Posts Tagged: social construction

Trivial Pursuit: Sexuality and American Culture Edition For my creative project, I chose to create a board game – Trivial Pursuit: Sexuality and American Culture Edition. Initially, my intent was to create a game that would test the knowledge our class gained over the course of the semester in a fun, nontraditional way. However, I […]

“Can transvestites be cured?” asked Time in an article reporting on Christine Jorgensen (Peiss, 375). If the article were about Cal, perhaps the question asked would be: Can hermaphrodites be cured? Within these questions lies the assumption that these things – these genders – need to be cured. “In some cases of transvestitism, as in […]

You can’t unring a bell!

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. 

Thoughts on Sula In her essay, Stevenson presents a very clear, though complex, depiction of slave sexual and marital relations; sex was generally encouraged only between married couples and pre-marital pregnancy led to marriage, and, in terms of monogamous relationships, fidelity was highly valued.  Most important in her analysis is her assertion that “[Slave kin] […]

Professor Bendavides’ talk on vampires and sexuality verbalized and intellectualized all those things that swim under the surface of seemingly mindless entertainment.  The vampire is used to talk about otherwise unbreachable topics in the pop culture medium.  The idea of linking fear and desire is very interesting, and can be applied as a psychological concept […]

As the sources I scour about sexuality increase, so does my understanding of the broad problems surrounding the history of sex. However, as my increased understanding, or rather, exponentially growing interest and grasps at the general ideas, grows, more questions seem to arise, the answers to them become seemingly more and more out of reach. […]

Multiple Discourses, Similar Objectives In closing his essay Essentialism and Queer History, Rictor Norton has this powerful reminder for his readers:  “It is naive to think that one theory or the other will inevitably affect the predominantly negative attitudes of modern Western society,” and suggests that, in place of abiding by one monolithic theory of […]

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 […]

Museum of Sex, Norton, Weeks I was struck by the condom exhibit at the Museum of Sex for two reasons.  One, despite Talmudic law that prohibits the “waste” of semen, the two most largely used types of condoms – animal skin and latex – were invented by Jews (one American, one German.)  This is as […]