Teachers have a very important role in determining the quality of the teaching-learning process and the students’ learning outcomes. Learning outcomes will optimally be achieved if it is supported by qualified teachers. One way to enhance the teachers’ performance is through instructional supervision which can be divided into two techniques, namely group and individual supervision techniques. Therefore, this study aims to find out the influence of instructional supervision techniques on the work motivation and performance of elementary school teachers. This study (...) was conducted in East Java, Indonesia, and an explanatory research design was used. The sample was taken from 80 elementary school teachers in Malang and Blitar using a multi-stage random sampling technique. Data were collected through the use of questionnaires and documentation, and then they were analyzed by using the structural equation modeling technique. The result of this study showed that group supervision has a significant effect on teachers’ performance, whereas individual supervision influenced teachers’ work motivation and it affected their performance. (shrink)

Goffredo Coppola, the Italian editor of this papyrus, supposed that τὸν ὄρχιν = τοὺς ὄρχεις; but he was puzzled when no likely erotic word seemed available to finish the line. He suggested φαλ[ῆς, from φαλός = λευκός to be followed by some metaphorical word for penis such as κέρκου. Romagnoli noted that it made no sense to have the testicle dependent on the penis, and argued that Hipponax here intended ὄρχις to refer metaphorically to the glans penis; therefore, he emended (...) to καί μοι τὸν ὄρχιν τῆς φαλ[ῆς ἐκλέψασα ; but his feminine form τῆς φαλ[ῆς is unlikely given the masculine form τοῦ φάλεω in Hipponax fr. 21 W. Medeiros suggested ὄρχις, sing. = ὄσχη ‘scrotum’; West actually exalted the role of the testicle by emending to τῆς φαλ[άκρης ἕλκουσα ‘pulling my testicle by the bald spot’; but it is not obvious why hitting the testicles merits such attention in a narrative fixed on the failure to attain an erection. (shrink)

The evolution of a female penis is an extremely rare event and is only known to have occurred in a tribe of small cave insects, Sensitibillini (Psocodea: Trogiomorpha: Prionoglarididae). The female penis, which is protrudable and inserted into the male vagina‐like cavity during copulation to receive semen, is thought to have evolved independently twice in this tribe, in the Brazilian Neotrogla and the African Afrotrogla. These findings strongly suggest that there are some factors unique to Sensitibillini that have facilitated female (...) penis evolution. Here, several hypothetical factors are presented that may have enabled the evolution of the female penis in Sensitibillini. The female–female competition for nutritious semen, the oligotrophic environment, and the twin insemination slots with switching valve are considered to be the driving factors for female penis evolution. Additionally, the following factors are considered responsible for relaxing the constraint against female penis evolution: preexistence of the female‐above mating position, the elongated duct connecting the female pre‐penis with the sperm storage organ, and the small male genital cavity accepting the female genital tubercle bearing the opening of this duct. Understanding the factors enabling female penis evolution may also shed light on the evolution of the male penis. (shrink)

What does epistemic decolonization mean for contemporary rethinking of the body, gender/sexuality, and knowledge in feminist and queer scholarship? Through a close reading of Chinese medicine's classical text Huang Di Nei Jing ( Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon ), this essay proposes a "body-of-orifices" in which the penis like the vagina and the anus is but another orifice among other more visible bodily openings. In feminist and queer theorization, the penis has been almost only accounted for as something else, as the (...) metaphoric pen, the psychoanalytic phallus, as anything other than the organ itself. Meanwhile, in pornographic, cinematic, and other visual representations, the Asian man's member(ship) is largely denied, nowhere to be seen. This invisibility mirrors the overrepresentation of white male philosophers in much of queer theory's theoretical foundation. Engaging closely with feminist and queer re-readings of Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis while delving deeply into the philosophical and cosmological concepts of Chinese medicine, the essay also argues that the body-of-orifices entails a different heuristic model for a less hegemonic practice of knowing based on cultivation of passivity and receptiveness, which is very different from the colonial/modern model of knowledge-acquisition as mastery, penetration, and possession. (shrink)

여성혐오를 넘어서기 위해서는 여성이라는 존재론적 차원의 물질성과 현실성을 기각시키거나 저항의 단위소를 무화시키는 것이 아닌, 성별 불평등 구조에서 지배계급성을 구성하고 있는 남성성의 작동 메커니즘에 대한 치밀한 분석과 해체로 나아가야 한다. 이를 위해 필자는 첫 번째로 남근질서라는 아버지의 법질서에서 팔루스와 페니스 간의 유착성-팔루스가 초월적이며 절대적 심급이 아닌 스스로 축소되고 사라져버리는 페니스의 유약성에 참조점을 두고 있는 내재적 결핍성의 지점임을 이론적으로 추적해나감으로써 남근질서의 해체 가능성을 모색해보고자 한다.BR 두 번째로 남성지배의 축 중 하나인 페니스 나르시시즘이라는 개인적 정체성화의 작동방식을 분석해보고자 한다. 여기서 페니스는 해부학적 기관에 그치는 (...) 것이 아니라 자기애의 온전성을 담지받는 장소이자 아버지의 법질서의 사회문화적 권위와 권력의 계승점을 나타내는 것이다. 즉 남성은 자신의 페니스를 중심으로 페니스 나르시시즘이라는 개인으로서의 남성의 정체성화 양식을 구성해나 가고 있으며, 사회문화적으로는 방기하는 몸이라는 권력적 몸, 특권적 몸을 양산하는 것이다.BR 세 번째로 남성지배의 또 다른 축인 페니스 카르텔이라는 집단적 정체성화의 메커니즘은 남성들의 본래적 우월성의 상호확인에서만이 아니라, 남성들의 자기 완결성의 결여, 무능력함과 형편없음, 비리 축적을 상호 묵인함으로써 더욱 더 강력하게 작동하는 것이다. 왜냐하면 남성특권구조란 특정한 남성 개개인에게 독점되는 양태가 아니라, 남성이라는 성별 계급으로 범주화된 이들이 의식적, 무의식적으로 나눠가지는 지배적 집합성에서 기인하는 것이기 때문이다.BR 이러한 페니스 나르시시즘과 페니스 카르텔을 해체하기 위해서 페니스가 자기 완결적이며 불침투적인 닫힌 몸이 아님을 드러내어야 한다. 즉 페니스는 사정기관과 배설 기관이라는 다공성의 일체화 구조를 통해 구멍 지어진 몸이자 숭고와 비천, 깨끗함과 더러움 등의 분열적 지점이라 할 수 있다. 또한 우뚝 솟은 불변의 공격성과 능동성, 힘과 권위의 기관이 아닌, 시시각각 형태가 변하는 유동적 살로서의 페니스와 팔루스-기관의 유약성을 연동시켜 사유해봄으로써 페니스 카르텔의 남근다발이 한데 묶일 수조차 없는 결핍성의 지대임을 논증하고자 한다. 남근 이데올로기론이 갖는 임계점을 이론적으로 살펴봄으로써, 폭압적 남성성의 재생산 고리를 끊어내어 여성혐오를 극복해보고자 한다. (shrink)

It is always awkward when someone asks me informally what I’m working on and I answer that I’m trying to figure out what gender is. For outside a rather narrow segment of the academic world, the term ‘gender’ has come to function as the polite way to talk about the sexes. And one thing people feel pretty confident about is their knowledge of the difference between males and females. Males are those human beings with a range of familiar primary and (...) secondary sex characteristics, most important being the penis; females are those with a different set, most important being the vagina or, perhaps, the uterus. Enough said. Against this background, it isn’t clear what could be the point of an inquiry, especially a philosophical inquiry, into “what gender is”. (shrink)

