Posts Tagged: family

Incest, Middlesex, and Intersex Having only read the first two books of Middlesex, I feel this post must be about incest, a topic that Eugenides handles with incredible grace and tenderness. 

One time, a professor told us about a series of ten confirmed genders that lie on a spectrum between “male” and “female.”  This is per the scarce liberal arms of the scientia sexualis establishment.  In the years since I acquired this information, I have hazily wondered why there are only restrooms designated for two genders.  […]

Families with Fluid Boundaries The way power was used in Ronald Bayer’s essay, AIDS and the Bathhouse Controversy was quite interesting.  Essentially, the question was whether the San Francisco government could control the private lives of gay individuals in the name of public health.  As stated in the essay, the criminalization of homosexuality by the […]

Are Vampires Incestuous? The lecture on vampires and sexuality brought up some interesting questions about kinship and family systems in the vampire world.  I’ve watched and read a lot of different stuff pertaining to vampires.  And after vampires are “made” or “sired,” they sometimes refer to their lineage in family terms such as “mother” or […]

Consent and Cautionary Tales Puritan colonial discourse liberally interchanges sodomy, unclean lusty acts, and rape. The concept of consent in sexual interaction appears vague and not at all relevant except in the final clause of Massachusetts Colony’s Laws on Sexual Offenses, where the offender may possibly punished with death for “ravishing” a woman by force. […]

Power and Problematic Sexualities Foucault finally started to make sense to me with The Deployment of Sexuality.  Maybe it’s because Part 4 is much more linear, but I am just relieved to feel a little less lost. In his “Method” section, Foucault effectively dispels the rest of the ideas I had about power in relation […]

Regarding the deployment of sexuality, Foucault discusses four strategies that, beginning in the 18th century, were used to distinguish the working relationship of knowledge and power of sex.  The very first, the “hysterization of women’s bodies”, focuses on the woman and how mentally and physically she became a symbol of the scientia sexualis of the […]

“Keep away from whores and all loose women.  KEEP AWAY FROM WHORES!” said a pamphlet given out to soldiers during World War I.  This pamphlet was ancillary to a pro-kit that was also distributed in order to prevent further outbreaks of venereal diseases.  It contained a tube of ointment, a cloth with soap, a cleansing […]

Manga, Media, Social Construction v. Essentialism? For me, our visit to the Museum of Sex drove home some of the ideas that Weeks’ touched upon in his discussion of the social construction of sexuality.  Weeks states that sexuality is shaped and given meaning by society and that it in turn shapes each of us.  Each […]