki neglected to disclose her trans identity to her husband or that the couple collectively decided to lie to the court during their custody case for the sake of their children, deception surrounding Nikki’s trans status is at the center of this legal case; and undoubtedly, her credibility will be diminished regardless of how the court decides.