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#gender studies
typhlonectes · 22 hours
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starry-ace · 7 months
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“The Barbie movie is like basic gender studies 101. It’s like the bare minimum for feminism”
YEAH SOME PEOPLE HAVENT TAKEN GENDER STUDIES 101 AND WOULDNT YOU AGREE WE ARE CURRENTLY AT LESS THAN THE BARE MINIMUM FOR FEMINISM?
things do not need to be perfect to be good. You cannot teach someone intersectionality if that person has not heard of bare minimum feminism. You might be on step 100 but just because you started earlier does not mean that everyone can jump to your level. They have to climb the stairs too. And the people at the top yelling down to the people at the bottom that being at the bottom is bad, they need to be at the top, IT DOES NOT ENCOURAGE THEM TO CLIMB UP.
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spacelazarwolf · 1 year
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idk what trans man or trans masc needs to hear this but if ur experiences with gender or gender identity make another trans man or trans person in general uncomfortable, that is entirely not your problem.
if you’re 50 years old and have lived the majority of your life as a woman and feel comfortable calling your younger self a girl and a woman and saying you used to be a woman, and some 20 yr old trans guy says that makes him feel dysphoric bc his experience is that he’s always been a man, that’s not your problem.
if you’re medically transitioning and want to look a certain way in order to pass for safety or comfort and someone says that makes them uncomfortable because you’re “inferring men have to look a certain way to be men”, that’s not your problem.
if you can’t or don’t want to medically transition and someone says that your body gives them “secondhand dysphoria”, that’s not your problem.
if the way you experience sexuality or queerness doesn’t make sense to someone and they think your identity is a reflection of their identity, that’s not your problem.
someone else’s unresolved issues are not your problem, and if they try to make them your problem, laugh at them and then block them/walk away.
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this is by no means comprehensive, as this app has a skewed demographic to begin with, but I'm just trying to decide on whether this is a worthwhile topic for the women and gender studies project I'm doing.
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shitacademicswrite · 9 months
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we-the-human · 8 months
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If you asked me if I had a pet and I said “yes, I have a stallion”, you know exactly what I am talking about.
I have a male horse. That is his definition. Just a word that describes him based on his sex and his species.
That doesn’t mean that’s ALL I see him as. He could be my best friend, my confidant, and we provide each other affection and happiness. I would groom and clean him, feed him, take him out riding everyday, bond with him. I would treat him when he’s sick - pay thousands of dollars to treat an injury or infection. He’s my best buddy and I love him. He is a Stallion, but his definition is not what he is to me.
Other people in the world purchase stallions for one reason and one reason only. To make money and breed. Someone could purchase a stallion, put it through gruelling paces to train it to its full potential, even at the cost of his health. He would be groomed and fed only because it increases the worth of his performance and thus his sperm. The only things he gets is to further his usefulness as either a horse whose actions directly make money, including his genetic material. He is not given affection or love outside of this. If he became injured, he would be put down. This is someone who only treats a stallion as his definition - a male horse capable of producing sperm that can be exchanged for money.
A man is a human male. He is in possession of a Y chromosome(s). His genetic instructions will attempt to create sperm. He may or may not succeed. He will NEVER produce ova.
A woman is a human female. She is only in possession of X chromosomes. Her genetic instructions will attempt to create ova. She may or may not succeed. She will NEVER produce sperm.
I do not see men and women as their definitions. We are people with feelings and dreams and lives.
Some people DO see others as simply a means of reproduction - mostly men in regards to women across the world. Our sex is what we are oppressed by. It is not all we are, it is just that some people want to own us simply for being women - like the stallion. CONTINUING to define man and woman on the basis of species and sex is important because sex is the basis on which women are oppressed and if we can’t define our oppression and make policies off that then we will devolve.
We have a definition for men. We have a definition for women. This is all that is, a definition.
No one can be both. No one can switch between the two.
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she-is-ovarit · 9 months
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Trans research and scientific consensus
(2020) - Study of 139,829 students finds that in comparison to other students, transgender identity, especially non-binary identity, is associated more with perpetrating bullying than being bullied. Non-binary identity was most strongly associated with involvement in bullying, followed by [transgender] opposite sex identity and cisgender identity. 
(2023) 21 leading experts on pediatric gender medicine from 8 countries wrote a letter to Wall Street Journal expressing disagreement over how gender dysphoria in youth is treated, voicing concerns against things such as the affirmative model and research conducted outside of the US has found hormonal interventions for gender dysphoria to be without reliable evidence. Among these international experts is Dr. Rita Kaltiala, chief psychiatrist at Tampere university gender clinic and author of several peer-reviewed studies on trans medicine and Finland's top authority on pediatric gender care.
