Monitoring and Medicalising Male Sexuality in Semi‐Colonial Egypt

This article examines the ways Egyptians monitored male sexuality in Ottoman and semi‐colonial Egypt. An exploration of the legislative proposals and press debates about marriage, prostitution and venereal disease reveals that the state attempted to medicalise the sexuality of Egyptian men to create ‘healthy’, disciplined men who would later marry and form fit families to serve as the foundation for a strong postcolonial nation. In their attempts to medicalise male sexuality, reformers delineated the normative heterosexuality of the ‘healthy’ male colonial subject for the emerging nation. This article explores the sexual practices of male colonial subjects to demonstrate how Egyptian notions of sexual diseases were gendered.     

Silences Broken,Silences Kept: Gender and Sexuality in African-American History

In 1989, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham observed that African Americanists paid scant attention to issues of gender and women's historians typically ignored questions of race; she warned that this silence compromised the very analysis of US history. Much has changed since Higginbotham issued her cautionary words. Not only has Americanist literature on gender and race grown exponentially over the past ten years, African-Americanist gender historians have produced some of the most influential monographs and articles in their field. This article surveys a decade's worth of conceptual breakthroughs in African-Americanist historiography as it ponders the question of whether certain silences still remain.     

Gender and Sexuality in Latina/o Miami: Documenting Latina Transsexual Activists

This article examines the borderlands between transgender MTF (male‐to‐female) and gay male communities in Latina/o Miami through an analysis of the participation of Latinas in the Transsexual Action Organization (TAO). Previous research suggests that Cuban and Cuban American gay male culture have historically been associated with gender transgressive behaviour and identity. Because of this, it is often unclear how to distinguish between what is gay male/homosexual expression and transgender expression. If outward gender manifestations that we now call ‘transgender’ were understood in other historical and cultural contexts as ‘homosexual’, how do we label those manifestations today? By labelling them as homosexual are we simply reinscribing the marginalisation of transgender individuals? On the other hand, by labelling them as transgender are we imposing a contemporary category and therefore performing another kind of intellectual violence? In order to address these questions, I analyse a Latino/a organisation that explicitly labelled itself ‘transsexual’. TAO was an early transsexual rights organisation founded in 1970 by Angela Douglas in Los Angeles which moved to Miami Beach, Florida in 1972. Drawing on the organisation's publications, Moonshadow and Mirage Magazine (1972–75), and Douglas's self‐published autobiographical texts, Triple Jeopardy: The Autobiography of Angela Lynn Douglas (1983) and Hollywood's Obsession (1992), I analyse the rarely discussed participation of Latinas in the organisation.     

Reading Habits: Catalina de Erauso and the Subjects of Early Modern Spanish Gender and Sexuality

This article reconsiders the subject of early modern Spanish gender and sexuality studies by analyzing the relación de méritos y servicios presented by the famed ‘Lieutenant Nun’ Catalina de Erauso to the Council of the Indies. Studies have focused on the Vida i sucesos de la Monja Alferez, a biography of disputed authorship, and its transgressive protagonist who hides gender identity and illicit desires from persecuting authorities. In contrast, this article studies the petition to show how Erauso’s identity depends upon bureaucratic forms, their standardized content, and collective authorship. In so doing, it moves from a study of gender transgression to a reading of ‘hábitos’—a term that designates interlocking categories of gender, dress, profession, and social status. By shifting the subject of gender and sexuality studies to this web instantiated by ‘hábitos,’ this article shows how collaborative acts of reading and writing allowed privileged subjects to navigate identity and empire in the seventeenth-century Spanish Atlantic world.     

Gender,Sexuality and the Formation of Racial Identities in the Eighteenth‐Century Anglo‐Caribbean World

In recent years, scholars have directed considerable attention to the influence of gender relations and sexual practices on developing racial formations in early British America, the colonial Caribbean and the wider British empire. Understanding that unauthorised intimacies in the imperial world threatened notions of Britishness at home has greatly enhanced our knowledge of the complexity and instability of the process of collective identity formation. Building on pioneering research in early American and British imperial history, this article charts the connection between gendered concepts of ‘whiteness’ in Anglo‐Caribbean contexts and in metropolitan discourses surrounding British national identity, as articulated in eighteenth‐century colonial legislation and official correspondence, popular texts and personal narratives of everyday life. It explores the extent to which the socio‐sexual practices of British West Indian whites imperilled the emerging conflation between whiteness and Britishness.     

The Cultural Queasiness Factor: Intersections of Gender,Sexuality and HIV Prevention in Burma/Myanmar

The Ministry of Health in Burma/Myanmar considers HIV its first priority in disease prevention, and HIV prevention represents a significant element of the work of many of the international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) based in the country (CBI, 2006; Ministry of Health, 2008). Yet inBurma/Myanmar, as elsewhere in Southeast Asia, there is a “cultural queasiness” around HIV. This queasiness is a dis-ease of the emotions, transmitted through the ongoing linking of HIV transmission with “bad behaviour” (resulting, in part, from HIV prevention's own repeated use of a “risk group” approach). Indeed, the mere existence of HIV prevention work, inand of itself, sparks waves of cultural queasiness because it transgresses the norms regarding which topics are considered appropriate for public airing, and which are not. Through reference to empirical research involving in-depth interviews and observation of field work practice, this article demonstrates how the desire to minimise this queasiness can result in disavowal of the experiential and emotional complications so deeply embedded in HIV prevention and HIV transmission. Thus HIV prevention both is affected by, and reinforces, cultural queasiness.     

Family and Sexuality the American Way

Books reviewed in this article: Karen Dubinsky, The Second Greatest Disappointment: Honeymooning and Tourism at Niagara Falls Kathleen Anne McHugh, American Domesticity: From How‐to Manual to Hollywood Melodrama Leila J. Rupp, A Desired Past: A Short History of Same‐Sex Love in America John C. Spurlock and Cynthia A. Magistro, New and Improved: The Transformation of American Women's Emotional Culture Jessica Weiss, To Have and To Hold: Marriage, the Baby Boom and Social Change     

Gender Equality in National Politics: The Views of Australian Male Politicians

Studies of gender and politics have typically been studies of women and politics. In contrast, this paper places men at the centre of its inquiry by drawing on interviews with 15 current federal male politicians. Of concern is exploring the ways in which men conceptualise the question of gender equity in the Australian parliament. Three frameworks are identified in the men's narratives. These are that the parliament is a masculinised space but that this is unavoidable; that the parliament is now feminised and women are advantaged; and that the parliament is gender neutral and gender is irrelevant. It is argued that collectively these framing devices operate to mask the many constraints which exist to marginalise women from political participation and undermine attempts to address women's political disadvantage as political participants. The paper concludes by highlighting the significance of the paper beyond the Australian context and calling for further research which names and critiques political men and their discourses on gender and parliamentary practices and processes.