A real test of someones’ character is how they act when they think no one’s watching. This is exactly why hidden camera social experiments are so poignant.
Unfortunately, these experiments usually produce negative results — but every once in a while, strangers will act so compassionately that it may actually surprise you.
The video, created by Spain’s State Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Transsexuals and Bisexuals, calls on the public to “report homophobic, biphobic and transphobic threats, insults or attacks.”
The premise of the hidden camera social experiment is this: A gay couple from the U.S. are in Spain on vacation and don’t know the language. So they stop people on the streets for directions and to translate this letter, given to them by their hotel owner. To the locals’ shock, the note is filled with homophobic remarks and hatred.
You can see the sadness on these strangers’ faces while reading the homophobic note. One girl, who cannot bring herself to translates what the note actually says, tells them “It’s better if you go to another hostel, because this one is not very good.”
Another man tells the couple, “You go with this to the police, they can close his business.” And a woman, visibly upset, calls the note “disgusting.”
The video, part of a larger campaign to stop homophobic harassment in Spain and beyond, urges victims to report all threats to local authorities.
An assortment of contraceptives such as Plan B and condoms provided by Planned Parenthood Generation Action at the Sex and Relationships photoshoot. Sex-ed is an important part of K-12 education, and the risk of losing the curriculum in schools can lead to an increase in unwanted teen pregnancies and STIs.
Although it may be a cliche, there is some truth to the trope ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ — whether it be through teachers, pediatricians, athletic coaches or politicians who create laws directly affecting youth. But in some states across the U.S., the adults in charge of youth policies are not doing their part in ensuring quality education for all.
According to an Associated Press article, GOP-led states are at risk of losing sex education curricula in their schools. This idea was amplified after the emergence of the “parents’ rights” movement, whose main concern is dismantling inclusive LGBTQ+ sex education. Republican leaders and parents are trying to ensure that it is the parents’ choice to allow their children to take part in any sex education.
So what can we expect in the absence of sex education at K-12 institutions if these policies are implemented?
Lack of sex education for all youth may lead to an increase in unwanted teen pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Since GOP state leaders tend to oppose abortion rights, minimizing unwanted pregnancy is crucial in these states to protect teens from potential physical, emotional and financial harms. In fact, teen birth rates are much higher in states that ban abortion and have minimal sex education curricula.
Moreover, the number of contracted sexually transmitted disease (STD) cases has risen again since the COVID-19 pandemic — reaching more than 2.5 million cases of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia according to the CDC’s 2022 statistics.
GOP-led states are especially at higher risk; out of the top 10 states with the highest rate of STDs, eight are Republican-controlled states.
Many of the Republican voters who oppose mandatory sex education argue that it is the parents’ responsibility to determine what constitutes appropriate sex education for their children. But this begs the question: is sex education really taught at home?
According to OnePoll, one in five parents are not willing to have conversations about sexual matters with their kids at all. Even the parents who discuss sex education with their kids tend to avoid more complex topics, such as birth control and consent.
While sex education in schools is taught by qualified instructors, parents may not have the same level of professional expertise. Not only do they tend to avoid harder topics, but their own lack of education can lead to misinformation. For instance, older generations who are more socially conservative may be more likely to still believe in myths regarding sexual assault, such as victim-blaming for dressing or acting in a “sexually provoking way,” or believing that victims could have prevented it if they wanted to. A study from the International Society for the Study of Individual Differences’ journal proves that individuals with sexually conservative views are more likely to accept these myths.
Furthermore, teenagers are more likely to seek sexual information from peers and teachers than parents. We must keep these resources open, allowing for spaces where minors feel comfortable participating in honest outreach discussions.
The controversy surrounding sex education in public schools has been a longstanding issue, but it significantly escalated recently in GOP-led states due to opposition from parents and politicians who are reluctant to incorporate LGBTQ+ topics. The “Don’t Say Gay Bill” in Florida exemplifies the strong aversion for such discussions in politically conservative states. Given that the inclusion of LGBTQ+ sexual health in the curricula is the biggest concern among Republican-controlled states, should schools offer LGBTQ+ exclusive sex education to satisfy everyone?
The main reason why LGBTQ-inclusive sex education is important is that gender and sexually-marginalized youth are at a higher risk for sexual health issues such as STIs, sexual activity under the influence and dating violence.
LGBTQ+ youth are also far less likely to have open sex discussions with their parents. Even if they do, unless their parents are part of the community themselves, it is often difficult for kids to receive useful and accurate information specifically concerning their sexual health. It is important that schools protect LGBTQ+ youth by providing adequate education to prevent against poor health outcomes and lack of support within their homes.
Sex education is a shared responsibility between schools and parents. While schools need to provide children with quality health education, they also need a welcoming environment at home to seek answers. Instead, youth are struggling to find proper information in a world where open discussions about sex and sexual diversity are considered taboo. In each of our villages, adults and educators are responsible for ensuring safe environments and comprehensive education for all youth, including the LGBTQ+ community.
Since not everyone is privileged enough to receive quality sex education at home, K-12 schools provide necessary education for everyone regardless of socioeconomic status, family background and sexual orientation. When giving equal educational opportunities is the main function of primary and secondary schools, how is it acceptable to exclude one of the most important subjects?
Sex education is directly related to a person’s physical, emotional and social well-being. The World Health Organization defines sexual health as “a state of physical, emotional, mental and social well-being in relation to sexuality.” Teaching adolescents about sexual health ensures a better quality of life overall.
According to a study from the Journal of Adolescent Health conducted with adolescent women, better sexual health is associated with better social integration, higher self-esteem, less substance use and lower self-reported depression. Another study from the Frontiers in Reproductive Health Journal suggests that among male adolescents, mental and reproductive health are intertwined; poor sexual health leads to poor mental health and vice versa.
Hence, comprehensive sex education can prevent many health issues and encourage healthy habits in various aspects of life. Minimizing sex education curricula means young people who are not fortunate enough to have sexually accepting and knowledgeable parents will have to learn on their own while risking their sexual health.
Conservatives’ irrational fear of healthy relationships being formed between members of same sex and non-binary gender identities, along with their false beliefs of comprehensive sex education encouraging reckless sex, are putting children at risk — including their own. What may hurt their kids is delaying essential education, as well as restricting exposure to healthy homosexual love or confident transgender people. The exclusion of proper sex education may leave people with irreversible consequences, such as unwanted pregnancy, HIV or sexual trauma.
Children should be set up for success, not put in a position where they have to rely on misinformation or the internet to be taught healthy sexual habits.
— How these terms changed and why states now want to define them
Transgender rights advocates rally at the Kansas capitol, Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2024. In 2023, the state enacted a measure that says there are two sexes, male and female, based on a person’s “biological reproductive system” at birth.
This year, 17 state legislatures sought to narrowly define “sex” or “gender” in state law as based solely on biological characteristics. In Utah, one became law.
Although they’re sometimes used synonymously, “sex” and “gender” have different meanings to medical professionals. Sex traditionally refers to one’s biological characteristics, whereas gender is how a person identifies.
Laws redefining sex in state law could require driver’s licenses and identifying documents to display a person’s sex assigned at birth, a policy that transgender advocates say would lead to discrimination.
After decades of creating laws that assumed “sex” and “gender” were synonymous, lawmakers across the country are taking another look at how states define those terms.
Scientific and legal interpretations of these words have evolved considerably in the past century. Today, medical experts understand biological sex assigned at birth as more complex and consider it distinct from gender identity.
In 2020, the Supreme Court also broadened its understanding of sex discrimination in employment to include discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Grappling with this cultural, scientific, and legal shift in the meaning of “sex” and “gender,” lawmakers in some states have tried defining the terms narrowly in state law as biological and binary. In 2023, four states passed such laws and, this year, 17 states introduced bills defining “sex.” Some bills in Florida and West Virginia were defeated, but 15 bills are still advancing in states across the country.
This focus on terminology may seem rhetorical, but these legislative changes can restrict access to driver’s licenses and documents that match a person’s gender identity. Transgender rights advocates say that requiring IDs to match the sex a person was assigned at birth can expose transgender Americans to discrimination.
So, how do we understand these terms, and what could these definitions mean for everyday life once codified?
How have the terms ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ evolved?
Until the mid-20th century, Americans’ understanding of “sex” was largely biological and binary.
“For a substantial time period, law in the United States defined identity categories, such as race and sex, in biological terms,” said Darren Hutchinson, an law professor at Emory University law professor.
In the 1950s and ’60s, psychological research emerged that differentiated biological sex from “gender.” Researchers coined terms such as “gender roles” as they studied people born with reproductive or sexual anatomy that didn’t fit the typical definitions of male or female and observed how children sometimes developed identity distinct from their biological sex.
By the early 1960s, the term “gender identity” began appearing in academic literature. By 1980, “gender identity disorder of childhood” was included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders’ third edition. This inclusion signaled that the concept of gender identity “was part of the accepted nomenclature being used,” said Dr. Jack Drescher, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University.
Before the 1970s, the word “gender” was rarely used in American English, according to research by Stefan Th. Gries, a linguistics professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He said evidence suggests it was used mostly when discussing grammar to describe the “gender” of a noun in Spanish, for example.
Edward Schiappa, a professor of communication and rhetoric at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, observed in his book “The Transgender Exigency” that the rising use of “gender” in English coincided with the term’s introduction into psychological literature and its adoption by the feminist movement. Feminists saw the term as useful for describing the cultural aspects of being a “woman” as different from the biological aspects, he said.
