In the 1930s and 1940s, a group of scientists tried to explain homosexuality by looking for “masculine” traits in lesbians and “feminine” traits in homosexual men. They claimed that gay men had broad shoulders and narrow hips (indicating “immature skeletal development”) and lesbians had abnormal genitalia, including larger-than-average vulvas, longer labia minora, a larger glans […]
День: 09.11.2015
Nora
When I first met Nora, in 1991, she was a 29 years old single mother living at her mother’s place in Meru together with her two children—from different fathers. Ever since Nora, at the age of 14, gave birth to her first born child out of wedlock, she has supported herself and her children through […]
Rule Four: Know What You’re Asking For
Decide beforehand exactly what you want your work life to look like and write it down. We’ve given you quite a few examples in this book of different women working different ways. There are literally thousands of schedule permutations. Before you put draw up your ideal, here are a few lifestyle issues to think of. […]
The ethic of justice and the ethic of care — again
The first issue which needs some clarification is the relevance here of the framework of the ethic of justice and the ethic of care, some twenty years after the work of Carol Gilligan was first published and after much has been published which further refines and develops these ideas.[439] It might be thought that enough […]
Measuring Sexual Orientation: How Many Are We?
How prevalent are homosexuality, heterosexuality, and bisexuality in society? Kinsey and his colleagues (1948) found that 37% of men and 13% of women reported that they had had at least one adult sexual experience with a member of the same sex that resulted in orgasm and that about 4% of men and 3% of women […]
The Different Voice
Gilligan’s claims about a different moral voice have changed over the last decade in response to critics and as a result of the further development of her own research. I want to highlight two aspects of this change: the empirical, which includes the evidence for the different voice and the issue of developmental stages, and […]
Models of Sexual Orientation: Who Is Homosexual?
Kinsey and his colleagues (1948) believed that relying on the categories “homosexual” and “heterosexual” to describe sexual orientation was inadequate. They also suggested that using a category such as “homosexual” was not as helpful as talking about homosexual behavior. Trying to decide who is a homosexual is difficult; trying to compare amounts or types of […]
The Ethic of Justice Strikes Back: Changing Narratives of Fatherhood
Carol Smart Introduction In this chapter, I shall explore a number of themes which have come together to form the background to the re-ignition of a major gender struggle in the area of family life and family law. This struggle is ostensibly over children and, in particular, over how children’s lives should be lived after […]
Conclusions: Signs of Change
This chapter started with a critical examination of the sexual ideologies that prevail in the public sphere in Vietnam. These ideologies, we have shown, define heterosexual marriage as the cornerstone of social order, emphasising people’s duties to contribute to society through the sexual alliances they build. The family visions that these ideologies entail are strongly […]
How Spermicidal Methods Work
Foam, suppositories, the sponge, creams and jellies, and VCF all contain a spermicide, a chemical that kills sperm. When foam is inserted with the applicator, it rapidly covers the vaginal walls and the cervical os, or opening to the uterus (see Figure 10.5). Contraceptive vaginal suppositories take about 20 minutes to dissolve and cover the […]