Although modern societies have come to recognize diversity in human sexuality as simply part of nature, many Christian communities and thinkers still have considerable difficulties with related developments in politics, legislation, and science. In fact, homosexuality is a recurrent topic in the transdisciplinary encounter between Christianity and the sciences, an encounter that is otherwise rather “asexual.” I propose that the recent emergence of “Christianity and Science” as an academic field in its own right is an important part of the (...) larger context of the difficulties related to attempts to reconcile Christianity and a recognition of diversity in human sexuality as a norm. Through a critical discussion of arguments which are upheld most disturbingly on a global scale by the Roman Catholic Church and supported with much sophistry by important stakeholders of an influential stream in analytic philosophy of religion, this paper aims to contextualize and defend the legitimacy of the question why God would create homosexuals as such if it is true that every homosexual act is prohibited by God. While recently advanced nonheterosexist scientific models of sexuality in nature inform the discussion, I reject the simplistic view that religions suppress and the sciences liberate in matters sexual. (shrink)

Early in the course of undertaking empirical research on the sexual diversity of the judiciary I had to address a particular challenge. Sexuality, I was repeatedly told, is not and ought not to be a difference that is taken into account. At best it ought to be disregarded or taken out of consideration. This generated a number of challenges for my research. How do you research and make sense of sexuality as a difference that key informants assert is (...) absent or seek to make invisible and irrelevant? How do you research the operation and effects of that which is not to be spoken about? How do you research the sexual norm when its existence and operation is denied? This article explores one response. It is a project that may for some be surprising and unexpected. It is a study of judicial portraits. Drawing on the insights of queer theory and art historical scholarship on portraits I undertake a textual analysis of these images, focusing upon the aesthetic and artistic traditions used to make them. A small case study of portraits of the Chief Justices of the Supreme Court of New South Wales is used to explore how, if at all, sexuality figured in these portraits. (shrink)

Ao tomar como referência o projeto de formação Direitos Humanos e diversidade afetivo-sexual na escola: homofobia, trabalho docente e cotidiano escolar, o texto busca sistematizar aspectos relacionados ao referido projeto, tendo em vista possibilitar que os professores em processo de formação construam novos modos de intervenção e práticas no seu cotidiano, capazes de combater o preconceito e promover a igualdade, no que concerne à homofobia no cotidiano social e escolar. É importante salientar que as questões especificamente sobre orientação (...) class='Hi'>sexual, homossexualidade e homofobia devem estar situadas no âmbito de discussão dos Direitos Humanos e devem, necessariamente, partir de uma compreensão sócio-histórica e cultural dessas questões, objetivando a incorporação, por parte do corpo docente, da transversalidade deste tema quando na construção do projeto político-pedagógico da Unidade Escolar, enfatizando o respeito às diferenças com o fito de promover a construção de alternativas práticas de trabalho. O texto organiza-se a partir de duas entradas sobre narrativas biográficas e fabricação de identidades, especialmente no que se refere aos dispositivos e às práticas disciplinares construídas no cotidiano escolar, no tocante à homossexualidade. A primeira entrada centra-se na discussão dos conceitos de biografização, identidade e formação como modos de narração constituídos de discursos da memória, a partir da centralidade do sujeito que narra, na perspectiva de analisar modos próprios vividos pelos professores sobre a homofobia na escola. A segunda entrada analisa questões concernentes à fabricação da igualdade, à estruturação de dispositivos pedagógicos engendrados no cotidiano escolar, no tocante à homossexualidade, no que se refere à construção de um projeto de homogeneização e negação das diferenças. Assim, tenciono discutir conceitos de igualdade e de diferença e de que forma escamoteia-se, a partir do “micropoder”, do “disciplinamento” – “poder disciplinar” – e do “dispositivo de sexualidade”, mecanismos tácitos e silenciosos inerentes à educação sexual com base nas relações entre corpo-poder-saber e suas correlações com o disciplinamento, o qual demarca papéis sociais e sexuais do processo identitário do adolescente e da polifonia de expressões da homossexualidade e de experiências homofóbicas na cultura social e escolar. Palavras-chave: Direitos humanos. Diversidade sexual. Homofobia. Trabalho docente. Cotidiano escolar. (shrink)