After the 1980s, gender’s term usage rose rapidly, moving beyond academic and activist circles. In common American English, “sex” and “gender” began to be used more interchangeably, including in state law — sometimes even in the same section of the law.
In Florida’s chapter on driver’s licenses, for example, the section on new license applications uses “gender,” but the section on replacement licenses uses “sex.”
Modern legal and scientific views of ‘sex’ and ‘gender’
Sex is a biological category determined by physical features such as genes, hormones and genitalia. People are male, female or sometimes have reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn’t fit the typical definitions of male or female, often called intersex.
Our legal understanding of “sex discrimination” has also evolved.
In 2020, the Supreme Court decided Bostock v. Clayton County, a series of cases in which employers were accused of firing employees for being gay or transgender. The court held that this was a form of “sex discrimination” prohibited under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Whether the court will extend this interpretation to other areas of federal law is unclear, legal experts told us.
How have lawmakers responded to this shift?
Recently, lawmakers have tried to codify their understandings of “sex” and “gender” into law.
In some cases, these laws aim to recognize and protect transgender Americans. The Democratic-backed Equality Act, which passed the House, but not the Senate, in 2019 and 2021, would have federally protected against discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation and gender identity. Some states have passed similar equality legislation, creating a patchwork of anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ people.
But lawmakers in many Republican-led states have proposed narrow definitions of sex and gender that would apply to large sections of state law. “Women and men are not identical; they possess unique biological differences,” Iowa’s Republican governor, Kim Reynolds said in a press release detailing her support for the state’s version of such a bill. She added, “This bill protects women’s spaces and rights afforded to us by Iowa law and the Constitution.”
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds speaks July 28, 2023, at the Republican Party of Iowa’s 2023 Lincoln Dinner in Des Moines, Iowa.
Opponents reject the idea that the bills relate to women’s rights and claim the bills are an attempt to “erase” legal recognition of transgender people.
The Kansas Legislature, for example, passed the “Women’s Bill of Rights” overriding Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto. The law says that “pursuant to any state law or rules and regulations … An individual’s ‘sex’ means such individual’s biological sex, either male or female, at birth.”
The law defines male and female as based on whether a person’s reproductive system “is developed to produce ova,” or “is developed to fertilize the ova of a female.”
The Kansas law also states that “distinctions between the sexes with respect to athletics, prisons or other detention facilities, domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers, locker rooms, restrooms and other areas where biology, safety or privacy are implicated” are related to “important governmental objectives” a condition required under the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment.
Rose Saxe, lawyer and deputy project director of the LGBTQ and HIV project at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the Kansas law does not explicitly require those spaces to be segregated by “sex” as the bill defines, but tries to justify policies that would do so.
Current bills defining ‘sex’
This year, 17 more states considered bills that would narrowly define “sex” and/or “gender” in state law according to the ACLU’s anti-LGBTQ legislation tracker. One, Utah, signed a definition into law, and 10 other states are advancing 15 bills combined. In the remaining six states, the bills were carried over to next year or defeated.
The Utah State Capitol is viewed March 1, 2024, in Salt Lake City.
Some bills, such as Arizona’s S.B. 1628 change the terms for the entire statute: “This state shall replace the stand-alone term ‘gender’ with ‘sex’ in all laws, rules, publications, orders, actions, programs, policies, and signage,” it reads. The state Senate passed the bill 16-13 on Feb. 22, along party lines with Republicans in favor.
Other bills, such as Idaho’s H.B. 421, don’t replace the word “gender” but declare it synonymous to “sex.” Gender, when used in state law, “shall be considered a synonym for ‘sex’ and shall not be considered a synonym for gender identity, an internal sense of gender, experienced gender, gender expression, or gender role,” reads the text of the bill, which passed the Idaho House 54-14 on Feb. 7.
Saxe said the bills could have a cascading effect on other laws.
Transgender rights advocates say access to identification that matches an individual’s identity and presentation is important. “If you can’t update the gender marker on your ID, you are essentially outed as transgender at every turn,” said Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality to PolitiFact for a previous story on drivers licenses in Florida. This can happen during interactions with potential landlords, employers, cashiers, bartenders and restaurant servers.
“Even in the states that have passed these bills,” said Paisley Currah, a political science professor at the City University of New York, “there’s still going to be these contradictions,” because a person’s driver’s license might not match the gender on their passport, for example.
“Unless you’re a prisoner or immigrant or you are in the Army, the government actually doesn’t get to look at your body,” said Currah, who wrote a book on how government agencies address “sex” categories. “It’s always some doctor that signs a letter … and so there’s always a document between your body and the state.”
How these sex-defining laws would affect state agencies remains to be seen. And the laws may face court challenges, likely on the grounds that they violate the Equal Protection Clause or right to privacy, Saxe said.
In the United States, gender has been considered a relatively ordinary term. We are asked to check a box on a form, and most of us do so without giving it too much thought. But some of us don’t like checking the box and think there should be either many more boxes or perhaps none at all. The myriad, continuing debates about gender show that no one approach to defining or understanding it reigns. It’s no longer a mundane box to be checked on official forms.
The anti-gender ideology movement, however, treats the range of sometimes conflicting ideas about gender as a monolith, frightening in its power and reach.
The fear of “gender” allows existing powers — states, churches, political movements — to frighten people to come back into their ranks, to accept censorship and to externalize their fear and hatred onto vulnerable communities. Those powers not only appeal to existing fears that many working people have about the future of their work or the sanctity of their family life but also incite those fears, insisting, as it were, that people conveniently identify gender as the true cause of their feelings of anxiety and trepidation about the world.
The project of restoring the world to a phantasmatic time before gender promises a return to a patriarchal dream order that only a strong state can restore. The shoring up of state powers, including the courts, implicates the anti-gender movement in a broader authoritarian, even fascist project. We see the rolling back of progressive legislation and the targeting of sexual and gender minorities as dangers to society, as exemplifying the most destructive force in the world, in order to strip them of their fundamental rights, protections and freedoms.
Consider the allegation that “gender” — whatever it is — puts children at risk through programs such as reading books with queer characters cast as examples of indoctrination or seduction. The fear of children being harmed, the fear that the family, or one’s own family, will be destroyed, that “man” will be dismantled, including the men and man that some of us are, that a new totalitarianism is descending upon us, are all fears that are felt quite deeply by those who have committed themselves to the eradication of “gender” — the word, the concept, the academic field and the various social movements it has come to signify.
The resulting authoritarian restrictions on freedom abound, whether through establishing LGBTQ+-free zones in Poland or strangling progressive educational curricula in Florida that address gender freedom and sexuality in sex education. But no matter how intently authoritarian forces attempt to restrict freedoms, the fact that the categories of women and men shift historically and contextually is undeniable. New gender formations are part of history and reality. Gender is, in reality, minimally the rubric under which we consider changes in the way that men, women and other such categories have been understood.
As an educator, I am inclined to say to these people, “Let’s read some key texts in gender studies together and see what gender does and does not mean and whether the caricature holds up.” Reading is a precondition of democratic life, keeping debate and disagreement grounded and productive.
Sadly, such a strategy rarely works.
A woman in Switzerland once came up to me after a talk I gave and said, “I pray for you.” I asked why. She explained that the Scripture says that God created man and woman and that I, through my books, had denied the Scripture. She added that male and female are natural and that nature was God’s creation. I pointed out that nature admits of complexity and that the Bible itself is open to some differing interpretations, and she scoffed. I then asked if she had read my work, and she replied, “No! I would never read such a book!” I realized that reading a book on gender would be, for her, trafficking with the devil. Her view resonates with the demand to take books on gender out of the classroom and the fear that those who read such books are contaminated by them or subject to an ideological inculcation, even though those who seek to restrict these books have typically never read them.
To refuse gender is, sadly, to refuse to encounter the complexity that one finds in contemporary life across the world. The anti-gender movement opposes thought itself as a danger to society — fertile soil for the horrid collaboration of fascist passions with authoritarian regimes.
We need to take a stand against the anti-gender movement in the name of breathing and living free from the fear of violence.
Transnational coalitions should gather and mobilize everyone the anti-gender ideology movement has targeted. The internecine fights within the field must become dynamic and productive conversations and confrontations, however difficult, within an expansive movement dedicated to equality and justice. Coalitions are never easy, but where conflicts cannot be resolved, movements can still move ahead together with an eye focused on the common sources of oppression.
Whether or not people are assigned a gender at birth or assume one in time, they can really love being the gender that they are and reject any effort to disturb that pleasure. They seek to strut and celebrate, express themselves and communicate the reality of who they are. No one should take away that joy, as long as those people do not insist that their joy is the only possible one. Importantly, however, many endure suffering, ambivalence and disorientation within existing categories, especially the one to which they were assigned at birth. They can be genderqueer or trans, or something else, and they are seeking to live life as the body that makes sense to them and lets life be livable, if not joyous. Whatever else gender means, it surely names for some a felt sense of the body, in its surfaces and depths, a lived sense of being a body in the world in this way.
As much as someone might want to clutch a single idea of what it is to be a woman or a man, the historical reality defeats that project and makes matters worse by insisting on genders that have all along exceeded the binary alternatives. How we live that complexity, and how we let others live, thus becomes of paramount importance.
There is still much to be understood about gender as a structural problem in society, as an identity, as a field of study, as an enigmatic and highly invested term that circulates in ways that inspire some and terrify others. We have to keep thinking about what we mean by it and what others mean when they find themselves up in arms about the term.