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(2023) Landmark study from Denmark on 3,800 transgender patients pulled data from hospital records and applications from legal gender changes and discovered 43% of this group had a psychiatric illness compared with 7% of non-trans group, and despite "gender affirming care" and legal gender changes, still had 7.7 the rate of suicide attempts and 3.5 times the rate of suicide deaths. Researchers state this rate is likely even higher due to missing data.
(2016) Study finds association with increased risk of multiple sclerosis for trans women taking estrogen/reducing testosterone levels.
(2023) Metadata study shows, at best, no improvement for patients in gender-affirming care. "The conclusions of the systematic reviews of evidence for adolescents are consistent with long-term adult studies, which failed to show credible improvements in mental health and suggested a pattern of treatment-associated harms. Three recent papers examined the studies that underpin the practice of youth gender transition and found the research to be deeply flawed. Evidence does not support the notion that “affirmative care” of today’s adolescents is net beneficial."
(2011) Long term follow up of 324 transgender people having undergone sex reassignment surgery in Sweden, found that trans women retained male patterned incidents and rates of violence and had a greater significance and rate of rape and sexual violence than cisgender men. The study also found, "Persons with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population. Our findings suggest that sex reassignment, although alleviating gender dysphoria, may not suffice as treatment for transsexualism, and should inspire improved psychiatric and somatic care after sex reassignment for this patient group."
(2020) Largest study to date on 641,860 people finds association with autism and "gender diversity", "Gender-diverse people also report, on average, more traits associated with autism, such as sensory difficulties, pattern-recognition skills and lower rates of empathy — or accurately understanding and responding to another person’s emotional state".
(2022) US study examining 10 years of data on 952 people finds large percentages of young adults prescribed hormones for trans identity no longer getting the drugs 4 years later. Discontinuation rate for both sexes combined = 30%. Female discontinuation rate as high as 44%. The standard disinformation pushed is that only 1-2% of people who begin medical transition end up desisting. But these figures show that in this cohort of young adults, the overall rate of discontinuing hormone treatment ranged from a low of 10% to a high of 44% within a space of just 4 years.
Abruzzese et al. 2023 'The Myth of “Reliable Research” in Pediatric Gender Medicine: A critical evaluation of the Dutch Studies—and research that has followed'
More to come.
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thebutchtheory · 1 year
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i find it so disingenuous that some people act like transmasculine people can't relate to transfem people.
transmasculine people, GNC cis women and butches, for *years*, have been writing about how they are seen as predatory in the women's restrooms because they 'look like men' or 'don't look woman enough' to be in there. i personally have experienced dirty looks and weird stares in the women's restroom as an openly butch person AFAB.
there are countless videos of cis women being removed from women's restrooms because they don't look 'woman enough' to be in there to take a leak. a video of a cis lesbian actually went viral for this.
there's a song by tribe 8, a lesbian queercore band, titled 'wrong bathroom' about these women not looking 'woman enough' to be able to use the women's restroom.
s. bear bergman has an essay titled 'tranny bladder', in hir book, 'butch is a noun', about how ze has been forced to be able to hold it instead of choosing to use the women's restroom because of how ze has been harassed in the women's restroom in the past over not looking quite 'woman enough', same for the men's restroom.
leslie feinberg wrote in hir book 'stone butch blues' about how the main character, jess, (butch) and her friend, ruth, (a trans woman), would declare that 'the world is our restroom' because of how they would rather use it on the side of the road than continue to be harassed in public restrooms about their presentations, assumed to be predatory.
like, do people just think that transmasculine people are not seen as predatory at all?
trans women are hypervisible and that definitely leads to them being labeled as predatory in a much more visible manner, but just because you don't see it, just because it may not be reported on as much or go viral, does not mean that transmasculine people aren't seen as predatory, and the idea that we can't be seen as predatory or that we have some sort of special privilege that means we're somehow not seen as predatory by society is, frankly, dangerous, especially for younger transmasculine people, who are going to experience a pretty rude awakening in the real world when they get questioned and harassed or even removed for not looking 'female enough' to use the women's restroom.
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liberaljane · 9 months
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"We need guarantees of safety, resources, and liberation for all."
-Kylie Cheung, Survivor Injustice (2023)
Digital illustration of an older Black fem sitting on a wood chair. She's wearing a purple blazer with matching shorts, a green turtleneck and white boots with fishnet socks. She has box braids and gold jewelry. Text reads, 'gender based violence is an inherently political issue.'