An Indian Court recently awarded 50,000 rupees damages to a couple who gave birth to their fourth daughter. The couple were mistakenly told they were carrying a male fetus. The doctor mistook a section of the umbilical cord for a penis. The husband said: “We are already struggling to raise three children. This was a big sacrifice for us to have a fourth child. We would have had an abortion if we had known it was a girl”. The cost of (...) damages amounted to the dowry they would have to pay at the time of their daughter's marriage.This is a fictional case. But the cases of Nicholas Perruche and Lionel1 are not fictional. According to reports, damages were paid to these children on the basis of what the media has described as a “right not to be born”. Is there a “right not to be born?” Was it right to compensate Nicholas Perruche for being born with congenital rubella and Lionel for being born with Down's syndrome?HARM TO THE CHILDWhat constitutes a right is a complex question. On one interpretation, rights protect interests. This implies that a right not to be born would exist if a child had an interest in not being born. Is it ever in a child's interests not to have been born? If it were, this might imply the child is better off dead than alive, as the Collective against Handiphobia claim. Is it better to be dead than have Down's syndrome?Some people do believe that Down's syndrome constitutes a life not worth living.2 But this view seems false. Children with Down's syndrome can and often do lead happy and worthwhile lives. After all, we do not suggest that other animals have a right not to be born or a life not worth …. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that men should take primary responsibility for protecting against pregnancy. Male long-acting reversible contraceptives are currently in development, and, once approved, should be used as the standard method for avoiding pregnancy. Since women assume the risk of pregnancy when they engage in penis-in-vagina sex, men should do their utmost to ensure that their ejaculations are responsible, otherwise women shoulder a double burden of pregnancy risk plus contraceptive responsibility. Changing the expectations regarding responsibility for contraception would (...) render penis-in-vagina sex more equitable, and could lead to a shift in the discourse around abortion access. I describe the sex asymmetries of contraceptive responsibility and of pregnancy-related risk, and offer arguments in favour of men taking primary responsibility for contraception. My arguments centre on: analogies between contraception and vaccination, and unwanted pregnancy and disease; a veil-of-ignorance approach, in which I contend that if a person were not told their sex, they would find a society in which men were expected to acquire and use effective contraceptives the fairest arrangement for everyone. (shrink)

In contrast to Aristotle's male oriented explanation of procreation the Galenic was 'feminist' inasmuch as both sexes were presented as contributing equally in conception and accordingly both had to experience pleasure... Anatomically, the two sexes were presented in Galenic accounts as complementary, the difference being that the man's genitalia were on the outside and the woman's on the inside. The clitoris was likened to the penis and the ovaries considered 'testicles' or 'stones' that produced seed. The male seed was, it (...) is true, depicted by Galenists as superior in having 'spiritual' qualities lacking in the female, but Galen's reproductive schema was far more egalitarian than Aristotle's. (shrink)

The foreskin is a complex structure that protects and moisturizes the head of the penis, and, being the most densely innervated and sensitive portion of the penis, is essential to providing the complete sexual response. Circumcision—the removal of this structure—is non-therapeutic, painful, irreversible surgery that also risks serious physical injury, psychological sequelae, and death. Men rarely volunteer for it, and increasingly circumcised men are expressing their resentment about it.Circumcision is usually performed for religious, cultural and personal reasons. Early claims about (...) its medical benefits have been proven false. The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control have made many scientifically untenable claims promoting circumcision that run counter to the consensus of Western medical organizations.Circumcision violates the cardinal principles of medical ethics, to respect autonomy, to do good, to do no harm, and to be just. Without a clear medical indication, circumcision must be deferred until the child can provide his own fully informed consent.In 2012, a German court held that circumcision constitutes criminal assault. Under existing United States law and international human rights declarations as well, circumcision already violates boys› absolute rights to equal protection, bodily integrity, autonomy, and freedom to choose their own religion. A physician has a legal duty to protect children from unnecessary interventions. Physicians who obtain parental permission through spurious claims or omissions, or rely on the American Academy of Pediatrics' position, also risk liability for misleading parents about circumcision. (shrink)

Circumcision of males represents a surgical “vaccine“ against a wide variety of infections, adverse medical conditions and potentially fatal diseases over their lifetime, and also protects their sexual partners. In experienced hands, this common, inexpensive procedure is very safe, can be pain‐free and can be performed at any age. The benefits vastly outweigh risks. The enormous public health benefits include protection from urinary tract infections, sexually transmitted HIV, HPV, syphilis and chancroid, penile and prostate cancer, phimosis, thrush, and inflammatory dermatoses. (...) In women circumcision of the male partner provides substantial protection from cervical cancer and chlamydia. Circumcision has socio‐sexual benefits and reduces sexual problems with age. It has no adverse effect on penile sensitivity, function, or sensation during sexual arousal. Most women prefer the circumcised penis for appearance, hygiene and sex. Given the convincing epidemiological evidence and biological support, routine circumcision should be highly recommended by all health professionals. BioEssays 29:1147–1158, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The last half-century has seen enormous changes in society’s attitude toward sexuality. In the 1950s, homosexuals in the United States were routinely arrested; today, homosexual activity between consenting adults is legal in every state, with same-sex marriage legal in Massachusetts and Connecticut. In the 1950s, ambitious women were often seen as psychopathological and were told by psychoanalysts that they had penis envy that needed treatment; today, a woman has campaigned for President of the United States. Mark Blechner has lived and (...) worked through these startling changes in society, and _Sex Changes _collects papers he has written over the last 45 years on sex, gender, and sexuality. Interspersed with these papers are reflections on the changes that have occurred during that time period, both within the scope of society at large as well as in his personal experiences inside and outside of the therapeutic setting. He shows how changes in society, changes in his life, and changes in his writing on sexuality - as well as changes within psychoanalysis itself - have affected one another. One hundred years ago, psychoanalysis was at the cutting edge of new ideas about sex and gender, but in the latter half of the 20 th Century, psychoanalysts were often seen as reactionary upholders of society’s prejudices. _Sex Changes _seeks to restore the place of psychoanalysis as the "once and future queer science," and aims for a radical shift in psychoanalytic thinking about sexuality, gender, normalcy, prejudice, and the relationship of therapeutic aims and values. (shrink)