— “After a year during which there has been very little good news about people’s reproductive health, this is the first solid win in a long time,” says BU gynecologist
The FDA’s approval of Opill for over-the-counter use makes it the first hormonal contraceptive available without a prescription in the United States.
The FDA’s approval of the first over-the-counter birth control pill in the United States could be a revolutionary change in birth control and reproductive health, says Katharine O’Connell White, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine.
White, who is also vice chair of academics and associate director of the complex family planning fellowship at Boston Medical Center, says she felt “jubilation and glee” at hearing news of the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of Opill, a hormonal birth control pill, on Thursday.
“After a year during which there has been very little good news about people’s reproductive health, this is the first solid win in a long time,” she says. “And it finally puts the United States on par with most other countries in the world, where people have always had access to pills without a prescription.”
The news was received with support from almost every major reproductive health organization in the country, including the American Medical Association, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the North American Society of Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecology, and the American Academy of Family Physicians.
The FDA’s approval comes amid myriad legal battles over reproductive rights—and almost exactly a year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, rescinding the right to abortion nationally.
Perrigo Company, which manufactures the pill, says it will likely be available in stores and from online retailers in the United States in early 2024.
BU Today spoke with White about the safety and effectiveness of Opill, as well as questions that still remain about its rollout and accessibility.
Q&A
with Katharine O’Connell White
BU Today: Based on what you’ve seen or read about Opill, how effective is it compared to other, prescription or nonprescription, birth control options?
White: The pill that got approved for over-the-counter use is a progestin-only pill. There are two types of birth control pills: the vast majority of pills—the ones you think about when you hear “The pill”—have estrogen and progesterone in them. But a few varieties are progestin only, for people who can’t or don’t want to take estrogen. So, this pill looks to be like other progestin pills. And all pills have roughly the same effectiveness rate—that they’re about 97 percent effective when taken perfectly, and about 93 percent effective when taken like a typical human being.
So, it’s a very effective method of contraception. And it’s now the most effective birth control that you can buy at the drugstore without a prescription. When you compare it to condoms and spermicides, or Plan B and other emergency contraception, all of those are effective, but they’re not as effective as a daily birth control pill.
BU Today: It sounds like in terms of effectiveness, it’s not necessarily better to get a prescription birth control pill vs this over-the-counter version. Is that correct?
White: So much of it is about access, which sounds like an advocacy talking point. But access has a real impact on people’s lives.
From the medical perspective, there’s no difference between a pill you take by prescription or a pill that you would then get over the counter. But the best birth control method for any given person is the one they’re most likely to take. And to take consistently. And now, we have a method that is not behind the walls of a doctor’s office. You don’t have to go in for a visit or a pap smear or even just get through on a telephone line in order to access this birth control. You can just walk into a place and get it and take it. That, for a lot of people, is going to be the key to feeling in control of their birth control.
BU Today: Do you see this as a step toward equalizing access to birth control or reproductive healthcare?
White: Hopefully—although I’m hesitant.
What’s really great about this is that it’s finally a highly effective method—a hormonal method—of birth control for which you don’t need medical insurance and you don’t need access to a doctor. This is great news for people who work weekdays and can’t get to a doctor’s office because they can’t take the time off of work. It’s great news for people who don’t have health insurance, or who are underinsured, meaning their insurance doesn’t cover a lot, or any, contraceptive methods. If you are new to this country and don’t have health insurance or if you are in a new job and in a new state and don’t yet have access to your insurance, this is going to help.
I’ll also add that this is birth control that you do not need to persuade [a healthcare provider] that you should take or want to take. It is a completely independent decision that you get to make, and that’s important.
The reason I’m hopeful that this will equalize access, but not certain, is because we don’t know how much it’s going to cost. And so it’s only an equity issue if everyone can actually access it. The company says that it’s committed to widespread access for the pill and that it’s going to have some kind of voucher or savings program for people who don’t have insurance coverage. Along with advocacy groups, it is going to push for coverage by insurance companies so that even though it’s over-the-counter, you can still use your insurance card, like you can in many places for emergency contraception, or until recently, COVID tests. But we need to see what the sticker price is.
BU Today: Besides the price, are there other things that you, or your colleagues in the medical community, are waiting to learn?
White: The implementation of something is always important. For example, when emergency contraception first went over-the-counter, it was actually, in a lot of cases, behind-the-counter. You had to ask a pharmacist for it, which meant that not only did you have to have a conversation, and possibly justify why you wanted something, there was a chance they would say no.
I want to see this product on the shelf, next to Plan B, next to KY jelly. I want it to be as easy as just taking it off the shelf, putting it in your cart, and checking out.
I also wonder: is it going to be behind in a clamshell? Are you going to have to get an employee to unlock it for you? Are you still going to have to deal with people’s judgment? Will mom-and-pop pharmacies refuse to stock it? Will Amazon stock it? Will national pharmacy chains make it available online? Because in that case, I can get it with my ibuprofen when I do an Amazon run. All of this remains to be seen. But I’m hopeful.
BU Today: Are there certain populations who might find an over-the-counter hormonal birth control option especially helpful?
White: Adolescents—you might not want to ask your pediatrician, who’s been seeing you since you were a baby, about the fact that maybe you need birth control. Adolescents are also people who maybe haven’t yet figured out how to get to the doctor on their own. Maybe they don’t have a car or don’t have access or even know how to navigate the system to try to get their own gynecologist. Now, they can just take matters into their own hands and get it.
I also think anyone who is on someone else’s insurance, where an explanation of benefits goes home whenever you have a visit with a provider or get a prescription filled. An over-the-counter option leaves less of a record. So if you are in a situation where you are not wanting your parents to know or not wanting your partner to know, this provides another layer of protection.
For people who have medical problems, whose doctors just tell them not to have sex so you don’t get pregnant—which is actually a thing—and don’t know who to turn to for advice, they can now do their own reading, decide this might be right for them, and then access it on their own. People who just changed jobs and whose new insurance hasn’t kicked in, or who have not yet found a new doctor. People who’ve just moved to a new state.
There are also all these situations during which there can be gaps in birth-control use. Let’s say you are a prescription-pill user or a patch or a ring user, but you find yourself in this position where you’re between insurance providers, between doctors, between homes, you then can just go get a pack [of birth control pills] to bridge that gap.
Or people who travel and forget their pack. You’re crazily packing for the airport, and you realize you’ve forgotten your pills. No worries, you can just go get a pack and take those pills for a week and then resume your birth control back at home.
This means that birth control doesn’t have to be this precious, Hope Diamond–like resource. Now, your birth control pills can be available to you whenever you need them, wherever you are. That is revolutionary. No one should have to fight for birth control. And now you have an option where you can just go get it.
BU Today: What about from a safety viewpoint? Is it safe to take these over-the-counter pills?
White: I think there’s a natural hesitancy to embrace something as safe, especially when, for so long, people have been telling you that it’s not. There’s this idea that, ‘Well, we’ve had birth control pills for 50 years, why hasn’t it been available over the counter until now? Is it actually safe?’
It’s so important for people to know that we have reams of good evidence about how safe the pill is. There are very few people who cannot use this pill, and it is very well labeled for who shouldn’t use it.
There’s a very small group of people who can’t, and everybody else can use it safely. People who have breast cancer or certain kinds of liver disease or certain kinds of benign liver tumors, and some people with lupus, should not use this. But people who have the kinds of conditions on this list are people who are already plugged into a healthcare system where they can get access. The vast majority of healthy people who don’t need to see doctors can all take this.
BU Today: What should people who might use this as their first hormonal birth control know?
White: One of the common side effects of a progesterone-only pill is irregular bleeding. This might be occasional spotting, it might be bleeding more days than not, though not usually as heavy as a period. If people are not prepared for that, it can be very surprising. I’ve had more than one patient who stopped their birth control pills when they were spotting, because they thought that meant either it was making their body sick or that it wasn’t working. My message is that you may have weird bleeding for three months, possibly even a little longer. And that is normal. Weird is normal when it comes to bleeding on this pill. So don’t be alarmed.
Alfred C. Kinsey is questioned by Hazel Markel, left, president of the Women’s National Press Club, and Cornelia Otis Skinner, actress and writer, in Washington on Sept. 2, 1953.
By Justin R. Garcia
At the entrance to the Kinsey Institute, at Indiana University, there’s a plaque with a famous quote from its founder, Alfred C. Kinsey: “We are the recorders and reporters of facts — not the judges of the behaviors we describe.”
That ethos is at the heart of all the institute’s research.
For generations, the Kinsey Institute has shined a light on diverse aspects of sex and sexuality, in pursuit of answers that bring us closer to understanding fundamental questions of human existence. In a time of divisive politics and disinformation, it is more imperative than ever to preserve and defend the right of such academic institutions to illuminate the unfolding frontiers of science — even, and especially, research that might challenge us as it advances our understanding of ourselves.
Thus it is tremendously disappointing that Indiana lawmakers voted late last month to approve a budget that specifically blocks Indiana University from using state funding to support the Kinsey Institute, and that last week Gov. Eric Holcomb signed it into state law. This is an unprecedented action that takes aim at the very foundation of academic freedom.
The Kinsey Institute, where I serve as the executive director and a senior scientist, is the leading sex research institute in the world. We publish dozens of scientific and academic articles each year, across multiple disciplines. Our faculty are internationally renowned biologists, psychologists, anthropologists, health scientists and demographers. We house the world’s largest library and research collection of sexuality-related materials, and scholars from across the globe visit us to study these materials and to train in our research theories and methods.
