Posts Tagged: Jeffrey Weeks

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 […]

Or You Can Just Blame Your Mother… The Alfred Kinsey and US Senate reading this week seem the paramount example of scientia sexualis; numbers, facts, and (false) theories predominate in both pieces. But what interested me the most was the “blame game.” According to Kinsey, “disapproval of heterosexual coitus…before marriage is often an important factor […]

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 […]