A MONTHLY ROUNDUP OF SEXUALITY, HISTORY AND CURRENT EVENTS

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"Chile Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage at Fraught Political Moment"
”The legalization of same-sex marriage in Chile comes as the country grapples with sweeping demands for social change.”

"What Will It Take to Build a Mass Movement for Abortion Rights?"
”It’s time to turn a committed core of supporters into a force capable of reclaiming what has been lost.”

"The Christian Legal Army Behind the Ban on Abortion in Mississippi"
”The Alliance Defending Freedom has been laying the groundwork to end legal abortion for years. But that’s just the beginning.”

Gillian Frank, "The Abortionist"

“Published in 1961 by Kozy Books, Aaron Bell’s The Abortionist was one of many low-priced paperbacks flooding newsstands across the United States and Canada. In the early 1960s, audiences could find condemnations of abortion competing for space with increasingly sympathetic and nuanced treatments of abortion providers and seekers—depictions that spoke to the growing public fissures over sex and reproduction. The Abortionist encapsulates these divides, oscillating between condemnation and compassion for abortion seekers while giving no quarter to abortion providers.”

Lisa Duggan, "Me Too Déjà Vu"
”The 1980s sex wars are most strongly associated with conflict over pornography. But a central component, often lost in present-day recollections, was a debate over the politics of queer desire.”

Joseph J. Fischel, "Pornography’s Contradictions"
”Porn performers and artists possess a unique vision for what labor justice and erotic fulfillment could look like, but they’re fighting uphill against draconian regulation and exploitative work conditions.”

Article Spotlight

Stephen Colbrook, “Why Pandemics Matter to the History of U.S. State Development,” Modern American History 4, no.3 (November 2021): 315-333. https://doi.org/10.1017/mah.2021.26

Covering diseases from Influenza to polio to HIV/AIDS, this article argues that the history of pandemics deserves to figure more prominently in accounts of the twentieth-century American state. Returning the state to the study of modern epidemics and bringing public health governance back into our discussion of state-building over the last century, it argues that pandemics offer a particularly revealing window into the contested boundaries of government authority in the American federal system. By the closing decades of the twentieth century, public health was one of the few policy areas where the legal constraints of federalism continued to prevent the national government from taking a leading role. Far outpacing the central government in terms of spending and legislative activity on infectious disease control, state and local authorities often diverged markedly in their approaches to managing the spread of contagion. As a result, federalism repeatedly and decisively shaped the course of twentieth-century pandemics.

To read more, click here.

Episode Spotlight

How do you come out in a religious community that loves you conditionally? What do you tell yourself about your faith and your desires when your Church views your sexuality as disordered? In this episode of Sexing History, we focus on the experiences of three gay men who were priests or seminarians in the St. Louis diocese beginning in the 1990s. Their overlapping stories, their friendships, their faith, and the ways in which they came out to themselves and each other within Catholic institutions, speak to the intertwined histories of desire and devotion.

For more, listen here.

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A MONTHLY ROUNDUP OF SEXUALITY, HISTORY AND CURRENT EVENTS

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"Transgender Athletes Face Bans From Girls’ Sports in 10 U.S. States"
”Over the past two years, nine states have enacted laws to bar transgender girls and women from competing in girls’ and women’s sports. Another relied on an executive order for a ban.”

"U.S. Issues First Passport With ‘X’ Gender Marker"

“The country’s first gender-neutral passport was issued to Dana Zzyym, an intersex military veteran who sued the State Department in 2015, according to Lambda Legal.”

"Christian Schools Boom in a Revolt Against Curriculum and Pandemic Rules"
”With public schools on the defensive, is this a blip or a ‘once-in-100-year moment for the growth of Christian education’?”

"Ohio Republicans Are Attempting to Pass an Even More Extreme Version of the Texas Abortion Ban"
”Under the proposed Ohio legislation, lawsuits can be filed against anyone who “knowingly engages in conduct that aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion”—which also applies to paying for an abortion via insurance. Defendants in these suits wouldn’t be allowed to defend themselves with the claim that they believe HB480 is unconstitutional, nor would they be able to rely on a court decision allowing abortion if it was overruled in the future, even if the decision wasn’t overruled until after the abortion was performed.”

Judith Levine, "Abortion Is a Public Good"
”The right to reproductive health and agency is a compelling state interest.”

Joseph J. Fischel, "Pornography’s Contradictions"
”Porn performers and artists possess a unique vision for what labor justice and erotic fulfillment could look like, but they’re fighting uphill against draconian regulation and exploitative work conditions.”

Article Spotlight

Martin Johnes (2021), “Masculinity, Modernity and Male Baldness, c.1880-1939.” Gender & History. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0424.12580

Male baldness was a very common experience but it has rarely been considered by historians of any period or place. This article argues that baldness reveals a precariousness and vanity to masculinity in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain. Baldness limited men's ability to self-fashion their appearance. It made them the target of jokes, marked the fact they were getting older, undermined their looks and, perhaps, made them less attractive to women. There was thus a vigorous market for cures and preventatives. Such products show how deep superstitions and irrational thinking could run, but understandings of the condition were also rooted in the social and cultural conditions of the day. The glamour of Hollywood, a keep-fit culture, growing advertising of male-grooming products and the fading of hat wearing from fashion, all intensified interwar anxieties around baldness. Not everyone worried about baldness, however, and men's feelings about their hair owed much to personality and circumstance. Baldness thus not only reveals the precarious nature of masculinity but also its inconsistent and inherently personal dimensions.

To read more, click here.

Episode Spotlight

In the 1960s, the airline industry ramped up its sexualization of stewardesses in order to increase revenues. Decades before the #MeToo movement, flight attendants navigated a workplace in which their employers required them to stay thin, remain unmarried, and squeeze into revealing clothing every day. In the early 1970s, flight attendants organized one of the first campaigns against workplace sexual harassment, assault, and sexual discrimination.

For more, listen here.

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"The School Culture Wars: ‘You Have Brought Division to Us’"
”From mask mandates to critical race theory and gender identity, educators are besieged. “You are just trying to keep everything from collapsing,” one official said.”

"As redistricting process begins, advocates push for states to keep L.G.B.T.Q. communities in mind."
”A national organization dedicated to increasing the number of L.G.B.T.Q. Americans who hold elected office has begun an effort to lobby states and localities to keep gay neighborhoods united as they begin the once-a-decade process of redrawing congressional districts and other political boundaries.”

"A Six-Week Abortion Ban in Texas Will Probably Go Into Effect; This Is Why"
”The Texas law relies on a legal mechanism that makes it almost impossible to preemptively block.”

"The American Medical Association Recommends Dropping 'Sex' From Birth Certificates"
”This change would be "a valuable first step" in addressing "the inequities transgender and intersex people face," the group says.”

Kathryn Bond Stockton, "Gender Is Queer for Everyone"
”Gender is queer. By which I mean irredeemably strange, ungraspable, out of sync with “male” and “female,” weirdly not normal, since lived gender fails to conform to normative ideals and expectations, even when it is played quite straight. Conventional views try to snuff this strangeness, yet conventional views are strange.”

Anya Jabour, "Claims of protecting sex workers have long been used to punish them"
”Criminalization hurts sex workers instead of helping them.”

Article Spotlight

Jesse Bayker (2021), ‘Some Very Queer Couples’: Gender Migrants and Intimacy in Nineteenth-Century America. Gender & History. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0424.12555

This article contends that the term gender migrant – which describes a person who changed gender on a long-term basis in their everyday life – offers a useful tool for grappling with the ambiguities of nineteenth-century transgender history. Examining four cases of gender change that circulated in the popular press between the antebellum era and the turn of the twentieth century, the article brings to light intimate relationships that do not fit within the categories of female husbands or sexual inverts that have become familiar to historians of sexuality. Some female-assigned gender migrants lived as men and sought same-gender intimacy in the company of other men. Reading ambiguous cases of love and marriage from multiple angles provides insight into the strategies that resourceful gender migrants used to legitimise their public gender identities.

To read more, click here.

Episode Spotlight

In the 1960s, the airline industry ramped up its sexualization of stewardesses in order to increase revenues. Decades before the #MeToo movement, flight attendants navigated a workplace in which their employers required them to stay thin, remain unmarried, and squeeze into revealing clothing every day. In the early 1970s, flight attendants organized one of the first campaigns against workplace sexual harassment, assault, and sexual discrimination.

For more, listen here.

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A WEEKLY ROUNDUP OF SEXUALITY, HISTORY AND CURRENT EVENTS

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"Argentina Formally Recognizes Nonbinary People, a Latin American First"
”Argentines no longer have to be identified as female or male on their national identity documents, the latest step in President Alberto Fernández’s push for gender equality.”