Our unbiased, apolitical, scientific approach to human sexuality makes the Kinsey Institute unique. It is also what makes the work we do so controversial.
Since its founding in 1947, the institute has been the target of disinformation and attacks. The original “Kinsey reports” (“Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” in 1948, “Sexual Behavior in the Human Female” in 1953) drew data from the most thorough sexological study ever conducted. Both books were instant bestsellers, and Kinsey went from scientist to celebrity.
Yet the reports were also met with shock and moral panic — especially following the second volume, which documented the real sexual lives of America’s wives, sisters, mothers and daughters. So much controversy ensued that the Rockefeller Foundation withdrew its sex research funding for the institute in 1954
In 1950, a U.S. customs officer seized a shipment of sexually explicit images and other materials being mailed to the institute’s research collection on the basis of their being “obscene.” The federal court case that followed, United States v. 31 Photographs, resulted in a historic ruling in favor of the institute’s right to collect materials and data for sex research, which has profoundly shaped our understanding of academic freedom from censorship.
Another wave of attacks came in the 1980s, whipped up by conspiracy theories that Kinsey’s research had unleashed the sexual revolution and, with it, a moral decay on America.
As Kinsey wrote in 1956: “It is incomprehensible that we should know so little about such an important subject as sex, unless you realize the multiplicity of forces which have operated to dissuade the scientist, to intimidate the scientist, and to force him to cease research in these areas.”
Yet, Kinsey and his researchers persisted. And three-quarters of a century after the institute’s founding, the contribution of sex research to our understanding of sexuality, relationships and well-being is clear.
We know that one of the biggest predictors of relationship satisfaction is sexual satisfaction, and that one’s sex life affects the trajectory of relationships and marriages. That comprehensive sex education, including understanding consent and identifying interpersonal abuse, is associated with positive psychological and health outcomes — from prevention of unintended pregnancy to protecting against sexually transmitted infections.
We also know many questions still need to be answered. The complex associations between sexual activity and fertility outcomes. The long-term effects of covid-19 on people’s relationships and sexual lives. How the loneliness epidemic is affecting mental health across demographics. How new social technologies are changing the concept of intimacy and redefining sexual behavior. Why 1 in 4 women in the United States still experience attempted or completed rape.
Given these major unknowns, why do attacks on our research continue? The state representative who first proposed this recent legislation parroted false allegations of sexual predation in the institute’s historical research and ongoing work, which the institute, the university and outside experts have repeatedly refuted. Indiana state Rep. Matt Pierce described these conspiracy theories as “warmed-over internet memes that keep coming back.” The legislature still acted on this disturbing, easily debunked misinformation.
Indiana is not alone. Across the country, legislation is being passed that affects millions of lives, restricting reproductive health care, discussions of gender identity and basic sex education. The people passing this legislation are fundamentally failing to leverage scientific evidence as a guide through these complex issues
I am optimistic that this latest culture war will pass. And the Kinsey Institute will carry on. While this recently passed legislation stings, the majority of the institute’s funding comes from outside the university, from research grants and contracts, as well as philanthropic donations. But I worry what the future will look like, for our institute and others — and for the students and researchers who rely on us — should state legislatures continue to act on misinformation around sexuality.
Some years ago, an Indiana University alum shared with me why the Kinsey Institute was so important to him. He was a gay man in his late 60s, and he recalled how as a student in the 1970s he was struggling to come to terms with his sexuality. At times, he felt so confused and isolated, he wasn’t sure he would ever find his way through that dark time. He was too afraid, he told me, to set foot inside the Kinsey Institute back then, but “just knowing it existed, that someone was out there searching for answers, saved my life.”
His words took on new resonance last week. I think about this story often, and I’m reminded what’s at stake when we limit the right to even ask questions.
— By focusing on sex, Republicans can court both the evangelical right and the right-wing extreme QAnon vote.
By Robert Reich
The Republican Party, once a proud proponent of limited government, has become a font of government intrusion into the most intimate aspects of personal and family life.
Last Friday, a judge who previously worked for a conservative Republican legal organization and was then nominated to the bench by Trump and pushed through the Senate by Mitch McConnell, invalidated the FDA’s approval of a 23-year-old abortion pill (mifepristone) used in over half of pregnancy terminations in the United States.
Meanwhile, in the wake of the Dobbs case (in which Republican appointees on the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade), Republican states are criminalizing abortion. Some are criminalizing the act of helping women obtain an abortion in another state. Texas gives private citizens the right to sue anyone who helps someone get an abortion. Idaho just passed an “abortion trafficking” law that would make helping a minor leave Idaho to get an abortion without parental consent punishable by five years in prison. Tennessee Republicans have made it illegal to mail medical abortion pills. In the last Congress, 167 House Republicans co-sponsored the Life at Conception Act, conferring full personhood rights on fertilized eggs.
At the same time, Republican lawmakers want to make it more difficult for couples to buy contraceptives. Sixteen Republican-dominated state legislatures already bar abortion clinics from receiving public contraception funds.
So far, at least 11 Republican states have enacted laws restricting or banning gender-affirming care for minors, even if parents approve. Texas’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, has ordered state child welfare officials to launch child abuse investigations into reports of transgender kids receiving such care. Republican lawmakers are also pushing teachers to refer to students by their gender assigned at birth. Many are restricting which bathrooms trans students can use.
Republican states are also limiting discussions of gender and sexuality in classrooms. Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, signed a bill banning public school teachers in kindergarten through third grade from talking about sexual orientation or gender identity, calling it an “anti-grooming bill” and accusing opponents of wanting to groom young children for sexual exploitation.
Republican lawmakers are also putting obstacles in the way of same-sex marriage and are considering appeals to the Supreme Court to reverse its 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling. Texas’s Republican attorney general says he’d “feel comfortable defending a law that once again outlawed sodomy” in the wake of Dobbs.
Oh, and Republicans now routinely accuse political opponents of favoring child pornography. In her confirmation hearings, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was barraged with questions from Republican senators about her alleged lenient treatment of child pornographers. (In four days of hearings, the phrase “child porn” or “pornography” or “pornographer” was mentioned 165 times, along with 142 mentions of “sex” or related terms like “sexual abuse” or “sex crimes.”)
Three Reasons Why Republican Lawmakers Are Obsessing about Sex
First, by focusing on sex, Republicans can court both the evangelical right and the right-wing extreme QAnon vote (with its loony “Pizzagate” conspiracy claim that Democrats are pedophiles).
Second, by focusing on sex, Republican lawmakers don’t have to talk nonstop about Trump. They don’t have to discuss his indictment or other pending cases against him. They don’t have to say whether they agree with his vitriolic diatribes against other Republicans (DeSantis, McConnell, and any other Republican who criticizes him). They don’t have to defend his bonkers positions (on Ukraine, NATO, George Soros, immigrants, and all else).
Finally, creating a culture war over sex allows Republicans to sound faux populist without having to address the practical problems faced by most Americans — lack of paid sick leave, unaffordable child care and elder care, stagnant wages, and inadequate housing. And by focusing on sex, they believe they can ignore the sources of populist anger — corporate profiteering and price gouging, monopolization, union busting, soaring CEO pay, and billionaires who pay a lower tax rate than the average worker (courtesy, in part, of the 2017 Republican tax cut for the wealthy).
But the Republican obsession about sex is backfiring on them, as we saw in the 2022 midterms and again in last week’s elections in Wisconsin and Chicago. It’s drawing a contrast between the two parties that pits the GOP against the vast majority of voters.
It’s becoming increasingly apparent to Americans that while Democrats want to make life easier for average working people and end corporate abuses of economic power, Republicans want government to intrude on the most intimate aspects of peoples’ lives.
— How Florida Republicans are taking aim at basic sex education
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis answers questions from the media in the Florida Cabinet following his “State of the State” address during a joint session of the Florida Senate and House of Representatives at the state capitol in Tallahassee, Florida, on March 7, 2023.
A bill wants to restrict when students can discuss “human sexuality” at school.
If passed, the law would require that teachers get approval for materials used in sexual health classes, which can only be taught in grades six through 12 under the law. It would also require that schools teach a specific definition of “sex” and “reproductive roles.”
The bill advanced last week at a Florida House Education Quality Subcommittee hearing — bolstered by a Republican supermajority — and is on its way to a vote on the state House floor. Ultimately, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will likely sign it into law.
The bill joins DeSantis’s two other education initiatives — the “Don’t Say Gay” law and the Stop WOKE Act — in seeking to restrict what teachers can talk about in the classroom. And while it’s nominally about sex education, it would also reinforce those laws’ restrictions on what students learn about gender and relationships, and increase the state’s ability to restrict what students read in the school library by giving parents and community members the power to object to some materials.
During the subcommittee hearing last week, Democrats were aghast that lawmakers didn’t consider whether a topic as innocuous as menstrual cycles would be barred from discussions at school under the legislation. Rep. Ashley Viola Gantt asked Rep. Stan McClain, who proposed the legislation, whether the bill would prohibit young girls from talking about their periods in schools.
“Does this bill prohibit conversations about menstrual cycles ― because we know that typically the age is between 10 and 15 ― so if little girls experience their menstrual cycle in fifth grade or fourth grade, will that prohibit conversations from them since they are in the grade lower than sixth grade?” Gantt asked McClain during the committee hearing. McClain responded that the bill would restrict such conversations, but later said the goal of the bill is not to punish little girls.
