#vagina obscura

[illustration-alcove]

Armando Veve's illustrated book cover for Rachel E. Gross's Vagina Obscura.

#armando veve #rachel e gross #book covers #vagina obscura #american literature

[idontwannabeyourmama]

i'm so excited to read more this year and post more excerpts on here

#on the radfem reading list: #when god was a woman #p/rnography #right wing women #vagina obscura #and hopefully more to come i have a lot of other books in the queue too but i've been reading a lot more #my post

[tigerfush]

In some ways, the consequences of all this skewed science down the ages are obvious: we now face a huge knowledge gap when it comes to half the bodies on Earth. The fact that science still doesn’t know exactly how these important organs work when they aren’t contributing to making a baby is disturbing, to say the least.

But the effects are broader than that. Female health is not its own planet, divorced from male health. We all share the same universal body plan, the same origins in the womb, the same hormones and basic bodily processes. Therefore, almost all of these issues have parallels in male bodies. Researchers who study endometriosis, for example, find that patterns of inflammation that underlie this disease also affect male health. Research into the vaginal microbiome sheds light on the penile microbiome. Studying menstruation teaches us about universal biological processes such as regeneration and scarless wound healing.

For centuries, science has been treating women as walking wombs, baby machines and incubators of new life. This narrow perspective has prevented us from asking questions and making advancements that could help all of us live longer, healthier lives. It’s time for a paradigm shift. We need to finally see the female body for what it truly is: a powerful constellation of interlocking elements, each part indivisible from the whole, that work together to support our health from cradle to grave. As we fill in the missing parts of this picture, we will undoubtedly expand our understanding of all bodies.

Rachel E Gross is the author of Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage(WW Norton).

#books #science #culture #health #society #rachel e gross #vagina obscura #anatomy #menopause #womens health

[amygdalae]

We have a book in stock called Vagina Obscura and every time I see that title I'm like omg....the prequel to penis mysterious......

[weirdnaturalscience]

Lately I've been really interested in primates, hominid evolution and the adaptions of the cis female body. I've enjoyed a lot of books on these subjects (for example, Vagina Obscura by Rachel Gross) and so I was excited to read Eve by Cat Bohanon. Unfortunately, this book has been a disappointment in multiple ways.

While I've learned some very cool things from the book, for example about about breasts (they intake saliva during nursing and tailor breastmilk according to the substances found in the saliva) or gluteofemoral fat (women are the only primates with so much gluteofemoral fat, a unique type of fat crucial to infant brain development) there are a lot of problems with the book.

Some are minor - I just don't like the religious metaphors, but then I should have known, given the title of the book. Some are major problems: she actually says at one point that women evolved to be sexist: "I propose that women are sexist because we essentially evolved to be" (hardback page 400). What the fuck? There's no evidence for this. I also find it ironic that we are essentially blaming women for a system that benefits men. Yeah, no. This is ridiculous.

There's more! Sections on women who have made it into the US military read like enlistment propaganda. So fun. Yes, what these women did physically is impressive. Still not a fan of the US military!

She discusses how promiscuous our close primate relatives are, including the females. This is 100% true. She goes on to note the advantages of monogamy for *males.* This is also true and backed up by other primate books I've read, for example the Woman Who Never Evolved by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy. She then makes a totally unwarranted leap that likens women choosing monogamy and having sex with one man to prostitutes. What the fuck, honestly. I thought we'd established that female chimps and bonobos will fuck anything that MOVES, and they're having a great time, so good for them. So why are we bringing back these tired and inaccurate sex stereotypes that women are "giving in" to having sex with men in exchange for monogamy, again, AFTER we've just established the ways in which monogamy is actually something MALE hominids might have preferred over females? Make it make sense

She doesn't argue so so so hard for the prostitution hypothesis, she just sort of presents it and doesn't tear it to shreds as she should. She mentions the "meat for sex" hypothesis, which has been debunked. She doesn't mention that it's been debunked. Remember, female primates don't need to be cajoled and wheedled into sex.

