A weekly check-up of gender, medicine, and history in the news The first seizure. Eat like a 1970s radical. The queer history of flowers. 9 women who deserve a biopic. Sex education meets art history. The animated history of abortion pills. The first drag queen was a former slave. OB-GYNs are using Reddit to help… Read more →
Category: News
Assassination as Cure: Disease Metaphors and Foreign Policy
On January 3, 2020, I was at my mother’s house where CNN is her constant companion. A drone strike ordered by President Donald Trump had killed Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani and nine others. I was horrified and wanted to hear the news, but I was only half-listening because I hate CNN’s so-called analysis and… Read more →
Sunday Morning Medicine
A weekly check-up of gender, medicine, and history in the news Charting pain in 1879. So you want to be a beatnik? Documenting sex ed in queer bodies. Teen girls don’t need routine pelvic exams. What’s the deal with mail-in sperm start-ups? A year’s diary of reckoning with climate anxiety. How medieval surgeons shaped sex… Read more →
Sunday Morning Medicine
A weekly check-up of gender, medicine, and history in the news I Gooped myself. Comics and medicine. Misogyny in lesbian dating. A brief history of masturbation. Is digital crime history too white? The long history of not having kids. The women who refuse ultrasounds. The mystery of a lake full of skeletons. The bikini turned… Read more →
Najila and Neymar; or, The Normalization of Violence against Women in Brazil
You may have heard of Neymar, Brazil’s soccer darling.1 With the speed and skill to rival the all-time greats, he’s been on the international scene for almost a decade, leading his team in two World Cups and clinching an Olympic gold medal in Rio de Janeiro in 2016. But he’s also faced intense criticism from… Read more →
This is Not a Culture of Life, This is a Culture of Un-Death
Last week at a Vatican conference on abortion, Pope Francis “argued that children who were not expected to live long after birth deserved to be treated in the womb ‘with extraordinary pharmacological, surgical and other interventions.’” He intimated that parents who did not use extraordinary measures were not caring for their children, saying that “Taking… Read more →
Intersex Revolutionary War Hero Did Good Because Doctors Did No Harm
The startling knowledge that the Polish nobleman and military leader, Casimir Pulaski, a hero of the American Revolution, may have been intersex should leave us with two important takeaways. First, people have always been born with intersex traits, or atypical sex development. Even the ancient laws of the Talmud recognized this fact, offering rules for… Read more →
Sunday Morning Medicine
A weekly check-up of gender, medicine, and history in the news The history of Women’s History Month. The failed Soviet rival to the flapper dress. The mystery of the 1957 gay wedding photos. The historical significance of black queer films. How fashion forensics are helping solve crimes. Is testing the DNA in museum artifacts worth… Read more →
Sunday Morning Medicine
A weekly check-up of gender, medicine, and history in the news Lady Death. “We all expected to die.” Scope Magazine (1941-1957). Tear gas and the U.S. border. The story of the pile of limbs. The boy left behind in Nazi Vienna. Daisy, Daisy, the Cycling Countess. The forgotten abortion-rights activist. Presumed heterosexuality in the archives. Why… Read more →
The Trump Administration Wants to Define a Person’s Sex at Birth. It’s Just Not That Simple
A memo circulating through the Trump Administration proposes that several government agencies should define sex as “a person’s status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth,” according to the New York Times. This definition is a blunt instrument that, along with its cruel dismissal of the transgender population,… Read more →