History of Family and Sexuality

What happens when sexuality is banned from
IAT public discourse?
This book shows how everyday sexual behaviour
and morality were — or were not — affected by the Soviet censorship on sexuality. Based on autobiographies written by ordinary people from St. Petersburg, it presents the loves and lives of three generations. It describes perceptions of love, the life course of the Russian family, transmissions of sexual knowledge, informal and illegal practices and contrasting subcultures.
By posing the 'man question', Anna Rotkirch argues that the postsocialist transformation has centred on the Russian man. By contrast, one of the strongest continuities in the Russian gender system concerns the ways of mothering.

The basic misunderstandings of sexuality in western culture derive from culturally constructed stigma of interpreting Sexuality as sin, violence and perversion. The basic and still living mistake was initialized by churchfather St. Augustine about 1600 years ago by staining sexuality by a non-scientific belief and construct of original sin.

Naturally and scientifically Sexuality includes none of these abovementioned demonizations. That is why it is finally the time to change the paradigm of sexuality and reveal its true core as a non-harming phenomenon.

Amor y sexo son y han sido a lo largo de la Historia dos de los principales
motores capaces de mover y remover nuestro día a día. Da igual a qué época nos refiramos, o el lugar en que nos encontremos, pues el mundo de los impulsos, sobre todo sexuales, no entienden de elementos de diferenciación. Es algo exclusivo del ser humano en su conjunto, esa manera de expresar los sentimientos que nos caracteriza. Ahora bien, lo que sí ha variado con el devenir de los siglos es la forma en que concebimos esa sexualidad, tanto la aceptada por cada comunidad como la ilícita o transgresora.
Al realizar este trabajo, nos adentramos en algunos de los aspectos más
sobrecogedores, impactantes y reprimidos que experimentó la mujer en los últimos siglos del Medioevo peninsular. Un periodo convulso en todas sus variantes, y que encontraría en el ámbito de las relaciones íntimas un escenario verdaderamente  interesante para trazar líneas de investigación que resulten del interés del lector.

En la política de promoción de las monjas mendicantes que desarrollaron los reyes de Castilla se percibe una tipología de “fundaciones en relación” con mujeres. Alfonso X y Pedro I colaboraron con sus amantes, Mayor Guillén y María de Padilla, y el segundo también con sus hijas, Beatriz e Isabel, para dar origen a monasterios de la Orden de Santa Clara o de sus formas previas. Estas páginas analizan unos procesos de fundación que enlazan lo personal y lo familiar con lo político, visibilizan formas de interacción entre los sexos y desvelan algunas de las fisonomías adoptadas por las religiosas que constituyeron la institución clarisa, una orden religiosa exclusivamente femenina en la que tuvieron gran peso las mujeres como agentes históricos.

This article explores the background to a suicide which occurred on the banks of the Breede River, not far from the present-day town of Ceres, in 1713. This was the first of my 4 articles on sodomy cases at the Cape of Good Hope in the early 18th century.  As such, it devotes a lot of space to the theological and legal treatment of sodomy in West European history and law.

"Anyone who wants to understand how abortion has been treated historically in the western legal tradition must first come to terms with two quite different but interrelated historical trajectories. On one hand, there is the ancient Judeo-Christian condemnation of prenatal homicide as a wrong warranting retribution; on the other, there is the juristic definition of "crime" in the modern sense of the word, which distinguished the term sharply from "sin" and “tort” and was tied to the rise of Western jurisprudence. To find the act of abortion first identified as a crime in the West, one has to go back to the twelfth century, to the schools of ecclesiastical and Roman law in medieval Europe. In this book, Wolfgang P. Müller tells the story of how abortion came to be criminalized in the West. As he shows, criminalization as a distinct phenomenon and abortion as a self-standing criminal category developed in tandem with each other, first being formulated coherently in the twelfth century at schools of law and theology in Bologna and Paris. Over the ensuing centuries, medieval prosecutors struggled to widen the range of criminal cases involving women accused of ending their unwanted pregnancies. In the process, punishment for abortion went from the realm of carefully crafted rhetoric by ecclesiastical authorities to eventual implementation in practice by clerical and lay judges across Latin Christendom. Informed by legal history, moral theology, literature, and the history of medicine, Müller's book is written with the concerns of modern readers in mind, thus bridging the gap that might otherwise divide modern and medieval sensibilities."