continent. 1.4 (2011): 279—285. Concerning its Transitive Nature, the Conversion of Native Americans of Spanish Colonial California, Indoctrinated Catholicism, & the Creation There’s no direct archaeological evidence that Jesus ever existed. 1 I memorized the Act of Contrition. I don’t remember it now, except the beginning: Forgive me Father for I have sinned . . . This was in preparation for the Sacrament of Holy Reconciliation, where in a confessional I confessed my sins to Father Scott, who looked like Jesus, (...) at least in Western cultural representations of Jesus since the middle ages, and if Jesus put on a few pounds. Father Scott was long-haired, redheaded, bearded, chubby, and tall. When he left church with the procession of altar servers and Eucharistic ministers, yelling, “Sing a Good Song Unto the Lord,” he smiled, hands folded, and he gazed over his parishioners, and bounced along. For four months every year he lived among the Crow Nation in Montana, where towards the end of his tenure at Our Lady of Refuge, they adopted him as an honorary member of their tribe. * This is the prayer we chanted, holding hands, every night before dinner: Bless us oh Lord, for these our gifts, which we are about to receive, our bounty through Christ, our Lord, Amen. Then we all said, God bless the cook! When we were with my grandparents, Grandpa said, God bless Chicky, and Holly, and Harvey, and Boots—all the dead dogs. * My sister tells me that she sits next to a handsome man on a flight across the country. After chitchat, she withdraws her book. She’s reading Kevin Sampsell’s A Common Pornography . After a few moments, the handsome man also reads from his book—his leather-bound Bible. Sister thinks, Oh, Jesus—too bad. She falls asleep. Later, settled in Nashville, she opens her volume and out falls a Jesus-covered card that reads, You can still find God and Salvation! Because that handsome God-fearing young man saw that word— pornography . * I suppose Father Jim’s dark hair, beard, and glasses made me think doctoral-ly of him. He called while I was in the midst of a breakup, after I’d twice attempted suicide, and my mother was desperate for help. She somehow found and phoned him. And Jim, now years out of Our Lady of Refuge’s parish, twenty years since my baptism, years even since he’d left the priesthood and the Catholic faith, still made the effort to bring me back into the fold. He said, “Have you seen a priest?” I did not respond, as I was more shocked to hear his voice than anything, so I said, “How are you, Father Jim? Sorry, I guess I shouldn’t call you ‘Father.’” And I said, “Why did you leave the priesthood? Do you have a girlfriend?” He said that I should call him just “Jim.” He said, “Do you need someone to talk to?” I said, “Not really.” He said, “Call your mother; she’s worried about you.” That was the last time I talked to Father Jim. * Mother let me know just how disappointed Jesus was. I cried and cried, and said I was sorry. Into my hands she placed my missal, ordered forty Rosaries. She said next Saturday I would go to confession. I hated confession. Who wouldn’t? * I realize, of course, that this page is a kind of confessional. * The Kumeyaay, Ipai, Tipai, Chumash, Esselen, Rumsen—all Native Americans of Alta California—shared similarities in their religions. Southern Californian tribes made use of Datura, or jimpson weed, a hallucinogen, for religious rituals. In the creation, God made brother sky and sister earth. Brother and sister mated, and sister gave birth to all things on Earth, including people, but it was difficult to distinguish people from all other aspects of Earth because everything was alive: granite and obsidian, the Pacific and its waves, the San Diego and Los Angeles Rivers. Wiyot—a hero—was very powerful, born from lightning, the son of the Creator and a virgin. When Wiyot thought that human women’s legs were more beautiful than Frog’s, Frog became jealous and poisoned Wiyot. The dying Wiyot went to all the people’s villages, and he distributed his power among them. He said, “When I die, I should be cremated.” The people built the fire and funeral pyre. When the fire was ready, and the people about to place Wiyot’s body upon it, Coyote came and snatched away Wiyot’s heart. * My friend Nick told me once how he ate some jimpson weed and that he hallucinated for three days. His family took a road trip and, while driving over the Sierra Nevada mountains, he kept seeing dinosaurs roaming the open meadows and charging down snowy slopes. So it’s no wonder that Native Americans who ingested this plant would have developed religion. * Walking Castroville’s streets after school I got into fights but mostly watched other boys scrabbling on the asphalt. I went to Burger King for Whoppers. Me and my friends cussed. Antonio admonished me when I said, “damn,” while strutting a sidewalk alongside the church. He said, “Jaime”—pronounced Hi-May, which was what all the Mexicans called me—“you’re crazy, eh. Don’t cuss at the church.” He meant while at church, as in, within its vicinity. I said, “We’re not in church.” Once we’d crossed the street, Tony said, “Damn dude, you’re fuckin crazy!” * Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra raised the Eucharistic goblet to his lips, and candlelight danced on the blood’s tiny waves. Incense clouded the church so completely that some of the Pame natives grew nauseous. So, too, felt Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra later that night, as he bent over a ceramic bowl and vomited blood, not only the Lord’s, but his own, for poison had laced the sacred vessel into which he poured the sacrament. The physician tending to the sick prelate urged him to take the remedy he’d prepared. But Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra refused, said that he would pray, for he had never taken any medicine in his life, and he never would. * The Chumash of El Valle de Los Osos called themselves the Stishni, separating themselves from Chumash of other regions, those varying tribes of the central California coast that spoke mutually unintelligible dialects of their Hokan language. This made learning their languages impossible for the Spanish friars, to say nothing of translating the Doctrina. Thus the priests baptized few natives, despite the help that the tribes offered the fledgling settlements in the form of meat and acorn meal, which the Spaniards found repugnant. Some from these cultures, feeling threatened by the newcomers, shot flaming arrows into the thatched roofs of the mission structures. And why wouldn’t they feel threatened when priests chastised them for performing, for example, their Coyote Dance, wherein a man donning a coyote-skin-and-skull costume dances while a singer sings his tale, which laments the human feces strewn imaginatively about the Earth? Coyote, meantime, tries to get an onlooker to lick his genitals, and finally engages in public sexual intercourse with a female tribe member or two, then ends the dance by defecating. Though the Franciscans called such forbidden acts devilry , the Chumash maintained their Datura cult religion, along with the enforced Christianity. For the Chumash, the Earth was made of two enormous snakes that caused earthquakes when they slithered past one another—a vast reptilian tectonics. In the 20th century, long after Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra and his cohorts had died, when asked by an anthropologist about religious contradictions, conflating the Datura and Christian cults, a Chumash man replied, incredulous: “But these are two different religions.” * When Portolá ordered that if by March 19th, the feast day of St. Joseph, the San Antonio had not arrived in San Diego Bay to relieve them, the Sacred Expedition to Nueva California would be abandoned, Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra prayed a novena for San José’s intercession. And lo, a lookout sighted the San Antonio ’s sails—what seemed to the priest a miracle—that very Saint’s feast day. Europeans would stay in California, and Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra would continue to reap a great harvest of souls for the Lord. By the end of mission secularization in 1836—sixty-six years after the San Antonio rescued the Spaniards—Native American populations in California had declined by seventy-three percent. * When Peter the Aleut would not renounce his Eastern Orthodox faith the padre of San Francisco had a toe severed from each foot with each refusal, totaling ten. The native Ohlones employed in this gruesome task—their obsidian chiseled knives tearing through skin and grinding bone—continued as per their orders, and cut off also each of Peter’s fingers (equals a total of twenty refusals). They quartered the martyr, spilled his bowels, as if from bear attack, attack by a bear in the shape of a Catholic. * Blessed Father Fray Junípero Serra absolutely believed that the slow rate of conversion for the native people was due to the influence of the Devil, who had been outraged by the coming of the Catholics to California, this region that he had long held in his dominion. * In his reception speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature, John Steinbeck said, “Man himself has become our greatest hazard and our only hope. So that today, St. John the Apostle may well be paraphrased: In the end is the Word, and the Word is Man—and the Word is with Men.” * In 1602, when Sebastián Vizcaíno and his friars sang mass on Catalina Island, as many as a hundred Pimungans witnessed the rite, asking by signs what it was about. According to Vizcaíno’s records, the Californians marveled not a little at the idea of Heaven and at the image of Jesus crucified. * Vizcaíno was brought to a prairie on Santa Catalina Island where the Pimungans worshipped their sun god. Upon the prairie they had placed an icon, a headless figure with horns protruding from the body, a figure that Vizcaíno predictably described as a demon. The Pimungans urged Vizcaíno not to approach the image of their deity, but he ignored them. He placed his crucifix against the wooden figurine and prayed the Our Father. Vizcaíno told the natives that his prayer was from Heaven, and that their god was the Devil. Vizcaíno held out his crucifix, encouraging the Pimungans to touch it and receive Jesus. He pointed at the sky and indicated Heaven. The Pimungans worshipped a sun deity, so they were impressed with this white man and his description of his god, for their gods seemed to be one and the same. It’s no wonder then that Vizcaíno’s diary reports the natives being pleased with this exchange. “Surely,” the diary says, “they will be converted to our Holy Faith.” * The Miwok women wailed and scratched at their faces when their men consorted with Sir Francis Drake and the other Englishmen who had landed on California’s coast in the summer of 1579. “The blood streaming downe along their brests, besides despoiling the upper parts of their bodies of those single coverings . . .they would with furie cast themselves upon the ground . . . on hard stones, knobby hillocks, stocks of wood, and pricking bushes.” Drake and his men fell themselves to their knees in prayer, their eyes Heavenward, so that the natives might see they prayed to God and they too might worship God then their eyes that had been so blinded by the deceiver might be opened. * Father Fray Antonio de la Ascención—Carmelite friar in Vizcaíno’s party—writes that the Indians of California can “easily and with very little labor be taught our Holy Catholic faith, and that they would receive it well and lovingly.” He calls for two hundred older and honorable soldiers to ensure brotherhood during the conquest, so that peace and love—the best tools to pacify pagans—should reign. The religious, the friar says, should likewise be wise and loving to easily quell animosities between Spaniards and the heathen, and therefore avoid war. The Spaniards should bring with them trinkets—beads, mirrors, knives—to distribute amongst the gentiles, so that they might come to love the Christians, and see “that they are coming to their lands to give them that of which they bring, and not to take away the Indians’ possessions, and may understand that they are seeking the good of their souls.” No women are to accompany the conquest, says Father Fray Antonio, “to avoid offenses to God.” * In 1955 Wallace Stevens admitted himself to St. Francis Hospital in Hartford, Connecticut. There, it’s rumored he converted to Catholicism before dying of stomach cancer, exclaiming to his priest after the baptism, “Now I am in the fold.” Stevens’s late-career poems seem less cynical, more in awe of being and death (read “Metaphor as Degeneration” from The Auroras of Autumn ). He could have chosen from at least three secular hospitals in Hartford at the time. * I was reading Stevens’s Collected Poems when I joined eHarmony and listed that as my “currently reading” book among the “more than twelve” books a year that I would read. I fell in love with my wife when she said, “Are you sending your work out to literary journals?” Prior to this, the first girl I talked to on the phone, when I explained my doctoral exams, said, “So, you’re like, reading Stephen King and stuff?” When I said not exactly she responded defensively: “He must be doing something right, since he makes all that money.” * Mom walked me, my brother, and sister, through the Stations of the Cross. We did this on Ash Wednesdays, or whenever she thought we needed extra God after church. It might’ve happened before church, though that’s unlikely because we were always late. Anyway, it’s easiest to walk the Stations of the Cross when there’s no one else around. To walk the actual Stations means one goes to Jerusalem and walks the Via Dolorosa to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. So the Stations elsewhere—usually paintings, or low-relief sculptures upon church walls—serve as a kind of virtual Dolorosa. Mom held our hands and started from the rear of Our Lady of Refuge: the First Station. Mom said we should say a prayer at each Station and to think of all the pain Jesus went through so that we could go to Heaven. It was hard to keep thinking about that one thing for so long. My mind went to that Saturday’s little league game, to the donut and chocolate milk (our after-church reward from Castroville Bakery), and as I grew older I thought about girls. When you’re thirteen you can’t not think about the girl’s butt in the pew in front of yours as she kneels and stands to pray throughout mass. * It grew increasingly juvenile to lie awake at night daring myself to utter a simple sentence. Even if I said I didn’t believe in God, wouldn’t He know the truth? He was omniscient, like a narrator. Even the idea of Him as a him ceased making sense. Not only did this come with a budding realization of my paternalistic culture, but due to the simple question of why? If God was everything, everywhere, all knowing, then why would he be a man? There’s that question: If God is a man then God must have a penis, and if so, what for? * The Catholic Church incorporates some modern scientific research into its dogma concerning the formation of the Universe, Solar System, and Earth, as well as evolution. According to Catholic doctrine, in approximately the fifth millennia BCE, humans began to worship the one true God. Those humans were Adam and Eve, though the Church says humans had been around for thousands of years prior to Adam and Eve. The Church claims to be infallible. Every time the Church changes its doctrine it remains infallible. * One Catholic writer, Tom Meagher, writes that “Modernism[—]the idea that we come to our beliefs individually through emotional or personal experiences[—]has crept into our Catholic schools.” * Catholics believe that evil spirits, given power through Original Sin, can imbue ordinary inanimate objects of everyday use. Thus, such objects should be blessed in order to induce in them the desire to serve the good. Such objects are not limited to, but include, “new ships and boats, railways and trains, bridges, fountains, wells, cornmills, limekilns, smelting furnaces, telegrams, steam engines, and machines for providing electricity.” * In The Sound of Music Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer sing together: “Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could...” * To explain competing theories on the very early universe, and pre-verse would be another book. What was the inflaton? Did (mem)branes collide, initiating the Big Bang, as opposed to Lemaître’s primordial atom, a singularity? Without a unified theory there’s gravity hanging out there, fucking everything up. We cannot make sense of the mechanics of the Planck Epoch—0-10-34 seconds into the Universe’s creation—named for Max Planck, who stumbled into the discovery of quantum mechanics in the early twentieth century. * My students often ask if I believe in God, since I espouse evolution, the Big Bang, Science, reject a strictly biblical or creationist theory of the Universe. I tell them that yes, I believe in God, though not the God that they imagine one must believe in. * When questioned regarding the rumor that, before his death, founder of quantum mechanics Max Planck had converted to Catholicism, he replied that he did not believe “in a personal God, let alone a Christian God.” * Physicist and Catholic priest George Lemaître, who formulated the theory and wrote the 1946 book The Primeval Atom Hypothesis , was made a household name by then-detractor Fred Hoyle, who pejoratively referred to the idea as a “Big Bang.” * Suicide is a mortal sin. To end one’s own life one must have despair, which is to lose hope, which is to lose faith, and to disbelieve in God. * Archaeology has uncovered graffiti in all of California’s missions—Indian pictographs inscribed into the adobe, covered with layers of whitewash. Native deities and depictions of cultural practices show that tribespeople never fully gave up their native traditions even after baptism and coming to the missions. There was something inside Native Californians that would never die. (shrink)

