Background: This study examined the cyberbullying experience and coping manners of adolescents in urban Vietnam and explored the mediating effect of different support to the associations between cyberbullying and mental health issues.Methods: A cross-sectional study was performed on 484 students at four secondary schools. Cyberbullying experience, coping strategies, psychological problems, and family, peer, and teacher support were obtained. Structural equation modeling was utilized to determine the mediating effects of different support on associations between cyberbullying and psychological problems.Results: There (...) were 11.6 and 28.3% of students who reported that they experienced and observed at least one cyberbullying act in the last 3 months, respectively. Among the victims, only 48.2% tried to stop the perpetrators. Meanwhile, the majority of observers belonged to the “Intervene” group who tried to report cyberbullying acts or help victims. Family support was found to partially mediate associations between cyberbullying experience and observation with levels of psychological problems among adolescents.Conclusion: The 3-month rate of cyberbullying experience and observation among urban adolescents aged 11–14 was low. However, current coping strategies against cyberbullying were not sufficient. Family support is an important factor that should be considered for designing interventions to mitigating the impacts of cyberbullying on the mental health of adolescents. (shrink)

It has recently been alleged that there was, among Greek men of the classical period, a deep-seated fear of the female genitals, and that pubic hair was a focus of that fear. On account of this phobia, it has been suggested, in order to achieve a satisfactory sexual relationship, Greek men required their women fully to depilate their genitals. The thesis has logical problems: if the cause is the sight of the mother's genitals during childhood, the syndrome can affect (...) only one generation. Besides this, it is clear that any depilation would tend to make the vulva more visible, while a heavier growth of hair would tend to hide it. To put the alleged phobic syndrome further to the test, three questions must be answered: Did Greek women practise total pubic depilation? Did they practise pubic depilation at all? If they did depilate, why did they? As for most questions of daily life, there are two major sources of information: Comedy and vase painting. The evidence presented will show that Athenian women did practise partial genital depilation, and that female genital display—including display of pubic hair—is an important element in Attic erotic painting. These two facts are not compatible with a theory of genital phobia. (shrink)

Recent events in the United States and beyond have brought debates over the practice of female genital cutting back into public, academic, and policy discourses.1 In April 2017, Jumana Nagarwala, a Michigan-based emergency medicine physician from a small Shia sect known as the Dawoodi Bohra, was charged with performing female genital mutilation. The procedure is prohibited by federal law and defined as the circumcision, excision, or infibulation of the whole or any part of the female genitalia under the (...) age of 18. Nagarwala argues that she did not mutilate, but rather performed a variation of a religious ritual, termed Khatna, which involves the nicking... (shrink)

Although primarily addressed to the general reader, the introduction and the last chapters of this work strike straight at reactionary philosophers who obstruct the philosophers who are honest searchers for wisdom. John Dewey was the most famous teacher of philosophy in the early twentieth century, and he was known for his lifelong work to reform America's educational system. Dewey was born in Burlington, Vermont in 1859 to strict Calvinist parents. After graduating from the University of Vermont, Dewey taught high school (...) and studied philosophy in his spare time. He finished his doctorate degree at Johns Hopkins University and continued to teach at various universities around the country, finally landing at Columbia University. While in New York, Dewey became involved in political groups and founded what would become the progressive education movement, which purported that students should learn to think for themselves to become active participants of a democratic society. He was also a founding member of the NAACP and the ACLU. At this time, Dewey was influenced by Karl Marx, and after traveling to different countries to study their educational systems, praised Soviet education and came under scrutiny in the United States. Dewey continued his political and philosophical efforts until his death in 1952. (shrink)

There are two opposed theories which attempt to account for the processes of problem solution involved in learning and intelligence. The former is neural in its basis and postulates the existence of a bare connection as a bonding or linkage of two experiences. The second theory, that of gestalt, implies that learning or apprehension involves a relationship of the parts of the experience to each other as well as to the whole. While these psychological schools are exclusive of and opposed (...) to each other, yet they are merely extremes of what actually exists. There is a minimum level of learning in which associationism is operative and a maximum intellectual level at which explicit relationships predominate. An examination of experimental results will show this to be the case. The results of conditioned reflex experiments in both animals and man appear to show that there is present nothing beyond arbitrary linkage or bonding between the parts of the situation involved. On the other hand, one finds a certain degree of implicit meaning involved in perceptual situations—the level of animal achievement—as well as a certain measure of transfer of meaning. Explicit meanings may be related by means of word symbols involving the principle of the concept through the medium of speech, and this is only arrived at by human beings. We may regard these higher levels as “emergents” from the level of bonding or linkage. (shrink)