She also spends far too much time flirting with these ideas of the "male brain" and "female brain" when there is no neuroscience to back either up. She does sort of conclude that our brains aren't sexually dimorphic and that stereotype threat exists and is an important area of study, which is true. But the path she took there was so circuitous. I'm sorry but if you're going to consider the question "are human women stupid and inferior???????" you need to do a better job of showing that the answer is unequivocally NO, human women are of equal intelligence to men and there's a huge amount of scientific evidence to show this. The end. Present that upfront, then get into the data, don't take your sweet time about it. Jesus!

Ugh!

No but the prostitution monogamy thing was so bad. Again, female bonobos and chimps fuck anything that moves. Female bonobos engage in female genital rubbing (female on female) on average every TWO HOURS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! TWO HOURS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Sorry to shatter the illusions of any of yall you thought you had sexual stamina.

But our hominid ancestors tried to "convince" males to be monogamous by "bartering" sex that they otherwise wouldn't have wanted to have? That doesn't sound like the female primates I know who are literally Olympic athletes of sex. Kill this myth that females are less sexual. That is purely human culture talking.

Disappointed. I'll finish reading the book because I am learning interesting things here and there, but.......yeah.

#Eve #cat bohanon #human evolution #primates #my posts

[manogirl]

My Year in Reading, 2023

For the first time since 2012, I didn't do a GR reading challenge. In every year between 2012 and 2021, I read over 150 books. Some years it was closer to 150, some years closer to 200. In 2022, I read 83 books. In 2023, 79 books.

See, in 2022, my world broke. My brain broke. The big bad burnout turned my brain inside-out and upside-down and I lost reading. In that same long first half of 2022, I realized I had to leave librarianship. Not just my job, but my fucking career. See, I was a fiction librarian. I had this ultra-rare position that was my dream job, and reading was a part of my job. When people tell you not to make the thing you love your job, I know. I know what they're saying.

I spent the second half of 2022 living in a state of nearly constant joy. And I wasn't reading for a lot of it. If you asked me three years ago, I couldn't possibly have foreseen this turn of events. And for some of 2022, I was stressed about how much I WASN'T reading. I am trying to figure out how to express this, because it didn't feel BAD to not be reading. It felt right and it felt like I didn't want to be reading. But it also felt wrong because reading was a huge part of my life, and then....it wasn't.

I decided 2023 had to be different, in terms of how I related to reading, so I jettisoned the reading challenge and just let myself...be. Here's what I found out:

I read a lot of BL manga. I'm not a huge graphic novel OR manga fan, so this was a new and unexpected joy. This probably isn't surprising to you if you know me on tumblr through BL, but it was surprising to me. I figured I would dip into queer romance novels, but nope, it was the manga that I loved.

Danmei isn't for me. No idea why, because it seems like it'd be just my cup of tea, but it isn't. I like it, I just don't LOVE it, and right now I want to love the books I'm reading, especially if it's fiction because...

I read SO MUCH NONFICTION IN 2023. It's what my brain asked for, so that's what I fed it. It also probably contributed to my lower numbers; dense nonfiction takes a LOT longer to read than fiction/manga. I think...I'm a person who feels passionate about learning; I love it so so so much. And when my consumption habits switched to mainly frothy TV shows about men falling in love with each other, my brain was like, uh, you better feed us some facts, lady. So I did.

I...like?...memoirs? In my book club, I'm the person who hates memoirs. Memoirs that everyone loved I scoffed at. Memoirs, yuck. Except...apparently no. Apparently I like a memoir now. I guess this is maybe an offshoot of the nonfic bias but nonetheless, my brain continues to shock me and the people who know me best.

Anyway, here is a short, lightly annotated (not in order at all) list of my fave reads this year:

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett. Fuck yeah she doesn't miss.

Doppelganger by Naomi Klein. Oh this is the real shit, and she also doesn't miss.

Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid. Okay, a fiction book that I devoured. Sports + love + grief = a meditation on life.

Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma by Claire Dederer. I sometimes go back and read my highlights from this, because it was so fucking powerful and spoke to me so powerfully.

You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith. I loved this in a way I don't think I can explain. Simply stunning in all the right ways.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. Video games + love + grief = a meditation on life. Fucking amazing.

Stay True by Hua Hsu. Oh jesus fuck this is sad but it is so so so so good.

Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree. Cozy fantasy that isn't romance is something I need more of in my life. Yes to orcs opening bookstores and coffee shops and very little fighting.

Witch Hat Atelier, all existing volumes, by Kamome Shirohama. I've been sharing these with my 8 year-old niece and it's just the nicest little happy thing.

Vagina Obscura by Rachel Gross. Yes, please explain my fucked up innards to me. Endometriosis ftw!

Fat Talk by Virginia Sole-Smith. Real, solid advice and real, solid evidence, and real, solid writing. Two thumbs up.

Maybe someday I'll do a post about how I've been tracking my reading since November 11, 2004. I guess we're hitting the 20th anniversary this coming year, after all.

I guess I do know one thing: I'm never NOT going to read at times. I still do love it, even if my needs and wants around it have changed. Happy New Year, all!

#a year in reading #fave books 2023 #former fiction librarian #best reads 2023 #best books 2023

[miss-multi45]

Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, called female genitalia "the shame parts." In 1545, French anatomist Andreas Vesalius followed suit, calling the clitoris "membre honteux," which means "shameful member," according to Rachel Gross, author of the book "Vagina Obscura." Adaptations of the word pudendum, a Latin word that translates to the verb "to be ashamed," can still be found in medical vocabulary today. What. Why are men so hellbent on making women feel ashamed of having a vagina? Like in the article I got this from, it literally said that the penis was the superstar and the vagina was something to be ashamed of.

[the-forest-library]

August 2022 Reads

Half a Soul - Olivia Atwater

The Lord Sorcier - Olivia Atwater

The Latch Key - Olivia Atwater

My Imaginary Mary - Cynthia Hand

Inheritance - Katharine McGee

Trick - Natalia Faster

The Fixer Upper - Lauren Forsythe

Thank You for Listening - Julia Whelan

Where It All Lands - Jennie Wexler

Would You Rather - Allison Ashley

Mad About You - Mhairi McFarlane

Seatmate - Cara Bastone

Just Haven’t Met You Yet - Sophie Cousins

Luck and Last Resorts - Sarah Grunder Ruiz

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches - Sangu Bandanna

When a Scot Ties the Knot - Tessa Dare

So Happy for You - Celia Laskey

Mika in Real Life - Emiko Jean

Misrule - Heather Walter

Alias Emma - Ava Glass

The Turn of the Key - Ruth Ware

On a Sunbeam - Tillie Walden

A Career in Books - Kate Gavino

Cornbread & Poppy - Matthew Cordell

I’m Glad My Mom Died - Jennette McCurdy

Nothing Like I Imagined - Mindy Kaling

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone - Lori Gottlieb

Vagina Obscura - Rachel E. Gross

Reasons to Stay Alive - Matt Haig

No Cure for Being Human - Kate Bowler

Crying in the Bathroom - Erika L. Sanchez

One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter - Scaachi Koul

I Might Regret This - Abbi Jacobson

You’ll Grow Out of It - Jessi Klein

How Are You, Really? - Jenna Kutcher

Rough Draft - Katy Tur

The Social Anxiety Cure - Frank Steven

All That She Carried - Tiya Miles

The Lazy Genius Kitchen - Kendra Apache

Bold = Highly Recommend Italics = Worth It Crossed out = Nope

Thoughts:

Julia Whelan is an audiobook narrator who became an author, and her second book (which she narrates), Thank You for Listening, features a fun and heartfelt plot about the world of audiobooks. It’s super-meta and a good time. 

