Tag Archives: gender and sexuality

Quick Hit: The Date that Never Was?

28 Thursday Jan 2010

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I was catching up on my RhRealityCheck podcasts while doing data entry at work yesterday, and heard Amanda Marcotte do a great analysis of author Laura Sessions Stepp’s vision of ideal hetero romance, which basically imagines all people (and specifically adolescents and college-age young adults) to have the income levels of established, upper-middle-class adults:

Hey, I’ve seen movies about young adults in the 50s and 60s. It was mostly necking in the car, going to dances and bars, and getting cheap food. What Sessions Stepp is doing here is incredibly sleazy. She’s feeding young women an image of dating that’s borrowed from what people do now in their mid 20s and beyond, when they have jobs and feel less awkward wearing grown-up clothes. But she’s pretending that those kinds of dates are something very young women did in the past. In reality, dinner dates and high heels are part of the future, their futures. Everyone I know who was drinking beer and watching videos in their college years on dates, and most of us became the sort of people who go to concerts, drink liquor, and eat expensive food on dates when we had, you know, jobs.

I’d actually take the critique further and point out that even in one’s mid-twenties and beyond, the high-heels “dinner date” ideal Sessions-Stepp puts forward as the only legitimate scenario for courtship is hardly everyone’s ideal way to spend quality time with their significant other. Setting aside the question of disposable income (lots of adults don’t have that kind of money — whether because they’ve lost their job, are still in school, or are stretching their salaries to pay for necessary expenses) I’d like to ask Sessions-Stepp why I should want to grow out of an evening at home with my girlfriend cuddling in comfy clothes and watching the latest episode of Sarah Jane Adventures over an open bottle of Charles Shaw merlot?

booknotes: "virginity is not the opposite of sex"

27 Wednesday Jan 2010

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On the last weekend before the official start of the semester (when one is “thesising” there really is not any official start . . . it just keeps on going ’til you turn in that final draft) I picked up what often consistutes my “non-required” leisure reading: nonfiction works on sex and gender. Not that it’s the only thing that catches my fancy; in the past couple of weeks, I’ve also dipped into Hanna’s manga collection (Fushigi Yugi and Revolutionary Girl Utena which I’d been meaning to read for going on four years) as well as Tom Stoppard and Andrea Barrett. But then I was at the bookstore the other day and Hanne Blank’s Virgin: The Untouched History (2007) caught my eye.

My historian’s heart is always warmed by the promise of de-normalizaton: the ability of an author to take an idea or practice so ubiquitous in our culture that it is considered inevitable, “natural,” and common-sensical and persuade us to ask “why?” Why do we believe there is such a state — physical and metaphysical — as virginity? What, exactly, do we believe constitutes virginity or proof of virginity? And what if it became clear that virginity, in fact, does not materially exist . . . but is, in fact, a conceptual way of organizing human sexuality that has varied in detail enormously across time and place? This is the story Hanne Blank sets out to tell (however briefly) in her three-hundred page book: the story of how the non-existent thing called “virginity” has nonetheless come to exert enormous power over human thought and practice concerning sexuality — and specifically female sexuality.

I can’t say this book offered any huge revelations to the reader (me); though I’ve not read any other book-length treatments of this specific subject, I’ve certainly read enough histories of human sexuality and women’s sexuality specifically to understand that much of what we consider to be immutable fact about sex actually resides, under closer examination, in the slippery realm of ideological work: the various systems of thought human beings construct to make sense of the world and their experience within it. As Blank notes in her opening sentence, “by any material reckoning, virginity does not exist.” Yet humans have, across the centuries and around the globe, devised elaborate methods for determining virgin status that made sense to them in the context of their own belief systems. Why they have felt compelled to do this is the recurring (possibly unanswerable) question at the heart of Blank’s narrative.