In this issue we include contributions from the individuals presiding at the panel All in a Jurnal's Work: A BABEL Wayzgoose, convened at the second Biennial Meeting of the BABEL Working Group. Sadly, the contributions of Daniel Remein, chief rogue at the Organism for Poetic Research as well as editor at Whiskey & Fox , were not able to appear in this version of the proceedings. From the program : 2ND BIENNUAL MEETING OF THE BABEL WORKING GROUP CONFERENCE “CRUISING IN (...) THE RUINS: THE QUESTION OF DISCIPLINARITY IN THE POST/MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITY” SEPTEMBER 21ST, 2012: SESSION 13 MCLEOD C.322, CURRY STUDENT CENTER NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY, BOSTON, MA. Traditionally, a wayzgoose was a celebration at the end of a printer’s year, a night off in the late fall before the work began of printing by candlelight. According to the OED, the Master Printer would make for the journeymen “a good Feast, and not only entertains them at his own House, but besides, gives them Money to spend at the Ale-house or Tavern at Night.” Following in this line, continent. proposes in its publication(s) a night out and a good Feast, away from the noxious fumes of the Academy and into a night of revelry which begins, but does not end, at the alehouse or Tavern. continent. proposes that the thinking of the Academy be freed to be thought elsewhere, in the alleys and doorways of the village and cities, encountered not in the strictly defined spaces of the classroom and blackboard (now white) but anticipated and found where thinking occurs. Historically, academic journals have served a different purpose than the Academy itself. Journals (from the Anglo-Fr. jurnal , "a day," from O.Fr. jornel , "day, time; day's work," hence the journalist as writer of the news of the day ) have served as privileged sites for the articulation and concretization of specific modes of knowledge and control (insemination of those ideas has been formalized in the classroom, in seminar). In contrast, the academic journal is post-partum and has been an old-boys club, an insider trading network in which truths are (re)circulated against themselves, forming a Maginot Line against whatever is new, or the distinctly challenging. All in a Jurnal’s Work will discuss (in part) the ramifications of cheap start-up publications that are challenging the traditional ensconced-in-ivory academic journals and their supporting infrastructures. The panel will be seeking a questioning (as a challenging) towards the discipline of knowledge production/fabrication (of truth[s]) and the event of the Academy (and its publications) as it has evolved and continues to (d)evolve. Issues to be discussed will revolve around the power of academic publishing and its origins, hierarchical versus horizontal academic modules (is there a place for the General Assembly in academia?) and the evolving idea of the Multiversity as a site(s) of a (BABELing) multivocality in the wake of the University of Disaster. STAGE NOTES AND/AS/OR TRACK CHANGES: INTRODUCTORY REMARKS AND MAGICAL THINKING ON PRINTING: AN ELECTION AND A PROVOCATION Isaac Linder “Of course most people don’t think of editing/publishing as theatre but as something boring or parasitical (vis-à-vis a ‘source’ text), a textual backwater populated by people with glasses. But I think publishing a book today is theatre, socially networked theatre…. Facebook and Flickr are our era’s administered and generic version of sixties happenings!” — Tan Lin 1 ELECTING A MASCOT: THE BARNACLE GOOSE After pitching the idea for this panel with the editorial help of my continental cohorts I became fascinated with the image of the goose—dead and roasted as it may be—and its relationship to the space of the printing press. For a long while after proposing this gathering I was seriously under the sway of delusions of grandeur, imagining that we might roast a goose (or goosefu) and, preparing a meal as one prepares a text for publication, feast in something approaching a warm and well-nourished revelry. I should note, by way of introduction, that a substantial part of my undergraduate experience involved learning to typeset and work as a devil, as typesetters mischievously call it, in a letterpress studio. This accounts in part for my fascination and helps to explain the fact that, when I began to leaf around in medieval beastiaries in lieu of being able to procure a goose, I was almost immediately struck by a fantastic monster that I hereby elect to be the mascot for our so-called para-academic practice(s) the relatively famed, but no less fabulous for it, barnacle goose. The barnacle goose is a creature that first makes its way into 12th century manuscripts with Giraldus Cambrensis in 1186. Phenomenologically speaking the monster is a tree, a tree which, when approached closer is seen to be birthing geese budding from the buds that hang like ripe fruit from its branches. As the story goes these trees were found over water; the fledgling geese, once wrested from their pods would take off in flight or fall to their watery death, where they would be transformed into driftwood. In retrospect we presume the barnacle goose was posited as a consequence of the fact that geese born in more northern regions, migrating to Ireland and western Europe at large, were never seen to give birth. And I should note that this is far from the only other animal posited to be born from trees at around this time, my other favorite being medieval accounts of Moroccan tree-climbing goats. 2 In particular I’ve thrown up the mascot of the barnacle goose and singled it out from the quires of its beatiaries because its thoroughly hybrid origins lead us to name two very real creatures we can find point to in abundance; discrete materialities of the world cobbled together in textual fancy: on the one hand, the modern day barnacle goose , a common species of goose and, on the other, goose barnacles , a particular type of crustacean with incredible feathery tendrils and—I can't help but mention—one of the largest body mass to penis size ratios of all of the animals in the kingdom. Why is this bit of genital trivia relevant? Because they’re all hermaphroditic and in rare cases have been found to reproduce just with themselves—to inseminate themselves and give birth to their kin. So I think it must be stressed, as a symbol for what we’re really here to talk about, it's not a boy’s club thing so much as a very queer thing and, I contend, para - in every perfect sense of the word... Alongside the natural world, a monstrous imaginary concatenation; Alongside the hulls of so many institutional structures, funding sources and resources, Serresian parasites in all manner of mutualist, symbiotic, or properly parasitic positions; migratory and adrift; The tree, center stage in the 21st century adaptation of Waiting for Godot that is unraveling in ateliers across the world, is a barnacle goose birthing a flurry of miscegenous texts beyond medium and genre. PROVOCATION 1: CHAOSMOSIS “Genre is obsolete.” — Ray Brassier 3 And so, here I was getting carried away in daydreams about this generative and genealogical symbol under which to think all of the diverse projects we are all involved in as architects of the dressed word, (well dressed, bespoke, mansy, butch, careless, or roguishly punk attired as those words may be), when it also dawned on me, mid-flight here from Denver, that we are, even in lieu of being able to roast geese together, very much so literalizing what was never just the metaphor of the wayzgoose—a tradition, as you know, celebrated to mark the crepuscular turn into fall—as we are poised here, tomorrow being the first official day of fall on our calendars in the US marking the seasonal change from at which point it will no longer be possible to print without the aid of candlelight. A beautiful thought, that tipped into magical thinking on account of a little quick math I was able to do to come to the conclusion that we can all be delighted to know that as we proceed into the autumn with our printing projects always ahead of us and still to be set, we will tonight be bathed not only by the artificial candlelight of our screens, but also in part by photons raining down on us at 186,282 miles per second—photons from an aspect of 9 cyg, a stereoscopic binary deep within Cygnus, the swan but not-so-distant-relative of the goose, with a distance of 572 Light years away; photons that are raining down on us, will rain down on us all winter, have been raining down on us all year, and which had their origin in the combustion cores at a center of 9 cyg 572 years ago, in 1440, the year which we point to today as the common year in which, as we all know, Gutenberg is said to have brought the movable type to the western world, inaugurating an era that stretches farther into the past and future than McLuhan could justify; the proliferation of so much ambient text; insurrectionary coups on (and re-crystallizations of) genre—perceived amidst so much ambient light—enveloping this campus, just now. So, with that thought, and perhaps a new mascot, Nico Jenkins... NOTES “ Writing as Metadata Container, An Interview with Tan Lin ,” Chris Alexander, Kristen Gallagher, Danny Snelson, Gordon Tapper, Tan Lin, Jacket 2. January 20, 2012. To explore Lin’s notion of ambient textuality, plagiarism, and parallel, cross­platform publication in the 21st century, also see Lin’s sampled novel, “ The Patio and the Index ,” Triple Canopy 14, October 24, 2011, as well as the Edit event, organized at the Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania, April, 2010 . For a fascinating and fecund exploration of medieval plant­animal hybrids in relation to media ecology, see Whitney Trettien, “ Becoming Plant: Magnifying a Microhistory of Media Circuits in Nehemiah Grew’s Anatomy of Plants (1682) .” postmedieval 3.1 (2012):97. See also the crowd­review version of the essay. “ Genre Is Obsolete .” Compléments de Multitudes . 28 (2007). (shrink)