Gender, sexuality and embodiment in digital spheres have been increasingly studied from various critical perspectives: From research highlighting the articulation of intimacies, desires, and sexualities in and through digital spaces to theoretical explorations of materiality in the digital realm. With such a high level of (inter)disciplinarity, theories, methods, and analyses of gender, sexuality, and embodiment in relation to digital spheres have become highly diversified. Aiming to reflect this diversity, this special issue brings together innovative and newly developed theoretical, empirical, (...) analytical, and critical approaches in the study of gender, sexuality, and embodiment in digital spheres. By connecting intersectionality and digitality to one another, it adopts an integrated approach that reflects the intricacy and interconnectedness of social categories and markers of difference, privilege, performance, and discrimination. The contributions explore a range of differently situated digital cultural practices, including intimate and sexual experiences with(in) digital media, online self-presentation, expressions of digital resistance, and forms of backlash and online attacks. What connects all these articles, is their critical approach to intersectional inequalities and privileges in relation to digitality, plus their nuanced perspective on gender, sexuality, and embodiment interferentially. The final article is based on a roundtable discussion and aims to encourage interdisciplinary connections and suggests ways of doing research that builds bridges between academia and activism. (shrink)

In this collection of provocative essays, historians and literary theorists assess the influence of Michel Foucault, particularly his History of Sexuality, on the study of classics. Foucault's famous work presents a bold theory of sexuality for both ancient and modern times, and yet until now it has remained under-explored and insufficiently analyzed. By bringing together the historical knowledge, philological skills, and theoretical perspectives of a wide range of scholars, this collection enables the reader to explore Foucault's model of Greek culture (...) and see how well his interpretation accounts for the full range of evidence from Greece and Rome. Not only do the essays bring to light the assumptions, ideas, and practices that constituted the intimate lives of men and women in the ancient Mediterranean world, but they also demonstrate the importance of the History of Sexuality for fields as diverse as Greco-Roman antiquity, women's history, cultural studies, philosophy, and modern sexuality. The essays include "Situating The History of Sexuality" (the editors), "Taking the Sex Out of Sexuality: Foucault's Failed History" (Joel Black), "Incipit Philosophia" (Alain Vizier), "The Subject in Antiquity after Foucault" (Page duBois), "This Myth Which Is Not One: Construction of Discourse in Plato's Symposium" (Jeffrey S. Carnes), "Foucault's History of Sexuality: A Useful Theory for Women?" (Amy Richlin), "Catullan Consciousness, the 'Care of the Self,' and the Force of the Negative in History" (Paul Allen Miller), "Reversals of Platonic Love in Petronius' Satyricon" (Daniel B. McGlathery), and an essay from Dislocating Masculinity (Lin Foxhall). (shrink)

While queer theology has foregrounded sexual and gender diversity in faith communities internationally, in South Africa, the emergence of a queer, African theology is necessary given that religion is often not a ‘safe space’ for sexual and gender minorities owing to theological violence. Advocacy for inclusion requires the development of theological capacity in queer communities so as to foster biblical, theological and interpretative resistance. There are a number of approaches available, including demythologising and reclaiming the Bible for (...) queer communities, developing more redemptive interpretative options for queer inclusion and developing alternative discourses that challenge the heteropatriarchy of the Bible. Entry points for this work include Bible study; workshops and seminars for faith communities on sexual and gender diversity; the acceptance of a minimum pastoral threshold (or minimum levels of preparedness) for engaging with issues of sexual and gender diversity; and creating ecumenical spaces, cognizant of the local context, where such engagements can take place. This involves moving beyond a theology of compassion and essentialised notions of sexuality and gender so as to develop a queer, African, people’s theology that recognises the trauma experienced by sexual and gender minorities in faith communities. (shrink)

Sexual activism (for, e.g., participants in the LGBT+ or BDSM communities) is prima facie commendable, at least for the liberal. However, it is unclear whether the end goal of such activism is toleration or recognition. The argument of this paper is that, on the level of authoritative political and social-moral rules, toleration is the only justifiable goal, while recognition may be pursued as an ideal outside the sphere of political and social-moral rules, that is, in civil society. The argument (...) builds on a Gausian public reason understanding of justifiability, emphasizing reasonable disagreement and a diversity of viewpoints. (shrink)

Sexual difference theory can best be explained with reference to French post‐structuralism, more specifically its critique of the humanist vision of subjectivity. The “post” in poststructuralism does not denote only a chronological break from the structuralists' generation of the 1940s and 1950s, but also an epistemological and theoretical revision of the emancipatory programme of structuralism itself, especially of Marxist feminist political theory. The focus of poststructuralism is the complex and manifold structure of power and the diverse, fragmented, but highly (...) effective ways in which power, knowledge, and the constitution of subjectivity combine. Poststructuralism questions the usefulness of the notion of “ideology,” especially in the sense developed by Louis Althusser, as the imaginary relation of the Subject to his/her real conditions of existence. In a feminist version, ideology refers to the patriarchal system of representation of gender and, more specifically, to the myths and images that construct femininity. Subjectivity is conceptualized therefore as a process (assujettissement) which encompasses simultaneously the material (“reality”) and the symbolic (“language”) instances which structure it. Psychoanalytic notions of identity, language, and sexuality – especially in the work of Jacques Lacan – play a central role in the redefinition of the subject as a process, rather than in the more traditional sense of a rational agent. The notion of difference emerges as a central concept in the poststructuralists' critique of both classical humanism and of the humanist legacy of Marxist‐inspired structuralist social theory. It includes both differences within each subject (between conscious and unconscious processes), as well as differences between the Subject and his/her Others. (shrink)