I think what I found most thought-provoking about Virgin was Blank’s suggestion that “virgin” is actually a sexual identity that is taken up and performed quasi-separately from the individual’s actual embodied sexual experience — and that that identity contains within it multiple and often contradictory meanings. Blank suggests that there is something of a “virginity void” that exists in the world, allowing the concept of virginity to flourish through lack of examination: it is presumed to exist and we all assume we understand how it works, so our beliefs about it remain unchallenged — yet if we start to ask “why” we realize how disparate and often contradictory our understandings of virginity really are. For example, what do we make of the story Blank tells of a young English woman, Rosie Reid, who — despite being open about her identity as a lesbian in a long-term relationship with another woman — auctioned her “virginity” off on eBay to the highest bidder, making $14,500 in exchange for sex with a man who, presumably, believed that despite a sexually-active relationship Reid was still a virgin because she had not experienced penetrative heterosexual intercourse (pp. 9-12).

Most interesting to me, as a feminist scholar, is Blank’s suggestion that what she terms “parthenophilia” — or the eroticization of sexual innocence — is so normalized in our culture that we fail to study it,

Despite the strength and breadth of the erotic interest taken in virginity in our culture . . . the erotic desire for virginity has been continually avoided as a subject of intellectual and clinical inquiry, as if there were no reason to ask and nothing that could possibly be learned by asking.

The virginity void exists on the other side of the fence as well. As little as we know about the erotic desire for virginity, we know even less about the erotic lives of virgins. Specifically, we know very little about how virgins themselves might understand themselves to exist as erotic objects or how they might themselves be erotically affected by the mythology of the erotic virgin that so permeates the culture. Virgins are not exempt from the mythologies of their own sexual status, after all. A virgin may well be every bit as erotically caught up in the implications of her own sexual status as the man who fantasizes about popping her cherry, but she is even less likely than he to be asked about it . . .

Virginity is not the opposite of sex. Rather, it is its own unique and uniquely troublesome sexual entity.

The idea that abstaining from sex is, in itself, a sexual practice has no doubt been argued before yet possibly it has not yet been examined in tandem with the closed-related (though not identical) concept of virginity.

On a related note: those of you interested in a more contemporary analysis of how virginity works in American culture would do well to check out Jessica Valenti’s The Purity Myth (2009) which focuses specifically on the policing of adolescent female sexuality — largely through narratives of virginity and sexual “purity.”

Call for Participants: Our Bodies, Ourselves revision

26 Tuesday Jan 2010

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From Our Bodies, Ourselves:

Our Bodies Ourselves is seeking up to two dozen women to participate in an online discussion on sexual relationships.

Stories and comments may be used anonymously in the next edition of “Our Bodies, Ourselves,” which will be published in 2011 by Simon & Schuster.

We are seeking the experience and wisdom of heterosexual, lesbian, bisexual, queer and trans women. Perspectives from single women are encouraged, and you may define relationship as it applies to you, from monogamy to multiple partners. We are committed to including women of color, women with disabilities, and women of many ages and backgrounds.

In the words of the brilliant anthology “Yes Means Yes,” how can we consistently engage in more positive experiences? What issues deserve more attention? And how do we address social inequities and violence against women? These are some of the guiding questions that will help us to update the relationships section in “Our Bodies, Ourselves.”

The conversation will start Sunday, Feb. 14 (yes, Valentine’s Day) and stay open through Friday, March 12.

Please click through to the OBOS website for more details and contact information, and pass this call along to anyone you think would be interested.

sunday smut: links on sex and gender (no. 8)

24 Sunday Jan 2010

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To lead off, this past Friday (January 22nd) was the 37th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision and thus Blog for Choice day. I’m still reading my way through all the thoughtful, passionate posts that were written by participants, but in the meantime I thought I’d share some of the round-ups that highlight contributions from around the web.

The Blog for Choice website put together posts throughout the day that excerpted posts; see What We’re Reading, More and More Blogs for Choice, What NARAL Staff and Friends are Saying, More Pro-Choice Blogging, What “Trust Women” Means to Heidi from SisterSong and Posts Keep On Coming….