“Teachers are a safe place. Schools are a safe place. [But teachers] can’t even talk to their students about these very real and biological things that happen to their bodies, these little girls. It wasn’t even contemplated that little girls can have their periods in third grade or fourth grade,” Gantt said in her testimony. “If we are preparing children to be informed adults, we need to inform them about their bodies and that’s something very basic.”
The bill would regulate Florida’s already disjointed sex ed landscape
Florida schools are not required to teach sex education, but are required to teach comprehensive health education. There is no statewide curriculum for sex education, which makes instruction inconsistent across the state, according to an ABC report. Plus, Florida has long touted its opt-out policy, which allows parents to remove their children from instruction on reproductive health.
Critics of the bill fear that it will push the state away from embracing comprehensive sex education, which advocates say is necessary. A 2019 CDC youth risk behavior study found that more than half of Florida’s 12th graders had already had sexual intercourse; of those who were sexually active, half of them did not use a condom during their last sexual encounter.
The bill is also another avenue for DeSantis and his allies to enforce conservative beliefs about sex and gender. According to the bill, “sex” is either female or male “based on the organization of the body of such person for a specific reproductive role.” One’s reproductive role and sex are determined by their “sex chromosomes, naturally occurring sex hormones, and internal and external genitalia present at birth.”
This law goes further than other proposed legislation that would require teachers to use pronouns that correspond with a student’s gender assigned at birth, which opponents of the proposal have argued is an attack on trans students and faculty members.
In building on earlier book restrictions already in effect in various parts of the state, the law would require that materials used to teach about reproductive health or sexually transmitted diseases be approved by the state education department. The bill does not detail what the approval process would entail. Teachers subject to book bans in certain districts, including the Duval County school district, have already described the process as time consuming and shrouded in mystery.
>Sex ed, health, and science classes that teach about HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases can only discuss human sexuality in grades six through 12. And the courses must abide by the idea that “biological males impregnate biological females by fertilizing the female egg with male sperm; that the female then gestates the offspring.” Under the law, these reproductive roles are “binary, stable, and unchangeable” — a statement that refuses to admit the existence of trans and nonbinary people.
Democrats also noted that limiting certain discussions to middle school and higher grade levels could be harmful to younger students.
“Imagine a little girl in fourth grade going to the bathroom and finding blood in her panties and thinking that she is dying. This is a reality for little girls in school. They can be in foster care. They could have parents who just work a lot because wages are stagnant and the price of living continues to grow,” Gantt said. “She doesn’t actually know what’s going on. And her teacher doesn’t have the ability to tell her that this is a part of life because she’s in the fourth grade.”
The law doubles down on abstinence education, which the state has long promoted, despite evidence that abstinence-only education does not lower adolescent birth rates. According to the law, teaching abstinence from sexual activity is a “certain way to avoid out-of-wedlock pregnancy.” The law emphasizes that teachers must teach the benefits of monogamous heterosexual marriage. The bill says teachers must teach material that is grade and age appropriate for students but does not offer additional details.
Relatedly, as DeSantis prepares his expected presidential run, his administration is moving to expand its “Don’t Say Gay” law, which took effect in 2022. It bars grades K-3 teachers from teaching about gender identity and sexual orientation, and a proposed State Board of Education rule, which comes up for a vote in April and doesn’t require legislative approval, would expand the restriction to grades four to 12.
The bans keep coming
DeSantis has said his education legislation empowers parents, giving them greater latitude to monitor what happens in classrooms. This bill carries this effort forward, though advocates have said such laws allow parental overreach and take power away from teachers who are experts.
The proposed legislation tasks district school boards with choosing course content and instructional materials used in classrooms. This means that boards have the power to control what’s available in school and classroom libraries and classroom reading lists. They’re also tasked with developing guidelines for how parents can object to what’s being taught and make it easier for them to do so.
The same provision even empowers “a resident of the county” to submit objections. Content can be objected to for a variety of reasons under the law, including if it depicts sexual content, is “not suited to student needs,” or is inappropriate for a student’s grade level or age group.
As with other Florida legislation, if certain material is objected to it must be removed from a classroom within five school days from when the objection was filed and cannot return to the school until the objection is investigated and resolved. If a school district finds an objection to be valid under the law, teachers must discontinue its use.
The bill also opens up avenues for parents to contest a school board’s decision to adopt certain course materials via petition. School districts are to consider petitions during hearings and make a determination. If a parent disagrees with a district’s decision, the law gives them the power to request that the commissioner of education appoint a special magistrate to issue a recommendation for how to resolve the dispute.
These allowances build on legislation that Florida passed last year that limits the kinds of materials that schools can carry in their libraries.
Republicans have argued that these bills do not constitute book bans, but activists say that’s exactly what they are.
“This is a ban because the language in the bill says this information will be removed completely. What if a parent says I don’t want my child to ever be exposed to slavery and that part of our history?” Gantt asked during her testimony. “There are so many ways we can keep children safe and informed and have these conversations.”
If signed by DeSantis, the law would take effect July 1, 2023.
The bipartisan Respect for Child Survivors Act, a law that would aid victims of child sex abuse and their families, just passed the House in a 385-28 vote.
All 28 votes against the bill came from Republicans.
The bill would require the FBI to form multi-disciplinary teams to aid sex abuse victims and their families in order to prevent re-traumatization from investigation and any cases from being dropped. These teams would include “investigative personnel, mental health professionals, medical personnel, family advocacy workers, child advocacy workers, and prosecutors,” Newsweek reported.
U.S. Senators John Cornyn (R-TX), Chris Coons (D-DE), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) introduced the legislation.
“I applaud Senator Cornyn’s leadership on this issue to correct an egregious wrong committed by certain FBI agents regarding their treatment of victims of sexual abuse,”said Sen. Graham.“Requiring the FBI to use appropriate, tried and true methods to interview child victims will help ensure the FBI’s failure in the Nassar case doesn’t happen again. This legislation will make it clear that we expect better.”
However, not all Republicans expect better from the FBI, it seems.
The bill was opposed by the following GOP Representatives: Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar (Ariz.); Dan Bishop and Virginia Foxx (NC); Lauren Boebert (Colo.), Mo Brooks and Barry Moore (Ala.); Louie Gohmert, Ronny Jackson, Troy Nehls, Chip Roy, and Michael Cloud (Texas); Andrew Clyde, Jody Hice, Austin Scott, and Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.); James Comer and Thomas Massie (Ky.); Rick Crawford (Ark.); Byron Donalds and John Rutherford (Fla.); Bob Good (Va.), Clay Higgins (La.), Tom McClintock (Calif.), Ralph Norman (SC), Scott Perry (Pa.), Matt Rosendale (Mont.), and Jeff Van Drew (NJ).
Despite this, the bill is supported by the Rape Abuse & Incest National Network, the National District Attorneys Association, Army of Survivors, the National Children’s Alliance, Keep Kids Safe, Together for Girls, Darkness to Light, the Monique Burr Foundation for Children, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), and the Brave Movement.
A sign outside a restroom in Durham, N.C., in May 2016.
The culture war over transgender rights is part of a fight over competing notions of gender and sexuality, including issues like abortion and sex education
by Kelsy Burke and Emily Kazyak
During the 2022 midterm election campaign, Republican public officials targeted transgender rights in what NPR and other news media have called the new front in the culture wars. Last month’s Public Religion Research Institute’s American Values Survey appears to offer confirmation, finding increased polarization on all measures of LGBTQ rights. In particular, Americans’ support for transgender rights has declined.
Public opinion on ‘bathroom bills’
Take one measure: whether laws should require transgender people to use bathrooms that correspond to their sex assigned at birth, not their current gender identity. In 2016, only 35 percent of all Americans favored these “bathroom bills,” the first of which was proposed that year in North Carolina. In 2022, after numerous other states proposed similar laws, the number of Americans supporting them rose to 52 percent.
The jump was especially pronounced for White evangelicals and Republicans. In 2016, only 41 percent of White evangelicals and 44 percent of Republicans supported the requirement that transgender people use bathrooms that aligned with their sex assigned at birth. By 2022, that number doubled to 86 percent and 87 percent, respectively.
Other groups also increased their opposition to transgender rights, but the rise was less dramatic for Democrats and Americans who are unaffiliated with religion. Only 27 percent of Democrats favored bathroom bills in 2016, compared with 31 percent in 2022. Among nonreligious respondents, support for requiring transgender people to use the bathroom that aligns with their sex assigned at birth increased from 21 percent in 2016 to 34 percent in 2022.
These numbers suggest that transgender issues are increasingly being lived out in polarizing ways among Americans — in other words, that the “culture wars” narrative holds true. As sociologists, we have sought to dig deeper than the quantitative findings to understand why Americans hold such diverging beliefs.
Gender logics
Using Nebraska as a case study, we asked residents to explain their views about transgender bathroom use in their own words.
The random sample of 938 mostly cisgender Nebraska residents who completed the mail survey were evenly split across this issue, with a slight majority (51 percent) saying transgender people should be required to use bathrooms that align with the sex they were assigned at birth. Like the latest PRRI national data, our respondents who were politically conservative and White evangelicals were more likely to oppose transgender rights on bathroom use.
In analyzing the 623 respondents who answered open-ended questions about “bathroom bills,” we found that support or opposition hinges on beliefs about the nature of gender itself. Sociologists have described these as believing in “static gender” (assigned at birth and unchanging) or “fluid gender” (can change over the life course and can manifest differently for different people).