"Judge Temporarily Blocks Arkansas Ban on Health Treatments for Transgender Youth"
”The decision came in response to an American Civil Liberties Union challenge to a first-in-the-nation law enacted by Republican state legislators in April.”

"Wisconsin Parents Can Now Use Gender Neutral Language on Birth Certificates"
”New parents in Wisconsin can now choose gender neutral language on their baby’s birth certificate, with the option to ditch “mom” and “dad” for the much more modern and gender-inclusive “parents.””

"Mississippi Has Officially Asked the Supreme Court To Overturn Roe v. Wade"
”The Mississippi anti-abortion law that the court will be examining in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization bans abortions after 15 weeks of gestation without exceptions for rape or incest. The bill was signed into law in 2018 but has not been enacted due to it being declared unconstitutional by lower courts.”

Abby Minor, "Beyond Choice"
”Liberalism cannot simply be extended to the uterus. Reproductive justice requires a vision of the social body.”

Adam Mars-Jones, "Good Activist, Bad Activist"
”A London Review of Books article on Sarah Schulman’s latest book, Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-93.”

Article Spotlight

Desiree Abu-Odeh, Shamus Khan, and Constance A. Nathanson. “Social Constructions of Rape at Columbia University and Barnard College, 1955–90.” Social Science History 44, no. 2 (2020): 355–79. doi: 10.1017/ssh.2019.49.

Sex on college campuses has fascinated scholars, reporters, and the public since the advent of coeducational higher education in the middle of the nineteenth century. But the emergence of rape on campus as a public problem is relatively recent. This article reveals the changing social constructions of campus rape as a public problem through a detailed examination of newspaper reporting on this issue as it unfolded at Columbia University and Barnard College between 1955 and 1990. Adapting Joseph R. Gusfield’s classic formulation of public problem construction, we show the ways police and other judicial and law enforcement authorities, feminists, university faculty, student groups, university administrators, and health professionals and institutions have struggled over ownership of how the problem should be defined and described, attribution of responsibility for addressing the problem, and prescriptions for what is to be done. Our findings show how beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the simultaneous swelling of the women’s liberation movement and the exponential integration of women into previously male-dominated institutions of higher education and medicine catalyzed the creation of new kinds of knowledge, institutions, and expertise to address rape and sexual violence more broadly on college campuses. New actors—feminists and health professionals—layered frames of gender and health over those of crime and punishment to fundamentally transform how we understand rape on campus, and beyond.

To read more, click here.

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.

For more, listen here.

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"M, F or X? American Passports Will Soon Have Another Option for Gender."
”The State Department also will no longer require medical certification when applying for passports if applicants’ stated gender does not match other identification documents.”

"Overlooked No More: Eve Adams, Writer Who Gave Lesbians a Voice"
”In her lifetime and for many years after, Eve Adams was variously called a “novelty girl,” “a bit of an anarchist,” “the queen of the third sex,” “a self-professed ‘man-hater,’” the author of an indecent book and, finally, Passenger 847 on Transport 63 to Auschwitz. But Adams was also an outspoken gay writer and Polish Jew in an often homophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant America in the 1920s and ’30s, one who published an early example of American lesbian literature written by a lesbian..”

"California bans state-funded travel to 5 states over anti-L.G.B.T.Q. laws"
”California has banned state-funded travel to Arkansas, Florida, Montana, North Dakota and West Virginia in response to anti-L.G.B.T.Q. legislation in those places. There are now 17 states under California’s ban, including Texas, Tennessee, and North and South Carolina.”

"LGBT rights and the battle for Europe's soul"
”A seemingly unbridgeable chasm is splitting the continent between countries that see LGBT rights as the core of European identity of freedom and tolerance, and those that see them as a threat to that same identity.”

Dan Royles "AIDS disappeared from public view without ending. Will covid-19 do the same?"
”In thinking of diseases just as medical problems, we allow them to fester in poor communities.”

Leslie J. Reagan, "Texas’s new abortion law threatens women’s health and well-being"
”Tacitly allowing antiabortion activists to enforce an abortion ban will lead to harassment, shaming and even violence.”

Article Spotlight

Monica B. Pearl; “A Thousand Kindred Spirits”: Reflections on AIDS Activism and Representations of AIDS in US Culture and Conversation. Radical History Review 1 May 2021; 2021 (140): 217–225. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/01636545-8841814

This article is one woman’s reflection on her experiences as a member of ACT UP/New York in the late 1980s and early 1990s through the lens of subsequent engagement in scholarship on AIDS representation in literature and visual media. Excerpted from a keynote address at a conference on the thirtieth anniversary of ACT UP at the University of York in June 2017, this essay reflects on the legacy of AIDS activism, ACT UP meetings, women and AIDS, needle exchange, safe sex workshops, the creation of the book Women, AIDS, and Activism, and queer kinship and conversation.

To read more, click here.

Episode Spotlight

How do you come out in a religious community that loves you conditionally? What do you tell yourself about your faith and your desires when your Church views your sexuality as disordered? In this episode of Sexing History, we focus on the experiences of three gay men who were priests or seminarians in the St. Louis diocese beginning in the 1990s. Their overlapping stories, their friendships, their faith, and the ways in which they came out to themselves and each other within Catholic institutions, speak to the intertwined histories of desire and devotion.

For more, listen here.

Books

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"Supreme Court Backs Catholic Agency in Case on Gay Rights and Foster Care"
”The Supreme Court ruled unanimously last week that a Catholic social services agency in Philadelphia could defy city rules and refuse to work with same-sex couples who apply to take in foster children. The decision, in the latest clash between antidiscrimination principles and claims of conscience, was a setback for gay rights and further evidence that religious groups almost always prevail in the current court.”

"Madeline Davis, Who Spoke to the Nation as a Lesbian, Dies at 80"
”She was the first openly gay woman to speak to a major party’s national convention, asking Democrats in 1972 to include an anti-discrimination plank in their platform.”

Shay Ryan Olmstead, "The new wave of anti-trans legislation is based on very old arguments and ideas"
”Trans Americans have taken to the courts for decades to fight against the notion that they are a threat.”

Julio Capó Jr., "There’s no LGBTQ Pride without immigrants"
”Immigration has been and always will be an LGBTQ issue. For the past century, government officials have adopted homophobic and racist strategies as a way to justify harsh immigration policies. In response, immigrants have long taken great risks to forge necessary paths to help liberate those seeking the freedom to express their gender and sexuality.”

Aaron S. Lecklider, "The push for LGBTQ equality began long before Stonewall "
”Activists were advocating for LGBTQ Americans decades before the gay liberation movement of the 1960s.”

Gillian Frank and Adam Laats, "This Critical Race Theory Panic Is a Chip Off the Old Block"
”This summer’s spate of state-level bills aimed at censoring the content of history teaching in public school classrooms—bills that have made much of the supposed double threat of “critical race theory” and the New York Times’ 1619 Project—might seem somewhat random. But in fact, conservative attacks like these on humanities curricula that discuss race and racism in the United States follow a long-established pattern.”

Jill Filipovic, "How US Abortion Politics Distorts Women’s Lives in Conflict Zones"
”From Rwanda and Bosnia to Myanmar and Tigray, rape is now recognized as a genocidal crime. Yet its survivors rarely receive the health care they need—thanks to America’s deadly culture war.”

Article Spotlight

Tanfer Emin Tunc, The Autobiography of a Neurasthene (1910): The Medical Counternarratives of Margaret Abigail Cleaves, MD. Gender & History (2021): https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0424.12536

This article argues that Margaret Abigail Cleaves's The Autobiography of a Neurasthene was part of a body of nineteenth-century writing that attempted to reclaim and recover the voices of American women by chronicling their struggles with illnesses and cures and documenting their interactions with the medical profession. Cleaves's gynocentric counternarrative was a searing criticism of the prevalent medical model of her era that questioned its treatment of neurasthenic women and offered therapeutic alternatives such as electric, light and music therapy. By doing so, it positioned Cleaves as a significant force of change in understandings of women and their bodies.

To read more, click here.

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.

For more, listen here.

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"Why the Latest Republican Assault on L.G.B.T.Q. Rights Is Different"
”L.G.B.T.Q. Americans — and particularly transgender and nonbinary people — are not simply living in a state of emergency; we are living in many states of imminent danger. The usual calls to action aren’t enough against these threats; we are now firmly in the territory of needing those in positions of authority to actively defy these laws — especially those enforcement agencies and leaders tasked with carrying out the unconstitutional and un-American assaults on the civil rights of millions of L.G.B.T.Q. people.”