Vanessa did a similar round-up at Feministing as did Rachel at Women’s Health News (on a small full-disclosure note, they both linked to my own post from yesterday — thanks for the love ladies, and I’m glad what I said made sense to someone outside my own skull!).

I’m (fingers crossed!) going to read my way through all of these during the coming week, and hope to share some of my own favorites next weekend. Meanwhile, here are the rest of your “sunday smut” for this week.

Hanna read and reviewed a biography of Athenais de Montespan, mistress to Louis XIV, and writes in her post about how the author felt compelled to critique the physical appearance of her historical characters.

Steerforth @ Age of Uncertainty shares with us the nineteenth-century perils of novel reading for women.

Nathan Schneider @ Killing the Buddha ruminates on sexual privacy in the age of the internet, and how “changing the balance of what’s hidden and what’s seen will also change what’s hot.”

Jessica Valenti of Feministing, over at her personal blog, offered some great observations about the damage elitism can do, even in the name of values (for example, gender equality) we believe in: “And that’s what really irks me about this kind of elitism – how some people talk of breaking down power structures while simultaneously using feminist rhetoric to place themselves at the top of a new intellectual feminist hierarchy that does nothing to further justice.”

Coming & Crying: Real Stories About Sex From the Other Side of the Bed is the tentative title of a book project by Melissa Gira Grant and Meaghan O’Connell, described as “a collection of stories (and photographs) from the messy, awkward, hilarious, painful, and ultimately true side of sex.”

“When a friend is sick, you bring her soup. When she loses a loved one, you bring her flowers. But what do you do when she has an abortion?” Before Blog for Choice day, Chloe @ Feministing offered some thoughts on a new script for talking about abortion.

Hanna passed along this respone in the Guardian to a woman who wrote in asking about the ethics of sexual experimentation.

The BBC is trying to evaluate its GLBT programming; Stephen Brook lets us know what he thinks in a recent op-ed titled BBC to ask homophobes what they think of its coverage of gay people. As Hanna pointed out, if only they’d renew Torchwood for another season they’d have their bases covered!

The National Sexuality Resource Center posted a video of author Carol Joffe speaking about reproductive rights and justice in The Emotion Work of Reproductive Health Specialists (50:32 video).

Over at the New Yorker, Margaret Talbot writes about Perry v. Schwarzenegger (the Proposition 8 case headed to the Supreme Court) in A Risky Proposal. Terry Gross also interviewed Talbot on Fresh Air this week; if you have time the audio interview is worth listening to (a transcript is also provided).

EastSideKate @ Shakesville poses questions about the euphemisms for masturbation in our culture.

And finally, something to look forward to: The Guardian reports that Focus on the Family has bought time during the Superbowl to broadcast a reportedly anti-choice television ad. Stay tuned for further outrageous developments ;).

*image credit: Life drawing couple by Philip by life drawing london @ Flickr.com.

Blog for Choice: The Radical Act of Trusting Others

22 Friday Jan 2010

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Today is Blog for Choice Day 2010, coordinated by NARAL Pro-Choice America. I somehow missed the 2009 action day, but you can read my 2008 Blog for Choice post, The Radical Idea that I am a Person, in the blog archive.


So when I told Hanna that this year’s theme for Blog for Choice Day was “trust women,” her first response was “Are you fucking kidding me?! What a ridiculous statement! Jeeze — ask anyone who’s gone through a dyke break-up. Never trust women! Especially when they have the ability to make vital documents, irreplaceable vhs tapes, and cookbooks disappear!”

Which made me stop and think about what the theme implies. Because, to be honest, my own first response to the exhortation to “trust women” was not unlike Hanna’s: what do you mean “trust women”? Just . . . because? Because they’re women? Why should I? ‘Cause women are only human after all: some trustworthy, some profoundly not. Which, to me, is both [the most obvious and the most radical claim of feminism]: that women are only human. And human beings run the gamut from completely trustworthy to completely untrustworthy and every point between. Ergo women, as individuals, are only as worthy of trust as our individual past and present actions warrant.