Supporters of transgender rights believe in gender fluidity and take transgender people’s experiences seriously. These respondents reasoned that “people should live their lives as the way they identify themselves.” They argued that to deny transgender people the ability to use the bathroom aligned with their gender identity is “disrespectful,” “discriminating,” and “exposes them to needless humiliation.” Some supporters questioned why social life is organized around gender at all, and suggested gender-inclusive restrooms as an option that would allow everyone, transgender or cisgender, to “pee in peace,” as one of our respondents wrote.
In contrast, opponents of transgender rights see gender change as illegitimate and privilege cisgender people’s experiences. Respondents reason that “you cannot choose gender” and that “society should not be forced to recognize other categories than male and female.” Opponents also take for granted that social life should be organized by gender and position transgender people as threats to both the status quo and to cisgender people, especially women and children. To allow transgender people the ability to use the bathroom aligned with their gender identity is “dangerous to our children” and “an invasion of our privacy,” two respondents wrote.
The PRRI survey finds that Americans overall are more likely to view gender as static than as fluid (59 percent of adult Americans surveyed), dividing sharply along political and religious lines. In 2022, 87 percent of White evangelical Protestants say they believe there are only two genders, man or woman, compared with 68 percent of White mainline Protestants, 76 percent of Black Protestants, 70 percent of White Catholics, 51 percent of Hispanic Catholics, and 45 percent of nonreligious respondents. Eighty-eight percent of Republicans believe there are only two genders, man or woman, compared to 66 percent of independents and 36 percent of Democrats. These data reflect the broader political landscape, with White Protestant Republicans pushing anti-trans legislation.
The stakes of the culture wars
Though these findings obviously relate to transgender people, they implicate cisgender people, too. The culture war over transgender rights is part of a war over competing notions of gender and sexuality, and how those should be regulated in the social world. Thus, in 2022, we have observed simultaneous political attacks on transgender people, reproductive freedoms, and sex education. Americans are divided because we have fundamentally different vantage points over whose identities deserve protection and which experiences are to be prioritized and believed.
Roberto Abreu, assistant professor in the psychology department at the University of Florida, discusses Florida’s “Parental Rights in Education” bill and its banning discussions of sexual orientation or gender identity in classrooms with young children
Florida Rep. Michele Rayner delivers an impassioned speech vowing to challenge the controversial “Don’t Say Gay” bill passed by Florida’s Republican-led legislature during a rally March 12 on the front steps of City Hall in St. Petersburg, Fla.
One of the sections of Florida’s “Parental Rights in Education” bill, passed by the state’s House and Senate, prohibits any discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in primary grade classrooms. Supporters say the bill will allow parents more participation and control around the discussion of topics they deem “sensitive” or “inappropriate” for young children; opponents, who have dubbed the legislation the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, find this reasoning both illogical and hypocritical.
“This bill is clearly an anti-LGBTQ bill,” says Roberto Abreu, an assistant professor in the psychology department at the University of Florida whose research focuses on the intersection of LGBTQ people of color in their families, parenting and community. “What really gets me about all of this is that parents already make comments in very heteronormative or cisnormative ways that bring up sexuality and sexual orientation and gender” pointing to widely practiced gender reveal parties and casual remarks about children and their classroom crushes.
Abreu, who holds a doctorate in counseling psychology and looks at parent-child relationships of parents of color and their LGBTQ children, took some time to discuss this legislation, how to have these conversations with young children in ways that are appropriate for their age and level of development, and what adults can do to overcome the homophobia and transphobia these bans are rooted in. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)
Q: Florida’s “Parental Rights in Education” bill prohibits classroom discussions about sexual orientation or gender identity for students in primary grades or in ways that aren’t considered developmentally or age-appropriate for those students. In your experience, what would be an appropriate age to begin having conversations with children about sexual orientation and gender identity?
A: As soon as children bring it up you can start talking about it. Of course, children will bring it up in developmentally appropriate ways and our response should be in developmentally appropriate ways, right? We have research to show that children start to understand their gender as early as 3 years old, so once they bring it up, those are conversation openings. We shouldn’t be waiting for ‘the big talk’ in adolescence. We should start bringing up those conversations in a developmentally appropriate way as early as possible because the interesting thing is that parents are already bringing these things up. For example, statements like, ‘What girl/boy do you think is cute in your classroom? He/she may have a crush on you.’ Comments about sexual orientation and gender identity are made around children all the time, we just do it in very heteronormative and cisnormative ways. Nothing gets to me more than gender reveal parties where people are revealing gender, biology, chromosomes and genitalia. That’s what we’re doing, is revealing genitalia, so clearly people don’t have a problem talking about this unless it’s in the context of trans and queer folks. Also, shouldn’t we trust teachers, who are trained educators and have experience with youth and development, to have these conversations? We trust them to teach everything else with our kids.
Q: How is that different from assessing a child’s developmental readiness for these kinds of conversations? What is typically used to determine whether a child is developmentally ready to have these kinds of conversations?
A: I don’t know that I see a difference. Thinking developmentally, we should be thinking this way when we introduce any concepts in a classroom, not just when it comes to LGBTQ issues. It’s important, for example, to talk to children in elementary school about the proper and appropriate names for their body parts. I don’t necessarily think that there’s a formula here. The other interesting part about this bill is that it’s almost couched in a way for people to say that they just want to make sure that they’re talking about these things in the right way, and that these aren’t appropriate topics for children this young; but they are appropriate topics because we’ve been talking about them already. In that context, we shouldn’t even be having conversations with children about liking another girl or boy their age because that should also be deemed inappropriate.
Q: What are some examples of what a developmentally or age-appropriate conversation about sexual orientation or gender identity would sound like? What would be covered in that kind of discussion?
A: I’ll use an example from my own personal life. My husband and I have a 7-year-old and he got home one day last year and said, ‘Most of my friends have a mom and a dad.’ How can I have that conversation? (Teachers should also be addressing this in ways that are developmentally appropriate for any child to see their family represented, and know that their teacher cares to have this conversation about their family structure that might be different and maybe isn’t the norm.) Most children won’t have two dads or two moms, but teachers and schools and parents should be having these conversations. With the language of this bill, these kinds of conversations can never happen because how do you explain to a child that they have two dads, without bringing up sexual orientation? Children have questions. You don’t have to talk about romantic relationships at that point, but how do you talk about two men raising a family for a child who has two dads, or two moms, without naming who they are? Books that are being read in classrooms can show a range of people and families. This is just another aspect of diversity, and LGBTQ students deserve to be seen, heard and cared for.
The first thing I do, is I affirm or dispel any myths the child might have heard. In this specific example, I affirm that ‘Yeah, you are correct. Most of your friends don’t have two dads. Your dads are gay, meaning that we are attracted, we are in love, we like to form relationships and families with two men. Your friends’ parents might be heterosexual, or maybe they’re bisexual, but they have a mom and a dad.’ You’re putting the context into words that the child is using themselves. I think it is appropriate to be honest, direct, frank, and to use the language and wording that the child is using.
Q: Why do you think people seem to be so uncomfortable with the idea of educating children about their bodies in ways that include informing them about topics related to sex?
A: I think we’re a very conservative society. I think we can also question why we don’t teach sex-positive education in high school. Why don’t we talk about woman-identified individuals making decisions for their own bodies? Power and control is one explanation. Another could be about adults’ own projection of erroneously thinking that children aren’t ready to have these conversations. They need to be age-appropriate, but I think adults’ own projections about their own discomfort about these topics is part of it. Honestly, though, at the root of it, I think it’s about transphobia and homophobia. These bills are not happening in a scattered manner, and a lot of attention to this bill has been around sexual orientation, but it’s also about gender and legislators trying to erase trans youth. It is about completely erasing groups of people who we do not see as worthy of personhood and humanity, from physical spaces, from history, from books, from everywhere. I think that is the real reason, that it’s the discomfort about trans bodies and queer bodies existing fully and free, and as their authentic selves in society.
Also, society is contradictory. Sex is everywhere: on TV, in the movies, in advertising; but let’s not talk about it with our kids? There is a real dichotomy there. We are OK with lots of displays of sexuality, but not this? Kids need information about sex, and they need it from educators and parents. The problem is most parents are not equipped to talk about it, or simply do not know how. Also, for some kids, school may be the only place where they are accepted.
Q: What are the best ways to think about and approach equipping children with this kind of information?
A: Everyone might have their own reasons, but I think people should get help, and I don’t mean that in a condescending way. As an adult, you should do your own work. If you feel discomfort about talking about these topics — although there is a wealth of literature and evidence and Google — I understand. I understand that people might be uncomfortable, and I’m not mad at anyone’s discomfort, but don’t project that onto other people or pass that on to children or use children as pawns in this. Do your own work, do your own therapy, and equip yourselves with materials and resources, and learn about these topics. I think working on yourself is important, and a great place to start. Here are some examples where you can find age-appropriate LGBTQ books for kids.
Houston, we have a problem! Love and sex need to happen in space if we hope to travel long distances and become an interplanetary species, but space organizations are not ready.
This situation is untenable and needs to change if we hope to settle new worlds and continue our expansion in the cosmos — we’ll need to learn how to safely reproduce and build pleasurable intimate lives in space. To succeed, however, we also need space organizations to adopt a new perspective on space exploration: one that considers humans as whole beings with needs and desires.