How can ethnic boundaries survive in contexts of legal racial equality and institutionalized ethnic mixing? Constructivist theories of ethnicity have long emphasized the fluidity, rather than the durability, of ethnic boundaries. But the fact that ethnic boundaries often endure—and even thrive—in putatively non-ethnic political contexts suggests the need for sustained attention to the problem of boundary persistence. Based on an ethnographic study of ethnic boundaries in the Turkish case, this article argues that the regulation of the domain of sexuality and (...) marriage can play a critical role in reproducing boundaries when political institutions neither acknowledge nor aid in the survival of ethnic diversity. Ultimately, the data provide substantial evidence that the transmission and internalization of informal rules of inter-ethnic sexual conduct are central to boundary maintenance. (shrink)

Presenting a range of data obtained from secondary schools in the UK and US, this path-breaking book explores the role played by language in constructing sexual identities. Analysing the often complex ways in which homophobia, heterosexism and heteronormativity are enacted within school contexts, it shows that by analysing language, we can discover much about how educators and students experience sexual diversity in their schools, how sexual identities are constructed through language, and how different statuses are ascribed (...) to different sexual identities. (shrink)

The term “sexual minority” functions in social, cultural, and political contexts as a catchall for minority sexuality categories. Yet, apart from serving as an umbrella term, its uses are contradictory. On the one hand, the term emphasizes “sexuality,” which serves the purposes of religious fundamentalist and political groups that demonize minority sexualities to the exclusion of identity, background or family status. On the other hand, the term can be useful for readers and researchers in sexuality studies to become more (...) globally aware of, and to reconceptualize, sexuality outside of tightly contained LGBT boxes. Such a contradiction has implications for education practice and policy. We suggest, for instance, using the term cautiously when describing same-sex sexualities because, as an umbrella term, it can homogenize people who represent a highly diverse spectrum of racialized categories, class backgrounds, genders, sexualities, and other social markers of difference. As a pedagogical heuristic device, the term is useful in delineating the differences between queer and sexual minority pedagogies when deciding upon the approach that will best draw an audience into the discussion. Our overall goal through this critical exploration is to support new understandings and insights of sexual diversity in ways that effectively challenge heterosexism and homophobia. (shrink)

This paper proposes that the human mind in its creativity and emotional self-awareness is the result of the evolutionary transition from sexuality to eroticism. Eroticism is arrived at and defined by the high amount of energy displayed in animal sexuality. We propose that the unique human emotional intelligence is due to this “overflow” of mating energy. What from the survival viewpoint looks like an enormous waste of time and energy reveals itself to be an unexpected psychological benefit. The diversion of (...) sexual energy from procreation — a process that results in erotic fantasies — turns intimacy into a source of human self -consciousness. This places different emphasis on the meaning of eroticism and provides a coherent scenario of mental development beyond mere cognitive capacities. Arguments are presented on how erotic imagination, or sexual excitation as an end in itself, promotes the human propensity for explorative curiosity; data from ethology, psychology, sociology, and neuroscience are presented to support these arguments. As philosophical anthropologists, we do not provide new empirical data, but the available results of comparative behavioral research confirm our hypothesis. (shrink)

This book traces the genealogy of ideas of reason, self and sexuality in the West, opening the way to a richer and more diverse understanding of sexual experience. Western philosophy and religion have distorted and continue to distort our experience of sex and love through three far-reaching constellations of reason, self and sexuality. Thinkers like Plato, Aquinas and Kant helped to fashion an ascetic ideal of reason hostile to bodily pleasures and sexual diversity. By contrast, philosophical hedonism (...) advocates a less demanding conception of rationality and defends sexual pleasure. But this approach of thinkers like Hume, Bentham, La Mettrie and de Sade is still one-sided and limiting. A third constellation, Romanticism avoids the limitations of both forms of rationalism, but in the name of a religion of love and passion that ultimately threatens the integrity of the self. In Reason and Sexuality in Western Thought, a richer understanding of sexual experience is traced to a dissident philosophical tradition. In their different ways Montaigne, Spinoza, Hegel and Kierkegaard, Marcuse and Foucault contribute to a more holistic, multi-layered and open conception of reason, sexuality and the self. This book will be essential reading for all students of philosophy and gender studies. (shrink)