So why, then, is it important for pro-choice activists to make the case for trusting women? And what, exactly, does it mean to “trust women” in the specific context of reproductive rights?

I would argue that it is precisely because women — particularly pregnant women — as a class are not really seen as fully human that the idea of trusting them with moral and medical decision-making continues to be such a radical notion. Setting aside for a minute the question of abortion per se, within the past week I have seen multiple stories about pregnant women’s right to bodily integrity and ability to consent to medical procedures challenged or violated with the support of the state. There was the story of Samantha Burton whose doctor got a court order to confine her in a hospital bed against her will when she disagreed with him about how best to proceed with her pregnancy care. A woman in Australia was visited by police when she resisted having her labor induced with the controversial drug pitocin. There have been a number of stories concerning the physical restraint of birthing women in prisons, who are often not able to labor in optimal positions because they’re shackled to their beds. As I’ve written previously, women shouldn’t have to give up their basic rights to bodily integrity and medical decision-making when they become pregnant, but the legal and cultural climate in the United States is such these days that many of us fear that’s precisely what will happen.

So when we chellenge folks to “trust women,” in part we’re demanding to merely be treated with the amount of trust that adult citizens in America have a right to expect: a legal and social framework that “trusts” individuals with decisions regarding their own personal physical well-being and medical decision-making. That trusts us to make informed decisions. Yet over and over again, anti-choice activists have made it clear that they don’t trust women. They fight to pass legislation that mandates physicians lie to us about our bodies, they harass us at clinics that provide health services and attempt to mislead us by dressing as clinic workers. If we trust women with the power to make decisions about their own well-being, these anti-choice activists seem to imply, the world will disintegrate before our very eyes.

Which brings me to the other implication of choosing to “trust women” with their reproductive agency. And I use the phrase “choosing to trust women” deliberately. Trusting other people with the agency to live their own lives is not necessarily something that comes easily to us: as human beings we often thrive on feeling in control of our environment (and by extension the people around us). Control can make us feel safe. But life simply doesn’t work like that: we could drive ourselves mad attempting to control the lives and decisions of others — and in the end, it would not make our lives richer or safer.

Choosing to “trust women,” then, is choosing to “trust others”: letting go of the burden of decisions that are not ours to make, and allowing those whose lives they directly affect (and who are best positioned to understand the ramifications of a given choice) to bear that responsibility. Because that’s what being human requires: rights and responsibilities.

Last sunday I shared a link to a beautiful essay from The Guardian by a vicar, David Bryant, who had recently counseled a woman trying to decide whether or not to seek an abortion. His essay is worth reading in full, but I would like to quote here the final two paragraphs,

One of the blessings of our humanity is that we have a conscience. To opt out of using such a priceless gift is irresponsible. Of course there are immense dangers here. We may make ill-guided decisions. Our thinking may be warped and skewed. On occasion we will follow a course of action so crass or unsociable that it brings us up before the magistrate. But if we allow the church, the nanny state, the media or popular opinion to become our conscience, we lose our moral integrity.

I had no easy answers for the woman. All I could offer was compassion in her grief and sympathy for the agony of choice that lay ahead. We fixed a meeting for the following day, but I never saw her again. True, I had been non-directive, but I could be none other. “I am responsible for my very desire of fleeing responsibilities,” said Jean-Paul Sartre. I believe he was right. That is why I could not decide the fate of the foetus for her.

What I appreciate so much about Bryant’s argument is that he refuses to retreat to the (legitimate, but limited) language of legal rights, instead challenging us to see that trusting women with the responsibility of making deeply challenging moral decisions is not only a legal imperative but a moral (dare I say “religious”?) one.

So when a pro-choice activist says to you “trust women,” pause for a moment and hear it for the truly radical challenge it is: a call to let go of the all-too-human impulse to control, and to allow some of the burden of responsibility to be lifted from your shoulders and taken on by someone else — someone whom you might not know enough to personally trust, but whom you must share this earth with, and who may well surprise you with her ability to make the decision that is, in the end, the most life-giving for us all.

After all: in the end, what other choice do we have?