Labiaplasty is a form of genital surgery to reduce large or protruding labia minora. Internationally, the rates of this surgery among women and girls is increasing and is viewed as a worrying trend. Currently, the main clinical strategy is to reassure adolescents that they are normal by talking about the variation of labia size and appearance and showing pictures demonstrating the wide range of normal female genital appearance. For the most part, policy documents recommend against labiaplasty in adolescents, (...) claiming that it is medically non-essential surgery. In this paper, we contrast findings from our interviews with clinicians with the existing literature and policy documents and we point out areas needing more thought. This is qualitative research using semi-structured interviews. We set out to find out on what basis clinicians decide how to treat or manage adolescent patients seeking labiaplasty. We interviewed clinicians who are likely to be approached by under-eighteens requesting labiaplasty. We use interpretive content analysis and thematic analysis to analyse the data. Our findings support the emphasis on education and reassurance as the first step for all patients, but other issues that have not figured previously in the literature that would alter clinical strategies for managing patients emerge as well. Key findings are that reassurance does not always work and that the distinction between functional and appearance concerns is not a solid foundation in itself for deciding whether surgery is ethically appropriate. We conclude that the distinction between functional and appearance concerns is not ethically relevant. It is open to different interpretations and is not regarded by all clinicians as the definitive factor in relation to surgery. The focus of clinicians should be on relieving distress whatever the cause. Appearance reasons may sometimes justify surgery but, also, functional reasons may sometimes not be sufficient justification for surgery. (shrink)

Despite global and local attempts to end female genital mutilation , the practice persists in some parts of the world and has spread to non-traditional countries through immigration. FGM is of varying degrees of invasiveness, but all forms raise health-related concerns that can be of considerable physical or psychological severity. FGM is becoming increasingly prohibited by law, both in countries where it is traditionally practised and in countries of immigration. Medical practice prohibits FGM. The Italian parliament passed a law (...) prohibiting FGM, which has put in place a set of measures to prevent, to oppose and to suppress the practice of FGM as a violation of a person’s fundamental rights to physical and mental integrity and to the health of women and girls. The Italian law not only treats new offences but also wants to deal with the problem in its entirety, providing important intervention in all the sectors. Different kinds of interventions are considered, starting with the development of informative campaigns, training of health workers, institution of a tollfree number, international cooperation programmes and the responsibility of the institution where the crime is committed. Particularly, the law recognises that doctors have a role in eliminating FGM by educating patients and communities. (shrink)

In men and women sexual arousal culminates in orgasm, with female orgasm solely from sexual intercourse often regarded as a unique feature of human sexuality. However, orgasm from sexual intercourse occurs more reliably in men than in women, likely reflecting the different types of physical stimulation men and women require for orgasm. In men, orgasms are under strong selective pressure as orgasms are coupled with ejaculation and thus contribute to male reproductive success. By contrast, women's orgasms in intercourse are highly (...) variable and are under little selective pressure as they are not a reproductive necessity. The proximal mechanisms producing variability in women's orgasms are little understood. In 1924 Marie Bonaparte proposed that a shorter distance between a woman's clitoris and her urethral meatus (CUMD) increased her likelihood of experiencing orgasm in intercourse. She based this on her published data that were never statistically analyzed. In 1940 Landis and colleagues published similar data suggesting the same relationship, but these data too were never fully analyzed. We analyzed raw data from these two studies and found that both demonstrate a strong inverse relationship between CUMD and orgasm during intercourse. Unresolved is whether this increased likelihood of orgasm with shorter CUMD reflects increased penile–clitoral contact during sexual intercourse or increased penile stimulation of internal aspects of the clitoris. CUMD likely reflects prenatal androgen exposure, with higher androgen levels producing larger distances. Thus these results suggest that women exposed to lower levels of prenatal androgens are more likely to experience orgasm during sexual intercourse. . (shrink)