"These Catholic Parishes Welcome New York’s L.G.B.T.Q. Community"
”Many of New York City’s most outwardly gay-friendly parishes “are concentrated in Manhattan, a center of both gay culture and efforts to build a gay-friendly Catholicism.

"How ACT UP Changed America"
”The defiant group of AIDS activists was itself riven by discord. What can the movement’s legacy, of both ferocity and fragility, teach us?”

Stephen Vider and David S. Byers, "A Supreme Court Case Poses a Threat to L.G.B.T.Q. Foster Kids"
”The Supreme Court is expected to rule this month on a case that could upend, in the name of religious freedom, 50 years of progress in the effort to provide better support for L.G.B.T.Q. children in the foster system. Such a decision would be a devastating setback for all children in foster care and set a dangerous precedent that could have broad repercussions.”

Roxane Gay, "Cops Don’t Belong at Pride"
”Modern Pride celebrations began with a rebellion against the police. We have not forgotten that.”

Jules Joanne Gleeson, "How Do Gender Transitions Happen?"
”The public’s obsession with why some people are trans burdens an already marginalized community, and misses the opportunity to ask more interesting questions about identity formation.”

Jules Joanne Gleeson, "How Do Gender Transitions Happen?"
”In recent years, Kimberlé Crenshaw’s idea of intersectionality has become central to left-wing discussions around feminism, race, and other social issues. Intersectionality, as a framework for understanding power, recognises how different aspects of a person’s identity overlap to create modes of privilege or discrimination. Intersectionality offers an invaluable lens through which to make sense of contemporary politics.”

Special Issue Spotlight

René Esparza; “Qué Bonita Mi Tierra”: Latinx AIDS Activism and Decolonial Queer Praxis in 1980s New York and Puerto Rico. Radical History Review, May 2021 (140): 107–141. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/01636545-8841706

Employing an anticolonial and anticapitalist approach to HIV/AIDS, the activists of the Latina/o Caucus of ACT UP/NY pushed beyond a biomedical framework of “drugs into bodies” that tended to dominate the larger organization. As US queer racialized/colonial subjects, Latinx AIDS activists enacted a queer and feminist decolonial activism that looked past the continental United States to the global South. In Puerto Rico, Latinx AIDS activists helped establish the first chapter of ACT UP in a Spanish-speaking country. Together, the Latina/o Caucus and ACT UP/Puerto Rico spearheaded a campaign against the colonial policies of the United States, the corporate greed of island-based pharmaceutical firms, and the heteropatriarchal investments of church and commonwealth officials—conditions that exacerbated the disproportionate rates of HIV/AIDS among Puerto Rican island and diasporic communities. Through these efforts, Latinx AIDS activists transformed the domestic and global fight against AIDS into a queer, feminist, and decolonial endeavor.

To read more, click here.

Episode Spotlight

In the 1980s and 1990s, the San Francisco Metropolitan Community Church wrestled with profound questions: What does it mean to minister a gay church when so many in the congregation are dying from AIDS-related complications and grieving the recently dead? How do you have faith during an epidemic? And what does it mean to participate in communion in a community ravaged by a plague?

For more, listen here.

Books

Upcoming Events

Raphael Samuel Memorial Lecture 2021: Hazel Carby, "Imperial Sexual Economies", 16 June 2021

This year’s Raphael Samuel Memorial Lecture will take place online on Wednesday 16 June. Hazel Carby, Charles C. And Dorathea S. Dilley Professor Emeritus of African American Studies and Professor Emeritus of American Studies at Yale University, will deliver a lecture on ‘Imperial Sexual Economies’. Drawn from her most recent book, Imperial Intimacies: A Tale of Two Islands, the lecture will examine the workings of patriarchal, racialized and gendered power through the entangled lives of free women of colour and enslaved women on a Jamaican coffee plantation.

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"Biden Administration Restores Rights for Transgender Patients"
”Officials invited people subject to health care discrimination to file complaints. But formal rule-making will be needed before a Trump-era policy can be fully reversed.”

"White House Reverses Trump Ban on LGBT Health Protections"
”The federal government will begin enforcing protections for LGBT Americans in health care again, reversing a ban put in place by the Trump administration. The decision to do so was made in light of the Supreme Court’s finding in Bostock v. Clayton County, which held that LGBT people are protected from discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”

“U.S. Lutheran Church Elects Its First Openly Transgender Bishop"
”A pastor in California became the first openly transgender person to be elevated to the role of bishop in a major American Christian denomination when they were elected to lead a synod in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.”

"German Catholic Priests Defy Rome to Offer Blessings to Gay Couples"
”More than 100 Roman Catholic parishes in Germany held services to bless gay couples, in defiance of the Vatican’s refusal to recognize same-sex unions.”

"The U.K. is set to pursue a ban on ‘conversion therapy.’ Here’s where other countries stand on the issue"
”The U.K. government will seek to ban “conversion therapy” aimed at LGBTQ people, Queen Elizabeth II announced in her annual address to the House of Lords. Measures “will be brought forward to address racial and ethnic disparities and ban conversion therapy,” she said in her speech, which is written by the government to set out its agenda.”

Joanna Wuest and Briana Last, "With Gay Adoption Decision, Will the Supreme Court Erode the Regulatory State?"
”On the surface, Fulton v. Philadelphia poses a question about religious conscience—but its proponents hope it will enable conservatives to pick and choose which laws they have to follow.”

Hugh Ryan, "When Queers Fought the State and Won"
”Sarah Schulman’s new history of AIDS activism group ACT UP NY is a definitive and instructive history of how outsiders forced the government to accept that they mattered.”

Special Issue Spotlight

Emily K. Hobson and Dan Royles, “The AIDS Crisis Is Not Over”, Radical History Review, Volume 2021, Issue 140, May 2021.

This issue of Radical History Review traces histories from around the globe and examines how HIV/AIDS has been shaped by the political economies of neoliberalism and state violence. Laura Frances Goffman examines the temporality of AIDS in Kuwait. Joseph E. Hower analyzes how the public sector union AFSCME moved from anti-discrimination to carceral unionism in responding to AIDS. Salonee Bhaman illustrates the contradictions of housing advocacy for people with HIV/AIDS in 1980s New York City. René Esparza shows how Latinx radicals across the Puerto Rican diaspora forged queer and feminist decolonial AIDS activism.

To read more, click here.

Episode Spotlight

Chances are you’ve never heard of Ruth Wallis, one of the greatest singers, comedians, and performers of sexually suggestive lyrics in the postwar United States. Most of her catalogue remains on vinyl and historians have forgotten her. But from the 1940s until the early 1970s, Ruth Wallis was a bestselling performer and a mainstay at supper clubs and hotels. At a time when it was legally risky for entertainers to sing about sexuality for profit and pleasure, Ruth sold millions of records that used innuendo to playfully hint at a variety of straight and queer sexual pleasures.

For more, listen here.

Books

Upcoming Events

Raphael Samuel Memorial Lecture 2021: Hazel Carby, "Imperial Sexual Economies", 16 June 2021

This year’s Raphael Samuel Memorial Lecture will take place online on Wednesday 16 June. Hazel Carby, Charles C. And Dorathea S. Dilley Professor Emeritus of African American Studies and Professor Emeritus of American Studies at Yale University, will deliver a lecture on ‘Imperial Sexual Economies’. Drawn from her most recent book, Imperial Intimacies: A Tale of Two Islands, the lecture will examine the workings of patriarchal, racialized and gendered power through the entangled lives of free women of colour and enslaved women on a Jamaican coffee plantation.

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"How Are There Only Three Lesbian Bars in New York City?"
”As the effects of the pandemic unfurl, lesbians are worried about losing their few brick-and-mortar spaces. Though New York may have more lesbian bars than any other city in the United States, the venues are part of a dwindling industry. According to a nonprofit known as the Lesbian Bar Project, only 19 of these spaces are left nationwide.”

"How Trans Children Became a Political Football"
”Legislation to restrict the rights of trans children isn’t new, but the speed with which it’s being introduced and approved around the country is. While the legislative wave may seem to have come out of nowhere, it is the product of a carefully coordinated and poll-tested campaign by socially conservative organizations looking for what may be their last foothold in the fight against L.G.B.T.Q. rights.”

“Republicans Have Found Their Cruel New Culture War"
”Lawmakers in a growing number of Republican-led states are advancing and passing bills to bar transgender athletes in girls’ sports, a culture clash that seems to have come out of nowhere.”

"Supreme Court conservatives may reset balance between LGBTQ rights and religious liberty"
”The Supreme Court is set to decide soon whether conservative Christians have a constitutional right to refuse to work with same-sex couples while participating in a city-funded foster care program that forbids such discrimination.”

