"N.Y. Repeals Law That Critics Say Criminalized ‘Walking While Trans’"
”The anti-loitering law was designed to discourage street prostitution, but was viewed by L.G.B.T.Q. advocates as a cudgel to harass transgender people.”
“Joseph Sonnabend, pioneering AIDS physician, dies at 88"
”Joseph Sonnabend was a physician who was one of the first to notice symptoms in his patients that would later be identified as HIV/AIDS.”
"Puerto Rico Declares an Emergency over Gender-based Violence"
”Furious over the alarming number of women murdered in Puerto Rico, feminists on the island have for years conducted sit-ins, scuffled with the police, blocked roads and even staged mock crime scenes.”
"Pete Buttigieg Is Confirmed as Biden’s Transportation Secretary"
”Pete Buttigieg, 39, became the first openly gay cabinet secretary to have been approved by the Senate and the youngest member of the president’s cabinet.”
"The Misogynistic ‘Dating Coach’ Who Was Charged in the Capitol Riot"
”Samuel Fisher left a long trail of videos and social media posts that reflect the views of a fringe faction of disgruntled men who became fixated on President Donald J. Trump.”
Alex Ross, "The Great Gay-Jewish Poetry Brawl of 1829"
”In the shouty Valhalla of pointlessly destructive literary feuds, a place of honor must go to the verbal duel between the poets Heinrich Heine and August von Platen.”
Shaun Armstead, "Blackness, Dehumanized: A Black Feminist Analysis of ‘Bridgerton’"
”Bridgerton caters to liberal white hopes at the expense of portraying Black humanity onscreen. This approach resembles our social reality. Instead of breaking down historical racial and gender formations that continue to dehumanize Black women and men today, Bridgerton reinforces them.”
Lea Eisenstein, "The Women’s Health Movement and the Dream of the Diaphragm"
”When the women’s health movement abandoned the pill as a viable means of achieving total bodily autonomy, they returned en masse to an older contraceptive method: the diaphragm with spermicidal jelly. What they originally considered a safe “backup” method of birth control, however, soon became more than just an alternative to the pill. Within the culture of second-wave women’s health activism, the diaphragm came to represent the feminist values of total bodily autonomy, sexual agency, and self-discovery.”
Matt Cook, "It’s a Sin: Revisiting AIDS in the Era of COVID"
”‘I have felt a chill of recognition’. Matt Cook interrogates the emotional resonances invoked by Channel 4’s TV drama serial ‘It’s A Sin’ and what this means for the recognition of memories of grief in suspension.”
Article Spotlight
Aaron George, ‘Imagining Icarus: Edward Field, Manhood and Authenticity in Post‐war America’, Gender & History (2021). https://doi-org.ezp.lib.cam.ac.uk/10.1111/1468-0424.12517
While the Second World War had profound effects on the way that American men conceived of themselves, for two groups ‐ Jewish men and men who would later identify as gay ‐ the war held a special resonance. Deborah Dash Moore has demonstrated that the Second World War allowed Jewish men to cast off stereotypes and be accepted into the larger American polity, while Alan Berube has written about the ways in which the Second World War created a space where gay men were able to understand themselves as part of a larger community. Historians have looked at the ways service affected these men during the war, however more work needs to be done understanding how these experiences affected men after the war. By examining the life of Edward Field, a Jewish and gay veteran who became a prominent poet in post‐war America, we can understand how experiences of wartime allowed men like Field to construct an alternative idea of masculinity, one based on male camaraderie and emotional authenticity. Edward Field's wartime and post‐war experiences suggest that Jewish and gay identities could intersect in ways that were mutually reinforcing and highlight the complicated nature of the Second World War experience.
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Episode Spotlight
In the 1960s and early 1970s many Americans believed that rape was a rare and violent act perpetrated by outsiders and sociopaths. Popular culture taught men that women needed to be tricked or coerced into sex, and psychiatrists accused rape victims of secretly inviting their attacks. Susan Brownmiller’s best-selling book Against Our Will shattered these myths about sexual violence. Informed by the broader feminist anti-rape movement, Against Our Will portrayed rape as a systemic, pervasive, and culturally sanctioned act of power and intimidation. Yet even as Brownmiller provided a framework for naming sexual violence as a mechanism of patriarchy, she also minimized the importance of race and denied the ways that rape accusations have long justified the criminalization and murder of men of color. At a moment when #MeToo has brought about yet another national reckoning with sexual violence and male power, Brownmiller’s book, its legacy, and the contexts that produced the anti-rape movement of the 1970s demand re-examination.
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