Best discovery of the month is Olivia Atwater (thank you @freckles-and-books for recommending her books!). I don’t normally like fae stories, but Half a Soul was just delightful. 

Since my life this year has been a quagmire of weird medical mysteries, it seems that all I do is stay home and listen to audiobooks. And, yeah, I’ve been getting through a lot of them. I increased my Goodreads Goal to 350. 

Goodreads Goal: 272/350

2017 Reads | 2018 Reads | 2019 Reads | 2020 Reads | 2021 Reads |

2022 Reads

#2022 reads #book reviews #book recommendations #books #booklr #bookish #reading #bibliophile

[gretchensinister]

2022 is now officially, 100% over, and so now I can be solid on my book count for the year. I read 103 books! Reading is my main source of entertainment and I make a point of doing it. Please don’t think I’ve also been keeping up with all the popular tv shows, video games, movies, podcasts, etc. I haven’t. I mostly read, and that’s how I get to this number. Also, I’m not buying all of these. I live in a place with a big public library system and free interlibrary loan. So, as a random person who read 103 books in 2022, I do want to note my favorites and other recommendations.

Favorites are totally personal and in no particular order. Also probably kind of uninformative, but you can always ask me for more details if you’re curious and would rather hear from me than a website selling the book.

Uprooted by Naomi Novik: This wasn’t the first time I read this book but the dynamic between the protagonist and the wizard is still catnip to me.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir: Hopeful, but not syrupy, science fiction, and also with some survival narrative flavor.

The Thousand Eyes by A. K. Larkwood: The second book in a duology that starts with The Unspoken Name. Completely nonhuman, alternate world, high-stakes fantasy, weird relationships with divinity and magic, fantasy trope aware but still earnest, I found the ending satisfying.

Vagina Obscura by Rachel E. Gross: Nonfiction book giving an overview of the latest knowledge and research of the pelvic organs including the vagina, clitoris, ovaries, uterus, etc. The last chapter is about neovaginas, and the book is intended to be trans-inclusive.

Fevered Star by Rebecca Roanhorse: Sequel to Black Sun, fantasy set in non-Columbian Central American styled setting, light and darkness in a struggle, political intrigue, I can’t quite get to squishing the avatars of light and darkness together in my mind but that’s because of the devoted nonbinary ex-assassin priest and the bisexual mermaid with a dark secret that they’ve respectively got. Story not completed and sequel not out yet.

Lost Boy by Christina Henry: A story asking what if Captain Hook started out as a lost boy? I’m usually very suspicious of books that kind of go for edginess with regard to Peter Pan, but this one was really good, and I felt like the author took the project seriously.

Revenant Gun by Yoon Ha Lee: End of the Machineries of Empire trilogy. Found the ending satisfying, unique science fiction world, yeah it’s one of them unnaturally old space generals with personal problems, one of them tear down the empire stories. You get it. First book is Ninefox Gambit.

The Obelisk Gate by NK Jemisin/The Stone Sky by NK Jemisin: I finished the Broken Earth Trilogy this year and it’s so good. I will probably re-read this series sometime in the future just to get to see the story from the new perspective of knowing what’s going on rather than being introduced to everything.

Devotions by Mary Oliver: An extensive collection of Mary Oliver’s poetry throughout her career. This is one of the few books in that 103 I own, and I have marked many poems in the volume for fighting against The Melancholy. Mary Oliver is the “Wild Geese” poet if you are unfamiliar.

Other fiction recommendations:

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet/A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers: I think these are good as a sort of lower-stakes sci-fi. They’re character-focused and...nice? But they do include a trope that’s my pet peeve, about humans being uniquely smelly among all aliens.

This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki: Graphic novel about two girls during a growing-up summer. Very good at capturing the vibe, didn’t make the first list because it’s not queer.

In the Night Garden by Catherynne M. Valente: Intricate, interwoven fantasy with a pure uncut fairytale vibe, beautiful language, didn’t make the first list because of casual fatphobia and also some places where I could not tell if certain orientalist tropes were being played straight or not.