"After Going ‘Free of L.G.B.T.,’ a Polish Town Pays a Price"
”Krasnik voted to be “free of L.G.B.T.” two years ago to satisfy conservative voters. Now, the mayor regrets the move, which has led to censure from other European countries and put funding at risk.”

Ian Ross Singleton, "God Is Genderqueer: A Conversation with H. L. Hix"
”The poet H.L. Hix discusses his new translation of the gospels into vernacular American speech. The most drastic change in this new translation has to do with gender and sexuality: Hix does not assign the male gender to God or Christ, instead using xe/xer pronouns; this translation of the gospel is thus the first to depict God and Christ as genderqueer.”

Rachel Rebouché, "Congress Could Legislate ‘Roe v. Wade’ and Still Fail Women"
”Roe v. Wade only guaranteed the right to patients’ privacy. A federal abortion law would need to go so much further.”

Vera Mackie Sarah Ferber and Nicola J Marks, "IVF and Assisted Reproduction: Why a Global History?"
”Writing the history of IVF means linking the intimate experiences of conception, gestation, and parturition with global and transnational processes.”

Article Spotlight

Matt Cook. “Local Matters: Queer Scenes in 1960s Manchester, Plymouth, and Brighton.” Journal of British Studies 59, no. 1 (2020): 32–56. doi:10.1017/jbr.2019.244.

This article compares queer social scenes in the 1960s in three English towns and cities: Brighton and Plymouth on the south coast and Manchester in the northwest. It considers how queer experience in these places was affected by local identities, demographics, geographies, and socioeconomic circumstances and so demonstrates how and why the local matters to queer scenes and lives, even in the midst of wider burgeoning mass and connective cultures. A focus on London has dominated analysis of both the “Swinging Sixties” and queer lives in England; this article shows how different queer experience outside that city could be. Despite multiple resonances and connections, London's queer story cannot stand in for that of other places.

To read more, click here.

Episode Spotlight

Chances are you’ve never heard of Ruth Wallis, one of the greatest singers, comedians, and performers of sexually suggestive lyrics in the postwar United States. Most of her catalogue remains on vinyl and historians have forgotten her. But from the 1940s until the early 1970s, Ruth Wallis was a bestselling performer and a mainstay at supper clubs and hotels. At a time when it was legally risky for entertainers to sing about sexuality for profit and pleasure, Ruth sold millions of records that used innuendo to playfully hint at a variety of straight and queer sexual pleasures.

For more, listen here.

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"Students Sue Department Of Education To Outlaw LGBTQ Discrimination At Christian Colleges"
”Students from 25 religiously-affiliated colleges and universities have filed a class-action lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education, claiming the schools are unconstitutionally discriminating against students in the LGBTQ community, as activists look to put pressure on lawmakers while the Senate considers a potentially landmark bill called the Equality Act—which would make LGBTQ Americans a protected class and ban public discrimination against members of the community if the bill is passed and signed into law.”

"Arkansas Senate OKs ban on treatments for transgender youth"
”The Arkansas Senate has approved banning gender confirming treatments for minors, sending the governor a restriction on transgender youth that has been criticized by medical and child welfare groups.”

“Why Transgender Girls Are Suddenly the G.O.P.’s Culture-War Focus"
”Lawmakers in a growing number of Republican-led states are advancing and passing bills to bar transgender athletes in girls’ sports, a culture clash that seems to have come out of nowhere.”

"Bills to ban transgender kids from sports try to solve a problem that doesn’t exist"
”Already this year, lawmakers in more than 25 states have introduced legislation to ban transgender young people from sports. Mississippi enacted a law this month requiring schools to designate teams by gender assigned at birth. Efforts elsewhere are progressing.”

Michael Schulman, "Tallying the Lost Years for LGBT Seniors"
”An art exhibition at a Brooklyn retirement home features twelve of the country’s three million L.G.B.T. elders, many of whom fear having to go back into the closet when they enter senior housing.”

Marce Butierrez and Patricio Simonetto, "No uterus, no opinion? Travestis, Gays & Maricas’ Activism for the Abortion Legalization in Argentina"
”In the early morning hours of 30 December 2020, thousands of protesters surrounded the Argentine parliament. With their masks and green handkerchiefs – the symbol of the National Campaign for Legal, Safe and Free Abortion (NCRLSA) – the crowds celebrated the vote that turned Argentina into the largest Latin American country to legalize abortion. Since the 1970s, Argentine feminist groups have struggled for the right over their own bodies. After decades of activism, the NCRLSA was founded in 2005 as a result of coordinated activities across more than 305 grassroots organizations, from catholic groups to leftist movements.”

Ashley Reese, "Yes, People Are Writing Horny Fanfic About the Suez Canal and the Ever Given"
”At the time of writing, fanfiction platform ArchiveOfOurOwn boasts 27 fanworks with the tag “Suez Canal (Anthropomorphic),” the majority pairing the canal and Ever Given, the container ship at the heart of the chaos. By default, these fics could all fall under the (arguably antiquated) category of “crack fic”—fan fiction that is intentionally absurd, usually written for laughs—but they’re also pretty compelling.”

Article Spotlight

Elizabeth Faue, Josiah Rector; The Precarious Work of Care: OSHA, AIDS, and Women Health-Care Workers, 1983–2000. Labor 1 December 2020; 17 (4): 9–33. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/15476715-8643460.

This article examines a series of Service Employees’ International Union (SEIU) campaigns for protection from needlestick injuries, led by women health-care workers, from the dawn of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s through battles over the 1992 OSHA standard on blood-borne pathogens and the Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act of 2000. We argue that these campaigns developed in response to the growing physical precarity of women health-care workers in the era of “managed care,” caused by the intensification and flexibilization of health-care labor and the deregulation and underfunding of OSHA and the CDC. We show how women workers challenged employers, OSHA, and elected federal officials to address workplace health hazards, through unions like SEIU and women’s, gay rights, and public health organizations. More broadly, we argue that the occupational hazards of health-care workers are a crucial but underexplored facet of workplace studies and the history of women workers in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

To read more, click here.

Episode Spotlight

In the 1960s, the airline industry ramped up its sexualization of stewardesses in order to increase revenues. Decades before the #MeToo movement, flight attendants navigated a workplace in which their employers required them to stay thin, remain unmarried, and squeeze into revealing clothing every day. In the early 1970s, flight attendants organized one of the first campaigns against workplace sexual harassment, assault, and sexual discrimination.

For more, listen here.

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"Equality Act is creating a historic face-off between religious exemptions and LGBTQ rights"
”As written, the Equality Act would override existing law that says the federal government must show it has a compelling interest before curbing religious rights. Because of that, many longtime watchers of this conflict believe the bill, which passed in the House, in its current form won’t win approval in the Senate and get to President Biden.”

"How Some States Are Moving to Restrict Transgender Women in Sports"
”Mississippi is the second state to bar transgender women from women’s sports. More are expected to follow.”

“Landmark Ruling Cracks Door Open for Same-Sex Marriage in Japan"
”A court found that it was unconstitutional for the country not to recognize the unions. But change would come only if Parliament passes legislation.”

"Vatican Says Priests Can’t Bless Same-Sex Unions"
”The judgment was issued in response to questions from some pastors and parishes that sought to be more welcoming and inclusive of gay couples.”

"Parliament votes to declare entire EU an LGBT ‘freedom zone’"
”The European Parliament has overwhelming adopted a resolution declaring the entire 27-member European Union a “freedom zone” for LGBT people, an effort to push back on rising homophobia in Poland and elsewhere.”

Marie Solis, "How Advocates for Massage and Sex Workers Are Mourning the Atlanta Shooting Victims"
”On Thursday night, Red Canary Song, a grassroots Chinese massage parlor worker coalition, mourned the deaths of the eight people who were killed in Tuesday’s Atlanta spa shootings, particularly the six Asian women. The mourners were rewriting a narrative that had been established by the shooter himself, 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long, and most of all by police, who took Long’s claim that his crimes were not racially motivated at face value.”

Lawrence D. Mass, "The Cassandra of Revolutionary Feminism: Commentary and an Interview with Martin Duberman"
”An interview with Martin Duberman about his new book, Andrea Dworkin: The Feminist as Revolutionary.”

Special Issue Spotlight

Gillian Frank, Rachel Kranson, and Jonathan Krasner, “Sexuality in American Jewish History”, American Jewish History, Volume 104, Number 4, October 2020.