Men in Political Theory builds on feminist re-readings of the traditional canon of male writers in political philosophy by turning the "gender lens" on to the representation of men in widely studied texts. It explains the distinction between "man" as an apparently de-gendered "individual" or "citizen" and "man" as an overtly gendered being in human society. The ten chapters on Plato, Aristotle, Jesus, Augustine, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Marx and Engels show the operation of the "gender lens" in different ways, (...) depending on how each philosopher deploys concepts of men and masculinity to pose and solve classic problems. (shrink)

The conditional interpretation of general categorical statements like ‘All men are animals’ as universally quantified material conditionals ‘For all x, if x is F, then x is G’ suggests that the logical structure of law statements is conditional rather than categorical. Disregarding the problem that the universally quantified material conditional is trivially true whenever there are no xs that are F, there are some reasons to be sceptical of Frege’s equivalence between categorical and conditional expressions. -/- Now many philosophers will (...) claim that the material conditional interpretation of laws statements, dispositions ascriptions, or any causal claim is generally accepted as wrong and outdated. Still, there seem to be some basic logical assumptions that are shared by most of the participants in the debate on causal matters which at least stems from the traditional truth functional interpretation of conditionals. This is indicated by the vocabulary in the philosophical debate on causation, where one often speaks of ‘counterfactuals’, ‘possible worlds’ and ‘necessity’ without being explicit on whether or to what extent one accepts the logical-technical definition of these notions. To guarantee a non-Humean and non-extensional approach to causal relations, it is therefore important to be aware of the logical and metaphysical implications of the technical vocabulary. -/- In this paper we want to show why extensional logic cannot deal with causal relations. Via a logical analysis of law-like statements ‘All Fs are Gs’ we hope to throw some new light on interrelated notions like causation, laws, induction, hypotheticality and modality. If successful, our analysis should be of relevance for a deeper understanding of any type of causal relations, whether we understand them to be laws, dispositions, singulars or categoricals. (shrink)

In his detailed and comprehensive analysis, Brian D. Earp shows clearly that prevailing discourses on female genital cutting have sought to quarantine the practice from male genital cutting, and further demonstrates that none of the various features that are supposed to fully distinguish one set of procedures from the other can logically hold water. The fundamental problem seems to be that the voluntary and official bodies campaigning against FGC, and especially the United Nations and the World Health Organization, (...) show unjustified discrimination and hence inconsistency with respect to gender and culture, but fail to make justified and morally relevant discriminations with respect to age... (shrink)

A key feature of economic transition in Russia has been the demoralization of men at the lower end of the labor market. Rather than focusing on the labor market directly, this article looks at how men’s position within the household influences their ability to deal with their employment difficulties. Men’s main role within the household is as primary breadwinners, and there are few other tasks in the urban Russian household that are seen as masculine. Using longitudinal qualitative data, the authors (...) argue that men who are unable to perform as breadwinners have their labor market problems compounded by a damaging domestic marginalization. (shrink)

This article examines problems that arise when women enter nontraditional blue-collar occupations. Despite job security, women's arrival in one such workplace generated strains by threatening assumptions of male supremacy. Previous research has examined women's modes of accommodation to male-dominated workplaces. In this case, men as well as women developed accommodative patterns that allowed them to accept women as co-workers without giving up their beliefs about male superiority.

