Gender and the Silences of Social Capital: Lessons from Latin America

Social capital has entered development policy thinking and practice in Latin America where it converges with the premises of a new development agenda that emerged in the 1990s. Women are often central to the forms of social capital that development agencies are keen to mobilize in poverty relief programmes, but the terms of women’s insertion into these programmes is rarely problematized. This article critically examines the gendered assumptions that govern efforts to build social capital, and explores some of the tensions that have arisen in post‐transition Latin America between women’s rights and social capital agendas.     

Writing Gender into History and History in Gender: Creating A Nation and Australian Historiography

This paper reflects on the impact of gender in the writing of history by considering the reception of Creating A Nation, the first gendered history of Australia. It argues that while there has emerged an impressive volume of feminist history and with it has come an important acceptance of women's historical experience, the reception of ‘gender’ within the historical profession has paradoxically been ambivalent and ambiguous. This is the case because of an unease about feminist theory and its relevance to history. There also remains a prevailing belief that a gendered neutral historical place exists, to which historians can retreat.     

The State of the Union: Sexuality in American History

Books reviewed in this article: Merril D. Smith (ed.), Sex and Sexuality in Early America Beryl Satter, Each Mind a Kingdom: American Women, Sexual Purity, and the New Thought Movement, 1875–1920 Sharon R. Ullman, Sex Seen: The Emergence of Modern Sexuality in America M. E. Melody and Linda M. Peterson, Teaching America about Sex: Marriage Guides and Sex Manuals from the Late Victorians to Dr Ruth     

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.     

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.