In 2018 Academic Placement Data and Analysis ran a survey of doctoral students and recent graduates on the topics of diversity and inclusivity in collaboration with the Graduate Student Council and Data Task Force of the American Philosophical Association. We submitted a preliminary report in Fall 2018 that describes the origins and procedure of the survey [1]. This is our final report on the survey. We first discuss the demographic profile of our survey participants and compare it to the (...) United States general population, its doctoral students, and APA membership, finding several areas of underrepresentation (i.e. gender, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic, and veteran status). We then discuss the results of questions regarding diversity and inclusivity. We find, for instance, that participant comfort in philosophy depends on gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, disability, and language status and that participants most often mentioned the theme of diversity when asked how philosophy could be more inclusive. Finally, we discuss the results of questions related to graduate program and placement. We find, for example, that underrepresented graduates are both less likely to recommend their graduate program to others and less likely to prefer an academic job. We close by making some recommendations for the APA and for the discipline based on our findings. (shrink)

In America by the 1930s, albino rats had become a kind of generic standard in research on physiology and behavior that de-emphasized diversity across species. However, prior to about 1915, the early work of many of the pioneer rat researchers in America and in central Europe reflected a strong interest in species differences and a deep regard for diversity. These scientists sought broad, often medical, generality, but their quest for generality using a standard animal did not entail a (...) de-emphasis of organic diversity. They chose white rats as test animals for two primary reasons. First, rats develop very slowly. They therefore made features of physiological, neural and psychological development accessible to the experimental method at a time when its application to the phenomena of development remained controversial. Secondly, rats were thought to have unusually strong sex drives. For this reason they became central to the experimental study of sexuality and, in the work of the reproductive physiologist Eugen Steinach, sexual development. Connections among three research institutes that stressed experimental approaches to the study of brain and development demonstrate the importance of the rat's institutional role. As the emphasis on experimentation in the study of development grew, two of these institutes bred rats to provide uniform materials. Eventually, however, their reasons for selecting rats were lost; and the ready availability of a uniform test animal led to a shift in scientists' presumptions about diversity, as the standard rat became a tool for assuring generality. (shrink)

Sexual selection drives the evolution of some of the most exaggerated traits in nature. Studies on sexual selection often focus on the size of these traits relative to body size, but few focus on energetic maintenance costs of the tissues that compose them, and the ways in which these costs vary with body size. The relationships between energy use and body size have consequences that may allow large individuals to invest disproportionally more in sexually selected structures, or lead (...) to the reduced per‐gram maintenance cost of enlarged structures. Although sexually selected traits can incur energetic maintenance costs, these costs are not universally high; they are dependent on the relative mass and metabolic activity of tissues associated with them. Energetic costs of maintenance may play a pervasive yet little‐explored role in shaping the relative scaling of sexually selected traits across diverse taxa. Also see the video abstract here: https://youtu.be/JyuoQIeA33Q. (shrink)

Feminist theory and reflections on sexuality and gender rarely make contact with contemporary continental philosophy of religion. Where they all come together, creative and transformative thinking occurs. In Feminism, Sexuality, and the Return of Religion, internationally recognized scholars tackle complicated questions provoked by the often stormy intersection of these powerful forces. The essays in this book break down barriers as they extend the richness of each philosophical tradition. They discuss topics such as queer sexuality and religion, feminism and the gift, (...) feminism and religious reform, and religion and diversity. The contributors are Hélène Cixous, Sarah Coakley, Kelly Brown Douglas, Mark D. Jordan, Catherine Keller, Saba Mahmood, and Gianni Vattimo. (shrink)

This contribution unfolds an existential-ontological response to the question of sexual difference in the context of Heidegger’s formally indicative concept of “Dasein.” The question of Dasein’s “neutrality” concerns how formal indication formalizes, empties, and neutralizes the givenness of factical human existence. Ostensibly “given” biological and anthropological facts, such as sexual difference, are interpreted from an emptied and neutralized perspective that appears abstract and fictional to Heidegger’s critics. How, then, is the “neutrality” of formalizing emptying related to the “facticity” (...) of in each case factically existing as a sexual and gendered being? The answer lies in Heidegger’s elucidation of the existential-ontological structure of Dasein: Dasein is always relationally instituted in its factical entangled life through “being-with.” The sexual difference of human existence is not merely biologically or anthropologically given, but disclosed and enacted according to one’s relations with others, the environment, and oneself. The formally indicating concept “Dasein” indicates, accordingly, the concrete diversity and plurality of individuated sexual and gendered ways of being. (shrink)