Soldiers hiding in enemy territory that are discovered by civilians face acute ethical problems as to what to do about them. The law of armed conflict forbids harming civilians, yet if they are released they may well betray the soldiers and alert enemy forces that will kill or capture the soldiers. This is not just a theoretical problem; there are recent documented accounts of British and American soldiers who have found themselves in such a position and who have died (...) because they released the civilians. This paper argues that the ethical imperative here is to save the lives of both the soldiers and the civilians and that this should be the guiding principle in such cases. To this end, where possible, non-lethal means of restraint should be used on civilians to incapacitate them while the soldiers escape. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:just Men and Just Acts in Plato's Republic JEROME SCHILLER I. Introduction Too MUCHhas already been written about Plato's Republic. But this, strangely enough, is why a little more needs to be written. For the book has been worked over so often that an obvious sign of fatigue has set in: critics are beginning to find such elementary flaws in the Republic that one wonders why he should waste (...) time on such a philosophically embarrassing work at all. It is to counter one of these recent criticisms and thus, hopefully, to help offset the fatigue, that this study is written. It purports not only to show the criticism mistaken, but also to sketch a way of looking at the Republic which should send the reader back for a further look at this incredibly rich work. The richness of the Republic is, indeed, a source of embarrassment for anyone writing on it. For because of its structure it is at least misleading to isolate one topic from the myriad others treated there, and because of its complexity, impossible to document interpretations of more than a few topics. I shall follow the time-honored practices here of merely expressing my bias on some topics (such as my non-political interpretation) and leaving it up to the reader to follow up hints of my interpretations of other topics (such as that of the Sun, Line, and Cave). II. Plato's Alleged Fallacy in the Republic David Sachs and A. W. H. Adkins have recently claimed that Plato commits the fallacy of equivocation in the Republic, not in the course of some minor argument, but in answering what is probably the central problem posed by the work: Why be just?1 Simply put, their objection goes like this: In the first book of the Republic, Socrates attempts to prove to Thrasymachus why justice is preferable to injustice. But even Socrates is dissatisfied with this answer and early in the second book, after a brilliantly fashioned defense of the Thrasymachean position by Glaucon and Adeimantus, the brothers ask for a more convincing demonstration from "You, [who have] passed your entire life in the consideration of this very matter." e Socrates seems to accept the challenge and proceeds to a search for the concept of justice writ large in the state. Now, claim Adkins and Sachs, Plato never does answer Glaucon's and AdeiDavid Sachs, A Fallacy in Plato s Republic, Philosophical Review, LX(XII (1963),141158 ;A. W. H. Adkins, Merit and Responsibility, A Study in Greek Values (Oxford,1960),p. 289. Adkins,in developingapolitical interpretation ofthe Republic, doesnot elaborate the criticism as does Sachs; hence I refer in this study primarily to the latter's article. sPlato, Republic 376e 2-3,trans. P. Shorey (2 vols.; Cambridge, Mass.: Loeb Classical Library, 1937-42).All subsequent quotations are from this translation. [1] HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY mantus' request. For though he does eventually purport to show that justice is preferable to injustice, the justice he attempts to prove this of is not at all the same justice that Glaucon and Adeimantus have in mind. Plato has simply equivocated on the term "iustice," meaning at one time the set of acts generally considered just,s but at another time a certain order in the individual's soul. He has purported to show that an individual with a well-ordered soul reaps advantages, but unless he can show a clear relation between this "Platonic" notion of justice and the "vulgar" notion of justice, the notion which Cephalus, Polemarchus, Thrasymachus, Glaucon and Adeimantus have in mind, he will not have answered the brothers' question, and will thus have avoided the central problem of the Republic. The relation he has to establish is, Sachs claims, that Platonic justice is a necessary and a sufficient condition for vulgar justice. Then he could argue that since he has shown that a man reaps advantages just to the extent that he is Platonically just, (1) a vulgarly unjust individual will not reap more advantages than a vulgarly just one (on the grounds that Platonic justice entails vulgar justice), and (2) a vulgarly just man will reap more advantages than a vulgarly... (shrink)

