tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/womens-bodies-24548/articlesWomen's bodies – The Conversation2021-09-02T12:23:38Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1671702021-09-02T12:23:38Z2021-09-02T12:23:38ZAs Texas ban on abortion goes into effect, a religion scholar explains that pre-modern Christian attitudes on marriage and reproductive rights were quite different<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418956/original/file-20210901-15-29ytfy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=63%2C12%2C8371%2C5547&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The U.S. Supreme Court has allowed Texas' abortion restrictions to take effect.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/supreme-court-police-officer-patrols-at-the-u-s-supreme-news-photo/1234993989?adppopup=true">Drew Angerer/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The U.S. Supreme Court has <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/09/01/supreme-court-texas-abortion-ban-508275">failed to rule on an emergency application</a> to block SB8, a controversial Texas law that bans abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. As such, the legislation went into effect on Sept. 1, 2021.</p>
<p>While signing the new law on May 19, <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2021/05/18/texas-heartbeat-bill-abortions-law/">Texas Gov. Greg Abbott stated</a>: “Our creator endowed us with the right to life, and yet millions of children lose their right to life every year because of abortion.” </p>
<p>As Abbott’s words show, these kinds of draconian restrictions on women’s reproductive rights in the United States <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-christian-rights-efforts-to-transform-society-120878">are often fueled by the belief of many Christians</a> that abortion and Christianity are incompatible. For example, the <a href="https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P7Z.HTM">catechism of the Catholic Church</a>, an authoritative guide to the beliefs and practices of Roman Catholics, states: “Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable.”</p>
<p>However, this statement tells only one part of the story. It is true that Christian leaders, virtually all male, have largely condemned abortion. Nonetheless, as a <a href="https://www.scrippscollege.edu/academics/faculty/profile/luis-josue-sales">scholar of premodern Christianities</a>, I am also aware of the messier realities that this statement conceals.</p>
<h2>Celebrating women’s celibacy</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A painted portrait of the saint Walatta Petros, created between 1716-1721, prevoiusly found in the saint's montastery in Ethiopia." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410460/original/file-20210708-19-1dis12o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=12%2C4%2C1327%2C1074&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410460/original/file-20210708-19-1dis12o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410460/original/file-20210708-19-1dis12o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410460/original/file-20210708-19-1dis12o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410460/original/file-20210708-19-1dis12o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410460/original/file-20210708-19-1dis12o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410460/original/file-20210708-19-1dis12o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=606&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The story of Walatta Petros, a 17th-century Ethiopian noblewoman who was later made a saint, shows that Christianity has a complex history with abortion and contraception.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walatta_Petros#/media/File:Portrait_of_Ethiopian_Saint_Walatta_Petros,_painted_in_1721.tif">A 1721 manuscript/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The earliest Christian writings – the <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Corinthians%207&amp;version=NRSV">letters of the Apostle Paul</a> – discouraged marriage and reproduction. Later Christian texts supported these teachings. In a second-century text known as the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/maps/primary/thecla.html">Acts of Paul and Thekla</a>, a Christian author in Asia Minor praised Thekla for rejecting her suitors and avoiding marriage in favor of spreading Christian teachings instead.</p>
<p>In the third century, Thekla’s story inspired a Roman noblewoman called Eugenia. According to the Christian text titled the <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/select-narratives-of-holy-women-translation/3B43CAD1AA875B23551CD19B3C94A930">Acts and Martyrdom of Eugenia</a>, Eugenia rejected marriage and led a male monastery for a time. Afterward, she discouraged Alexandrian women from having children, but this advice angered their husbands. These men convinced the emperor Gallienus that Eugenia’s teachings about women’s reproductive choice endangered Rome’s military power by reducing the “supply” of future soldiers. Eugenia was executed in the year 258. </p>