By modifying the body in meaningful ways, human beings establish their identity and social status. Lip plugs, ear plugs, penis sheaths, cosmetics, ornaments, scarification, body piercings, and genital modifications encode and transmit messages about age, sex, social status, health, and attractiveness from one individual to another. Through sociocultural sexual selection, male genital modification plays an important role as a sociosexual signal in both male competition and female mate choice. The reliability of the signal correlates with the cost of acquiring the (...) trait. Women use a variety of cues to assess male quality. Male genital modification is one way that some women assess their mates. Extreme male genital modifications not only honestly advertise status, sexual potency, and ability to provide sexual satisfaction, they may provide a reliable index of male-female cooperation through the male’s commitment to endure pain and risk. (shrink)

Circumcision of males represents a surgical “vaccine“ against a wide variety of infections, adverse medical conditions and potentially fatal diseases over their lifetime, and also protects their sexual partners. In experienced hands, this common, inexpensive procedure is very safe, can be pain‐free and can be performed at any age. The benefits vastly outweigh risks. The enormous public health benefits include protection from urinary tract infections, sexually transmitted HIV, HPV, syphilis and chancroid, penile and prostate cancer, phimosis, thrush, and inflammatory dermatoses. (...) In women circumcision of the male partner provides substantial protection from cervical cancer and chlamydia. Circumcision has socio‐sexual benefits and reduces sexual problems with age. It has no adverse effect on penile sensitivity, function, or sensation during sexual arousal. Most women prefer the circumcised penis for appearance, hygiene and sex. Given the convincing epidemiological evidence and biological support, routine circumcision should be highly recommended by all health professionals. BioEssays 29:1147–1158, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This month's issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics is a special issue devoted entirely to the ethics of infant male circumcision—an elective surgical practice that is currently performed on around a third of the world's male population.1The last time the Journal ran a symposium on this issue was in 2004, and there has been relatively scant discussion of the practice in the ethical literature since then. Three events that took place in the past year have brought the ethics of (...) infant male circumcision back into the global spotlight.First, in April of 2012, controversy erupted after it was reported that a baby had died in New York City after contracting Herpes Simplex virus during the Orthodox Jewish variant of circumcision known as metzitzah b'peh, which involves the oral suction of blood from the infant's penis following the circumcision procedure.2Later that year, the American Academy of Pediatrics released a policy statement which suggested that the health benefits of ordinary forms of male circumcision outweigh the risks and …. (shrink)

An ambiguity in this passage apperas to have gone unnoticed. The ambiguity in line 27 is well known; and when Xanthias at once continues ‘But you tell me about yours’, many a listener might well not immediately realize that the noun to be supplied was from 25 rather than from 27, and might therefore momentarily suppose that Xanthias was saying ‘Tell me about your penis’; a supposition that would be temporarily confirmed when Sosias replied ‘It's a big one’. The reaction (...) of such a listener would be the same as that of Kalonike at Lys. 23. She has been told that the women have been summoned to deliberate . Now she asks and on receiving the answer at once jumps to the conclusion that Lysistrata is using in its phallic sense and asks. (shrink)