Over two decades have passed since Im and Meleis proposed “gender‐sensitive theories” as a category of nursing theories in 2001. Since then, the global conditions of women and minoritized identities across the various spectra of sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sexual characteristics (SOGIESC) have changed. Moreover, feminist theorizing has evolved, prompting the need to update how nurses theorize and research the interactions of gender and health in their practice. This discursive essay aims to (1) provide a (...) summary of Im and Meleis' characterization and guidelines in the development of gender‐sensitive theories in nursing and present exemplars that use these guidelines; (2) assess the gender‐sensitive nursing theory guidelines in terms of gender‐responsiveness; and (3) expand the transformative potential of gender‐sensitive theorizing in nursing by proposing Diverse SOGIESC‐Transformative Theories. Diverse SOGIESC‐Transformative Theories include three additional aspects to enhance the transformative potential of gender‐responsive theorizing in nursing: inclusion of diverse SOGIESC, elaboration of intersectionality, and consideration of men and masculinities. (shrink)

The evolution of human language, and the kind of thought the communication of which requires it, raises considerable explanatory challenges. These systems of representation constitute a radical discontinuity in the natural world. Even species closely related to our own appear incapable of either thought or talk with the recursive structure, generalized systematicity, and task-domain neutrality that characterize human talk and the thought it expresses. W. Tecumseh Fitch’s proposal (2004, in press) that human language is descended from a sexually selected, prosodic (...) proto-language that approximated its syntactic complexity, and later acquired semantics thanks to kin selection for its use as a means of pedagogical transmission, has the promise of meeting these explanatory challenges. However, Fitch’s theory raises two problems of its own: (1) according to Boyd and Richerson (1996, Proc. Br. Acad. 88: 77–93), circumstances in which pedagogy is adaptive are inevitably rare in nature, and (2) it is unlikely that our non-discursive precursors had generally systematic, task-domain neutral thoughts to communicate to their offspring. I propose solutions to these problems. Pedagogy would be favored in a population where complex rituals dominated diverse aspects of life. Prosodic proto-language could emerge as the medium of pedagogic transmission. As this medium was used to teach a greater variety of tasks, it would become increasingly general and domain neutral. The presence and importance of such a system of communication in hominid populations could then drive, via Baldwinian mechanisms, the evolution of a kind of ‘thinking for speaking’ (Slobin 1991, Pragmatics 1: 7–25) characterized by recursive structure, generalized systematicity, and task-domain neutrality. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Sexual Difference as Model: An Ethics for the Global FutureGail SchwabIn Éthique de la différence sexuelle (1984), Luce Irigaray targeted language and love—for her, inseparable from each other—as the two areas of focus for the elaboration of an ethics of sexual difference. The heterosexual couple seemed to have taken on a new, and somehow inappropriately central, importance in Irigaray’s thought in the early eighties; however, the projected (...) mutations in language and love theorized in Éthique did not exclusively concern the heterosexual relationship, even though many readers of Irigaray expressed just such reservations about the book. Éthique foregrounded the couple in the love relationship in order to rethink the philosophical basis of ethics in general, to develop new paradigms, beyond or outside of Western totalizing phallo- and logocentrism, for human relations—not only relations between women and men, but also, and perhaps even more importantly, relations among women and relations among men. Irigaray carried on this project in subsequent works, in Sexes et parentés (1987), which as the title explicitly indicates, opens up the ethical debate to familial and genealogical issues and broadens her focus to include children and the ethical basis of their relationships to parents and more generally to adults of both sexes, and in Sexes et genres à travers les langues (1990), a cross-cultural report on her empirical studies of gender differences in language usage, which sheds new light on the linguistic and communicational issues she had presented in Éthique and even before, in several seldom read and even more rarely analyzed works of the late seventies and early eighties. J’aime à toi (I Love to You) (1992) returns specifically to the more traditionally philosophical approach to the problems of language and love and their intertwining, and carries on the work projected in Éthique, but it goes much further in both the theoretical and the practical development of the concept of sexual difference as the foundation for a new ethics, a new culture of universal validity. J’aime à toi can be read as a follow-up to Éthique and as a founding text for the construction of an ethics of difference modeled on sexual difference, an ethics for the future of humanity in all of its diversity.Western Feminism and the Global FutureIrigaray is very much aware of the limits of the various Western political and academic feminisms, of the need to broaden their scope, both horizontally across cultures and vertically within specific cultures, before they can serve as the basis for a new ethics. Irigaray expresses the concern that Western feminists, rather than represent the exploited women of the world, may exploit them ideologically for their own personal or political purposes, at the risk of preventing them from coming to a feminism of their own making, appropriate to their own cultures and historical moments. “Certain women do implement power strategies—including the power of the media—but not solely for the benefit of the exploited women they use as an alibi. They thus run the risk of clouding the issues and [End Page 76] preventing their consciousness from being raised” [Irigaray, J’aime à toi 15]. 1 Irigaray calls this “egological” feminism (Dare I invent a new term here? Now we have “egofeminists” as well as “ecofeminists”...) and demonstrates its totally undemocratic orientation, despite its representative claims.Certain militants..., practicing direct democracy or an egological feminism, based on their own real, or imagined, needs and desires, rather than on those of all women, leave women subject to existing legislation. Indifferent to the rights necessary for all women—including the little girls of the present and the future, and the women of other cultures—they make decisions that perpetuate, and even aggravate, through unnecessary misunderstandings, the injustices done the female gender.[J’aime à toi 13]As a feminist, in general, it always pains me to read criticisms of feminism, even cogent and theoretically valid criticisms, and I am even now painfully aware of the political dangers of criticizing feminism myself in a public forum such as this one. However, if I have managed to learn anything from the works of Western feminists of color and from Third World feminists, it is... (shrink)