<p>Even as the Roman Empire became increasingly Christian, women still received praise for avoiding marriage. For example, the bishop Gregorios of Nyssa, an ancient city near Harmandali, Turkey, wrote the beautiful text <a href="https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/macrina.asp">Life of Makrina</a> to celebrate his beloved sister and teacher, who died in 379. In this text, Gregorios admires Makrina for wittily rejecting suitors by claiming that she owed faithfulness to her dead fiancé.</p>
<p>To sum up, while early Christian texts did not exactly encourage women to explore sexual experiences, neither did they encourage marriage, reproduction and family life.</p>
<h2>Choices beyond celibacy</h2>
<p>Pre-modern Christian women had options besides celibacy as well, although the state, the church and mediocre medicine limited their reproductive choices.</p>
<p>In 211, the Roman emperors Septimius Severus and Caracalla <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt3fh9jv">made abortion illegal</a>. Tellingly, though, Roman laws surrounding abortion were centrally concerned with the father’s right to an heir, not with women or fetuses in their own right. Later Roman Christian legislators <a href="http://nbls.soc.srcf.net/files/files/Civil%20II/Texts/Digest%20of%20Justinian,%20Volume%204%20(D.41-50).pdf">left that largely unchanged</a>.</p>
<p>Conversely, Christian bishops sometimes condemned the injustice of laws regulating sex and reproduction. For example, the bishop Gregorios of Nazianzos, who died in 390, <a href="https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310237.htm">accused legislators of self-serving hypocrisy</a> for being lenient on men and tough on women. Similarly, the bishop of Constantinople, Ioannes Chrysostomos, who died in 407, <a href="https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/210224.htm">blamed men for putting women in difficult situations that led to abortions</a>.</p>
<p>Christian leaders often gathered at meetings called “synods” to discuss religious beliefs and practices. Two of the most important synods concerning abortion were held in Ankyra – currently Ankara, Turkey – in 314 and in Chalkedon – today’s Kadiköy, Turkey – in 451. Notably, these two synods drastically reduced the penalties for abortion relative to earlier centuries.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Abortion protesters listening to clergy give speeches and praying" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410880/original/file-20210712-15-l5nbfk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410880/original/file-20210712-15-l5nbfk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410880/original/file-20210712-15-l5nbfk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410880/original/file-20210712-15-l5nbfk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410880/original/file-20210712-15-l5nbfk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410880/original/file-20210712-15-l5nbfk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410880/original/file-20210712-15-l5nbfk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Some contemporary Christians oppose abortion and contraception based on their religious beliefs. But historically the faith has sometimes supported women’s reproductive autonomy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/PlannedParenthoodProtests/af52d6f1312245dd911e4cba3f27574a">Brennan Lindsey/AP</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But over time, these legal and religious opinions did not seem appreciably to affect women’s reproductive choices. Rather, <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/abortion-and-contraception-in-the-middle-ages/">pregnancy prevention and termination methods thrived in premodern Christian societies</a>, especially in the medieval Roman Empire. For example, the historian Prokopios of Kaisareia claims that the Roman Empress <a href="https://wps.pearsoncustom.com/wps/media/objects/2426/2484749/chap_assets/bookshelf/procopius.pdf">Theodora nearly perfected contraception and abortion</a> during her time as a sex worker, and yet this charge had no impact on Theodora’s canonization as a saint.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.medievalists.net/2013/07/abortions-in-byzantine-times-325-1453-ad/">Some evidence even indicates that pre-modern Christians</a> actively developed reproductive options for women. For instance, Christian physicians, like <a href="https://medieval.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/catalog/person_79115278">Aetios of Amida</a> in the sixth century and <a href="https://library.princeton.edu/byzantine/subject-name/paul-aegina">Paulos of Aigina</a> in the seventh, provided detailed instructions for performing abortions and making contraceptives. Their texts deliberately changed and improved on the medical work of Soranos of Ephesos, who lived in the second century. Many manuscripts contain their work, which indicates these texts circulated openly.</p>
