Gender and Sexuality

What implications does the Srin-mo, a pre-Buddhist deity who traverses across almost all of the periods of time in Tibetan religious life, have on the social status of women? Embodying the places and spaces of Tibet, a malevolent demoness called the Srin-mo has been essential in laying the formation of Tibetan Buddhism. The concept of the Srin-mo can be traced back to the pre-Buddhist religion of Tibet: Bön. The story of the Srin-mo is not a creation myth in the sense of a worldly inception,  but the story of the demoness does represent the creation of a harmonious society, spurring from the preceding time of primordial chaos found amongst the Bön religion. Looking at the origins of the demoness’ story is necessary in order to understand how and why the Srin-mo holds efficacious power over the land and people of Tibet. Here, I will investigate the case of the Srin-mo, which is controversially one of the most important beings in Tibet, but unquestionably, an irrevocable component of understanding what implications geography holds on Tibet.

This essay seeks to examine in parts, the ostensible absence of women’s political participation, particularly in peace processes in Africa. The essay will draw experiences and examples from a couple of African countries to argue that women’s continuous absence in peace discourses is as a result of political stereotypes, backed by patriarchal norms and masculinity tendencies which usually epitomises maleness to the ‘knower’, ‘protector’, ‘powerful’, ‘leader’.

Therefore in instances were women are able to actively participate on equal capacities like their male counterparts, it goes against and threatens the constructed patriarchal systems and its flair of hegemony.

The female terrorist circulates within contemporary Western culture as an object of fascination and heightened concern. Gender and the Political analyses cultural constructions of the female terrorist, arguing that she operates as a limit case of both feminine and feminist agency. Drawing on an interdisciplinary theoretical framework, this book demonstrates that the development of the discourse on terrorism evolves in parallel with, and in response to, radical feminism in the US in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Situated at the borderlines between sexuality, threat and abjection, Amanda Third argues that the figure of the female terrorist compels a reexamination of the project of radical politics and the limits of modernity.

http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/gender-and-the-political-amanda-third/?K=9781137402752

"A fascinating exploration of the historical twinning of terrorism and feminism in the U.S. By redirecting our attention to these important discourses emerging in the 60's and 70s, this book provides a crucial corrective to counter post 9/11 anxieties that continually project the terrorist as somehow coming from elsewhere." - Jasbir K. Puar, Associate Professor of Women's and Gender Studies, Rutgers University, USA

"Amanda Third's Gender and the Political convincingly argues that the modern concepts of terrorism and feminism are historically and conceptually interwoven. The book does this by reading terrorism studies against the grain while simultaneously positioning the concept of terrorism as a central trope of postmodern thought. These two discourses - the former increasingly foundational to, the latter highly critical of, the modern state and social order - are placed in fruitful conversation with one another, resulting in a deeply illuminating study of the contemporary political terrain in the United States." - Mehmet Döşemeci, Assistant Professor of History, Bucknell University, USA

Violence against lesbians and gay men has increasingly captured media and scholarly attention. But these reports tend to focus on one segment of the LGBT community—white, middle class men—and largely ignore that part of the community that arguably suffers a larger share of the violence—racial minorities, the poor, and women. In Violence against Queer People, sociologist Doug Meyer offers the first investigation of anti-queer violence that focuses on the role played by race, class, and gender. Drawing on interviews with forty-seven victims of violence, Meyer shows that LGBT people encounter significantly different forms of violence—and perceive that violence quite differently—based on their race, class, and gender. His research highlights the extent to which other forms of discrimination—including racism and sexism—shape LGBT people's experience of abuse. He reports, for instance, that lesbian and transgender women often described violent incidents in which a sexual or a misogynistic component was introduced, and that LGBT people of color sometimes weren't sure if anti-queer violence was based solely on their sexuality or whether racism or sexism had also played a role. Meyer observes that given the many differences in how anti-queer violence is experienced, the present media focus on white, middle-class victims greatly oversimplifies and distorts the nature of anti-queer violence. In fact, attempts to reduce anti-queer violence that ignore race, class, and gender run the risk of helping only the most privileged gay subjects. Many feel that the struggle for gay rights has largely been accomplished and the tide of history has swung in favor of LGBT equality. Violence against Queer People, on the contrary, argues that the lives of many LGBT people—particularly the most vulnerable—have improved very little, if at all, over the past thirty years.