The Habitation of the Blessed by Catherynne M. Valente: I took a class in college on the European medieval imagination, particularly as it related to monsters and marvels. So I read this book with context for Prester John and the various creatures in the story. Because this is an imagining of Prester John’s journey and how he became king of the land that’s first mentioned in this medieval text. I didn’t put it in the first list because I feel that it’s kind of inaccessible without at least some background knowledge of the way medieval thought worked.

Other nonfiction for writers and other people that just want to know WTF is going on:

Revelations in Air by Jude Stewart: Musings about scents

Hurts So Good by Leigh Cowart: How does pain work and why do people seek it out

Sentient by Jackie Higgins: Animal senses and human senses

Sandy Hook by Elizabeth Williamson: What happened, including the long-term aftermath that has recently culminated with a billion dollar judgment against Alex Jones. Heavy read.

The Tragedy of Heterosexuality by Jane Ward: What is going on with straightness?

Evolution’s Rainbow by Joan Roughgarden: Nature is very queer

Phallacy by Emily Willingham: What is going on with penises? (When you try to look without patriarchal assumptions.)

Legacy of Violence by Caroline Elkins: Sober look at one of the ways British colonization fucked up everything it touched, focused on the 20th century. Dense, heavy read.

Edit: Wow! The spacing was very fucked up in this before I fixed it! Hope this doesn’t happen again when I try to copy and paste things from LibreOffice in the future!

#rambling #reading #book recommendations #books

[xtruss]

Life-Saving Tool or Torture Device?

The Answer, Once You Learn the History of the Speculum, is a Little of Both

— March 15, 2024 | Kirstin Butler

1847 Specula. Source image: National Library of Medicine.

Many iterations came before and have gone since, but the most controversial version of the speculum started out, in 1845, as a bent spoon. That was when an Alabama-based doctor named James Marion Sims set out to treat an agonizing medical condition, and in the process established precedent for the practice of modern gynecology—in more ways than one.

Sims was attending to a patient who had been thrown off of her horse, and in landing on her pelvis, developed uterine retroversion (a tipping, or tilting backward, of the uterus). In the process of attending to her, Sims was struck by the insight that a custom-fashioned tool would allow him to see better into the vaginal canal. His first foray into speculum design was a doubly bent spoon that allowed him to separate and hold apart the vaginal walls. “Introducing the bent handle of the spoon I saw everything, as no man had ever seen before,” Sims later wrote in his unfinished memoir, The Story of My Life. “I felt I was on the eve of one of the great discoveries of the day.” Sims’s first experiments with that speculum were all done on enslaved women.

An Engraving Demonstrating the Sims Speculum (Bracket-Shaped Metal Instrument). Wikimedia Commons.

He ran a small private hospital—a “Surgical Infirmary for Negroes,” read an 1852 ad in Montgomery’s Weekly Advertiser, where he was “enabled to offer his professional services to his friends.” “It's really impossible to talk about the beginning of gynecology in America without talking about slavery because they were so deeply entwined and dependent on each other,” says Rachel Gross, science journalist and the author of Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage. Sims himself had slaves, and, Gross adds, “worked with other slaveholders to experiment on enslaved women in order to develop techniques that would help them continue to give birth, and continue to work.”

Sims used his new speculum to perform surgery on vesicovaginal fistulas, abscesses that often developed during difficult births, where the pressure of labor damaged tissue between the vagina and bladder or rectum. His surgeries on enslaved women were conducted without the use of anesthesia. Sims noted in his memoir that he operated on one woman, named only as Anarcha, 30 times.

He was lauded for his work, becoming the president of the American Medical Association in 1876 and then the founder and president of the American Gynecological Association. In a tribute written after Sims’s death, the American doctor W.O. Baldwin breathlessly wrote that the eponymous Sims speculum “has been to diseases of the womb what the printing press is to civilization, what the compass is to the mariner, what steam is to navigation, what the telescope is to astronomy.”