*image credit: amor! by slickerdrip @ flickr.com.

quick hit: dahlia does it again

18 Monday Jan 2010

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Dahlia Lithwick on the Supreme Court’s decision to ban broadcast of the circuit court trial of Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the legal challenge to Proposition 8 which overturned California’s earlier law legalizing same-sex marriage.

Perry v. Schwarzenegger promises to be a sprawling exploration of every aspect of the fight over gay marriage. But beneath all of the social-science testimony and constitutional nitpicking lies a deep institutional anxiety about whether California’s voters or unelected federal judges should be the arbiters of what marriage means. Opponents of liberal jurisprudence, and their pushy push to legalize gay marriage, have long argued against allowing unelected, sherry-sipping judges to substitute their values for those of the American people. As an argument, this has legs. It’s populist. It’s catchy. But it’s hard to take it seriously when the same people making it also come out strongly against letting the people watch trials.

. . .

The absurdity of the court’s meaningless distinction between broadcasting high-profile vs. low-profile cases is highlighted by the Supreme Court’s own broadcasting policy: The court only provides same-day audio-casting of its own oral arguments that are of major public importance, or, as the court puts it, if there is a “heightened public interest” in the case. So, to be perfectly clear: The court only provides same-day broadcast in its most contentious, hot-button cases, but when the 9th Circuit attempts to do the same, the justices run away shrieking.

. . .

Putting aside the merits of the gay-marriage trial itself, in this new decision the Supreme Court has revealed something profound about its view of the American people. One cannot argue that the majority of California citizens wanted to ban gay marriage and should be respected while also claiming that supporters of such an initiative are a fragile, oppressed minority who must testify in dark sunglasses in dark rooms. Opponents of gay marriage can’t have it both ways. If they want to say that unelected federal judges cannot subvert the will of John Q. Voter, then they cannot also insist that John Q. Voter be banned from witnessing federal judges at work.

On this Martin Luther King, Jr. day treat yourself to a mini civics lesson and go read the whole thing over at Slate.

sunday smut: links on sex and gender (no. 7)

17 Sunday Jan 2010

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Last week, Hanna found a wonderful opinion piece @ The Guardian by a vicar reflecting on his experience ministering to a woman considering abortion.

In a piece that relates to both human sexuality and information science, figleaf @ Figleaf’s Real Adult Sex muses on the challenges of making research available for public analysis when so many journals are provided through astronomically expensive databases.

Miriam @ Radical Doula asks if “choice” is a poor frame for childbirth policy.

Jessica @ Feministing asks people who are against women’s rights to stop identifying as feminists. “I don’t believe that there’s one ‘true’ feminist platform,” she writes. “A huge part of the power of feminism today is its diversity of thought and the numerous intersecting political goals of the movement. But you have to draw a line somewhere. And women who actively hurt other women and aim to limit their choices and take away their rights are just not feminists.” I would re-write that last sentence to say that people who actively hurt women and aim to limit their choices and take away their rights are just not feminists since I believe anyone can be a feminist . . . but otherwise, I’d say spot-on.

Charlie Glickman @ the Good Vibrations Magazine blog offers his own answer to the question “why use the word ‘cisgender’?”

And while we’re on the question of words, the Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) podcast series presents an hour-long research colloquium presentation on “the classification and language of gender.”

The Onion reports that a gay teenager in Louisville, Kentucky is worried he might be Christian. Setting aside the simplistic equation of “Christian” with “right-wing fundamentalist,” it’s a cute joke.

Linda Hirschman @ The Nation weighs in on the Supreme Court’s decision against televising the circuit court oral arguments over Proposition 8 (California’s same-sex marriage legislation). While tangentially a “gender and sexuality” story because of the nature of the case, I’m mostly just disappointed I won’t get to hear or see any audio or visual clips of the legal process. Let’s hope Nina Totenberg gets sent in to do NPR coverage!

Lisa @ Sociological Images points out that a stripped-down cell phone marketed for five-year-olds (yes, five-year-olds) assumes the child using the phone will be part of a two-parent, hetero family unit.