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typhlonectes · 9 months
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8-rock · 1 month
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GENDER STUDIES is out now! 🎉
A comic treatment of the challenges, complexities, and occasional absurdity of life at the crossroads of race, gender, and geekiness.
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spacelazarwolf · 2 years
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maybe it’s just me but i feel like there’s no way to make “lol she’s clearly an egg” jokes abt cis men who you think are feminine or are exploring their gender presentation while groups like east asian men and jewish men are routinely called effeminate in derogatory and racist/antisemitic ways and stripped of their manhood. we can’t preach “clothes don’t have gender!!!!!! men can wear dresses and makeup too!!!!!!!!” then call a man a closeted trans woman the second he puts on a skirt.
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regulusrules · 13 days
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Yo, I saw your post about orientalism in relation to the "hollywood middle-east" tiktok!
How can a rando and university dropout get into and learn more about? Any literature or other content to recommend?
Hi!! Wow, you have no idea how you just pressed a button. I'll unleash 5+ years on you. And I'll even add for you open-sourced works that you can access as much as I can!
1. Videos
I often find this is the best medium nowadays to learn anything! I'll share with you some of the best that deal with the topic in different frames
• This is a video of Edward Said talking about his book, Orientalism. Said is the Palestinian- American critic who first introduced the term Orientalism, and is the father of postcolonial studies as a critical literary theory. In this book, you’ll find an in-depth analysis of the concept and a deconstruction of western stereotypes. It’s very simple and he explains everything in a very easy manner.
• How Islam Saved Western Civilization. A more than brilliant lecture by Professor Roy Casagranda. This, in my opinion, is one of the best lectures that gives credit to this great civilization, and takes you on a journey to understand where did it all start from.
• What’s better than a well-researched, general overview Crash Course about Islam by John Green? This is not necessarily on orientalism but for people to know more about the fundamental basis of Islam and its pillars. I love the whole playlist that they have done about the religion, so definitely refer to it if you're looking to understand more about the historical background! Also, I can’t possibly mention this Crash Course series without mentioning ... ↓
• The Medieval Islamicate World. Arguably my favourite CC video of all times. Hank Green gives you a great thorough depiction of the Islamic civilization when it rose. He also discusses the scientific and literary advancements that happened in that age, which most people have no clue about! And honestly, just his excitement while explaining the astrolabe. These two truly enlightened so many people with the videos they've made. Thanks, @sizzlingsandwichperfection-blog
2. Documentaries
• This is an AMAZING documentary called Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Villifies A People by the genius American media critic Jack Shaheen. He literally analysed more than 1000 movies and handpicked some to showcase the terribly false stereotypes in western depiction of Arab/Muslim cultures. It's the best way to go into the subject, because you'll find him analysing works you're familiar with like Aladdin and all sorts.
• Spain’s Islamic Legacy. I cannot let this opportunity go to waste since one of my main scopes is studying feminist Andalusian history. There are literal gems to be known about this period of time, when religious coexistence is documented to have actually existed. This documentary offers a needed break from eurocentric perspectives, a great bird-view of the Islamic civilization in Europe and its remaining legacy (that western history tries so hard to erase).
• When the Moors Ruled in Europe. This is one of the richest documentaries that covers most of the veiled history of Al-Andalus (Muslim Spain). Bettany Hughes discusses some of the prominent rulers, the brilliance of architecture in the Arab Muslim world, their originality and contributions to poetry and music, their innovative inventions and scientific development, and lastly, La Reconquista; the eventual fall and erasure of this grand civilization by western rulers.
3. Books
• Rethinking Orientalism by Reina Lewis. Lewis brilliantly breaks the prevailing stereotype of the “Harem”, yk, this stupid thought westerns projected about arab women being shut inside one room, not allowed to go anywhere from it, enslaved and without liberty, just left there for the sexual desires of the male figures, subjugated and silenced. It's a great read because it also takes the account of five different women living in the middle east.
• Nocturnal Poetics by Ferial Ghazoul. A great comparative text to understand the influence and outreach of The Thousand and One Nights. She applies a modern critical methodology to explore this classic literary masterpiece.
• The Question of Palestine by Edward Said. Since it's absolutely relevant, this is a great book if you're looking to understand more about the Palestinian situation and a great way to actually see the perspective of Palestinians themselves, not what we think they think.
• Arab-American Women's Writing and Performance by S.S. Sabry. One of my favourite feminist dealings with the idea of the orient and how western depictions demeaned arab women by objectifying them and degrading them to objects of sexual desire, like Scheherazade's characterization: how she was made into a sensual seducer, but not the literate, brilliantly smart woman of wisdom she was in the eastern retellings. The book also discusses the idea of identity and people who live on the hyphen (between two cultures), which is a very crucial aspect to understand arabs who are born/living in western countries.