Baldwin’s encomium conveniently overlooked one historical aspect, however. “The speculum has been around for a really long time,” historian Deirdre Cooper Owens tells American Experience. “You can go to Ancient Greece, and Ancient Rome, the site of modern western medicine, and you'll find specula that existed.” What changed with the popularization of Sims’s design were the mores around gynecology. “Most men did not perform vaginal examinations, or pelvic examinations on their female patients because of the gender ideals of the time,” says Dr. Cooper Owens. “Now, these things become a bit more nuanced when we’re talking about enslaved people, or poor people, or people who were institutionalized in asylums. They tended to be the ones that were exploited, as doctors experimented and used their bodies literally as canvases to learn from. That kind of paints the picture of American medicine that we know today.”

The 19th-Century Metal Cusco Vaginal Speculum Still Closely Resembles the Design of Most Specula Used Today. Science Museum Group, C. Firmin Cuthbert Collection.

As for the speculum itself, others refined Sims’s design in the decades that followed. In 1870, Edward Gabriel Cusco introduced a two-bladed instrument that featured a screw mechanism to hold the blades open inside the vaginal canal. Cusco’s bivalve construction was further iterated upon by T.W. Graves, a Massachusetts-based doctor. It was Graves’s duckbilled speculum—which combined elements of Sims’s curved design and Cusco’s double-bladed device—that eventually became most popular within the medical establishment.

Then a century after Sims’s crudely fashioned cutlery, the speculum came to play a central role in the battle against cervical cancer, at the time the deadliest form of cancer for women. Dr. George Papanicolaou conceived of taking a swab of cells from the cervix for examination under a microscope; the speculum made it possible for physicians to gather the cervical tissue from patients. Thus was the pap smear born, drastically diminishing the numbers of casualties as a result of cervical cancer.

However, today the incidence of advanced-stage cervical cancer is on the rise again, in part because fewer women are getting pap smears as a preventative measure. According to the National Institutes of Health, the percentage of women overdue for cervical cancer screening went from 14% in 2005 to 23% in 2019. Some of that reticence, perhaps, has to do with the long reach of Sims’s paternalistic legacy. “A pap smear is not done in a neutral environment,” Gross asserts. “When you enter an office with a doctor, a very real power dynamic becomes established where you feel like there is sort of an authority of your body.”

Vaginal Specula Today Tend to be Single-Use Plastic. Image by Whispyhistory, Wikimedia Commons.

The burgeoning “femtech” industry (a term coined in 2013 to describe technology geared toward female biology) aims to change that by making the experience of cervical cancer screenings feel less invasive—and that includes reimagining the speculum. But updating a 150-year-old design is only part of a larger picture. “People have really bad experiences getting pelvic exams and pap smears where they feel their body was violated, they weren't treated with respect or dignity,” says Gross. “That's not quite a problem with the tool, itself. That’s a problem with the culture of medicine, and the place of healthcare in our society, and how we communicate to women what this is for and what they’re allowed to know about their own bodies.”

— A Vaginal Speculum is a medical device that allows physicians and health providers to better view a woman’s cervix and vagina during pelvic exams. Most specula are made of metal and plastic, and physicians insert a portion of the speculum into the patient’s vagina to separate the vaginal walls.

#NOVA | PBS #Life Saving Tool #Torture Device #History of Speculum #The Cancer Detectives #Article

[halfopenheart1]

Del mar, también del mar, de la tela del mar que nos envuelve, de los golpes del mar y de su boca, de su vagina obscura, de su vómito. de su pureza tétrica y profunda, vienen la muerte, Dios, el aguacero golpeando las persianas, la noche, el viento.