As researchers exploring the psychology of human sexuality and studying the psychosocial aspects of human factors in space, we propose that it is high time for space programs to embrace a new discipline: space sexology, the comprehensive scientific study of extraterrestrial intimacy and sexuality.
In practice, rocket science may take us to outer space, but it will be human relations that determine if we survive and thrive as a spacefaring civilization. In that regard, we argue that limiting intimacy in space could jeopardize the mental and sexual health of astronauts, along with crew performance and mission success. On the other hand, enabling space eroticism could help humans adapt to spacelife and enhance the well-being of future space inhabitants.
To date, however, space programs have almost completely omitted the subject of sex in space. The few studies that relate to this topic mostly focus on the impacts of radiation and micro- or hyper-gravity on animal reproduction (rodents, amphibians and insects).
Pleasure and taboo
But human sexuality is about more than just reproduction. It includes complex psychological, emotional and relational dynamics. Love and sex are also pursued for fun and pleasure. As such, space exploration requires the courage to address the intimate needs of humans honestly and holistically.
Importantly, addressing the sexological issues of human life in space could also help combat sexism, discrimination and sexual violence or harassment, which are unfortunately still pervasive in science and the military — two pillars of space programs.
Due to taboos and conservative sexual views, some organizations may choose to ignore the realities of space intimacy and sexuality. They may also think that this is a non-issue or that there are more pressing matters to attend to. But this attitude lacks foresight, since producing quality science takes time and resources, and sexual health — including pleasure — is increasingly recognized as a human right.
More and more, this means that space agencies and private companies may be held accountable for the sexual and reproductive well-being of those that they take into space.
Thus, space organizations who submit to their conservative funders will likely pay the price of their inaction in a very public and media-fueled way when disaster strikes. The hammer may fall particularly hard on the organizations who have not even tried addressing human eroticism in space, or when the world learns that they knowingly failed to conduct the proper research and take the necessary precautions that scientists have been requesting for more than 30 years.
Intimacy beyond Earth
To move forward, space organizations must stop avoiding sexual topics and fully recognize the importance of love, sex and intimate relationships in human life.
Accordingly, we encourage them to develop space sexology as a scientific field and research program: one that not only aims to study sex in space, but also design systems, habitats and training programs that allow intimacy to take place beyond our home planet, Earth.
We further propose that, given its expertise and the sociopolitical climate of Canada, the Canadian Space Agency is ideally positioned to become a world leader in space sexology. We have what it takes to pave the way for an ethical and pleasurable space journey, as we continue to boldly go where no one has gone before.
In the earliest phase of European capitalism, Marx’s old story goes, a significant number of laborers renounced agrarian communities for towns and cities, dissolving the family unit and moving from one place to another. As Christopher Chitty writes in Sexual Hegemony: Statecraft, Sodomy, and Capital in the Rise of the World System, these workers encountered the state of propertylessness for the first time and transformed from husbands of women and the land into people connected by “impersonal market-mediated relations.” In early modern towns and cities full of solitary laborers, and in the Mediterranean ports where sailors flowed through a porous social texture like water, large numbers of men mingled in common lodgings. These towns, where maritime trade and merchant capital had led to new pools of artisanal, servant, and slave labor, “therefore tended to favor homosexuality,” Chitty writes.
This is but one moment from Chitty’s sweeping history of the relationship between sexuality and capital, which seeks to answer a seemingly trollish question: What if there were no such thing as homophobia? Chitty’s not suggesting that violence against gays is some fiction. Instead, he’s pointing out that homophobia tends to be treated as a “timeless force of exclusion,” some inevitable element of human nature, rather than a relatively recent historical behavior. Specifically: behavior brought about by the convulsions of market capitalism. To read Chitty is to experience something like the “galaxy brain” of meme culture, the kind of world-upending feeling one gets from Antonio Gramsci or Silvia Federici, who also use Marxian theory to question the aspects of our social reality that we take for granted.
Chitty is not alive to see the publication of these striking ideas. Max Fox, the book’s editor, explains in his foreword that Sexual Hegemony “represents both a precious record and a bitter loss”: Chitty committed suicide in 2015 before he could submit a version of it as his doctoral dissertation. In Fox’s words, he was a “brilliant young scholar and activist” in the University of California Santa Cruz’s History of Consciousness Department. After his death, Chitty’s family and friends gave Fox access to “early drafts of chapters, essays submitted as coursework, notes for further refinement or research,” and so on. The book is structured like a dissertation, though a hair shorter than most. The style is academic but sparklingly clear, if you concentrate, though it’s not what anybody would call skimmable. Fox must get the credit for the polish and sheer rhetorical coherence that Sexual Hegemony boasts as a whole.
Here’s another historical example, Engels-style, from the mid-nineteenth century. In 1841, urinals “towering twelve feet above the street, capped with a round glans-like finial,” popped up along the busiest streets of Paris, sparking a trend in sanitation reform that would soon see public toilets studding all the major capitals of Europe. Britain was in the full bloom of industrialization, and the towns buzzed with young workers. Almost immediately, a new problem emerged, as women—especially middle-class British women—complained that these new conveniences provided them with unwanted glimpses of men’s penises. Middle-class bourgeois outrage spread fast and caused literal walls to be built around men’s public toilets, which, in Chitty’s rather luxurious phrasing, “erotically intensified the experience of urination in public by providing a semiprivate, same-sex urban space.”
Sexual Hegemony: Statecraft, Sodomy, and Capital in the Rise of the World System
At the very same time, forensic medicine in France and Germany “discovered” the psychological definition of homosexuality. British elites suddenly became terribly concerned about deviancy among the nation’s poor, of all genders, and “mobilized forces of social control” to make them behave better—hence the invention of the public urinal, and crackdowns on sex between men. It was a “struggle over the phallus,” instigated by capitalism and animated by conflicts between various combinations of class and gender, one where “the entry and influence of middle-class women into the public sphere is the decisive factor in changing norms of urban policing around public displays of sexuality—namely, prostitution and homosexuality.”
Running through all this, Chitty argues, is a deeper truth that doesn’t quite line up with anything historians have said before: “[S]ocioeconomic progress is directly to blame for a wider basis for sexual repression.” Where markets tremble, sexuality is policed, and wherever there are police, the “deviants” of a society become more visible. From this truth then emerges another, just as the big brain follows the littler brain in the meme: “Thus the massive American economic boom of consumer society following the second World War extended middle-class sexual norms to ever more Americans and led to the most extensive policing of homosexuality in any period of history.”
If we think this way, Chitty writes, we can see how America’s fundamentalist Christian revival and the “free love” radical counterculture of the 1960s were “perhaps two faces of the same spiritual awakening,” paired forces that antagonized and inflamed the other according to a logic dictated by—you guessed it—capital.
If Chitty’s theory of the universe makes intuitive sense to you, then you are not alone. As I read Sexual Hegemony slowly, like a child trying to understand all the big words, it felt obvious: Of course more men would have sex with each other when compelled to live side by side, bereft of the family structures they’d left behind. Of course those sexual dynamics would bear some relationship to markets. Of course all that helps explain the correlation between the mad, intense American postwar boom and the massive postwar fuss called “homophobia,” which grew so powerful we needed scientists to study it.
Chitty’s study could probably only have come out of UCSC’s “HistCon” department, a peculiar institution founded in the 1970s. Among its first appointed professors were the literary theorists Hayden White and James Clifford, who were later joined by Angela Davis and Donna Haraway, among others. Founder of the Black Panthers Huey P. Newton received his Ph.D. in HistCon in 1980, which gives you a flavor of the department’s inclinations.
The chief authority Chitty takes aim at in Sexual Hegemony is Michel Foucault, the theorist whose work made HistCon possible. His History of Sexuality had an explosive effect on the twentieth-century postwar intellectual scene, because he had figured out a way to speak about sex and capitalist development in the same breath. Among its sledgehammer ideas is that the new medical science of the nineteenth century produced the “homosexual” by defining it. For Foucault, repressive forces don’t just push marginalized communities to the edges of society but cause them to exist.
The problem with this argument, Chitty thinks, is that it frames oppressed communities as totally passive, as well as suggesting that there is some unique quality to modern gay sex that it never had before. Foucault’s argument doesn’t much account for what was happening before modern science reached its position of authority. Surely there were changes going on in the way people formed sexual relationships as capitalism marched across the globe, Chitty insists, that we can read about and observe in action?
It matters what we forget and what we remember. Perhaps the saddest moment in the book comes toward its end, when Chitty notes that the “boldest propositions have tended to be advanced at the margins of gay history, buried in endnotes or writing not published in the historian’s lifetime.” It’s certainly true here. Lovingly, he frames Sexual Hegemony as a tribute to the unremembered working-class gays of centuries past, who have not been part of the inherently elitist microscope of queer literature. “The oblivion faced by working-class homosexuals was an oblivion of historical memory,” Chitty writes; “by contrast, their elite counterparts left behind a labyrinthine wardrobe of tortured interiority, self-involvement, and coded references in which subsequent generations of queer readers have wandered.”
When we do history this way, Chitty argues, we can sidestep the problem of trying to guess whether queers from history were “authentically gay” or just responding to the pressures of poverty or class hierarchy. We think of modern queer sexuality as defined by the individual’s freedom: a tenet we can see most clearly in the importance we place on the concept of consent. When we read about a poor teenaged boy having sex with rich older men in early modern Venice, our ordinary language of consent just doesn’t apply. But this binary between “real” and “situational” gayness is a false one, Chitty thinks. All sexual encounters, whether present-day or historical, are subject to the contingencies of time and place and power dynamics.