This paper uses evangelical reflections on the meaning of "rights" to explore the juridification of religion in contemporary England. Drawing on sixteen months of participatory fieldwork with evangelicals in London, I argue that English evangelicals' critiques of Christian-interest litigation reflect the interaction of local theologies with developments in the law's regulation of religion, developments that have contributed to the relativization of Protestant Christianity even as historic church establishment is maintained. Through an exploration of the tension between the goals of (rights-based) individualism and (Christian) relationalism as they concern the law, I show how litigation can affect religious sub-jectivity even in the absence of a personal experience with the pageantry of the court.

In this paper, I will look at the depiction of South African intersex athlete Caster Semenya as a means to understand the existing problematic essentialist and naturalistic binary paradigms of sex and gender. I will look at the social, cultural, legal and medical treatment of her as an ‘abnormal’ body, and the attempts at normalization as a form of social control. I will ultimately establish how her very existence – and refusal to conform, is evidence of the social constructionism of both sex and gender.

This study aims to analyze the relationship between the military and homosexuality by analyzing the experiences of sexual minority soldiers in the Korean military beyond the claim that homosexuality in the Korean military is a social and national "problem". In recent years, the anti-homosexual discourses have been spreading that homosexuality in the military is causing the serious national crisis. However, substantive researches or sociological interests are insufficient. Meanwhile, homosexuality in the military has been defined as a perverse existence to be managed and punishment in the change of the 'Sexual Harassment in Military Criminal Act' or 'the Military Discipline Instructions' since the mid - the 2000s. However, unlike anti-homosexual discourse or legal discourse that calls homosexuality in the military as a "problem," non-normative sexual identity in the military actually exists as a process rather than a fixed, essential attribute or category. In the military that is male-centered and heterosexual -oriented, sexual minorities are coping strategies for surviving by "passing" into heterosexuals and practicing being joined into the male bond, or by separately performing military service successfully. Some sexual minorities have been criticizing the military from the point of view of a man who is not a 'heterosexual soldier', that is, an 'inside outsider', by first being aware of and accepting his sexual identity in the military. These experiences reveal that self-representation carried out by sexual minority soldiers in the institutional and cultural conditions of the military is in the dilemma of self-contradiction and invisibility of homosexuality. However, this dilemma comes not from the strategic gender practice itself of the sexual minorities but from the institution itself, which reproduces homophobia and recognizes only heterosexuals as 'men'.

최근 한국에서는 군대 내 동성애를 국가적 위기와 연결하는 반동성애 담론이 거세지고 있다. ‘군형법상 추행죄’나 ‘부대관리훈령’이 2000년대 중반 이후 정비되 는 과정에서 군대 내 동성애(자)는 관리되어야 할 변태적 존재이자 처벌받아야 할 대상으로 규정되어 왔다. 본 연구는 그러한 배경 아래에서 군대 내 남성 동성애자 의 경험을 중심으로 군대와 동성애(자) 간 관계를 분석하는 것을 목표로 한다. 군대 내 동성애(자)를 ‘문제’로 호명하는 반동성애 담론 내지는 법 담론과는 달리 실제 군대 내 비규범적 성 정체성은 고정적이고 본질적인 속성이나 범주이 기보다는 과정으로서 존재한다. 동성애(자)는 군대 내에서 존재하지 않는 것으로 간주되거나 존재를 드러내지 않도록 강요당하며, 이들에 대한 차별대우는 공적/ 사적 영역 그리고 행위와 존재라는 허구적 구분을 통해 정당화된다. 폐쇄적이고 위계적 공간 속에서 성소수자는 이성애자로 ‘패싱’하여 남성 연대 속으로 편입되기를 시도하거나, 군인됨을 성공적으로 수행함으로써 살아남는 전략을 택하기도 한다. 반면 어떤 이들은 군대에서 자신의 성 정체성을 비로소 자각하고 받아들 임으로써, 남성이지만 ‘이성애자 군인’이 아닌 ‘내부의 외부인’의 관점으로 남성 중심적인 군대 문화를 비판하기도 한다. 이는 군대라는 제도적이고 문화적인 조건 속에서 성소수자 군인들이 수행하는 자기재현이 동성애의 비가시화와 커밍아웃에 따른 제도적 폭력 간 딜레마에 빠져있음을 역설적으로 보여준다. 본 연구는 이러한 딜레마가 성소수자의 전략 적 젠더실천 때문이 아니라, 성차별적이고 동성애혐오적인 군대라는 제도, 이성애-남성중심적 한국사회 자체에서 비롯한 것임을 밝히고자 한다.