The anti-choice activist who murdered Dr. Tiller is being allowed to defend himself in court on the grounds that he killed Tiller out of the belief he was saving lives. Emily Bazelon @ Slate explains why this is a deeply problematic decision.

And Finally, Hanna and I commute passed the Planned Parenthood in our neighborhood every morning on the way to work, and often there are protesters outside — though rarely more than a handful, and often only one woman with her posters and pamphlets. Still, on the occasions when I’ve walked by at the same time as someone was trying to enter the clinic, the harassment of young women (as likely to be going in for pelvic exams and birth control as abortion services) feels invasive — even to me as a passer-by! It’s amazing to me that the folks who picket Planned Parenthood believe they are being helpful. And yet, as Jos @ Feministing wrote this week, protesters often (disturbingly) believe that’s exactly what they’re doing.

*image credit: charcoal by fairsquare @ Flickr.com.

Quick Hit: Blog for Choice 2010 (Jan 22nd)

15 Friday Jan 2010

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I just signed up for NARAL Pro-Choice America’s Blog for Choice Day 2010. The theme for this year is “Trust Women” and bloggers are asked to write a post about what the statement means to them. Now I just have to think what I’m going to say! Check out NARAL’s information about the action day for guidelines and to register your blog.

guest post: holland, hope & homosexuality

13 Wednesday Jan 2010

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A couple of weeks ago I wrote a response to Dustin Lance Black’s op-ed, describing his experience this past fall in my home town of Holland, Michigan. I also invited one of my sister’s friends, Arin Fisher — a Hope College senior in creative writing (poetry) and self-described “closet pamphleteer” who was involved trying to bring Black to campus to write a guest post about his own experience of how Holland and Hope College deal with homosexuality. Without further ado, here’s Arin.

I’m a gay cliché, especially recently. I’m now the gay who quotes Harvey Milk, gestures always with endearing melodrama, and isn’t afraid to wear ivory post-Labor Day. As you may assume, my behavior is a red-flag to hicks everywhere, especially at home in Indian River, that I’m a goddam homsexshul. I make trite jokes about the gay agenda and how, due to mail-error, the conservos always receive my copies. Fuck me.

But I wasn’t always so gay. I was the kid whose first very secret crush committed suicide, who went on short term mission trips with Global Expeditions, whose reorientation therapy failed (whose therapist’s son was gay, too, and who taught me a few of the tricks I now know), and who applied to all the conservative colleges in Michigan, including Hillsdale, and was accepted with enormous scholarships because of my promise in right-wing politics. But I chose Hope for the mentors who, like me, struggled to come to terms with their sexuality and who married women and led what many believed to be perfectly normal straight lives.

Freshman year I followed my RA, Erin, to a Gay Straight Forum meeting at a wee white house just off-campus, but then I passed the house, peaking as covertly as possible through cracks in the lacy curtains before looping back toward my dorm, spooked by the perceived threat of association and other threatening receptions from the gay people in the house. I thought quietly [righteously] that had I gone there to listen to the conversations, they’d know that I’m queer. Gawd.

Growing up in northern Michigan, I was skilled — I skirted every gay man I encountered. Those gays whose friendship I began to value, I diligently offended. All those whom I crushed on, I cut out of my life because I was Christian, and you know the story. I elegantly employed these hard-learned skills. I learned that to avoid other gay men, I must avoid situations where gay men would be present. All to say: I’m unaware of any concerted effort to dialog about sexuality apart from the Mel White battle in the late 90s as I spent a majority of the past three years praying the gay away.*

You might aim blame at me for Lance’s misinformation. I briefed him from my experience which was teleologically sub-gay until fall 2008. Now that I’m more on the front-lines in terms of having “friendly” conversations with the Dean of the Chapel and “friendly” discussions with the Dean of the Students and organizing 501c3 LGBT groups, I’m doing more research, both personal and academic, in hopes of self-informing enough to competently reflect informed LGBT students to the higher-ups at Hope and in the community. I’m happy that I’ve been able to contribute a little to the conversation, if not always in the most informed way, at least in a way that adds Dustin Lance Black and my supreme penchant for melodrama to the coveted repertoire of Hope’s self-consciousness of diversity.