This paper addresses two related topics: 1. The disanalogies between elective cosmetic practices and sex reassignment surgery. Why does it seem necessary for me – an aging professional woman – to ignore the blandishments of hairdressers wielding dyes and dermatologists wielding acids and scalpels? Why does it not seem equally necessary for a transgendered person to repudiate sex reassignment procedures? 2. The role of the body in identity and agency. How do phenomenological insights regarding the constitution of selfhood in relation (...) to the interplay between the body image and corporeal know-how contribute to an account of the agency of transgendered individuals? Studying several paintings by contemporary feminist artist Jenny Saville has advanced my thinking on these topics. Saville’s imagery is an invaluable aid to reflection on these issues because she uses her painterly technique, which critics often dub “virtuoso,” to represent lived human bodies. In her work, viewers encounter representations of subjectivized, agentic corporeity, as distinct from inert, objectified flesh. Moreover, her sympathetic engagement with nonconformist, devalued bodies helps to reconfigure the standard gestalts of the human body that viewers typically carry with them and thus to convert fear and/or disgust into appreciation and understanding. In this paper, I consider three of Saville’s paintings. Plan, Saville’s self-portrait as a nude female whose body has been prepped for liposuction, conveys the pathos of this procedure. Matrix is a nude portrait of self-described “gender variant visual artist” Del LaGrace Volcano. In the words of one critic Saville’s depiction of Volcano’s nude intersexed body “restores beauty to the primitive [female] genital organ.” Passage, another nude portrait of an intersexed individual, is an image of vibrant sexuality despite the presumptively jarring juxtaposition of breasts and a penis. I argue that conceiving the agentic subject as a rational deliberative capability that uses a conjoined body as the instrument of its will makes it impossible to theorize the agency of transgendered people. In contrast, when agentic subjects are understood as embodied subjects and embodiment is understood as a dimension of practical intelligence, the agency of transgendered individuals is intelligible. (shrink)

it has recently been discovered that propranolol — a beta-blocker traditionally used to treat cardiac arrhythmias and hypertension — might disrupt the formation of the emotionally disturbing memories that typically occur in the wake of traumatic events and consequently prevent the onset of trauma-induced psychological injuries such as Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. One context in which the use of propranolol is generating interest in both the popufor and scientific press is sexual violence. Nevertheless, feminists have so far not weighed in on (...) propranolol. I suggest that the time is ripe for a careful feminist analysis of the moral and political implications of propranolol use in the context of sexual violence. In this paper, I map the feminist issues potentially raised by providing propranolol to victims of sexual assault, focusing in particufor on the compatibility of propranolol use and avaüability with an understanding of the social and systematic dimensions of rape s harms. I do not deliver a final verdict on propranolol; in fact, I show that we do not yet have enough information about propranolol's effects to do so. Rather, 1 provide a feminist framework for evaluating the possibilities and penis opened up by therapeutic memory manipuktion in the context of sexual violence against women. (shrink)

The foreskin in small boys causes much anxiety in our society. It develops during the second half of gestation, and in premature infants may appear relatively deficient. By term, however, it has grown and protruded to well beyond the glans penis. The inner layer of the foreskin is densely adherent to the surface of the glans and cannot be retracted until it is fully separated, which occurs during the first few years of life. Prior to that time the distal opening (...) of the foreskin is narrow, but because of its adherence there is no significant pocket under the skin to allow accumulation of urine or debris. Later in childhood, after the foreskin is fully separated, urine and dirt can accumulate between the foreskin and the glans, leading to infection and inflammation . With recurrent balanitis, and/or tearing of the delicate foreskin, phimosis or scarring may constrict the distal foreskin.Circumcision has a long history in ancient societies of the Middle East, and is likely to have arisen as an early public health measure for preventing recurrent balanitis, caused by sand accumulating under the foreskin. Circumcision is a major part of the ritual for such religions as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and it is probably no accident that all of these arose in the Middle East. By contrast, in religions arising outside the arid Middle East , there is no ritual circumcision. In aboriginal society in Australia, circumcision is practised also.The importance of preventing recurrent balanitis and secondary phimosis in arid, sandy regions was confirmed by the Australian army medical corps in two world wars. During both wars, Australian soldiers were stationed in North Africa and the Middle East, and the incidence of recurrent balanitis caused by sand under the foreskin reached “epidemic” proportions, leading to large numbers …. (shrink)

Les dénudations dans les images médiévales sont souvent associées au régime de la preuve dans un cadre juridique. Les Cent nouvelles nouvelles, recueil rédigé en Bourgogne dans les années 1450, présente un cas singulier de dénudation (nouvelle 45) dont il existe une image dans un manuscrit conservé à Glasgow. Une lavandière transgenre, Mme Marguerite, est accusée de relations sexuelles avec une jeune fille et exposée semi-dénudée sur la place du marché de Rome pour dévoiler son pénis. L’article compare ce cas (...) à d’autres occurrences de procès de personnes transgenres ayant trait à des questions de sexualité. Il compare également ce cas à un fabliau et à une nouvelle de Boccace dans lesquels se posent des questions de transition de genre et de sexualité illégitime. Le cas de Mme Marguerite apparaît comme l’un des jalons d’une histoire longue de la dénudation forcée des personnes transgenres. (shrink)

Is the opposition to circumcision partly driven by cultural prejudices?In this issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics you can read a minisymposium on circumcision, mainly dealing with the circumcision of male children at an age where they cannot consent, but also touching upon issues of female genital mutilation.When reading the papers I found it strange, but of course not really surprising given its symbolic importance, that we are so worried about interventions on the male penis. Why are we not (...) equally worried about other irreversible bodily and mental interventions to which parents subject their children? I will not dwell on the irreversible mental imprinting, apart from mentioning that upon becoming a father I was amused to find that certain Danish lullabies and children’s rhymes had apparently been stored in my mind for the last 40 …. (shrink)

Taking a cue from Slavoj Zizek’s reading of the Qur’anic tale of the two sons of Adam, Abel and Cain, this paper examines an overlooked erotic layer of meaning archived in the key Qur’anic term for sacrifice; it also explores the nexus of eroticism and sacrifice in this tale. At the beginning of this text the Qur’an announces that the “truth” of this story will be told. However, that truth turns out to be the symbolic absence of the truth, allowing (...) for a range of interpretive possibilities. I will argue that in the Qur’anic narrative of Cain and Abel the “shame/penis” of the murdered brother is the site of the archive, and interpretive possibilities are conditioned by the function of the master-signifier, the phallus alluded to in the text by the presence of the penis. (shrink)

How the brain constructs one's inner sense of gender iden-tity is poorly understood. On the other hand, the phenomenon of phantom sensations-- the feeling of still having a body-part after amputation--has been much studied. Around 60% of men experience a phantom penis post-penectomy. As transsexuals report a mismatch between their inner gender identity and that of their body, we won-dered what could be learnt from this regarding innate gender-specific body image. We surveyed male-to-female transsexuals regarding the incidence of phantoms post-gender (...) reassignment surgery. Addition-ally, we asked female-to-male transsexuals if they had ever had the sensation of having a penis when there was not one physically there. In post-operative male-to-female transsexuals the incidence of phan-tom penises was significantly reduced at 30%. Remarkably, over 60% of female-to-male transsexuals also reported phantom penises. We explain the absence/presence of phantoms here by postulating a mis-match between the brain's hardwired gender-specific body image and the external somatic gender. Further studies along these lines may provide penetrating insights into the question of how nature and nur-ture interact to produce our brain-based body image. (shrink)

Background: We like to think about sexual activity as something fixed, basic and primal. However, this does not seem to fully capture reality. Even when we relish sex, we may be capable of mentalizing, talking, voluntarily postponing orgasm, and much more. This might indicate that the central control mechanisms of sexual activity are quite flexible and susceptible to learning mechanisms, and that cortical brain areas play a critical part. Objective: This study aimed to identify those cortical areas and mechanisms most (...) consistently implicated in sexual activity. Design: A comprehensive review of the human functional neuroimaging literature on sexual activity, i.e. genital stimulation and orgasm, is made. Results: Genital stimulation recruits the classical somatosensory matrix, but also areas far beyond that. The posterior insula may be particularly important for processing input from the engorged penis and coordinating penile responses. Extrastriate visual cortex tracks sexual arousal and responds to genital stimulation even when subjects have their eyes closed. The ventromedial prefrontal cortex is also tightly coupled to sexual arousal, but low activity in this area predicts high sexual arousal. Conclusion: This review has indicated cortical sites where activity is moderated by tactile genital inflow and high sexual arousal. Behavioral implications are discussed and where possible the relevance for learning mechanisms is indicated. Overall, it is clear that the cerebral cortex has something to say about sexual activity. Keywords: functional neuroimaging; insula; ventromedial prefrontal cortex; extrastriate visual cortex; penis; clitoris; orgasm (Published: 15 March 2012) Citation: Socioaffective Neuroscience & Psychology 2012, 2 : 17337 - DOI: 10.3402/snp.v2i0.17337. (shrink)

The main issue in the Masiya judgment was whether the current South African definition of rape—namely non-consensual penetration of a vagina by a penis—should be extended to include anal penetration of both female and male victims. The majority of the Constitutional Court held that anal penetration of female victims should constitute rape, but declined to offer similar protection to male victims. This note argues that this judgment reverts to and reinforces patriarchal stereotypes and dichotomies and that it misunderstands, in a (...) profound way, central concepts such as sex and gender and the gendered nature of rape. It further suggests that, instead of being an aberration, the judgment actually fits into a pattern of conservative judgments about gender and sexuality by the South African Constitutional Court. (shrink)