Stellen Kondome einen potenten Schutz sowohl vor HIV als auch von anderen sexuell übertragbaren Infektionen (STIs) dar, und besteht außerdem ein barrierefreier Zugang zur HIV-Postexpositionsprophylaxe (PEP) (z. B. nach Kondom-Fatigue), muss präzise sondiert werden, wann die sich zunehmend etablierende HIV-Präexpositionsprophylaxe (PrEP) die bessere Wahl darstellt. Vor dem Hintergrund einer generalisierten everyone at risk-Annahme über MSM wird die PrEP zunehmend zu einem standard of care. Zwar kann kein Zweifel daran bestehen, dass dies für bestimmte MSM mit einem bestimmten Risikoprofil wünschenswert ist. (...) Es ist aber von Variabilitäten (z. B. casual condomless sex versus random condomless sex) auszugehen, die zur Vermeidung einer unverhältnismäßigen Medikalisierung berücksichtigt werden müssen. Im Spannungsfeld von hochpotenter HIV-Prävention und Medikalisierung insbesondere von Männern, die Sex mit Männern praktizieren, soll im Sinn einer Güterabwägung gefragt werden, wann genau eine PrEP (dauerhaft oder on demand) mehr Vorteile und weniger Nachteile bietet als der Gebrauch von Kondom oder PEP. Dazu gehört ein Fokus auf den aktuellen Stand der klinischen Forschung und ein Fokus auf die medizinethische Debatte. Die Medizingeschichte der Prävention und der HIV-Erkrankung erweist sich dabei als relevanter Erörterungszusammenhang für die weitgehend noch ausstehende ethische Untersuchung der PrEP. Methodisch basiert diese Arbeit auf einer Auswertung der interdisziplinären Fachliteratur über die HIV-Präexpositionsprophylaxe im Besonderen und über HIV-Prävention im Allgemeinen. Basierend auf den PRISMA (Prefered Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) Guidelines wurden aus der Datenbank PubMed/MEDLINE solche Studien ausgewählt, die die aktuelle klinische Praxis der PrEP oder eine medizinethische Diskussion der PrEP zum Gegenstand haben. Auf der Basis dieser Literatur erfolgt eine diskursive Erörterung und Abwägung der verfügbaren Pros und Cons zur PrEP. Präventionsmaßnahmen treten regelmäßig als ambivalente Instrumente der Gesundheitsförderung zwischen Liberalisierung und Restringierung des Individuums hervor. Insgesamt bietet daher die PrEP on demand gegenüber der kontinuierlichen PrEP im Sinne der Personalisierung die Option einer individuellen Anpassung an konkretes Risikoverhalten. Auch im Sinne einer Güterabwägung hat die PrEP gewichtige Vorteile gegenüber der kontinuierlichen PrEP und gegenüber einer PEP, wenn kein dauerhaft gleichhohes Risiko vorliegt. In dieser medizinethischen Untersuchung wird darauf hingewiesen, dass es sich bei MSM um eine heterogene Gruppe handelt, deren individuelles Sexualverhalten eine ebenfalls individualisierte HIV-Präventions-Strategie benötigt. Diese Studie argumentiert daher für ein stark personalisiertes decision making bei möglicher Indikation für eine PrEP bei MSM. Damit soll ein wesentlicher Faktor zur Vermeidung einer Medikalisierung von MSM dargestellt werden. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:just Men and Just Acts in Plato's Republic JEROME SCHILLER I. Introduction Too MUCHhas already been written about Plato's Republic. But this, strangely enough, is why a little more needs to be written. For the book has been worked over so often that an obvious sign of fatigue has set in: critics are beginning to find such elementary flaws in the Republic that one wonders why he should waste (...) time on such a philosophically embarrassing work at all. It is to counter one of these recent criticisms and thus, hopefully, to help offset the fatigue, that this study is written. It purports not only to show the criticism mistaken, but also to sketch a way of looking at the Republic which should send the reader back for a further look at this incredibly rich work. The richness of the Republic is, indeed, a source of embarrassment for anyone writing on it. For because of its structure it is at least misleading to isolate one topic from the myriad others treated there, and because of its complexity, impossible to document interpretations of more than a few topics. I shall follow the time-honored practices here of merely expressing my bias on some topics (such as my non-political interpretation) and leaving it up to the reader to follow up hints of my interpretations of other topics (such as that of the Sun, Line, and Cave). II. Plato's Alleged Fallacy in the Republic David Sachs and A. W. H. Adkins have recently claimed that Plato commits the fallacy of equivocation in the Republic, not in the course of some minor argument, but in answering what is probably the central problem posed by the work: Why be just?1 Simply put, their objection goes like this: In the first book of the Republic, Socrates attempts to prove to Thrasymachus why justice is preferable to injustice. But even Socrates is dissatisfied with this answer and early in the second book, after a brilliantly fashioned defense of the Thrasymachean position by Glaucon and Adeimantus, the brothers ask for a more convincing demonstration from "You, [who have] passed your entire life in the consideration of this very matter." e Socrates seems to accept the challenge and proceeds to a search for the concept of justice writ large in the state. Now, claim Adkins and Sachs, Plato never does answer Glaucon's and AdeiDavid Sachs, A Fallacy in Plato s Republic, Philosophical Review, LX(XII (1963),141158 ;A. W. H. Adkins, Merit and Responsibility, A Study in Greek Values (Oxford,1960),p. 289. Adkins,in developingapolitical interpretation ofthe Republic, doesnot elaborate the criticism as does Sachs; hence I refer in this study primarily to the latter's article. sPlato, Republic 376e 2-3,trans. P. Shorey (2 vols.; Cambridge, Mass.: Loeb Classical Library, 1937-42).All subsequent quotations are from this translation. [1] HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY mantus' request. For though he does eventually purport to show that justice is preferable to injustice, the justice he attempts to prove this of is not at all the same justice that Glaucon and Adeimantus have in mind. Plato has simply equivocated on the term "iustice," meaning at one time the set of acts generally considered just,s but at another time a certain order in the individual's soul. He has purported to show that an individual with a well-ordered soul reaps advantages, but unless he can show a clear relation between this "Platonic" notion of justice and the "vulgar" notion of justice, the notion which Cephalus, Polemarchus, Thrasymachus, Glaucon and Adeimantus have in mind, he will not have answered the brothers' question, and will thus have avoided the central problem of the Republic. The relation he has to establish is, Sachs claims, that Platonic justice is a necessary and a sufficient condition for vulgar justice. Then he could argue that since he has shown that a man reaps advantages just to the extent that he is Platonically just, (1) a vulgarly unjust individual will not reap more advantages than a vulgarly just one (on the grounds that Platonic justice entails vulgar justice), and (2) a vulgarly just man will reap more advantages than a vulgarly... (shrink)