Over the past fifty years, archaeological excavations in Israel have unearthed about half a dozen ancient synagogues that were in use at different points in time between the first century BCE through the outbreak of the Bar-Kochba rebellion early in the second century of the Common Era.  In close proximity to each of these synagogues, a mikveh (ritual bath) has been discovered.  In contrast, no mikvaot have been discovered adjacent to any of the dozens of later synagogues that have been excavated and studied, with only one or two possible exceptions. 
At this point it is impossible to determine exactly when mikvaot ceased to be built in connection with synagogues, as the archaeological record reports very little about synagogues of the late second - early third century CE.  From an archaeological perspective, it is clear that at least from the second half of the third century, synagogues began to be built without regard for proximity to mikvaot.
Talmudic sources make no mention of a requirement to build mikvaot adjacent to synagogues. To date, no satisfactory explanation has been given for the evident connection between the synagogue and the mikveh in the early period, and the disappearance of such a connection in later periods of synagogue history. The objective of this paper is to present and explore a possible interpretation of this puzzling phenomenon.
  During the Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods, a rabbinical enactment was in effect requiring mikveh ablutions prior to engagement in Torah study and prayer for individuals who had experienced seminal emission. Careful study of the Talmudic sources reveals that this enactment was nullified early in the Amoraic Period, sometime during the second quarter of the third century CE.
It would appear that the mikvaot built adjacent to the earlier synagogues were intended for this precise function, serving visitors to the synagogue who required ritual ablutions prior to Torah study and prayer.  Once the rabbinical enactment regarding these ablutions was nullified, there was no longer need for such mikvaot, and hence the absence of mikvaot in proximity to the later synagogues.

This article studies Cypriot LGBs' identity construction processes and understandings of politics amidst the sociopolitical environment within which they are articulated. It does so by addressing a question that is central to gender and sexuality research: How are gender and sexual identities formed, and how do these formations inform gender and sexuality politics in contexts caught between tradition and modernity? Employing a qualitative research design, it thematically analyzes data from interviews with Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot LGBs. It marks intra-ethnic and interethnic in-group exclusions. It argues that these exclusions are reinforced by local notions about modernity, expressed through the “Europe/west–versus the–rest” opposition. Nonetheless, it also finds that the successes of the Cypriot LGBTI movement have been based on opportunities created by Europeanization. Therefore, it helps develop our understanding of the implications of conceptions of nationhood, gender, and sexuality on gender and sexuality politics where the “rest” meets the “west.”

KEYWORDS: Gender, Sexuality, Identity, Politics, Modernity, Cyprus

In the field of identity politics and cultural identity, the representation of differences plays a crucial role. The extent of the differences a society has determines the social outcomes in divergent ways. Surely, there are other variables that cause social anxiety or communal solidarity such as religious views, socio-political conditions and also gender relations. To the point of departure, the case of homosexuality, or in a general way, the boundaries of sexuality is very controversial field so as to reveal the effects of ideologies, social conditions and historical past where all of these evolved through times. In order to understand and to reach a general view, the experiences of small towns are very decisive and unavoidable parts of such studies. As a basic explanation, that is why Arlene Stein chooses to make an ethnographic study in the USA around 1990s. In this paper, I will try to make a basic analysis of ‘The Stranger Next Door: The Story of a Small Community’s Battle Over Sex, Faith and Civil Rights’ by presenting my reading of this story and through reacting to the general points.

We start with a theatre, and two moments of astonishing gender transgression. One happened in a theatre on a hillside in the center of Athens on a spring day in late March of 431 BCE. The second happened there sixteen years later, in March of 415 BCE. Both took place as the audience watched tragedies by the poet Euripides. These plays were about gendered oppression, sexual pain, rape, slavery and the horrors of war.