• The Story of the Moors in Spain by Stanley Lane-Poole. This is a great book if you're trying to understand the influence of Islamic culture on Europe. It debunks this idea that Muslims are senseless, barbaric people who needed "civilizing" and instead showcases their brilliant civilization that was much advanced than any of Europe in the time Europe was labelled by the Dark Ages. (btw, did you know that arabic was the language of knowledge at that time? Because anyone who was looking to study advanced sciences, maths, philosophy, astronomy etc, had to know arabic because arabic-speaking countries were the center of knowledge and scientific advancements. Insane, right!)
• Convivencia and Medieval Spain. This is a collection of essays that delve further into the idea of “Convivencia”, which is what we call for religious coexistence. There's one essay in particular that's great called Were Women Part of Convivencia? which debunks all false western stereotypical images of women being less in Islamic belief. It also highlights how arab women have always been extremely cultured and literate. (They practiced medicine, studied their desired subjects, were writers of poetry and prose when women in Europe couldn't even keep their surnames when they married.)
4. Novels / Epistolaries
• Granada by Radwa Ashour. This is one of my favourite novels of all time, because Ashour brilliantly showcases Andalusian history and documents the injustices and massacres that happened to Muslims then. It covers the cultural erasure of Granada, and is also a story of human connection and beautiful family dynamics that utterly touches your soul.
• Dreams of Trespass by Fatema Mernissi. This is wonderful short read written in autobiographical form. It deconstructs the idea of the Harem in a postcolonial feminist lens of the French colonization of Morocco.
• Scheherazade Goes West by Mernissi. Mernissi brilliantly showcases the sexualisation of female figures by western depictions. It's very telling, really, and a very important reference to understand how the west often depicts middle-eastern women by boxing them into either the erotic, sensual beings or the oppressed, black-veiled beings. It helps you understand the actual real image of arab women out there (who are not just muslims btw; christian, jew, atheist, etc women do exist, and they do count).
• Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. This is a feminist travel epistolary of a British woman which covers the misconceptions that western people, (specifically male travelers) had recorded and transmitted about the religion, traditions and treatment of women in Constantinople, Turkey. It is also a very insightful sapphic text that explores her own engagement with women there, which debunks the idea that there are no queer people in the middle east.
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With all of these, you'll get an insight about the real arab / islamic world. Not the one of fanaticism and barbarity that is often mediated, but the actual one that is based on the fundamental essences of peace, love, and acceptance.
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khalidistan · 10 months
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It seems like every year I end up writing an iteration of the same idea. But here I am! Writing it again! If you haven’t seen the tweet that sparked this conversation, I’ve screenshotted the tweet and artwork below. It’ll help inform this discussion. Full piece under the cut.
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It would help to check out my essay from 2021 about the emasculation of Abdul Ali from Squid Game, since both pieces share similar references.
Maryam Khalid writes “Orientalist notions of the masculinity of the ‘Eastern’ male as uncivilized also inherently ascribe primitiveness, ineptness and a certain amount of weakness to the barbarized ‘other.’” Those doomed to the mythical Orient are automatically placed lower in masculinity than their white and colonial counterparts.
The reason for this emasculation is to defang them, to ensure they can never attain the same power conferred by white masculinity and to maintain racial purity: “This feminizing divests the male body of its virility and thus compromises its power not only to penetrate and reproduce its own nation (our women), but to contaminate the other's nation (their women) as well” (Puar, 99).
To be South Asian is to be pathologically queer, irrespective of the one’s true sexual orientation. “The Orient becomes a living tableau of queerness” by virtue of being from the Orient (Said, 103). There is already a robust amount of artwork depicting Pavitr with tons of gold jewelry and piercings, which to the West are typically feminine accessories. This essentially reduces Pavitr to a stereotype of South Asian culture.
Fanworks use the bejeweled, indulgent, exotic, and sultry attitude as a short-hand for their perception of South Asia. They are “caricatures stripped from movies like Disney’s Aladdin, the Arcana or people’s sexual fantasies about our men,” as allahrakhi writes in her essay on fandom's reception of Claude von Riegan from Fire Emblem: Three Houses, a character similarly mischaracterized by virtue of his brown identity.
Puar describes that the (implied white) nation defines “upright, domesticatable queernesses that mimic and recenter liberal subjecthood, and out-of-control, untetherable queernesses” (47). Nonwhite queerness is “untetherable,” leaving white queerness as “domesticatable.” This inability to engage brown queerness forces brown queer people to assimilate into white queerness.