~Arin Fisher.

*Editor’s footnote: “the Mel White battle” Arin refers to is the period I described briefly in an earlier post. Former Christian right activist turned gay Christian author Mel White was invited by a coalition of campus groups to speak at Hope in response to another guest speaker, Mario Bergner, a conservative ex-gay therapist, brought in by the campus ministry as part of a chapel series on Christian love.

sunday smut: links on sex and gender (no. 6)

10 Sunday Jan 2010

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“Nation’s Nipples Severely Under-Clamped, U.S. Bureau Of Masochism Reports.” As so often with the The Onion, the headline says it all.

Amanda Marcotte takes on the idea of sex addiction; I usually don’t agree with her in every particular, but I share her skepticism about the overuse of the concept.

CarnalNation reports on a new study by British Scientists claiming to prove the G spot doesn’t exist; Amanda Marcotte again weighs in as does figleaf, and xkcd (in comic strip form, of course).

Worth special mention is Rachel Kramer Bussel’s response (well worth the click-through), which mades the case for honoring the complexity of human sexuality: “I’m all for reducing anyone’s sense of inadequacy around the “right” way to have sex (including men who think they’re not superstuds because they can’t coax a woman’s G-spot out of hiding), but this is not the way to go about it. Articles which call the only evidence of the G-spot ‘a woman’s imagination’ do everyone a disservice.”

Hanna commented in her review of Sherlock Holmes on the potential homoerotic reading of the relationship between Holmes and Watson. Apparently, this potential has disturbed the copyright holder of the Conan Doyle novels (who, in my opinion, doesn’t understand much about late-nineteenth-century sexuality and homosociality). As Ben Walters writes in The Guardian,

If the film’s depictions of Holmes engaging in underground boxing bouts, rescuing damsels from occult ceremonies through brute force and diving for cover from exploding warehouses are to get a pass – if, that is, it’s fine for the physical prowess described by Conan Doyle to be ramped up a few notches – then why shouldn’t a similar process of exaggerated extrapolation apply to the intimacy unquestionably enjoyed by the detective and his sidekick in the original stories?

Anna Clark @ RhRealityCheck reports on the efforts of universities to establish enforceable standards of etiquette for sexually-active students. As Dorothy Sayers might say, “Some consideration for others is necessary in community life!”

Another book to add to my 2011 reading list is Jesus Girls: True Tales of Growing Up Female and Evangelical, reviewed by Brittany Shoot @ Feminist Review.

Jessica @ Feministing asks “is sleep a feminist issue?” and also wonders “how do you feel about feminist ‘waves’?.” As an historian, I find the “wave” analogy a pretty limiting one that ends up drawing too heavily upon mainstream stereotypes of feminist activism.

I don’t usually go in for advice columns, but I like Greta Christina’s advice @ The Blowfish blog to a young woman who, burned by an internet relationship, believes all men are liars but wants no-strings-attached sex with them anyway.

Sociological Images offers us a sociological analysis of the color “girly blue” and earns a special place in my heart for coining the phrase “fractal gender binaries.”

Amy Gates @ BlogHer writes about a Christmas “miracle” in which a laboring woman and her infant nearly die due (potentially) to a botched epidural . . . and the attending physicians are quick to cover their asses.

And finally, in the spirit of a new year, The Economist has just discovered what my U.S. Women’s History professor used to call “difference feminism” — that is, the strand of feminist thought (present in self-identified feminist philosophy and praxis since at least the 1840s) that is based on the belief that male and female human beings are innately different not just in physical parts but in their way of being in the world. So what this tells me is that The Economist has just woken up from a really, really long nap. Welcome to the 21st century guys: it’s when everything changes :).

*image credit: life drawing by fairsquare @ Flickr.com.