Primary sexual traits, those structures and processes directly involved in reproduction, are some of the most diverse, specialized, and bizarre in the animal kingdom. Moreover, reproductive traits are often species-specific, suggesting that they evolved very rapidly. This diversity, long the province of taxonomists, has recently attracted broader interest from evolutionary biologists, especially those interested in sexual selection and the evolution of reproductive strategies. Primary sexual characters were long assumed to be the product of natural selection, exclusively. (...) A recent alternative suggests that sexual selection explains much of the diversity of. (shrink)

‘What is ‘sexual orientation’ for?’ is a question we need to answer when addressing a more seemingly basic one, ‘what is sexual orientation?’. The concept of sexual orientation is grounded in the concepts of sex and/or gender since it refers to the sex or gender of the individuals one is sexually attracted to. Typical categories of sexual orientation such as ’heterosexual’, ‘homosexual’, and ‘bi-sexual’ all rely on a sex or gender binary. Yet, it is now (...) common practice to recognize sex and gender categories that transcend the binary. Should our sexual orientation categories be revised to reflect sex and gender diversity? Drawing on the example of pansexuality, I argue that they should. The reason is that one aim of reconstructing the concept of sexual orientation—in addition to the epistemic goal of understanding— should also be political: it should make it easier to argue for the protection of those who have been marginalized or discriminated against because their sexual attraction is other than heterosexual. (shrink)

Research on sexual orientation attempts to reduce it to a monocausal phenomenon, whether that be biology (genes, hormones) or social environment (parenting patterns). None of these fully accounts for the diversity of erotic attraction and behavior, and indeed these reductionist strategies either misrepresent many forms of sexual behavior or erase them from our ontology. Understanding is better served by first acknowledging the variety of roles of sexual interaction in human life, rather than treating sex as a (...) single kind of phenomenon. (shrink)

There are a growing number of examples where naturally occurring mutations disrupt an established physiological or developmental pathway to yield a new condition that is evolutionary favored. Asexual reproduction by seed in plants, or apomixis, occurs in a diversity of taxa and has evolved from sexual ancestors. One form of apomixis, diplospory, is a multi‐step development process that is initiated when meiosis is altered to produce an unreduced rather than a reduced egg cell. Subsequent parthenogenetic development of the (...) unreduced egg yields genetically maternal progeny. While it has long been apparent from cytological data that meiosis in apomicts was malfunctional or completely bypassed, the genetic basis of the phenomenon has been a long‐standing mystery. New data from genetic analysis of Arabidopsis mutants1 in combination with more sophisticated molecular understanding of meiosis in plants indicate that a weak mutation of the gene SWI, called DYAD, interferes with sister chromatid cohesion in meiosis I, causes synapsis to fail in female meiosis and yields two unreduced cells. The new work shows that a low percentage of DYAD ovules produce functional unreduced egg cells (2n) that can be fertilized by haploid pollen (1n) to give rise to triploid (3n) progeny. While the DYAD mutants differ in some aspects from naturally occurring apomicts, the work establishes that mutation to a single gene can effectively initiate apomictic development and, furthermore, focuses efforts to isolate apomixis genes on a narrowed set of developmental events. Profitable manipulation of meiosis and recombination in agronomically important crops may be on the horizon. BioEssays 30:798–801, 2008. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Public and academic medical ethics debates surrounding justice and age discrimination often proceed from a problematic understanding of old age that ignores the diversity of older people. This article introduces the feminist perspective of intersectionality to medical ethical debates on aging and old age in order to analyze the structural discrimination of older people in medicine and health care. While current intersectional approaches in this field focus on race, gender, and sexuality, we thus set out to introduce aging and (...) old age as an additional category that is becoming more relevant in the context of longer life expectancies and increasing population aging. We analyze three exemplary cases on the individual, institutional, and public health level, and argue that considering the intersections of old age with other social categories helps to accommodate the diverse identities of older people and detect inequality and structural discrimination. (shrink)