In fandom’s and society’s mind, there is no such thing as a queer South Asian without them discarding their brown identity and adopting white queer practices, behaviors, and aesthetics. Queer South Asians are “either liberated (and the United States and Europe are often the scene of this liberation) or can only have an irrational, pathological sexuality of queerness” (Puar, 13).
Which brings us to the recent depictions of Pavitr in fanworks, stripping him of his masculinities to render him as a vapid, neutered, and yes, whitewashed queer boy, completely unrecognizable from the source material.
Interestingly, this reduced masculinity co-exists, paradoxically, with the idea that men from the Orient are simultaneously aggressive, belligerent, and violent. Elgin Brunner writes: “Such a framing—the association of the enemy with barbarism, as opposed to the self, which is civilized—includes two, often simultaneous, moves, that is: the ‘hypermasculinization’ of the enemy on the one hand, and his ‘effeminization’ on the other… The very same opponent is, by virtue of being categorized as a cowardly barbarian, rendered effeminate.”
The flip side of the effeminate brown man is the hypermasculine brown man, which can be seen through Miguel, one of Across the Spider-Verse’s antagonists. Both instances of brown masculinity confiscate personhood from characters who would have otherwise offered rich, nuanced, interesting perspectives to the story and to the audience.
It would be myopic of me to not mention the implicit genderings of other nonwhite ethnicities in this discussion. Brown men hold a unique positionality to other nonwhite men in a racial triangulation I’d like to examine further in another essay for the future. Brown men can either be gendered the way that East Asians are (feminine, asexual, neutered, timid, obedient) or the way that Black people are (hypersexual, predatory, dangerous, aggressive). Both misgenderings are in opposition to the “ideal” male gender, which is of course, the white man. This fallacy is why we see Hobie depicted as cruel, mean, and irritated in the exact same artwork from earlier.
Many people in this artist’s quoted replies have accused the artist of being white. I have seen some criticisms of the backlash, that people shouldn’t assume the artist’s ethnicity. I think both opinions miss the point: anyone can be orientalist. Membership within a nonwhite ethnic identity does not absolve the individual of perpetuating orientalist or racist depictions of characters of color.
As Edward Saïd said, “Everyone who writes about the Orient must locate himself vis-a-vis the Orient” (Orientalism, 20). That is to say, if you write and depict the Orient and people from the Orient, you have to consider your positionality in relation to the Orient. Naturally, this would mean that white people should always be cognizant of their depictions of Orientals. But East Asians can also orientalize, whether it is other ethnic groups like South Asians; or self-orientalization. Similar can be said for South Asians who self-orientalize.
Khalid writes “Gendered identities do not exist independently of other factors, and must be viewed as intertwined with, for example, race or ethnicity if we are to understand the hierarchical organization of identities.” There is no examination of gender without an accompanying racial context. And Pavitr’s emasculation in fandom certainly requires a critical eye for both race and gender, lest we repeat the same dehumanizing characterizations of him in further fanworks.
Works Consulted:
Brunner, E. M. (2008). Consoling display of strength or emotional overstrain? the gendered framing of the early “War on terrorism” in transatlantic comparison. Global Society, 22(2), 217–251. https://doi.org/10.1080/13600820801887223
Khalid, M. (2011). Gender, orientalism and representations of the ‘other’ in the War on Terror. Global Change, Peace & Security, 23(1), 15–29. https://doi.org/10.1080/14781158.2011.540092
Puar J. K. (2007). Terrorist Assemblages: homonationalism in queer times. Duke University Press.
Said, E. W. (1994). Orientalism. 25th anniversary edition. With a new preface by the author. New York, Vintage Books.
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leministfesbian · 27 days
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“Scholars of today’s prevailing feminist theory and its adjunct, queer theory, call for questioning all categories, disrupting gender binaries, halting separations; and women have been a casualty. After some acrimonious debate, Georgetown changed the name of its women’s studies program to Women’s and Gender Studies, hoping to attract more majors, and to appeal to those students who were male or trans-identified: worthy goals, but suggesting that a focus on women alone is no longer relevant or sustainable.
The change was made after a semester of studying the issue together, during which one professor declared (to an all-female faculty gathering) that she taught her students there was no such thing as a woman. Another colleague amended, “And aren’t all of us here to destabilize and problematize the concept of woman?”
As we went around the room and introduced our areas of research, I explained that my own specialization was history—what women have done, regardless of how they are identified now—to which someone responded, ‘There’s already too much history offered here.” But another colleague whispered, ‘God! After all the struggle to get women taken seriously as a research subject …’”
– Bonnie J. Morris, The Disappearing L: Erasure of Lesbian Spaces and Culture (2016)
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chronivore · 2 months
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