Using a legal brief (responsum) by Isaac de Lattes, rabbi in Rome during the middle of the sixteenth century, the paper examines the dynamics of family and sexuality, and explores how a family used Jewish law (halakha) to control financial resources.

This is the story of Claas Holder and of my attempts to understand the circumstances of his lonely death. Claas Holder's death is mentioned only twice in the records left by the Dutch authorities at the Cape. The first entry covers only one page, but it is by far the longest. The second is no more than a scratch in the muster rolls of Drakenstein district. Each year from 1710 to 1713, ?Claas Oudom' was listed as a member of a burgher infantry division led by Captain Abraham de Villiers, but his name was crossed off the list for 1713 and someone had pencilled the word ?dood' in the margin. Leviticus 18:23 provides some insight into why it should be necessary to kill the animal: ?You will not have intercourse with any kind of animal; you would become unclean by doing so.Keywords: Captain Abraham de Villiers; Claas Holder; Claas Oudom; dog; Drakenstein district; Leviticus

Through some published and unpublished documents this article aims to describe the role of Agostino Gemelli in the italian eugenic movement and his engagement in promoting and interpreting the encyclical Casti connubii and in fostering a catholic association of physicians.

Attraverso documenti editi e inediti questo articolo cerca di tratteggiare il profilo di Agostino Gemelli all’interno del movimento eugenetico, il ruolo che ebbe nel promuovere e divulgare una certa interpretazione della dottrina morale, e in particolare dell’enciclica Casti connubii, e il suo impegno nel favorire l’aggregazione dei medici cattolici intorno ad alcuni principi.

Resumen: el presente artículo analiza dos dispositivos de la penalidad en Córdoba (Argentina) implementados a fines del siglo XIX y principios del XX, que incidieron en la producción y resguardo de estereotipos de género para las mujeres. Entendemos por penalidad al complejo penal en su conjunto, por lo que se analizarán discursos sostenidos por los operadores judiciales, por un lado y las dinámicas desarrolladas en una institución penal —la Cárcel del Buen Pastor—, por el otro. Se pretende demostrar la manera en que ambos dispositivos operaron como engranajes que, de manera interconectada y complementaria, incidieron en la producción y consolidación de un ideal modélico de feminidad, diagramado por roles de madre y esposa y subordinado a la autoridad masculina. Para ello, realizaremos una lectura en clave de género de los discursos sostenidos por jueces y defensores en casos de adulterio e infanticidio y analizamos los mecanismos de disciplinamiento puestos en práctica en la cárcel. Nos interesa destacar el lugar del discurso judicial como instrumento que reproduce y consolida imperativos de género y el rol de la cárcel como institución destinada a la normalización a través de un discipli amiento que se planificaba mediante la prescripción de labores domésticas.

Abstract: this article analyzes two devices of penalization in Cordoba (Argentina) implemented in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which influenced the production and safeguarding of gender stereotypes for women. We understand by penalization the penal complex as a whole. Therefore, we will analyze discourses held by judicial operators, on the one hand, and the dynamics developed in a penal institution —the Buen Pastor Prison—, on the other hand. The aim is to demonstrate how both devices operated as a mechanism that, in an interconnected and complementary way, influenced the production and consolidation of an ideal model of femininity, diagrammed by roles of mother and wife and subordinated to male authority. For this purpose, we will make a gendered reading of the discourses sustained by judges and defense lawyers in cases of adultery and infanticide and we will analyze the disciplinary mechanisms put into practice in the Prison. We are interested in highlighting the place of judicial discourse as an instrument that reproduces and consolidates gender imperatives and the role of the Prison as an institution aimed at normalization through a disciplining that was planned through the prescription of domestic tasks.

This manuscript investigates clinical decisions and the management of 'intersex' children at the University Children's Hospital Zurich between 1945 and 1970. This was an era of rapid change in paediatric medicine, something that was mirrored in Zurich. Andrea Prader, the principal figure in this paper, started his career during the late 1940s and was instrumental in moving the hospital towards focusing more on expertise in chronic diseases. Starting in 1950, he helped the Zurich hospital to become the premier centre for the treatment of so-called 'intersex' children. It is this treatment, and, in particular, the clinical decision-making that is the centre of our article. This field of medicine was itself not stable. Rapid development of diagnostic tools led to the emergence of new diagnostic categories, the availability of new drugs changed the management of the children's bodies and an increased number of medical experts became involved in decision-making, a particular focus lay with the role of the children themselves and of course with their families. How involved were children or their families in an era widely known as the golden age of medicine?