The scarcity of critical analyses of Jewishness in the history of sexuality and of sexuality in the histories of American Jews has separated and obscured the ways that these categories have been mutually constituted. Historians of American Jews—who attend to Jewish difference as a matter of course—have produced relatively little scholarship on sex, sexual identity, sex work, and reproduction. When compared to the robust scholarship on these topics within related fields, matters of sexuality remain remarkably underexplored within American Jewish history. But when—like the authors in this special issue—we center sexuality within the study of American Jewish history, we recognize that it speaks directly to the central questions of the field. For scholars who think about the conditions that enabled or inhibited Jewish integration into the American mainstream, examining sexual stereotypes offers insight into how non-Jews conceptualized Jewish difference. The contributors to this special issue take as axiomatic that Jewishness is a difference that makes a difference in the history of sexuality in the United States. Jewish people, institutions, identities, and values shaped—and were shaped by—American conversations about sexual identities, acts, communities, and values.

To read more, click here.

Episode Spotlight

Chances are you’ve never heard of Ruth Wallis, one of the greatest singers, comedians, and performers of sexually suggestive lyrics in the postwar United States. Most of her catalogue remains on vinyl and historians have forgotten her. But from the 1940s until the early 1970s, Ruth Wallis was a bestselling performer and a mainstay at supper clubs and hotels. At a time when it was legally risky for entertainers to sing about sexuality for profit and pleasure, Ruth sold millions of records that used innuendo to playfully hint at a variety of straight and queer sexual pleasures.

For more, listen here.

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"House Passes Sweeping Gay and Transgender Equality Legislation"
”The bill, first passed by the Democratic-led House in 2019, faces a steep climb in the Senate. It was approved as Democrats and Republicans sparred more broadly over transgender rights.”

"The Equality Act and the ramped-up culture war over LGBTQ rights"
”As Congress considers the Equality Act, legislation that would largely ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and identity, the topic of transgender rights is taking center stage.”

“Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Twitter attack on congresswoman’s transgender daughter draws outrage"
”Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Twitter attack on a fellow congresswoman’s transgender daughter has drawn outrage from other members of Congress. Greene, a pro-Trump freshman from Georgia who has espoused baseless conspiracy theories, posted an anti-transgender sign in a shared office hallway.”

"Major Evangelical Adoption Agency Will Now Serve Gay Parents Nationwide"
”The decision comes as more cities and states require organizations to accept applications from L.G.B.T.Q. couples or risk losing government contracts.”

"Republican Legislatures Are Trying To Ban Transgender Athletes From Women’s Sports"
”The bills are obvious attempts to restrict LGBTQ rights under the guise of solving phony concerns about athletic advantage.”

Esther Want, "These Girls Just Wanted to Run; the Right Wanted a War"
”How Republicans thrust teen girls into the center of a years-long, organized hate campaign to legislate trans people out of society.”

Michael Waters, "The Untold Story of Queer Foster Families"
”In the nineteen-seventies, social workers in several states placed queer teen-agers with queer foster parents, in discrete acts of quiet radicalism.”

Jessa Crispin, "Feminism in Lockdown"
”The pandemic has foregrounded women's exploitation in the home and challenged feminism to once again go beyond middle-class concerns.”

Article Spotlight

Gábor Szegedi, “The Emancipation of Masturbation in Twentieth-Century Hungary.” The Historical Journal, 2021, 1–25. doi:10.1017/S0018246X21000091.

In this article, I discuss the emancipation of masturbation in twentieth-century Hungary, focusing on the socialist, Kádár era (late 1950s to late 1980s), which I claim was the time when the discourses concerning masturbation underwent profound transformation. I use Thomas Laqueur's periodization of discourses on masturbation in the West and make the case that in Hungary, due to its twentieth-century political and intellectual history, which affected both the institutionalization of sexology and discourses on sexuality, there is a markedly different chronology. In Hungary, interwar socialists were the first to suggest a new approach toward masturbation but these ideas remained marginal during the Horthy regime and in the ‘Stalinist’ 1950s. In the early years of the Kádár regime, debates about sexual morality reformulated what should be understood under socialist sexual morality. The concept of socialist humanism, especially Imre Hirschler's work, linked early 1960s sex education with the interwar socialist discourse on sex and paved the way to the emancipation of masturbation and the establishment of a post-Stalinist, socialist sexual ethics. In the 1970s and 1980s, iconic sexologists like Vilmos Szilágyi and Béla Buda moved away from socialist humanism and continued Hirschler's work, but mirroring the perspectives of contemporary Western science.

To read more, click here.

Episode Spotlight

In the 1960s and 1970s, a belly dancing craze swept the United States. Audiences could enjoy live belly dancing performances in Middle Eastern restaurants and clubs. Viewers could watch belly dancers in hit movies and on popular television show. At first glance, the history of belly dancing appears to be a story of white middle class women appropriating Middle Eastern culture and styles to make themselves more exotic. But the story of belly dancing is much more complex: it is a story in which Middle Eastern and American artists and audiences shaped and reshaped artistic expressions, sexual performances and cultural identities.

For more, listen here.

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"Equality Act introduced in House to provide sweeping LGBTQ protections"
”Democratic U.S. lawmakers last week introduced sweeping legislation to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, marking the first step in advancing a set of historic measures that President Biden has pledged to sign.”

"Strategy talks in high gear to get Equality Act across the finish line"
”With a U.S. House vote on the Equality Act set for next week, talks between LGBTQ rights advocates and Capitol Hill have begun on getting the legislation across the finish line with Democratic control of both chambers of Congress and the White House, although that has become more complicated with opponents raising fears about transgender kids in sports and Sen. Mitt Romney’s (R-Utah) newly declared opposition to the bill.”

“Rush Limbaugh mocked the deaths of People with AIDS to disco music in despicable radio segment"
”Rush Limbaugh included an “AIDS Updates” segment on his radio show in the 1990s, just one of the many ways he trafficked in cruelty against LGBT+ people.”

"Carmen Vázquez, a longtime force in the world of L.G.B.T.Q. rights, dies at 72."
”Vázquez, a longtime force in the world of L.G.B.T.Q. rights and issues, first in San Francisco, then in New York, died on Jan. 27 in Brooklyn. She was 72. The cause was complications of Covid-19, said her longtime friends Carlie Steen and Erica Pelletreau. The National L.G.B.T.Q. Task Force was one of several organizations to post news of her death. Its executive director, Rea Carey, called Ms. Vázquez “one of our movement’s most brilliant activists.”

Samuel Clowes Huneke, "The Death of the Gay Bar"
”The pandemic may spell the end of many gay bars, but apps and increased acceptance for LGBTQ people meant most were already on the rocks. Should we mourn their passing?”

A.J. Bauer, "His Ignominy Is His Triumph: a counter-obituary of Rush Limbaugh"
”An alternative obituary of Rush Limbaugh anchored in social and cultural theory.”

Riley Grace Roshong, "The LGBTQ+ ‘Panic’ Defense Needs to Go in Maryland"
”According to the LGBTQ Bar, the LGBTQ+ “panic” defense is: ‘a legal strategy that asks a jury to find that a victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity/expression is to blame for a defendant’s violent reaction, including murder.’ The LGBTQ+ “panic” defense has been banned in California, Illinois, Rhode Island, Nevada, Connecticut, Maine, Hawaii, New York, New Jersey, Washington, Colorado and the District of Columbia. Legislation has also been introduced to ban the LGBTQ+ “panic” defense in Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Texas, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Iowa and Virginia.”

Article Spotlight

Joseph Plaster; Safe for Whom? And Whose Families? Narrative, Urban Neoliberalism, and Queer Oral History on San Francisco’s Polk Street. The Public Historian 5 August 2020; 42 (3): 86–113. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/tph.2020.42.3.86

In this essay I reflect on my experience as director of Polk Street: Lives in Transition, a project that drew on oral histories to intervene in debates about gentrification, homelessness, sex work, queer politics, and public safety in the highly polarized setting of gentrifying San Francisco. From 2008–10, I recorded more than seventy oral histories from people experiencing the transformation of the city's Polk Street from a working-class queer commercial district to a gentrified entertainment destination serving the city's growing elite. Oral histories enabled me to document a local past rich in non-biological family structures, which I interpreted through public "listening parties," professionally mediated neighborhood dialogues, a traveling multimedia exhibit, and radio documentaries. The project challenged gentrifiers' claims to be promoting "safety" and "family" by positing alternative understandings of both concepts drawn from oral histories with transgender women, queer homeless youth, sex workers, and working-class gay men who had made Polk Street their home.

To read more, click here.

Episode Spotlight

In 1975, two years after Roe v Wade, an all white and mostly Catholic jury convicted Dr. Kenneth Edelin, an African American physician, of manslaughter for performing a legal second trimester abortion. His trial transformed the anti-abortion movement.