Using Ritzer’s McDonaldization of Society thesis as a reference point, this article contributes sociologically to burgeoning critical obesity studies. It does this using qualitative data from a study of men and weightrelated issues undertaken in northern England. Taking a counter-intuitive approach, it explores whether slimming proceeds in accord with the rationalizing principles of the fast-food restaurant: calculability, efficiency, predictability and technological control. Rather than reproducing a simplified and ultimately stigmatizing account, where fatness is a pathological bodily state caused by fast (...) food, this article explores the degree to which fatness is actively made into a correctable problem using McDonaldized principles. Irrationalities and meaningful resistances associated with the public and private fight against fat are also considered. (shrink)

The article deals with the nature of the mind and its act, according to Nicholas of Cusa: it is a main philosophical problem in his thought because of the centrality of the mens as an essential category between God and the world, and in order to grasp what is life, principie and being.

1. Some Preliminary Distinctions. The relation between the natural and the social sciences, as it bears on their respective subject-matters, methods, and propositions, has long been a source of problems for the philosophy of science. The title of this paper is intended to indicate one of the most basic of these problems. Before developing my point, however, I wish to guard against a possible misinterpretation. I am not questioning the accepted fact that as knowledge in any field advances (...) men may come to recognize the incorrectness of what they had previously regarded as “laws” in that field, and may consequently “change” these laws to take account of such increased knowledge. Let me call this kind of change of laws doctrinal change. The kind of change about which I am asking is rather a change in the subject-matter itself insofar as it is subject to laws—i.e., a change in the causal relations among the facts, objects, properties, events, or whatever they may be called, with which the science deals. Let me call this kind of change of laws factual change. Now, without inquiring more fully at the moment into the nature of scientific laws as such, we may say that the history of science shows that men can and do effect doctrinal changes in the laws of any science, natural as well as social, and formal as well as empirical. And it is recognized also, with minor exceptions to be noted later, that men cannot effect factual changes in the laws of the natural sciences, since these are independent of human volition or decision. The question I am asking, then, is whether men can effect factual changes in the laws of the social sciences. (shrink)

Little is known about how gendered understandings of patients can inform professionals’ discretionary actions and decisions to include or exclude in clinical practice. Using Connell's poststructuralist perspectives on gender as an analytic framework, this article aims to investigate how professionals’ articulations of depression are framed by signs of masculinity and femininity, and how these articulations inform service provision to patients with depression in clinical psychiatry. Building on interview data drawn from an ethnographic study, the article shows how the professionals’ articulations (...) reflected a gender binary that framed how the feminized patients were often connected to psychiatric care while masculinized patients were referred to separate alcohol or substance use treatment outside the psychiatric institution. The article discusses the societal and institutional conditionality of gendered understandings in psychiatry. In spite of several limitations, the article elucidates how professionals’ understandings might have wide‐ranging implications for the accuracy of epidemiological research and policy, and how they reflect a power struggle between patients and professionals about the legitimate right to interpret patients’ conditions and efforts to manage their illness‐related problems. (shrink)