Jaką rolę w związkach intymnych pełnią dziś moment rozpoczęcia relacji, zamieszkania razem oraz ślubu, a jaką pełniły dawniej? W jakim stopniu koncepcja miłości romantycznej opisuje doświadczenia współczesnych par? Czy trafne są tezy mówiące o indywidualizacji, kryzysie rodziny lub rosnącej popularności życia w pojedynkę?

Cel tej pracy to analiza przemian charakteru związków intymnych w kontekście ogólnych trendów obecnych w kulturze europejskiej ostatnich stuleci, ze zwróceniem szczególnej uwagi na relację między życiem intymnym a formami zamieszkiwania. Punktem wyjścia jest problematyzacja uproszczeń towarzyszących nieraz myśleniu  o przemianach intymności, takich jak wyobrażenie przeszłości jako ery licznej  i wielopokoleniowej rodziny, miłości – jako zjawiska kulturowo niezmiennego, czy współczesności – jako epoki ludzi niezdolnych do tworzenia bliskich relacji, żyjących w świecie pozbawionym kulturowych wzorów. Zarówno przeszłość, jak i współczesność pary intymnej jak znacznie bardziej wielowątkowa, dynamiczna i pełna napięć oraz zawsze uwikłana w różne formy uspołecznienia, a książka dokumentuje to na trzy sposoby.

Pierwszy to analiza zmieniających się historycznie relacji między miłością, mieszkaniem razem, małżeństwem i rodziną – z naciskiem na kontekst Polski – oparta na teoria przemiany więzi społecznych oraz bogatych danych z prac historyków i socjologów. Drugi to analiza badań intymności prowadzonych współcześnie, dotyczących zwłaszcza trwałości związków, rosnącej liczby singli i upowszechniania się ko habitacji, a także pułapek związanych z ich projektowaniem i interpretowaniem. Trzeci to wnioski z badań autora przeprowadzonych w Polsce, od sondażowych po pogłębioną eksplorację historii dwudziestu par młodych ludzi.

This chapter explores and contrasts two of the ways that the Swedish journalist Moa Martinson (1890–1964) depicts sexuality in her work in labour movement newspapers in the 1920s. In the anarchist papers she speaks in her own voice, depicting the hardship for working-class women,
herself included, brought about by a lack of access to contraception, abortion and adequate maternity care. However, in the role of her alter ego, the washerwoman Madam Andersson, she adopts a light-hearted tone. Discussing the antics of the middle and upper-classes, Andersson uses their sexual mores to imply a deeper political and social malaise.

Anyone who wants to understand how abortion has been treated historically in the western legal tradition must first come to terms with two quite different but interrelated historical trajectories. On one hand, there is the ancient Judeo-Christian condemnation of prenatal homicide as a wrong warranting retribution; on the other, there is the juristic definition of "crime" in the modern sense of the word, which distinguished the term sharply from "sin" and “tort” and was tied to the rise of Western jurisprudence. To find the act of abortion first identified as a crime in the West, one has to go back to the twelfth century, to the schools of ecclesiastical and Roman law in medieval Europe.

In this book, Wolfgang P. Müller tells the story of how abortion came to be criminalized in the West. As he shows, criminalization as a distinct phenomenon and abortion as a self-standing criminal category developed in tandem with each other, first being formulated coherently in the twelfth century at schools of law and theology in Bologna and Paris. Over the ensuing centuries, medieval prosecutors struggled to widen the range of criminal cases involving women accused of ending their unwanted pregnancies. In the process, punishment for abortion went from the realm of carefully crafted rhetoric by ecclesiastical authorities to eventual implementation in practice by clerical and lay judges across Latin Christendom. Informed by legal history, moral theology, literature, and the history of medicine, Müller's book is written with the concerns of modern readers in mind, thus bridging the gap that might otherwise divide modern and medieval sensibilities.