La sessualità, oggi, si "vede" ovunque, non occorre andarla a cercare; ci troviamo di fronte ad un flusso costante di immagini più o meno velatamente riferite al sesso ma di sessualità non si parla. Forse la si balbetta, pressappoco, nelle pagine delle riviste, nelle conversazioni tra pari, nelle chat e nei forum. La reticenza nel riconoscere il giusto spazio ad un argomento come la sessualità è il sintomo di un disagio diffuso, che diventa malessere nel momento in cui viene associata all'adolescenza.
Il volume propone una ricostruzione articolata del processo di sviluppo della sessualità individuali, partendo dall'infanzia fino alla tarda adolescenza.
La riflessione condotta in queste pagine, incentrata sul contesto italiano ma con costanti raffronti ad altre realtà sociali, culturali e storiche, si sviluppa partendo da un insieme di testimonianze raccolte sul campo, attraverso la conduzione di interviste, focus group e l'analisi di materiale etnografico online. Lo scopo è dare la parola agli adolescenti per mostrare dall'interno il mutamento in atto; un cambiamento che, per certi versi, sta portando al superamento delle tradizionali dicotomie di genere.

Interracial sex mattered to the British colonial state in West Africa. In Crossing the Color Line, Carina E. Ray goes beyond this fact to reveal how Gold Coasters—their social practices, interests, and anxieties—shaped and defined these powerfully charged relations across racial lines. The interplay between African and European perspectives and practices, argues Ray, transformed these relationships into key sites for consolidating colonial rule and for contesting its racial and gendered hierarchies of power.

With rigorous methodology and innovative analyses, Ray brings Ghana and Britain into a single analytic frame by examining cases in both locales. Intimate relations between black men and white women in Britain’s port cities emerge as an influential part of the history of interracial sex and empire in ways that are connected to rather than eclipsed by relations between European men and African women in the colony.

Based on rich archival evidence and original interviews, the book moves across different registers, shifting from the micropolitics of individual disciplinary cases against colonial officers who “kept” local women to transatlantic networks of family, empire, and anticolonial resistance. In this way, Ray cuts to the heart of how interracial sex became a source of colonial anxiety and nationalist agitation during the first half of the twentieth century.

In the midst of the 1970s, where the immersion of culture battles made an entrance in the realms of politics and gender issues, Protect Renoir (1974) by Helen Frankenthaler was seen as polarizing in multiple dimensions as critics believed she was trying to defend the “male gaze” - the idea that women bodies were used as an object to satisfy male sexual desire within the visual representation domain. Protect Renoir is considered to be rebellious, it not only embraces the appropriation of Renoir’s fleshy colors palette but also elevates female sexuality through its dampness texture created by the pour of turpentine which allows the audience to view the legacy of Renoir in its true light. Frankenthaler used her status as a female painter to bring back the concept of “feminine mystique” and the embracement of sensuality in female sexuality without being interfered with moralizing didacticism of what was considered to be decadent gaze in our modern political correctness era.

From a Jungian point of view, human mental constructs and processes of the psyche, including experiential categories of gender and sexuality, are constituents of a creative field that modifies nature and the natural in particular ways. Gender understanding unfolds from the arising of human civilization in general as an imaginal exercise that entwines the needs of the individual and the group in which they are embedded.  This social fabric continually unfolds as new ways of thinking become possible and this unfolding needs constant attention in order to be as compassionate and inclusive as possible while still maintaining individual and group coherence.

Whoredom in the Wild West has created a plethora of pseudo-historical “memorabilia”, artifacts that have become part of popular culture. Brothel tokens are part and parcel of the “Wild West” image portrayed by the media and western novels. Strong sexual economies were prevalent in most western towns due to their unusually high male population ratios and are always present in mediums that portray western American life including reenacted historical western American towns such as Tombstone, Arizona.

Tijelo kao film | Body as Film | Body and Sexuality in Short Feature Film; Retrospective at Croatian Film Days 2015 curated by Željko Luketić. Featuring works from Ante Babaja, Miroslav Mikuljan, Mišo Budisavljević, Neven Korda, Tomislav Gotovac, Dasen Štambuk, etc.

Este es un ensayo que se enmarca dentro de la reflexión por el centenario de la Constitución Política de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos, promulgada en 1917. El punto de partida, por lo tanto, es el texto constitucional en sí. Desde aquí, son dos las preguntas principales que guían este ensayo. La primera es: ¿qué dice o qué no dice la Constitución sobre " los derechos sexuales y reproductivos "? La segunda, que se derivará de la anterior, es: ¿qué discusiones constitucionales más amplias están implicadas en el debate por estos derechos? En otras palabras: ¿por qué el debate por los derechos sexuales y reproductivos puede ser interesante y relevante para quienes no se especializan en ellos pero tienen, de cualquier forma, un interés en la Constitución y los derechos humanos?