#jaime sabines

[c0mradepete]

Vagina Obscura: Legitimation, Authority, and Authenticity in Sexual and Reproductive Health

Episode Transcript

About a month ago, I came across a brand new podcast series through Apple titled Unruly. American art influencer and writer Kimberly Drew serves as the host, and here is how she sums up the series at the beginning of each episode: “Where we take the quiet ways women’s bodies are commodified, defined, regulated and we name them – out loud. We wanna educate and support each other. Because your body is your business” (1:33). So far, Drew and her featured guests have covered topics such as social media, the beauty industry, fertility treatments, and menopause. Unruly has become one of my favorite podcasts so far, and while I would absolutely love to cover everything about the series, this blog post will strictly focus on “Episode 3: Body Language”. In this episode, Drew speaks with Rachel E. Gross, the author of Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage”. In this book, Gross informs the audience about a growing movement to reclaim how women’s bodies are described within the medical industry. We shall be analyzing the episode’s content by using Craig Martin’s concepts of legitimation, authority, and authenticity from his book A Critical Introduction to the Study of Religion.de 3: Body Language”. In this episode, Drew speaks with Rachel E. Gross, the author of Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage”. In this book, Gross informs the audience about a growing movement to reclaim how women’s bodies are described within the medical industry. We shall be analyzing the episode’s content by using Craig Martin’s concepts of legitimation, authority, and authenticity from his book A Critical Introduction to the Study of Religion.

In earlier chapters from A Critical Introduction to the Study of Religion, Martin informs his audience about how social reproduction, or conformity, takes place through socialization. In Chapter 7: “How Religion Works: Legitimation”, Martin expounds on the notion of conformity further by introducing us to the concept of legitimation. Martin writes, “What happens when ‘that’s just the way things are’ doesn’t suffice as an answer? What happens when individuals probe further and require further justifications? This is when societies turn to what scholars call ‘legitimation’” (103). Basically, people are more likely to participate in a social norm if there is a good enough reason, and people are also more likely to participate if there is a danger or consequence as a result of refusing to comply. So, where can we find legitimation within Drew and Gross’ exchange? At some point in the episode, Drew shifts the conversation towards the experience of intersex folks in America. According to Gross, after an intersex person is born, it is not unusual for a doctor to perform a surgery to make the child’s genitalia appear “normal”. It should be noted that these people do not get to consent to these operations when they take place. Based on Gross’ inputs, we can see that medical professionals legitimize these surgeries by claiming “‘there’s a natural state of being that’s having men and women’” (10:34). Although there is no real danger to living in a world where the gender binary does not exist, these doctors are quite insistent about keeping sex and gender strictly male and female, or man and woman. 

The next concept we will discuss is authority, and Martin has a lot to say about it as well as its various forms. The following statement from Chapter 8: “How Religion Works: Authority” stood out to me the most: “A second type of authority is linked to religious figures or social positions above one in a social hierarchy…For those who claim to be adherents to these traditions, the actions or commands of these authoritative figures have a special, important, or sacred status” (121). One example from Unruly comes to mind when I reflect on this. Firstly, Drew asks Gross how long the negative language surrounding women’s bodies has existed, and Gross dates this back all the way to Hippocrates, an ancient Greek physician. According to Gross, he “did decide to name the genitals and he named them ancient Greek for ‘the part for which you should be ashamed…’” (18:18). Gross also briefly mentions that Hippocrates did not look at any actual female bodies; instead, he relied on whatever the midwives told him. Okay, so how does this affect us now? As more scientists and doctors began to research human anatomy, more shame-based terms were adopted. For instance, the French and German languages use words for “shame” to create a new word to describe a part of the female anatomy. For those who are unaware, Hippocrates is still relatively important when it comes to modern medicine; in fact, doctors swear to follow the Hippocratic Oath, a pledge to follow a specific code of ethical behavior. So, one could argue that since Hippocrates is a key figure in the history of medicine and healthcare, he holds credibility or authority over contemporary doctors. As a result of this status, many doctors continue to use language which does not feel inclusive for the majority of patients. 