Back in 2017, Moodley and Rennie published a paper in the Journal of Medical Ethics entitled ‘Penile transplantation as an appropriate response to botched traditional circumcisions in South Africa: an argument against.’1 As the title suggests, we took a critical view towards penile transplantation as a way of responding to the problem of young men in South Africa experiencing genital mutilation and amputation as a result of traditional circumcision practices. Our main conclusion was that prevention is key: social, cultural (...) and political strategies to prevent mutilations and amputations should be prioritised, rather than surgical solutions, particularly in low-resource communities. Van der Merwe, who led the surgical team for the first successful penile transplantation in Stellenbosch, South Africa, has responded to our views, and in what follows, we will distill and evaluate his main arguments. Cost and access to services : Van der Merwe states that our position is mostly based on costs, that is, that penile transplantation is expensive and it is unrealistic to think that young men in traditional communities will be able to avail themselves of such services. Against this, Van Der Merwe argues that the actual cost of penile transplantation can be favourably compared with another, more established medical intervention, that is, renal transplantation. Of course, cost comparisons are difficult with a new intervention when it is …. (shrink)

Double standards are widespread throughout biomedicine, especially in research on reproductive health. One of the clearest cases of double standards involves the feminine gendering of reproductive responsibility for contraception and the continued lack of highly effective, reversible methods for cisgender men. While the biomedical establishment accepts diversity and inclusion as important social values for clinical trials, their continued use of inequitable standards undermines their ability to challenge unfair social hierarchies by developing male contraception. Thus, the gender/sex bias present in contraceptive (...) research raises the “New Demarcation Problem”: If we accept that values can and will play important roles in science, how can we nevertheless distinguish positive influences of values from more corrosive bias? I argue that biomedical researchers ought to aim their clinical trials at equity and utilize methodologies that actually achieve that aim. More specifically, I contend that we can avoid the problem of double standards by gender/sex in contraceptive research by utilizing more equitable standards. My demarcation strategy captures dynamic interplay between values and their effects, with direct policy implications for institutions conducting, funding, and evaluating clinical trials. For male contraceptive trials, this involves shifting risk assessment from an individual model to a shared model for sexual partners. (shrink)

The introduction of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV has triggered critical analysis within the social sciences. For example, some have signalled how PrEP may lead to a renewed medicalisation of gay and other homosexually-active men’s sexuality. This chapter challenges some of those accounts. Adopting a public health ethics perspective, it argues that gay men should be understood as agentic in their use of PrEP, as opposed to being the passive victims of medicalisation, and that greater attention should be paid to (...) questions of pleasure in PrEP use. Applying a reproductive justice framework, the chapter argues that the worldwide inaccessibility of PrEP constitutes a more serious ethical issue than the potential problem of the medicalisation of gay men’s sexuality. (shrink)

Cutting people’s genitals—at least, when thought of as an exotic practice—seems to interest philosophers chiefly as a source of problem cases for moral relativism. A ready-to-hand example is supplied by Simon Blackburn, in the relativism chapter of his charming little introduction to ethics text, Being Good: “If, as in some North African countries, young girls are terrifyingly and painfully mutilated so that thereafter they cannot enjoy natural and pleasurable human sexuality, that is not OK, anywhere or anytime”. Now, it’s worth (...) considering how vulnerable moral relativism actually is to intuitive counterexamples. Surely, there’s a powerful tendency to say that any metaethics... (shrink)

In this article we focus on female genital mutilation. We analyse this problem as one of the most important issues of multiculturalism, which is also coming to the attention of the public in Italy as a consequence of the growing number of immigrants from African countries. The fundamental problem is about the acceptability of this practice: can female genital mutilation be permitted and, if so, on what basis? We will try to cope with this as a genuine conflict (...) between culture-relative values and universal values, such as human rights. Some attention will be drawn to Italian law. Finally, the impact on nurses of requests for genital mutilation will be described. (shrink)

This study considers two problems: the extent to which feminist opinions are distinct from feminist identity and the generalizability of these separate constructs across gender and time. Using pooled cross-sectional data from the six National Election Study surveys conducted from 1972 through 1992, the author employs a series of measurement and structural equation models to evaluate the validity and reliability of various feminist orientations and to estimate the relationships among feminist identity, feminist opinion, and individual characteristics associated with feminism. (...) The results indicate that identity and opinion are separate but related constructs. This configuration generalizes across women and men and two decades of American electoral history. (shrink)