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gender



  • Deconstructing "The Child"

    by Jules Gill-Peterson

    Since the Victorian era, Anglo-American conceptions of childhood have worked ideologically to place children at risk of harm through the justifying idea of love, and hide the reality that only a tiny percentage of young people experience youth as protected, secure, and nurtured. 



  • Is Messi the Avatar of a Post-Macho Argentina?

    by Brenda Elsey

    Lionel Messi's tenure at the top of the soccer world has coincided with an upsurge of feminism in Argentina and its sports culture, changes Messi has quietly supported. 



  • Empathy in the Archive: Care and Disdain for Wet Nursing Mothers

    by Anna K. Danziger Halperin

    "Just like today, women’s decisions in the past about how to feed their babies were shaped by personal preference, to be sure, but the possibilities available are bounded by technological innovations, shifting medical advice, and social, cultural, and economic pressures and practices."



  • Historians Documenting the Lives of Transgender People

    Historians like Jules Gill-Peterson argues that the history of transgender people is often hiding in plain sight, and contains as many moments of joy as of discrimination or misunderstanding. 

  • How We Told the Ongoing Story of Title IX

    by Laura Mogulescu

    A curator and her team chose to center the work of activists who pushed to determine the scope and meaning of Title IX's prohibition on sex discrimination in education throughout the law's 50-year history. Their exhibit is now open at the New-York Historical Society.



  • Tucker Carlson Heralds Yet Another "Crisis of Masculinity"

    by Mona Charen

    Tucker Carlson's recent examination of testicular tanning as a boost to manliness shows the need for societies to support pathways to male expression that don't lead to violence or painful sunburns. 



  • "Father Knows Best": Anti-LGBTQ Legislation and the Patriarchy

    by Judith Levine

    The elision of children’s interests and parents’ rights is not just bad grammar, however. It is an expression of conservative “pro-family” ideology, which posits the family as an indivisible unit where everyone’s interests are unanimous.



  • Hating Motherhood

    by Judith Levine

    Feminist thought that has questioned "the inexorable tie between mothers and children" and imagined women's lives without motherhood have been the "demon texts" of the movement; 


  • The Anti-Valentine: "Dear John" in Military Culture

    by Susan Carruthers

    The cultural phenomenon of the "Dear John" letter illustrates how wartime has created occasion for the policing of gendered norms of faithfulness and forbearance, as well as a script for breaking them. 



  • Susan Carruthers on The Myths and History of the "Dear John" Letter

    The "Dear John" letter represents a convergence of the social history of the military and the culture of family, love and relationships. Historian Susan L. Carruthers explains how the term was coined and what she learned about romantic breakups in military history.



  • Manhood, Madness, and Moonshine

    by Dillon Carroll

    Today's concern for "deaths of despair" among white Americans isn't unprecedented; a wave of alcoholism and temperance advocacy after the Civil War highlighted the relationship between social unsettlement, substance abuse and social reformism.



  • Why Hollywood Can't Change a Diaper

    by Janet Golden

    While Hollywood portrayals of motherhood have adapted to incorporate single and working mothers, popular culture images of fatherhood have remained stubbornly stuck in the past. Would supports for child care and parental leave in the budget reconciliation bill help bring movie dads up to date? 



  • Do Colleges have a Guy Problem

    "The imbalance reveals a genuine shift in how men participate in education, the economy, and society. The world has changed dramatically, but the ideology of masculinity isn’t changing fast enough to keep up."