Finally, in the ninth chapter of his book, Martin touches on authenticity. He refers to this concept as a rhetorical power play; in other words, claiming authenticity “sets up a binary opposition between ‘the real’ or authentic and ‘the unreal’ or inauthentic—between an ‘us’ and a ‘them’” (146). This explanation is arguably pretty straightforward, and similarly to legitimation, we can see this concept at play. Towards the end of this episode, Gross concludes her thoughts by offering some advice to the folks tuning in to Unruly. She says, “There is a dynamic that can happen in the doctor’s office that we are all susceptible to…where they’re sort of an authority figure and you’re sort of the patient and…it’s like frowned upon to ask too many questions or to bring in your own research” (25:20). Although Martin uses religious-oriented events or people to describe authenticity, we can clearly see some sort of divide between the patient and the doctor. This divide can occur for many reasons; for instance, some women may feel hesitant about vocalizing their concerns because they feel intellectually inferior to the doctor. Although these women know their own bodies better than anyone else and are totally capable of doing personal research, they may feel like they lack credibility in their opinion because they do not have a professional degree. Furthermore, America’s healthcare system is designed to be fast-paced and offer quick solutions. Some Americans are completely aware of this, and they may feel as though they will be an inconvenience or a burden if they decide to ask multiple follow-up questions or ask for an alternative solution to their ailment. Essentially, the system appears to discourage patients from “overstepping” their role and questioning what a doctor suggests initially. 

 If one were to parse through the other episodes of Unruly, one may find more examples of religious concepts. However, it is safe to say that Episode 3: “Body Language” shows how we can use religious concepts like legitimation, authority, and authenticity to critically analyze popular culture and social norms.

[sexualnews12]

Clitoris Diagram - SEX-ED +

Written by Rachel E Gross, science journalist and author of Vagina Obscura, an anatomical voyage, the article Half the World Has a Clitoris. Why Don’t Doctors Study It? is available in English and Spanish. Why such an interest for a 20 min read on that subject? Maybe because despite the fact that half of the world population has got one, there is little accessible medical information about it.…

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[harrysnotechanges]

hi happy new yearrrrr! for the book asks!

17, 28, 39!

thank you!! 💕 can't believe I'm writing this from 2023!

17. Top five books of the year

This is difficult for me because I haven't really had the best reading year tbh. I read a fair bit but most of it's been work related and so not necessarily what I would have chosen on my own (but when I have to read for work a lot, I don't really want to read in my free time too). I'll say the book eaters by sunyi dean (this was good but not that good and in a normal reading year it would not have made my top 5), the martian by andrew weir (I do love this book but it was a reread), vespertine by margaret rogerson, our violent ends by chloe gong and romeo and juliet (my least favourite shakespeare play so far but nothing else deserves to be on this list so here we are, also these last 3 books were all for work)

28. Did you start any new series?

I actually have not, I finished a couple but otherwise it's been mostly standalones.

39. Five books you absolutely want to read next year?

joan by katherine j. chen, devotion by hannah kent, babel by r. f. kuang (a fantasy book about translation, I simply have to), vagina obscura by rachel e. gross and I contain multitudes by ed young (I've been meaning to read this for the past 6 years but I'm also kind of terrified)

#books #asks

[draftspotforwritingthings]

is it adhd that causes me to feel constantly overwhelmed at the magnitude of my own curiosity? an endless list of books to read, languages to master, subjects to study, movies and manga and anime and television to consume and analyze and experience.

currently:

mo dao zu shi (lol)

the tragedy of heterosexuality

erica kanesaka's cute studies syllabus

writing course i bought recently (which spurred my return to tumblr)

more erotica/fanfic? https://archiveofourown.org/

want to read the entire catalog of chao yang trap

andrea dworkin

leftover women

betraying big brother

basically any book i can find on chinese feminism

how far the light reaches

vagina obscura

poetry: victoria chang, mahmoud darwish...

spirituality: eckhart tolle (a new earth), wherever you go there you are (therapist recs lol)