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"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.

To read more, click here.

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.

For more, listen here.

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"Biden Reverses Trump’s Transgender Military Ban"
”On Monday 25 January, President Biden overturned a Trump administration policy banning transgender individuals from serving in the military.”

Chris Johnson, “Biden signs Executive Order to undo Trump’s transgender military ban"
”President Biden has signed an executive order that reverses the Trump administration’s policy against transgender military service but stops short of explicitly stating that transgender people will be allowed to enlist in the armed forces.”

Samantha Schmidt, John Wagner and Teo Armus, "Biden selects transgender doctor Rachel Levine as assistant health secretary"
”President Joe Biden has announced that he will nominate Rachel Levine, Pennsylvania’s top health official, as his assistant secretary of health. Levine, a pediatrician, would become the first openly transgender federal official to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.”

Josh Gerstein, "Biden DOJ nixes last-minute Trump administration memo on LGBTQ rights"
”The Justice Department has taken its first major step under President Joe Biden to reverse the Trump administration’s resistance to expansion of rights accorded to LGBTQ Americans.”

"Group of US Catholic bishops urges support for LGBT youth"
”Declaring “God is on your side,” a Roman Catholic cardinal, an archbishop and six other U.S. bishops are declaring their support for LGBT youth and denouncing the bullying often directed at them.”

Andrew Kreighbaum, "Biden Moves to Reverse DeVos on Transgender Students’ Treatment"
”President Joe Biden took the first steps this week to reverse Trump administration policies on the rights of transgender students.”

Sian Cain, "Hungary orders LGBT publisher to print disclaimers on children's book"
”Hungary’s government, which has made hostility to LGBT people a central part of its rightwing agenda, has ordered a publisher to print disclaimers identifying books containing “behaviour inconsistent with traditional gender roles.””

Article Spotlight

Lauren Jae Gutterman; “Caring for Our Own”: The Founding of Senior Action in a Gay Environment, 1977–1985. Radical History Review , 2021 (139): 178–199. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/01636545-8822675.

This article traces the founding of Senior Action in a Gay Environment (SAGE), the nation’s oldest and largest social service organization for LGBT elders. Drawing on archival documentation as well as interviews with SAGE founders and early members, the article shows how SAGE was born of two largely disconnected social transformations: the gay and lesbian movement and the national expansion of services and programs for the elderly that was enabled by the Older Americans Act of 1965. SAGE’s institutionalization and its relationship with the state allowed it to grow in an increasingly conservative political context while ensuring that the organization would not take a broadly intersectional approach to the challenges gay and lesbian elders faced. Despite its political limitations, however, SAGE provided a setting in which some white gay and lesbian elders began to see themselves as agents of social change.

To read more, click here.

Episode Spotlight

Chances are you’ve never heard of Ruth Wallis, one of the greatest singers, comedians, and performers of sexually suggestive lyrics in the postwar United States. Most of her catalogue remains on vinyl and historians have forgotten her. But from the 1940s until the early 1970s, Ruth Wallis was a bestselling performer and a mainstay at supper clubs and hotels. At a time when it was legally risky for entertainers to sing about sexuality for profit and pleasure, Ruth sold millions of records that used innuendo to playfully hint at a variety of straight and queer sexual pleasures.

For more, listen here.

Books

Congratulations to Lauren Gutterman for an honourable mention in this year’s John Boswell Prize from the Committee of LGBT History. Use discount code NEIGHBOR40-FM for a 40% discount off Her Neighbor’s Wife’s on the University of Pennsylvania Press website, plus free shipping.

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Chris Johnson, "LGBTQ Trump supporters tiptoe away from president after U.S. Capitol attack"
”In the aftermath of the assault on the U.S. Capitol instigated by President Trump, his one-time LGBTQ supporters are now distancing themselves from him without outright renouncing their previous support.”

Chris Johnson, "Dems win in Georgia, oust Republican who introduced anti-trans bill"
”Democrats, seizing on momentum after President Trump’s shocking phone call urging Georgia state officials to “find” votes for him to reverse his election loss, scored a win in a run-off election in Georgia for two U.S. Senate seats, disrupting the narrative Democrats are unable to win in the Deep South.”

Suyin Haynes, “LGBTQ and Women’s Rights Activists in Europe Hope a Biden Administration Will Make the U.S. an Ally Again"
”LGBTQ North Carolinians in unmarried, dating relationships must have the same access to domestic violence protections as people in heterosexual relationships, according to a recent North Carolina Court of Appeals ruling.”

Jo Yurcaba, "LGBTQ people now eligible for domestic violence protections in all 50 states"
”With President-elect Joe Biden quickly filling out his Cabinet, fewer opportunities remain for him to make history by nominating the first openly LGBTQ person to a Cabinet-level role for Senate confirmation. Some LGBTQ leaders are quietly expressing frustration that the movement hasn’t pushed more aggressively for representation in Biden’s Cabinet.”

Suyin Haynes, “After a 'Rainbow Wave' in 2020's Elections, Here's What the New Class of LGBTQ Lawmakers Expect From a Biden Presidency"
”On the heels of the past four years, in which LGBTQ advocates argue the Trump Administration has attempted to sow divisions among the queer community by remaining silent on LGBTQ issues and presiding over a rollback of rights targeting transgender people, the “rainbow wave” of new elected officials indicates a broader reflection in America’s changing demographics, and increasing acceptance of queer communities.”

Will Doran, "LGBTQ people can finally get domestic violence protections in NC, court rules"
”LGBTQ people in North Carolina can no longer be prevented from getting domestic violence protective orders, the N.C. Court of Appeals ruled in late December. North Carolina had been the only state in the country to withhold emergency protections from people seeking protection from abuse by a same-sex partner”

Grace Lavery, "A High Court Decision in Britain Puts Trans People Everywhere at Risk"
”The decision is an unprecedented juridical attack on the LGBT community in the U.K., in which the British state has asserted a right to enforce unwanted puberty—and to arrest transitions that are already in progress—on the slimmest of pretexts. It also reflects a disturbing escalation of anti-transgender policy across the United Kingdom..”

Blair McClendon, "Lost Lost Causes"
”“This is not America.” That strange, contradictory phrase seems to descend like fog every time a legible and precedented event occurs in the United States. If it wasn’t America, it wouldn’t need to be said.”

Article Spotlight

Elizabeth Evens, "Plainclothes Policewomen on the Trail: NYPD Undercover Investigations of Abortionists and Queer Women, 1913–1926", Modern American History (2020), 1-18. doi:10.1017/mah.2020.22.

In early twentieth-century New York City, policewomen went undercover to investigate abortion and queer women. These early female entrants to the New York Police Department were not the middle class reformers typically associated with Progressive Era vice reform; they tended to be working class white widows who carved out a gendered expertise that relied upon their unique capacity and willingness to extend surveillance over the female, immigrant spaces that eluded their male counterparts. The NYPD instrumentalized policewomen’s bodies; investigations of criminalized female sexuality required policewomen participate in intimate encounters, exposing their own precarity in the masculine world of policing. But plainclothes work also furnished policewomen with a rare route to professional renown and social mobility, “success” they won at the expense of more marginalized women. Their work reveals that the early twentieth-century state was more innovative and invested in methods to police “disorderly” female heterosexuality and same sex desire than previously understood.

To read more, click here.

Episode Spotlight

How do you come out in a religious community that loves you conditionally? What do you tell yourself about your faith and your desires when your Church views your sexuality as disordered? In this episode of Sexing History, we focus on the experiences of three gay men who were priests or seminarians in the St. Louis diocese beginning in the 1990s. Their overlapping stories, their friendships, their faith, and the ways in which they came out to themselves and each other within Catholic institutions, speak to the intertwined histories of desire and devotion.

For more, listen here.

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Livia Albeck-Ripka, "U.K. to Ease Rules on Blood Donations by Gay and Bisexual Men"
”The new policy, which will take effect next summer, was described by Britain’s health secretary as a landmark and by an activist as “a fundamental shift toward recognizing people are individuals.”

Clea Skopeliti, "Blood donor rules to be relaxed for gay and bisexual men in England"
”Gay and bisexual men will be able to donate blood more easily from next summer following a landmark policy change, the NHS blood service has announced. The move has been welcomed by campaigners who have fought to overturn rules that “perpetuate inequality.”

Jacqueline Alemany, “LGBTQ+ Caucus wants to see more representation in a Biden administration"
”President-elect Joe Biden has pledged the “most diverse” Cabinet in U.S. history. But the congressional LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus has released a letter expressing concern that LGBTQ+ representation is insufficient at the highest levels of American government.”

