Recently, physicians, public health experts, and anthropologists (among others) have pointed to a prevalence of gender, class, race, age, and ethnic bias in biomedical research and the specific ways in which knowledges about bodies are created and reproduced in biomedicine.
In the 19th century, when the long-standing idea of women’s inferiority was brought into question more …
This article is part of the following series: Book forum
Saida Hodžić’s The Twilight of Cutting: African Activism and Life after NGOs (University of California Press, 2017) illuminates the myriad state and non-state actors collaborating on campaigns against “Female Genital Mutilation” (FGM) in Ghana, where genital cutting was already on the decline. From a uniquely multi-scalar perspective, Hodžić reveals how cutting emerged as a problem to be shared by African …
This article is part of the following series: Medico-Legal Borderlands
On June 28, 2009, a group of queer Africans took to the streets of Toronto. In what is one of the largest and longest-running Pride parades in North America, this group led the way. As well as being queer and born in Africa, they were all also seeking refugee status in Canada. As they proceeded along the parade route, they …
Women are having a moment. At President Trump’s State of the Union address, Democratic women wore white as a nod to suffragists and female leadership, and Nancy Pelosi’s backclap went viral. At the 2019 Oscars, women of color made history, receiving an unprecedented number of awards, and Period. End of Sentence. (2018),a film about menstruation in rural India,won best …
Governing Bodies: American Politics and the Shaping of the Modern Physique
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. 224 pages.
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When Michelle Obama launched the “Let’s Move” campaign in 2010, it triggered a backlash by conservatives anxious about the so called “nanny state” interfering unduly in the private sphere. The campaign was a national initiative “dedicated …
On January 13th, Gillette, a razor blade brand, released a new ad campaign called, “We Believe.” The video ad opens with a collage of news clips that—unlike the voiceover narrator—explicitly use the words, “toxic masculinity” and “#MeToo movement.” The narrator then asks, “Is this the best a man can get?” In the short film, Gillette plays on their decades-old slogan…