Los Salmanticen-ses fueron teólogos que enseña-ron en el Colegio universitario salmanticenses de los carmelitas descalzos durante el siglo XVII y primera parte del XVIII. A ellos se deben el “Cursus theologi-cus salmanticensis”, así como el “Cursus moralis salmanticensis”. El tratado de penitencia del Cur-sus theologicus salmanticensisestá dividido en dos partes bien diferenciadas, aunque íntima-mente relacionadas: 1. La peni-tencia como sacramento. 2. La penitencia como virtud. Resumi-mos aquí sobre todo lo que se refiere la Penitencia como sacra-mento. Nuestro método es (...) analí-tico y comparativo, y el objeto de nuestra investigación consiste en la síntesis, el análisis y el comen-tario de los textos más destaca-dos sobre la materia penitencial. (shrink)

K. J. Dover, in Greek Homosexuality , p. 125 n. 1, observes: ‘My interpretation ad loc. , that drosos is Cowper's secretion, appearing when the boy's penis has been erected by titillation, is far-fetched , but no other interpretation so far seems to me to pay enough attention to the semantics of drosos or to explain why Right regards the beauty of “drosos and down” as incompatible with anointing below the navel’.

K. J. Dover, in Greek Homosexuality, p. 125 n. 1, observes: ‘My interpretation ad loc., that drosos is Cowper's secretion, appearing when the boy's penis has been erected by titillation, is far-fetched, but no other interpretation so far seems to me to pay enough attention to the semantics of drosos or to explain why Right regards the beauty of “drosos and down” as incompatible with anointing below the navel’.

This article interrogates a psychoanalytically inflected strain of anti-social queer theory that in privileging refusal and negation, views as paradigmatic of ‘queerness’ the destructive, annihilative aspects in (queer) sex. In this view, sexuality is a product of the unconscious, thus irreducible to gender, such that gender is irrelevant to (and indeed hinders) understandings of desire. Informed by feminism, which views gender as crucial to any theory on sexuality, I expose that which ‘sexual negation’ masks through this very disavowal – that (...) of gender and the body itself. I argue that subtending the figural representation of queer/ness is a deep-seated, albeit disguised, masculinism that, through negation, works to re-centre and re-virilise (gay) men’s sexual economies. I take up Butler’s lesbian phallus to de-idealise and thus challenge this privileging of the penis operating within this strain of queer – as only phallic sexual economies can, it seems, deliver the very annihilation we (all) seek. (shrink)

This book should have been called “The Penis Book.” Sure, there are a few clitorises here and there, a few vaginas, but all in all, it’s about penises. Giant penises and tiny penises, singing penis...

A partir de los conceptos de carácter, virtud y amistad propuestos por la ética de la ficción de Wayne Booth, realizamos un análisis comparativo entre los efectos éticos provocados por el territorio y la música en las novelas Península, Península de Hernán Lara Zavala y en El llamado de los tunk’ules de Marisol Ceh Moo. Sugerimos que, a pesar de estar ante dos novelas que comparten el mismo contexto geo-histórico, los efectos éticos causados por el territorio y la música, bajo (...) la idea de Yucatán, guardan diferencias que ameritan llevar a cabo una co- ducción para dilucidar el tipo de compañía literaria que nos ofrecen. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Michael’s Story or the Paradox of NormalcyMichael KreuzerI was born in Montreal in 1974. My parents were both “older.” My mother was almost 45; my father was in his 50’s. I have a sister who is six years older than me. What I know about my mother’s prenatal care is that it was quite basic.I was premature. My mother’s due date was in mid–August, however I showed up about (...) three weeks earlier. I know that initially upon my birth I was declared male. However, upon closer examination, a few “abnormalities” of my genitals were found. I urinated through a small hole at the base of my penis; adjacent to this hole was another opening, barely big enough for a Q–tip. My scrotum was empty; my gonads had not descended.The doctors who examined me decided that they could not assign a gender without further testing. They told my mother I would need to remain in the hospital until such testing was completed. Apparently not being able to determine sex/gender is a life–threatening condition that requires hospitalization.It was determined that I had a uterus and it was presumed that my undescended gonads were ovaries (not verified by biopsy). There was a small vaginal opening behind my small urethral opening. Structures such as the labia were not developed. I found out later my vagina had fistulated into both my urethra and my perineum. Karyotyping was performed resulting in 46,XX with a diagnosis of female pseudo–hermaphroditism. My parents were informed that in spite of my external genitalia I was female and I would never develop as a male. I would require “corrective surgeries” which should be performed as soon as possible so I would not have any issues with my gender identity. They were even told that I would be able to become pregnant if I had the surgeries. In fact, I never ovulated and I have a small unicornuate uterus.My father refused all surgeries on my behalf most likely because he was a full–blooded Navajo who had suffered from abuse in an Indian boarding school during his childhood in New Mexico. His family was traditional, and because they didn’t adapt to prevailing Christian values, he and several of his siblings were removed from their parents. My dad was the oldest of 12 children and by the time his youngest siblings were born, the practice to take children away from their families had been changed.I think my father was deeply traumatized by his childhood and did not associate much with his family, nor did he want to visit the reservation. He spoke the language but never encouraged us to learn it. He did teach us some of the traditions. He told me about the nadleh, which is the other gender besides male and female in the Navajo tradition. There are two kinds of nadleh, which are almost like male–to–female and female–to–male transsexuals. Mostly I educated myself later and learned about the Navajo belief system in which the creation story is an important part. In the Navajo tradition, the creation story tells of First Man and First Woman; the first children born to them are the Hermaphrodite Twins. [End Page E7]My father was a US Army Master Sergeant, which was an unusual career for a man of his origins; he was a veteran of the Second World War. After he left the army he took his family to Montreal where he had a job in security. I think he preferred to live outside the U.S. He used to say that in Germany, where he had managed to stay for a long time while serving in the Army, he was just another American soldier. In spite of his career, he had a deep mistrust for “white people.” I remember he used to say that he was in the Army because this was his country long before the white people came and he loved it. He did not love the people who governed it. All this very much played into the decision not to listen to the doctors’ recommendations about surgery. My... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Testament of the Other: Abraham and Torok’s Failed Expiation of GhostsChristopher Lane (bio)Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok. The Shell and the Kernel. Vol. 1. Ed., trans., and intro. Nicholas T. Rand. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1994.Nicholas Rand and Maria Torok. Questions à Freud: Du Devenir de la Psychanalyse. Paris: Belles Lettres-Archimbaud, 1995.Nicholas Rand and Maria Torok. “Questions to Freudian Psychoanalysis: Dream Interpretation, Reality, Fantasy.” Trans. Rand. Critical (...) Inquiry 19.3 (1993): 567–94. [“QFP”]Truly the universe is full of ghosts, not sheeted churchyard spectres, but the inextinguishable and immortal elements of life, which, having once been, can never die, though they blend and change and change again for ever.—H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon’s MinesWhat haunts are not the dead, but the gaps left within us by the secrets of others.—Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok, The Shell and the Kernel1. PrologueNicolas Abraham and Maria Torok may be best known for advancing a theory of transgenerational haunting. According to this theory, repressed secrets are passed from one generation to the next if they are “encrypted” as unprocessed and traumatic information. Before Abraham’s death in 1975, he and Torok saw their analytic role as reparative: Encouraging their analysands to mourn repressed secrets, they hoped to transform their analysands’ perspectives on family history.Abraham and Torok quickly became known for expanding Freud’s emphasis on the subject’s conflicting desires and identifications. From 1968 on, when Abraham published “L’écorce et le noyau” (“The Shell and the Kernel”) as an extended review of Laplanche and Pontalis’s The Language of Psychoanalysis, he and Torok published their claims in cheerful defiance of Freudian orthodoxy, acquiring a reputation in France—and, later, in England and the United States—for shattering such “doctrinaire” elements of psychoanalysis [End Page 3] as the Oedipus complex and death drive, penis envy, and the primal scene, as well as for criticizing Lacan’s alleged stranglehold on psychoanalysis in France and much of Europe. 1 After publishing L’écorce et le noyau (1987), a collection of their essays (many coauthored), and a radically new interpretation of Freud’s patient “the Wolf Man,” Cryptonymie: Le verbier de l’homme aux loups (1976; trans. The Wolf Man’s Magic Word: A Cryptonomy), Abraham and Torok were championed in Europe and the United States by theorists delighted to see a “poststructuralist” critique of Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis. Ironically, Abraham and Torok’s work received almost comparable support from analytical philosophers eager to denounce Freud’s “unscientific” precepts.Now that the first volume of Abraham and Torok’s essays has appeared in translation, non-Francophone readers have an opportunity to assess what Abraham and Torok contributed to psychoanalysis and to revisit the debates they staged with Freud and Lacan in the 1970s and—posthumously for Abraham—in the ‘80s. Reviewing this collection is not a simple task, however, because its conceptual interests are so diverse and because Torok’s coauthored work with Abraham differs radically from the essays and book she published recently with Nicholas Rand, editor and translator of The Shell and the Kernel. Rand’s interventions confirm Torok’s latest arguments but they also, occasionally, misleadingly frame the older work in terms of the new. Readers may therefore see Rand’s editorial notes and introduction as guides to how he and Torok now view Torok’s collaboration with Abraham. We can only speculate whether Abraham would have interpreted the collaboration the same way. 2How does Abraham and Torok’s account of psychic “encryptment” differ from Freud’s model of repression? Assessing their revision of Freud’s metapsychological project, Abraham and Torok declare, “It would be presumptuous indeed to allege that we have reached our goal. Yet it would be false modesty to deny our suspicion that we are finally entering an open road” [140]. 3 Echoing Freud’s conviction that in dreams he had discovered “the royal road to the unconscious,” Abraham and Torok encourage a comparative reading of their psychoanalytic “road” and Freud’s. The following essay undertakes this reading, but it also speculates on what Freud’s and Lacan’s emphasis on [End Page 4] psychic... (shrink)