Enacted February 24, 2014 and effective until August 1, 2014, Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act targeted Ugandans of minority sexual orientations and gender identities—many of whom self-identify as 'kuchu'—by imposing life sentences for homosexual sex and same-sex marriage. The original Anti-Homosexuality Bill introduced in 2009 promised even worse for kuchus: it would have mandated that all Ugandans report known homosexuals and threatened execution for serial offenders and other perpetrators of “aggravated homosexuality.” In the context of Ugandan political conflict, emerging international human rights norms, and global asymmetries of power, Uganda has become an ideological battlefront where competing actors—both US-based and Ugandan—advance their respective visions of a just and righteous global society. These factors mandate that US-based activists and organizations painstakingly consider how (or whether) they can advocate responsibly and effectively for international human rights related to gender identity and sexual orientation. Through interdisciplinary lenses and critical analysis, this paper explores three questions:

• How is Uganda distinct from other sites of antigay legislation?
• How have US-based organizations impacted Ugandan discourse and policy toward kuchus?
• How can US-based rights advocates and activists campaign for kuchus without doing them further harm?

For the last two decades, my sexual-emotional relationships have happened within what has come to be known as non-monogamy, a field in which I am an activist, theorist, consultant and who knows what else. And despite all that, and despite dedicating body, mind, emotional networks and a great deal of my energy to the matter, I still come up against repeated difficulties in trying to sustain relationships that are plural and healthy for everybody involved. And it’s not just me. The same thing happens to other people in the social circles I’m involved in: anguish, guilt, jealousy, lack of comprehension by those around us… all the psychological horrors get going.
It’s not me and it’s not us: it’s the system.

Dans la plupart des pays occidentaux, la constitution de la relation de couple, puis de la « famille conjugale », est désormais le produit de l’amour entre deux personnes. À partir d’une enquête par entretien, cet article se propose d’explorer les ressorts de cet engagement amoureux. Au travers de l’analyse diachronique des histoires d’amour énoncées par les acteurs sociaux, puis de leur attachement à l’exclusivité sexuelle et pour finir, de l’influence de la culture romantique, nous défendrons l’idée selon laquelle la relation d’amour naissante procède de logiques dramaturgiques.

Social changes in the contemporary era have directly influenced human life and existence, especially the meaning of marriage. In light of these contemporary developments, researchers have emphasized the urgent need to deconstruct marriage and re-constitute it, fundamentally altering its traditional characteristics and meaning in the process. Conversely, the Orthodox Church views the essence of marriage with an interminable consistency and continuity characterized by the mysterion of love in Christ. Is it viable to live the meaning of this mysterion in today’s postmodern era? To examine this issue, this study initiates an interdisciplinary dialogue between postmodern perspectives on marriage and family on the one hand, and the vision of Orthodox theology on the other. This new and unexplored dialogue endeavors to contribute to the positive engagement of the Orthodox Church with the postmodern world.

“Repression” names just one of the defense mechanisms that characterize queer theory’s quarter-century evasion of Lacanian psychoanalysis. The act of repressing the unconscious might seem entirely different than the decision to reject the psychoanalytic theory of the unconscious. Yet, as Freud writes in the 1925 “Negation,” “[a] negative judgement is the intellectual substitute for repression; its ‘no’ is the hall-mark of repression, a certificate of origin.” One of the key concepts of Lacanian theory that queer theory finds inadmissible is repression. Indeed, repression has been somewhat of a bugaboo since its inception. Tracing queer theory from the foundational texts of Judith Butler and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick to the contemporary writings of Lee Edelman, Lauren Berlant, and Paul B. Preciado, while building on Tim Dean’s Beyond Sexuality, this chapter argues that queer theory has repressed repression, thereby forestalling the thinking of radical social change that Lacan makes possible.

En France, dans le sillage du mouvement de Mai 68, émerge spontanément et joyeusement le Mouvement de Libération des Femmes (MLF), à l’initiative d’Antoinette Fouque et de Monique Wittig. Au cœur de leur débat, de leur relecture critique des textes freudiens et lacaniens se trouvent pensés à nouveau frais le discours et la théorie de la psychanalyse sur “La femme”, “le féminin”, “la sexualité féminine”, “la différence des sexes”. Les dogmes théoriques concernant “le continent noir” romantiquement évoqués ainsi par Freud sont revisités, voire renversés. Les querelles autour du terme même de “féminisme” produisent et ouvrent à d’autres discours. Freud a toujours considéré que la théorie psychanalytique était open to revision et Lacan que la psychanalyse gagnerait à être en “extension”. Que se passe-t-il lorsque la théorie et la pratique psychanalytiques rencontrent les discours féministes? L’horizon s’ouvre-t-il pour le discours psychanalytique, sa théorie, sa pratique? Une ouverture, une révision peuvent- elle s’opérer? Un renversement du dogme, une nouvelle joie de la pratique analytique?