In the series Dear White People, students at the fictional University of Winchester struggle for racial justice. We analyze how the series treats “race” and racism and how this relates to contemporary debates in the United States. While the series presents an imaginary environment, we recognize strong similarities to actual student life and students grappling with various experiences of oppression including sexual violence. We draw on theories of identity formation and intersectionality to uncover how the series portrays and complicates (...) “Blackness” as an identity-forming experience and as an experience shaped by converging forms of structural discrimination. While we highlight the merit of combining two theoretical approaches, we note that especially intersectionality helped uncover a major blind spot of the series. Although Black women are at the center of the series and the struggle for racial equality at Winchester, their particular experiences of violence are marginalized in seasons 1–3. This tendency to overlook the experiences of Black women reflects the larger debate around race, racism, and movements for social justice. (shrink)

This research conducted in state and municipal public schools of Recife in Pernambuco through research project that had the support of UFPE and CNPq aimed to analyze the Religious Education curriculum, the place that women, especially with marginalized sexual orientation as lesbian, bisexual and transgender occupy. To this end, we work with the methodology of Discourse Analysis and the Theory of Speech, looking first identify the main ideologies surrounding and involving the theme, then locate the hegemonic discourse or hegemonic (...) discourses that claimed around him. Thus, it reached the conclusion that approaches religion, gender and sexual diversity, which are expressed in the daily life of the classrooms are not, however, raised the disciplinary component examined in the absence of a curriculum that can assist teachers by through proposals and pragmatic content activities that encourage the emergence of points to be considered, negotiated and correlated to the themes in question. Thus, the difficulties in dialogue about sexual orientation and homosexuality in general, and specifically in the female case, are great in ER discipline in the schools surveyed. (shrink)

These three papers present a quite diverse and complementary set of answers to the question, “Why Sexuality Matters to Philosophy.” They show the ways in which sexuality as an issue may be of interest to philosophers working on a wide range of questions. The theme of sexuality appears as both subject matter and context for the development of scientific theories of human behavior, as a pervasive dimension of the representation of everyday life, and as a social phenomenon raising important questions (...) bearing on the implications of equal citizenship for persons of different genders and sexualities. Sexuality reveals itself as implicated in epistemology and philosophy of science, aesthetics and ethics, political philosophy and jurisprudence. Sexuality as a subject matter provides rich examples for extending the treatment of quite traditional problems. At the same time, by identifying sexuality as a fundamental human phenomenon, fraught with normative implications and closely linked to emotional and bodily life, these papers show how thinking about sexuality may also act to unsettle and redefine certain important areas of philosophical inquiry. (shrink)

This publication features the stories and experiences of pharmacy professionals who identify as members of historically underrepresented groups. This collection of personal essays presents significant events in the lives of those in the pharmacy community whose experiences have been shaped by their race, ethnicity, gender or gender presentation, sexual orientation, ability, language, mental health, or other factors. The perspectives from the narratives highlight the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the healthcare sector. The authors of the narratives (...) also reflect on their experience to consider what they wish would have happened in the experience, to offer advice for others that may be faced with similar situations. Access to these stories will deepen the collective understanding among pharmacy colleagues, patients, and society of the experiences that individuals from historically underrepresented groups within pharmacy have experienced. (shrink)

This article presents research on the scale of the phenomenon of sexual violence against students at selected 33 universities across Poland, the mechanisms used to combat the problem and the awareness of students on the subject. The study focuses on the practical dimension of combating sexual violence against students in the Polish academic environment. It looks at the existence and functioning of both specialised bodies and the procedures used to help the victims and punish the perpetrators. Additionally, the (...) paper describes how the diversity of available legal measures to address the problem by both helping the victims and holding perpetrators accountable creates the issue of the coexistence of two systems—criminal and intra-university. Presenting preliminary results of gathered opinions of universities’ officials regarding functioning of the bodies specialised in combating sexual violence shows not only the most dominant observations and conclusions the professionals have regarding the functions they hold at their home universities, but also main challenges that have to be considered in both creating sufficient policies in order to deal with sexual violence and conducting comprehensive research on said phenomenon. (shrink)