Kenneth Dover proposes an explanation of this joke in which the gist is to be understood in terms of ‘homosexual rape as an expression of dominance’, so that Dicaeopolis is offering himself up for use as a pathic by Lamachus. Dover believes that the joke becomes ‘intelligible if the assumption is that the erastēs handles the penis of the erōmenos during anal copulation’. Others have seen a circumcision joke here. Alan Sommerstein explains how the joke would work either of these (...) ways. (shrink)

The split in our thinking between "masculine" and "feminine" is probably as old as language itself. Human beings seem to have a natural tendency to divide things into pairs: good/bad, light/dark, subject/object and so on. It is not surprising, then, that the male/female or masculine/feminine dichotomy is used to classify things other than men and women. Many languages actually classify all nouns as "masculine" or "feminine" (although not very consistently: for example, the Spanish masculine noun pollo means "hen", while the (...) feminine polla is slang for "penis"). This is perfectly natural; it is part of the way categorisation works in language. This does not, however, mean that it is right. It is probably unimportant whether a table or a chair is thought of as masculine or feminine. It may not even be very important these days whether we think of the sun as male and the moon as female (like the ancient Greeks) or vice versa (like most of the German tribes). However, when we start associating abstract concepts like Reason or Nature with men and women, we run into serious difficulties. (shrink)

I argue that, in George Eliot’s early, definitive statement of realism in the seventeenth chapter of Adam Bede, realism will only have been accomplished when readers have learned not merely to respect, but to desire, the dysphorically sexed bodies of others. In this sense, I argue, realism shares a central tenet with two of the more controversial and, frankly, neglected dimensions of Freudian thinking—which Sigmund Freud himself took to be indipensable components in the treatment of neurotics—castration complex and penis envy. (...) Though post-Freudian analysts have frequently found these dimensions of libidinal embodiment distasteful, to trans people they are central and in certain respects definitive aspects of social participation. Hence, while trans studies tends to eschew psychoanalysis altogether, and the only psychoanalysts to write about trans people tend to be Lacanians for whom Freud’s therapeutic ambitions were frequently mystified, reappraising the realist dimension of psychoanalytic practice can reveals the trans logic at the core of both Freud’s project and Eliot’s. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Circumcision:Ordinary and Universal in My CommunityAllan J. JacobsMy1 circumcision experiences are remarkable mostly for their ordinariness. My wife Danaë gave birth to our son Perseus2 while I was a resident in obstetrics and gynecology in a city where we had no family. Perseus was circumcised in a Jewish brit milah3 ceremony on the eighth day of his life, as were my wife's and my male ancestors back into ancient (...) times. We were relieved because Perseus had just recovered from a potentially serious condition. After a difficult forceps delivery, his blood bilirubin rose almost to the point where he might have developed the dreaded kernicterus syndrome. Kernicterus can cause permanent severe motor, intellectual and visual impairment. It was unclear whether he would be discharged from the hospital in time. He had to spend a week in restraints under a bright light whose frequency degraded bilirubin. Happily, he came home the day before the scheduled brit.Our four parents attended the brit. Danaë's father was the sandek,4 being granted the honor of holding our son on his lap during the circumcision ceremony. The mohel, or circumciser, was the local Conservative rabbi. We were mildly anxious because he didn't do many circumcisions in this city with few Jews. Perseus cried briefly after he was circumcised. The circumcision undoubtedly was far less stressful than treatment of elevated bilirubin. The circumcision certainly was less painful than the prodding and sticks for the many blood tests he had to undergo in the hospital, not to mention the pain of his difficult forceps delivery. Perseus did not seem to have much discomfort in his penis afterward, and had no circumcision complications.After the brit, our parents and my resident colleagues ate refreshments and chatted for an hour or so. A brit milah is a happy occasion, but not an elaborate one. It marks the end of the joy, anxiety, and excitement of the child's birth and its aftermath and is followed by the less exalted rhythm of feedings, diaper changes, and sleep deprivation.At the brit, our boys are assigned Hebrew names and confirmed in the Biblical covenant between God and the Hebrew people established between God and Abraham, and reaffirmed between God and Moses. Regardless of the historical truth of the formation of the covenant, it is accepted as a myth tantamount to [End Page 71] truth. In other words, regardless of its literal truth, such a myth is to be regarded as true because it concretizes God's demands or a moral truth. The covenant is real for me whether or not there was a historical Abraham. As with other religious commitments, the obligation to circumcise our sons is unprovable, but binding. On this basis, Perseus's ancestors on both sides were circumcised in brit milah ceremonies for many centuries into the past.My two grandsons were circumcised as well. Achilles was circumcised among friends and relatives. The mohel was an experienced obstetrician who was certified to officiate at a brit milah following the practices of Conservative Judaism. He administered adequate analgesia with topical local anesthetic cream followed by an injected regional block. Achilles slept through his circumcision, suffered no complications, and had little discomfort afterward. My other grandson had a circumcision performed as an infant outside the context of Judaism and is not being raised as a Jew.The two brit milah in my family were beautiful, dignified ceremonies, welcoming the infants into the Jewish fold, and bestowing their Hebrew names.5 Some of my relatives, including Perseus's son, had circumcisions performed in a medical setting without a ceremony. None of the many boys in my family had obvious short- or long-term problems with their circumcisions. My social circle has many Reform and Conservative Jews. I have never heard any Jewish man in my circle of acquaintances complain about his circumcision. Circumcision is a given. Problems are rare, and an exposed glans is the norm. Our men typically enjoy sex and have no difficulty in fathering children. Circumcision is part of the comforting cocoon of custom and tribe that helps to protect us as a group. It also reinforces Jewish endogamy... (shrink)

Despite having paved the way for face, womb and penis transplants, hand transplantation today remains a small hybrid of reconstructive microsurgery and transplant immunology. An exceptionally limited patient population internationally complicates medical researchers’ efforts to parse outcomes “objectively.” Presumed functional and psychosocial benefits of gaining a transplant hand must be weighed in both patient decisions and bioethical discussions against the difficulty of adhering to post-transplant medications, the physical demands of hand transplant recovery on the patient, and the serious long-term health (...) risks of immunosuppressant drugs. This paper relates five narratives of hand transplantation drawn from an oral history project to show how narrative methods can and should inform ethical evaluations and the clinical process of hand transplantation. The interviews with patients and their partners analyzed here lead us to suggest that qualitative accounts of patient experiences should be used to complement clinical case studies reported in medical journals and to help develop instruments to assess outcomes more systematically. (shrink)