Chris Johnson, "Frustration builds as Biden’s Cabinet includes no LGBTQ picks"
”With President-elect Joe Biden quickly filling out his Cabinet, fewer opportunities remain for him to make history by nominating the first openly LGBTQ person to a Cabinet-level role for Senate confirmation. Some LGBTQ leaders are quietly expressing frustration that the movement hasn’t pushed more aggressively for representation in Biden’s Cabinet.”

Harron Walker, “Republican Effort to Make Life Hell for Trans Kids Finds Victory in Federal Court"
”The impact of Donald Trump’s record number of federal court appointments continues to make itself known as a pair of Trump-appointed judges have ruled against banning what is commonly referred to as “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ+ minors.”

Chris Johnson, "Trump’s Labor Dept. goes through with gutting LGBTQ workplace protections"
”With less than two months remaining in the Trump administration, the Department of Labor went through with making a rule final that would grant religious institutions a broader exemption under former President Obama’s executive order barring anti-LGBTQ workplace discrimination among federal contractors.”

Kate Hodal, "Covid used as pretext to curtail civil rights around the world, finds report"
”Free speech, LBGT+ rights and freedoms to peacefully assemble have deteriorated during the pandemic.”

Mike Ives, "Bhutan Becomes Latest Asian Nation to Dial Back Anti-Gay Laws"
”Lawmakers in the Himalayan country have voted to amend a 2004 law that criminalizes “sexual conduct that is against the order of nature,” previously treated as a reference to gay sex.”

Julia Laite, "‘An Equality of Injustice’: The Sex Buyers’ Bill and Lessons from History"
”In the U.K., Labour MP Diana Johnson, backed by other prominent Labour back-benchers like Jess Philipps and Sarah Champion, has proposed a new bill called ‘The Sex Buyer’s Law’, which aimed ‘to criminalise paying for sex; to decriminalise selling sex; to create offences relating to enabling or profiting from another person’s sexual exploitation; to make associated provision about sexual exploitation online; to make provision for support services for victims of sexual exploitation’. The bill, like other ‘end demand’ laws passed in Sweden, Ireland, and Canada, has been met with anger and extreme worry by women who sell sex in the United Kingdom.”

Article Spotlight

Allyson P. Brantley, ‘“Hardhats May Be Misunderstood”: The Boycott of Coors Beer and the Making of Gay-Labor-Chicana/o Alliances.‘ Pacific Historical Review (2020) 89 (2): 264–296. DOI: 10.1525/phr.2020.89.2.264.

Drawing on organizational records, the progressive press, and oral history archives, this article explores the development of a multiracial, coalition-backed boycott of Coors beer in the 1970s and 1980s. It focuses on the boycott’s expansion from a localized labor dispute in the San Francisco Bay Area to a national, politicized campaign. It argues that the Coors boycott and its array of backers, representing labor, Chicana/o, queer, black, Native American, and leftist circles, demonstrate the vibrancy, creativity, and evolution of activism in the decades following the civil rights movements. Instead of seeing the move to coalition and consumer movements as conservative, this article identifies the Coors boycott as an example of ongoing grassroots efforts to forge solidarity and oppose business conservatives and the New Right.

Episode Spotlight

How do you come out in a religious community that loves you conditionally? What do you tell yourself about your faith and your desires when your Church views your sexuality as disordered? In this episode of Sexing History, we focus on the experiences of three gay men who were priests or seminarians in the St. Louis diocese beginning in the 1990s. Their overlapping stories, their friendships, their faith, and the ways in which they came out to themselves and each other within Catholic institutions, speak to the intertwined histories of desire and devotion.

For more, listen here.

Books

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Jon Henley, "‘US elects first trans state senator and first black gay congressman"
”A deeply polarised US electorate has given the country its first transgender state senator and its first black gay congressman – but also its first lawmaker to have openly supported the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory.”

Chris Johnson, "LGBTQ hopefuls await appointments amid Biden transition"
”With the current administration winding down — despite continued bluster and refusal to concede from President Trump — LGBTQ hopefuls shut out from the U.S. government for four years are eager to reemerge amid high hopes for change when President-elect Joe Biden takes office.”

Carlos Santoscoy, “81% Of LGBT voters voted for Biden, 14% for Trump"
”According to a recent poll, a large majority of LGBT voters voted for President-elect Joe Biden. The survey of 800 LGBT voters was commissioned by GLAAD and conducted November 9-14 by Pathfinder Opinion Research.”

Samantha Schmidt and Emily Wax-Thibodeaux, "How a Biden presidency could advance transgender rights — and lead to backlash"
”The incoming Biden administration has pledged to work to end what he calls an “epidemic” of violence against transgender people, particularly transgender women of color. He has committed to expanding access to health care for the LGBTQ community and ensuring their fair treatment in the criminal justice system. He plans to prioritize enacting the Equality Act, which would guarantee LGBTQ protections under civil rights laws, and to collect data on a community that advocates say has long existed in a vacuum of information.”

Marie-Amélie George, “The history behind the latest LGBTQ rights case at the Supreme Court"
”On Nov. 4., the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, a case on whether private, religiously affiliated foster care agencies may refuse to work with same-sex couples. These foster care agencies have become the latest bastions of resistance to LGBTQ rights, taking up conservatives’ strident calls to defy the Supreme Court’s rulings on LGBTQ equality.”

Daniel Boffey, "EU proposes new rules to protect LGBTQ+ people amid 'worrying trends'"
”Brussels has put itself on a collision course with the Polish and Hungarian governments after proposing to criminalise hate speech against LGBTQ+ people under EU law and secure recognition of same-sex partnerships across the bloc’s borders.”

Soo Youn, "How can you be LGBTQ+ at an evangelical university? In secret"
”Students at Liberty University have to sign an honor code, which describes accepted and forbidden behavior – and LGBTQ students fear they have to remain in the shadows to graduate.”

Article Spotlight

Andrew Lester, ‘"This Was My Utopia": Sexual Experimentation and Masculinity in the 1960s Bay Area Radical Left."‘ Journal of the History of Sexuality 29, no. 3 (2020): 364-387. DOI: 10.7560/JHS29303.

When Black Panther Party cofounder Huey P. Newton argued in 1970 that in order to have a chance to be free, Black people would have to discard “all these romantic, fictional fin[a]lisms, such as they’re married and they live happily ever after with a white picket fence,” he expressed a sentiment that was shared across the movements of the day, including the sexual and gay liberation movements. Amid the political ferment of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Area in the second half of the 1960s, activists from various movements experimented with utopian alternatives to the nuclear family norm. This essay deepens our understanding of the late 1960s Bay Area Left by examining how these experiments with unconventional forms of belonging connected Newton with two lesser-known figures: Richard Thorne, who led the East Bay Sexual Freedom League chapter in 1966, and Leo Laurence, who cofounded the Committee for Homosexual Freedom in 1969. Newton and Thorne were Black activists with roots in Oakland’s early Black Power movement, while Laurence was a white gay liberation activist with experience in Thorne’s SFL. The personal and organizational links between these three leaders illuminate a shared sexual culture that bridged the Bay Area’s gay liberation and Black Power movements.

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.

For more, listen here.

Books

Upcoming Events

Book Launch: Paulo Drinot, "The Sexual Question: A History of Prostitution in Peru, 1850s–1950s", Centre for Latin American Research and Documentation (CEDLA), University of Amsterdam, 4 December 2020
”Exploring links between sexuality, society, and state formation, this is the first history of prostitution and its politics in Peru. The history of prostitution, Paulo Drinot (University College London) shows, sheds light on the interplay of gender and sexuality, medicine and public health, and nation-building and state formation in Peru. With its compelling historical lens, this landmark study offers readers an engaging narrative, and new perspectives on Latin American studies, social policy, and Peruvian history.”

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Clint Witchalls, "‘Rainbow Wave’ of LGBTQ Candidates Run and Win in 2020 Election"
”More LGBTQ candidates ran for office in the United States in 2020 than ever before – at least 1,006. That’s a 41% increase over the 2018 midterms, according to the LGBTQ Victory Fund.”

Chris Johnson, "Gay conservatives get small victory: LGBTQ vote goes 61% Biden, 28% Trump"
”Amid celebration in the LGBTQ community over the wins of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the 2020 election, gay conservatives are claiming a small victory of their own with President Trump claiming a better than expected percentage of the LGBTQ vote.”

Emma Powys Maurice, “The Good, the Bad and the Sometimes Ugly History of New President-Elect Joe Biden and LGBT+ Rights"
”Though Biden is certainly now a powerful advocate for the LGBTQ community, his allyship is something he’s learned over a long, uneven career.”

