Fuck Yeah, Gender Studies! was set up to discuss gender, sexuality, body politics & related issues from the very personal to the universal & everything in between; to address those gender/sexuality issues that, though of great importance, get fewer column inches than they should. For more information, please use the links below.
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Currently reading:
Annabel by Kathleen Winter. Here’s the blurb:
In 1968, in a remote part of Canada, a mysterious child is born: a baby who appears to be neither fully boy nor girl, but both at once. Only three people share the secret—the baby’s parents and a trusted neighbour. Together the adults make a difficult decision: to go through surgery and raise the child as a boy named Wayne. But as Wayne grows up within the hyper-male hunting culture of his father, his shadow-self—a girl he thinks of as ‘Annabel’—is never entirely extinguished, and indeed is secretly nurtured by the women in his life. As Wayne approaches adulthood, and its emotional and physical demands, the woman inside him begins to cry out. The changes that follow are momentous not just for him, but for the three adults that have guarded his secret.
Will post a review when i’ve finished. I’ve heard positive things about it, though.
You know what? I’ll just embed the first part.
This is part one of BRILLIANT documentary Paris is Burning. The Wikipedia entry sums it up better than i could:
Paris Is Burning is a 1990 documentary film directed by Jennie Livingston. Filmed in the mid-to-late 1980s, it chronicles the ball culture of New York City and the African American, Latino, gay and transgender communities involved in it. Many consider Paris Is Burning to be an invaluable documentary of the end of the “Golden Age” of New York City drag balls, as well as a thoughtful exploration of race, class, and gender in America.
Feminist Frequency: Women in Refrigerators
Feminist Frequency examines comic book/wider pop culture trope of violence against women as a mode of masculine enhancement.
Study by London Metropolitan University.
[…] Because women are much less likely to sexually abuse teens than are men, those rare cases that do feature female defendants tend to attract lots of media attention – particularly when the woman involved is relatively young and conventionally attractive. Invariably, someone will suggest that the boys involved were lucky, and that rather than being abused, they had lived out every straight teen guy’s fantasy of nailing the hot teacher. When, as in this Ohio case, the boys involved are described as distraught at what had happened to them, there’s often a sense of disbelief. How could normal red-blooded American boys be upset about the fact that they got laid?
[…]
Being legally considered a man in Australia no longer requires having a penis, after the High Court in Canberra recognised two female-to-male transsexuals who have not undergone full gender realignment surgery as men.
Make no mistake, I grieve the loss of Meredith Kercher and the horrible way she died. But I have little doubt that if Knox had been a little less pretty, a little less sexual, and a little less American, she’d never have spent a day in prison for her roommate’s murder.
I rejoice in her freedom today.
Me, too.
The weaker sex?! X-chromosomes are genetically stronger
This is pretty interesting. A new study, published in BioEssays, attempts to illuminate why members of the so-called stronger sex succumb to “man-flu”: scientists believe their immune systems typically can’t keep up with those of wives and girlfriends because of the double X-chromosome. This appears to be on account of microRNAs - short strands of RNA (ribonucleic acid; related to dioxyribonucleic acid, which you better know as DNA) encoded on the chromosome… [edited for brevity]…
Can I get the full citation for this? I would like to read the study..
Mostly because strictly genetically/evolutionarily, it makes sense: the X chromosome is “stronger,” aka more heavily conserved within cell nuclei because it is needed for reproduction, since those with the eggs who dedicate their bodies to produce children have the double-X chromosomes. So naturally you’d want the person carrying around children to have a higher resistance to infection, disease, etc. and thus they have better immune systems.
It doesn’t make sense, then, why those with an XX chromosome are actually hugely disproportionally prone to autoimmune disorders like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?
ETA: this is just generally speaking. I’m aware that some bodies with XY chromosomes can carry children too! :)
Full article is currently online.
Pinheiro, I., Dejager, L. and Libert, C. (2011), X-chromosome-located microRNAs in immunity: Might they explain male/female differences?. BioEssays
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201100047/abstract