The story behind Chris Chitty’s book also moved me, for a reason the author himself specified. Gay people, he writes, have a particular desire to understand themselves as part of history, for the very reason that we don’t see ourselves in the past. This makes the “homosexual desire for history … itself historical,” he writes, a phenomenon that always leads us to feeling out of place, cut off from solidarity. We have an uncertain kinship with the misunderstood and the dead, who have also lost their place in the world. The desire for history that runs so hot through queers today is also a desire to recognize and be recognized. Both a labor of love and a collaboration across the frontier of death, Sexual Hegemony is one of that desire’s most uniquely affecting expressions.
It may, paradoxically, be precisely because they believe cuckoldry is so bad
By Justin Lehmiller
In the wake of allegations that he spent years watching his wife have sex with another man, Jerry Falwell Jr. resigned this week from his post as president of Liberty University. Falwell has denied the specifics of those allegations, but if they’re true, he would be neither the first nor the last conservative man to take pleasure in sharing his spouse or partner while he looks on, a sexual practice known more commonly as “cuckolding.” In fact, a disproportionate percentage fantasize about just that happening to them.
They’re not alone, of course. Cuckolding routinely ranks among the top searches on the world’s biggest porn sites, as reported by neuroscientists Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam in their book “A Billion Wicked Thoughts,” for which they analyzed the contents of hundreds of millions of Internet searches. But as my own research has shown, reports of that sexual fantasy exhibit a surprising ideological pattern. For my book “Tell Me What You Want,” I studied the sexual fantasies of 4,175 Americans from all 50 states. I asked my participants to report how often they fantasized about hundreds of different people, places and things — including cuckolding.
A majority of heterosexual men (52 percent) said they had fantasized about watching their partner have sex with someone else. Heterosexual men who identified as Republican were the most likely to report having had a cuckolding fantasy at some point — and they fantasized about it more often than Democrats. Fewer than half of Democratic straight men (49 percent) reported having ever fantasized about cuckolding, and 19 percent said they fantasize about it often. By contrast, nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of heterosexual Republican men reported having had this fantasy, and 30 percent said it is a frequent fantasy. Republican men also reported more fantasies about infidelity, swinging and a wide range of sexually taboo activities, including voyeurism.
One way to understand why these desires are so much more common for conservative men is through what sex therapist Jack Morin termed “the erotic equation,” which he spelled out as follows:
Attraction + Obstacles = Excitement
The basic premise here is intuitive: When we are told we cannot do something that we want to do — even if we do not have a particularly strong desire for it — those restrictions make us want to do it even more. Violating taboos creates risk — and taking on a certain amount of risk can heighten arousal and excitement. This is precisely why public sex (or semipublic sex) was another extraordinarily popular fantasy in my survey: The thrill of potentially being caught in the act amps up the intensity of the situation.
Because those on the right tend to have more restrictions placed on their sexuality in general, it stands to reason that they have access to plenty of potentially appealing taboos. And among those many paradoxically pleasurable roadblocks to sexual gratification, cuckolding is one of the most prominent. They are really, really not supposed to let themselves become cuckolds, let alone to long for it.
According to this logic, a man who shares his wife with another man doesn’t just violate social and moral dictates for monogamy, but he also violates traditional notions of masculinity. In the eyes of many men, cuckolding is the ultimate form of emasculation. This sentiment is precisely why many on the right have taken to using the term “cuck” to denigrate men they see as giving up their own power and control, or humiliating themselves. It is also why many of them use the term “cuckservative” to refer to conservative men they see as caving to the left.
It may, paradoxically, be precisely because of all this that cuckoldry fantasies are so appealing. People on the right tend to place a very high value on their freedom. For example, consider conservative views on wearing masks during the covid-19 pandemic: Surveys find that Republicans are more likely to refuse to wear masks than Democrats, citing it as an attack on their liberty. This tendency is an effect of the psychological concept known as reactance, the idea that when one’s individual freedoms are threatened, one tries to reassert autonomy and independence.
Resistance to restrictions, in this mode, becomes a way to reassert personal freedom, and that’s a big deal for those on the right. As the mask resisters show, conservatives may be willing to put themselves at risk to merely assert the fact of their freedom. Likewise, it seems possible that some are open to violating erotic norms — even those that might expose them to mockery or humiliation — to demonstrate to themselves that they’re not bound by the rules. While such behaviors may seem to contradict the expectations and norms espoused by those who practice them, they actually serve to reaffirm a more fundamental conservative value, the emphasis placed on freedom itself.
With all of that said, it is certainly not the case that all Republicans and conservatives are fantasizing about cuckolding or other taboo sexual activities, nor is it the case that they’re alone in expressing such wishes. As I report in “Tell Me What You Want,” one of the kinks that Democrats report more often than Republicans is BDSM: bondage, discipline, dominance, submission, sadism and masochism. In other words, those on the left fantasize about things like power play and rough sex more than those on the right. For Democrats, subverting ideals of equitable and fair power relations is a major taboo. The same could be said for visualizing a scenario in which the lines of sexual consent might not be explicit. After all, people on the left tend to be much stronger supporters of the #MeToo movement and have more vocally advocated for models of enthusiastic sexual consent. Flirting with this taboo may therefore be why BDSM is more tantalizing for them.
In short, while the specific content of our sexual fantasies and the particular activities we pursue in our bedrooms may differ to some degree according to our political affiliations, the factors that feed our erotic desires might not be so different after all.
Jerry Falwell Jr. may well be wishing that a photo with his underwear showing and his arm around the waist of a woman not his wife was the worst of his problems.
That snapshot kick-started a round of speculation into the prominent evangelical leader’s personal life that has cost him his job. On Aug. 25, Falwell confirmed that he has resigned his presidency at Liberty University.
How male public figures react to a sex scandal can be a very complex process. In trying to preserve what is left of their reputations, my research indicates that they will often attempt to prove that they remain a “real man” – both a loving, devoted husband and a strong, virile leader. This behavior makes sense when one understands the conservative Christian gender roles that inspire them.
Under conservative Christian gender norms, men are described not only as naturally sexual, but also as divinely designed to be far more sexual than women. In fact, male sexuality is often depicted as out of control. The point of marriage, many evangelicals claim, is to harness that male sexuality so that it is productive rather than wild and unbounded.
This view of marriage may strike many as archaic, but these ideas nevertheless permeate part of American culture – one can see it in the “boys will be boys” defense of bad male behavior.
Such ideas also strongly influence how large swaths of the public tend to view sex scandals. Generally speaking, while the public holds the offending politician responsible, they are also often eager to condemn other figures who were involved for leading him astray.
More specifically, my research shows that women who are in any way associated with sex scandals are much more likely to be demonized or blamed for the sexual incident in question. Even when they are the innocent party, they can be portrayed as power-hungry strategists who stayed in a bad marriage to elevate themselves or enablers who give all women a bad name by sticking up for another adulterer.
And as scholar Amy DeRogatis has shown, if a woman is sexual outside of marriage, she is often described by evangelicals as compromising the “gift” of her sexuality intended for her husband. Giving her sexuality to someone else sacrifices her future capacity for intimacy, it is argued.
At the same time, some evangelicals claim that a wide number of marital problems stem from the fact that women do not provide their husbands with enough sex.
In this particular subculture, everything from men’s self-esteem to their job performance can be linked to the frequency and quality of their sexual encounters. In this way of thinking, when men have problems, their wives’ sexual attitudes and behaviors are often to blame.
Demonization of women
Negative stereotypes often extend to all women involved in a sex scandal, no matter whether any sexual contact actually happened nor whether the act in question was consensual.
For instance, Paula Jones and Anita Hill both claimed to have been the victims of sexual harassment, at the hands of Bill Clinton and Clarence Thomas, respectively.
In the case of both women, elaborate sexual stories were concocted by critics of all political stripes. These stories were then adopted more broadly by the general public to portray them as immoral women who must have been at least partially responsible for the sexualized encounters they experienced with two prominent figures.
The case of Paula Broadwell is also instructive. Broadwell was the lover of Gen. David Petraeus, one-time director of the CIA. While both Broadwell and Petraeus admitted to a consensual affair while married to other people, Broadwell’s ethics were called into question in a way that Petraeus did not experience.
In short, there is a pattern in American culture of finding fault with the woman in a sex scandal. Falwell’s response falls in line with this pattern.
But there is another aspect of Granda’s allegations that deserves attention when looking at the response to the scandal. In Granda’s telling – again, which has been denied by Jerry Falwell – the evangelical leader watched the sexual encounters between Granda and Becki but did not actively participate.
As scholar Joshua Gamson has shown, men whose sexual violations do not involve actual intercourse – for example sexting, as in the case with disgraced New York politician Anthony Weiner – are often portrayed as less masculine, even silly, for failing to “do the deed.”
Chance of redemption?
What we are watching play out before us with the Falwells is a study of conservative gender norms.
If Falwell can convincingly argue that the fault lies entirely with his wife, then this well-worn story might give him the chance to redeem himself at some point in the future. After all, in this version of events, he can maintain the appearance of a loving husband and father who has some integrity.
On the other hand, being the man who “watched from the corner of the room” fulfills neither the devoted family man role nor that of the virile, powerful husband. If this is the narrative that is ultimately adopted, then the path back to redemption in the eyes of the evangelical public is harder to imagine.
You must be logged in to post a comment.