Statutory requirements for compulsory Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) in the UK is generating concern among many religious communities and reigniting debates about the purpose of School Based Sexuality Education (SBSE). Among the communities voicing their dissent are members of the British Islamic community. Quranic scripture deems obligatory the teaching and learning about all aspects relevant to human sexuality, however, religion, and in particular Islam, is widely viewed as hostile to sexuality education. Whilst Muslim objection to ‘progressive’ agendas in SBSE (...) (i.e., same-sex relations, gender fluidity, pleasure and desire) is generating much attention, equal attention to understanding the Islamic theological, philosophical and epistemological underpinnings of these views, is less frequently sought. The purpose of this paper is to foreground Islamic responses to some of the ‘progressive’ topics featuring in RSE and SBSE more broadly. Using British printed media sources and Critical Discourse Analysis, this paper aims to make sense of British Muslim parents’ objections to ‘progressive’ sexuality education. A more concerted focus on Islamic underpinnings of these views is imperative to alleviate negative responses to Muslim positions on this subject as well as inform the ongoing dilemma of finding ways in which religious diversity be addressed in SBSE. (shrink)

In pluralist societies, stakeholders in healthcare may have different experiences of and moral perspectives on health, well-being, and good care. Increasing cultural, religious, sexual, and gender diversity among both patients and healthcare professionals requires healthcare organizations to address these differences. Addressing diversity, however, comes with inherent moral challenges; for example, regarding how to deal with healthcare disparities between minoritized and majoritized patients or how to accommodate different healthcare needs and values. Diversity statements are an important strategy (...) for healthcare organizations to define their normative ideas with respect to diversity and to establish a point of departure for concrete diversity approaches. We argue that healthcare organizations ought to develop diversity statements in a participatory and inclusive way in order to promote social justice. Furthermore, we maintain that clinical ethicists can support healthcare organizations in developing diversity statements in a more participatory way by fostering reflective dialogues through clinical ethics support. We will use a case example from our own practice to explore what such a developmental process may look like. We will critically reflect on the procedural strengths and challenges as well as on the role of the clinical ethicist in this example. (shrink)

In this article, Cris Mayo examines the relationship among anti-LGBTQ policies, gay marriage, and sexuality education. Her concern is that because gay marriage is insufficiently different from heterosexual marriage, adding it as an issue to curriculum or broader culture debate elides rather than addresses sexual difference. In other words, marriage may be an assimilative aspiration that closes down discussions of what sexuality is and can mean, that sidesteps other related social issues such as health care for all, and that (...) reinforces sexuality and gender identity as privatized, not political, concerns. Mayo examines different strands of LGBTQ history that complicate the meanings of sexuality and that critique a variety of antigay or heterosexist policies for their exclusions. She concludes by suggesting that the possibilities of sexuality are not served by advocacy for one gay relationship formation and calling for a sexuality education that is instead directed at sexual diversity. (shrink)

Contemporary moral philosophy has different approaches to provide justice and equality to groups that are traditionally discriminated on the grounds of gender, religion, age, sexual orientation, etc. On the other hand, functionally diverse (disabled) people have had a parallel approach to their discrimination, excluded from mainstream diversities. Including functional diversity and the diversity model in modern recognition and redistribution theories, as another human diversity, provides an extended ethical approach: diversity ethics. This general framework also includes (...) other fundamental ideas for equality such as human fragility, social domination logics, self-respect and auto-recognition. Diversity ethics provides sound foundations to defend justice and equality for all human diversities and an alternative to other approaches that broaden the moral community, excluding some humans, like Peter Singer’s ethics. (shrink)

Robert Sparrow has recently claimed that unless there are reasons to think the sexed nature of human beings is normatively significant, current trends in bioethical reasoning force the conclusion that “we may do well to move toward a ‘post sex’ humanity” (American Journal of Bioethics 10: 7 (2010)). This commentary uses basic methodological principles from feminist ethics to argue that he has, in fact, given no reasons to think that a 'post sex' humanity is any more valuable than gender diverse (...) one, and no reason to think that sexual dimorphism has normative significance as a brute biological fact. (shrink)

Asylum-seeking and refugee women (ASRW) are population groups characterized by diverse social, economic and legal backgrounds as well as diverse needs. Their backgrounds of forced migration have a profound impact on their overall health, including their sexual and reproductive health (SRH). In Europe, the SRH needs of ASRW are usually more pressing than those of the host country population. In the context of refugee health, it is important to distinguish between asylum seekers and statutory refugees, as asylum seekers have (...) distinct needs and often limited rights in their host country. Yet both groups face many barriers in accessing national health services. This article addresses the issue of entitlements to health services for asylum-seeking women in Europe, and highlights the wide range of difficulties of both asylum-seeking and refugee women in accessing (sexual and reproductive) health services. (shrink)