Maria Cramer, "Woman Who Says She Was Fired for Being a Lesbian Is Elected Sheriff"
”Charmaine McGuffey, an ex-major in the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office in Ohio, defeated her former boss in a primary and won the general election against a candidate the sheriff had backed.”

Chris Johnson, “New ‘Blueprint’ Lights Way for Biden to Reverse Trump Policies on LGBTQ Rights"
”With LGBTQ advocacy organizations eager for change in the new Biden administration, the Human Rights Campaign has laid out proposals lighting the way forward with a detailed guide on administrative actions to reverse President Trump’s anti-LGBTQ policies.”

Zalman Rothschild, "‘Religious Equality’ Is Transforming American Law"
”The idea that people of faith must be protected from discrimination—even when that means they themselves will discriminate against others—is gaining traction in the courts.”

Monika Pronczuk and Benjamin Novak, "European Union Tries to Counter Anti-L.G.B.T.Q. Wave in Hungary and Poland"
”The bloc is trying to stop the Eastern European member nations from advancing discriminatory measures, but its legal powers are limited.”

Other Media

Podcast: Adventures in Time & Gender
”New Time-Traveling Drama Podcast Takes Listeners on a Moving and Inspiring Journey Through Transgender History. Adventures in Time and Gender is a light and quirky drama in which nothing is taboo and gender, science and history are playfully questioned. Listeners are invited to join a talking suitcase and their curious non-binary companion on a moving odyssey through time, space and Ikea to uncover transgender history.”

Article Spotlight

Lauren Jae Gutterman, ‘“Not My Proudest Moment”: Guilt, Regret, and the Coming-Out Narrative’, The Oral History Review, 46:1 (2019), 48-70, DOI: 10.1093/ohr/ohy059

This article draws on oral history interviews with twenty-six lesbian and bisexual women who came out within the context of heterosexual marriages between the 1970s and the early 2000s. Despite the extent to which the LGBTQ community emphasizes narratives of progress and triumph, feelings of shame, guilt, regret, and ambivalence figured significantly in these women's life stories, particularly with regard to their experiences of coming out. This article thus considers how oral history can provide queer narrators with an opportunity to share negative feelings that often remain unspoken within mainstream LGBTQ culture and politics.

Episode Spotlight

In 1966, before breast implants were widely available or popular, Jack Feather patented a "spring type breast developer." He made millions of dollars promising women that they could change their bodies and increase their sex appeal.

For more, listen here.

Books

Upcoming Events

Book Launch: Rachel Hope Cleves, "Unspeakable: A Life beyond Sexual Morality", 17 November 2020
”Unspeakable is the clear-eyed biography of Norman Douglas, a once beloved, now largely forgotten author—and an unrepentant and uncloseted pederast. Rachel Hope Cleves’s careful study of Douglas’s life opens a window onto the social history of intergenerational sex in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, revealing how charisma, celebrity, and contemporary standards protected Douglas from punishment—until they didn’t.”

Book Launch: Paulo Drinot, "The Sexual Question: A History of Prostitution in Peru, 1850s–1950s", Centre for Latin American Research and Documentation (CEDLA), University of Amsterdam, 4 December 2020
”Exploring links between sexuality, society, and state formation, this is the first history of prostitution and its politics in Peru. The history of prostitution, Paulo Drinot (University College London) shows, sheds light on the interplay of gender and sexuality, medicine and public health, and nation-building and state formation in Peru. With its compelling historical lens, this landmark study offers readers an engaging narrative, and new perspectives on Latin American studies, social policy, and Peruvian history.”

Sexing History Swag

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A WEEKLY ROUNDUP OF SEXUALITY, HISTORY AND CURRENT EVENTS

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Gillian Frank, "Pricks in Public: A Microhistory"
”In a high-profile instance of work-from-home gone horribly wrong, legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin was recently suspended from his gigs at the New Yorker and CNN, after masturbating during a work Zoom meeting in front of a number of his coworkers. One historian, Jonathan Zimmerman, even characterized the widespread condemnation of Toobin as rooted in Americans’ longstanding prudishness about masturbation. But while there is a history at play here, it’s not that of Americans’ uneasy relationship with masturbation. It’s the history of men publicly “sharing” their private parts in offices and on the street. It is also a story of white men’s power to sexualize and control workplaces and public space through these same actions.”

Robert Barnes, "Barrett’s Evasiveness Alarms LGBTQ Advocates Fearful Supreme Court May Roll Back Protections"
”Supreme Court Judge Amy Coney Barrett dodged questions on the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, which granted same-sex couples the right to marry.”

Emma Bubola, “Bill Offering L.G.B.T. Protections in Italy Spurs Rallies on Both Sides"
”Supporters frame the measure as a long-overdue means to provide basic human rights. Opponents depict it as an overreaching step that would suppress opinion.”

Julie Moreau, “Anti-LGBTQ Attack Ads Ramp up Ahead of Election Day"
”Anti-LGBT political ads have ramped up as election day has neared. A number of attack ads this election cycle have also targeted transgender candidates and candidates that support policies that advance transgender rights.”

Michael K. Lavers, "Activists in Swing States Drive LGBTQ Voter Mobilization Efforts"
”Advocacy groups in battleground states from Michigan to Florida, have pulled out all the stops in their efforts to encourage members of the LGBTQ community to vote.”

Elisabetta Povoledo, “Vatican Clarifies Pope Francis’s Comments on Same-Sex Unions"
”The Vatican has confirmed the pope’s remarks on gay couples deserving civil protections as it sent an explanatory note to bishops underlining that Francis’s comments did not mark a change in church doctrine. The pope’s remarks made headlines last month after they appeared in the documentary “Francesco,” at its Oct. 21 premiere at the Rome Film Festival. In the documentary, he reiterated his view that gay people are “children of God,” and said: “What we have to create is a civil union law. That way they are legally covered.”

Paul Elie, "Pope Francis Supports Same-Sex Civil Unions, but the Church Must Do More"
”When it comes to sexuality, the Church’s account of the human person is as superannuated as trickle-down economics and coal-burning power plants.”

Article Spotlight

Kirsten Leng, ‘Fumerism as Queer Feminist Activism: Humour and Rage in the Lesbian Avengers’ Visibility Politics’, Gender & History, Vol.32 No.1 March 2020, p. 108–130. doi:10.1111/1468-0424.12450

This article examines the role of humour within the late twentieth‐century lesbian feminist direct action group, the Lesbian Avengers. Using stand‐up comedian and writer Kate Clinton's neologism ‘fumerism’, it explores how the Avengers’ actions mixed humour with an angry edge to protest issues such as sexual violence and dabbled in the grotesque in order to target misogyny. This article argues that ‘fumer’ served the Avengers as a creative, cathartic and provocative means of raising awareness of lesbian issues, broaching demands and making (political) lesbians visible. This article situates the Avengers’ tactics within an era of resurgent conservatism and direct‐action politics, and asserts that they belong to a larger, longer history of feminist humour only now gaining scholarly attention.

Episode Spotlight

Decades before the #MeToo movement, flight attendants navigated a workplace in which their employers required them to stay thin, remain unmarried, and squeeze into revealing clothing every day. In the early 1970s, flight attendants organized one of the first campaigns against workplace sexual harassment, assault, and sexual discrimination.

For more, listen here.

Books

Upcoming Events

Contagions of Empire: A Conversation With Professor Khary Polk, 8 November 2020
"An author discussion with Professor Khary Polk about his recently published book, Contagions of Empire.

Contagions of Empire: Scientific Racism, Sexuality, and Black Military Workers Abroad, 1898-1948 (University of North Carolina Press, June 2020) examines how the movement of Black soldiers and nurses around the world in the early-to-mid twentieth century challenged U.S. military ideals of race, nation, and honor.”

Rachel Hope Cleves in Conversation with Alexis Coe, 17 November 2020
”Rachel Hope Cleves, author of Unspeakable: A Life beyond Sexual Morality, in conversation with Alexis Coe, author of You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington.

Unspeakable is the clear-eyed biography of Norman Douglas, a once beloved, now largely forgotten author—and an unrepentant and uncloseted pederast. Rachel Hope Cleves’s careful study of Douglas’s life opens a window onto the social history of intergenerational sex in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, revealing how charisma, celebrity, and contemporary standards protected Douglas from punishment—until they didn’t.”

Race, Sex, and Disease in the Early Caribbean: Yaws and Syphillis, UCL Institute of the Americas, 18 November 2020
”Dr Katherine Paugh of Oxford University will discuss the story of syphilis in the early Caribbean, focusing on how Britons and West Africans who were caught up in the Atlantic slave trade and new world slavery understood syphilis. ”

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