In France, in the wake of the movement of May 68, the Women's Liberation Movement (MLF) spontaneously and joyfully emerged, initiated by Antoinette Fouque and Monique Wittig. In their debates and their critical rereadings of the Freudian and Lacanian texts, they think afresh the discourse and theory of psychoanalysis on “Women”, “the feminine”, “female sexuality”, and “sex difference”. e theoretical dogmas concerning "the black continent" romantically evoked by Freud are revisited, and even reversed. e quarrels over the very term of "feminism" produce and give way to other discourses. Freud always considered that psychoanalytical theory was open to revision and Lacan that psychoanalysis would benefit from being in ‘extension’. What happens when psychoanalytic theory and practice meet feminist discourses? Does this encounter imply that the horizon should open up for psychoanalytical discourse, its theory and practice? Can an opening, a revision then take place? A dogma, a new joy in analytical practice?

Pedagogical formats proliferated in aesthetic output of the 1960s, responding to the compulsory academicization of artistic practice, the rise of the M.F.A. degree, and the emergence of the institutionally accredited artist. Arts education in the period trained artists for virtuosic displays of verbal expertise, and the lecture-performance subsequently emerged as a prominent aesthetic form. Throughout the decade, artists deployed the lecture format to imagine how knowledge might be assembled otherwise: within para-institutional frameworks, beyond authorized discourse, and through embodied tactics of performativity. As cognitive labor was theorized in the increasingly disembodied, technologized terms of “informating,” the lecture-performance situated knowledge in the specificity of embodied agents and their attendant coordinates. This essay brings the histories of the lecture-performance into focus, tracing its renegotiation of the discursive practices that regulate bodies of knowledge and knowledgeable bodies.

This course takes eco-feminist and critical race studies approaches to the anthropology of gender and sexuality, taking “eco-feminism” as an identity, an object of analysis, and as a methodological approach. While “Feminism” in practice need not be (though often is) gender-specific, as a political and academic practice it often carries racialized inflections towards its objects of its inquiry as well as its activism. The term, “eco”, from the Greek “oikos,” means “dwelling,” “household,” “home,” or “family”, laying the foundation for examining the roles that gender and sexuality play in changing forms of kinship, citizenship, and (environmental) politics beyond and within the concept of the human. These different meanings of the “eco” in eco-nomy and eco-logy shape scholarly analyses as well as the lived experiences for those do not feel “at home” in a white hetero-normative structure. In investigating the intersections and interconnections of gender and sexuality with race, ethnicity, and class, we will consider “eco’s” various forms and how humans come to think about the concept of  “home.”  An overarching question for this course revolves around whether, if, or when, one should separate environmental justice from social justice – and what the possibilities and limits are to fusing naturecultures (Haraway). The readings will cover classic anthropological approaches, current critical theory and philosophy, as well as less-often-read scholars whose voices often fall between the lines – or at the margins of – mainstream academic discourse. This is an attempt both to decolonize the syllabus as well as show how thoughts and bodies, as well as body politics become colonized. What does it mean to decolonize bodies through words? How can language create and maintain (earth) body politics? How has the concept of “home” – the “eco” continued to structure ideas about who and what bodies may chose to, or be let, to live? How do notions of “home” and what is “normal” gain their gendered, sexualized, racialized texture? What does it mean to “be at home in one’s own body?” When it comes to people’s choices about their bodies, it is crucial to understand how certain human and nonhuman bodies and lives matter, and how others do not.  The fundamental anthropological divisions of “nature” and “culture” frame how we think about what it means to be human as well as what it means “to be free to choose” what we do with our bodies. Authors include Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Gloria Anzaldúa, along with Andrea Smith, and Winona LaDuke. We will read these authors along with Marilyn Strathern, Donna Haraway, Gayle Rubin, Judith Butler, Friedrich Engels, and the Gender Nihilists, to name a few.