<p>Further Christian texts about holy figures suggest complex Christian perspectives on the acceptable termination of fetal development – and even newborn lives. Consider a sixth-century text, the <a href="https://www.oca.org/saints/lives/2016/09/16/102632-venerable-dorotheus-the-hermit-of-egypt">Egyptian Life of Dorotheos</a>. In this account, the sister of Dorotheos, an Egyptian hermit from Thebes, becomes pregnant while possessed by a demon. But when Dorotheos successfully prays for his sister to miscarry, the text treats the unusual termination of the pregnancy as a miracle, not a moral outrage.</p>
<p>Around 1,100 years later, a similar event happens in the Ethiopian <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691164212/the-life-and-struggles-of-our-mother-walatta-petros">Life of Walatta Petros</a>. According to this text, Petros, a noblewoman later canonized as a saint, married a general and became pregnant three times. However, every time she conceived, she prayed for her fetus to die promptly if it would “not please God in life.” The narrator tells us that all three children died days after birth, since “God heard her prayer.”</p>
<p>Certainly, Christians have a history of opposing methods for preventing and terminating pregnancies. But these pre-modern texts, spanning some 1,500 years, indicate that Christians also have a history of providing these services, and making them safer for women.</p>
<p>This tense and inconclusive relationship to abortion may be poorly known – or perhaps overlooked for political convenience. But that does not change the fact, as I see it, that Christians who support women’s reproductive rights are also following the historical precedent of their religious tradition.</p>
<p>[<em>3 media outlets, 1 religion newsletter.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/this-week-in-religion-76/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=religion-3-in-1">Get stories from The Conversation, AP and RNS.</a>]</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of a piece <a href="https://theconversation.com/christian-attitudes-surrounding-abortion-have-a-more-nuanced-history-than-current-events-suggest-162560">first published on July 13, 2021</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167170/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luis Josué Salés does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Supreme Court declined to rule on a Texas law that bans all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. However, abortion and contraception were quite common among pre-modern Christians.Luis Josué Salés, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Scripps CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1625602021-07-13T12:29:16Z2021-07-13T12:29:16ZChristian attitudes surrounding abortion have a more nuanced history than current events suggest<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410460/original/file-20210708-19-1dis12o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=12%2C4%2C1327%2C1074&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The story of Walatta Petros, a 17th-century Ethiopian noblewoman who was later made a saint, shows that Christianity has a complex history with abortion and contraception.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walatta_Petros#/media/File:Portrait_of_Ethiopian_Saint_Walatta_Petros,_painted_in_1721.tif">A 1721 manuscript/Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Opponents and supporters of legal abortion in the U.S. will be watching when the Supreme Court hears <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/dobbs-v-jackson-womens-health-organization/">Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization</a> during its upcoming term. In this lawsuit, a Mississippi women’s health center has challenged the constitutionality of a 2018 state law banning abortions after the first 15 weeks of pregnancy. In the Supreme Court’s hands, the case has the potential <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/05/18/supreme-court-just-took-case-that-could-kill-roe-v-wade-or-let-it-die-slowly/">to affect provisions of Roe v. Wade</a>, the landmark decision that legalized abortion in the U.S., and further limit women’s access to abortion in <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/a-guide-to-abortion-laws-by-state">many states</a>.</p>
<p>Such challenges to abortion in the United States <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-christian-rights-efforts-to-transform-society-120878">are often fueled by the belief of many Christians</a> that abortion and Christianity are incompatible. For example, the <a href="https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P7Z.HTM">catechism of the Catholic Church</a>, an authoritative guide to the beliefs and practices of Roman Catholic Christians, states: “Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable.”</p>
<p>However, this statement tells only one part of the story. It is true that Christian leaders, virtually all male, have largely condemned abortion. Nonetheless, as a <a href="https://www.scrippscollege.edu/academics/faculty/profile/luis-josue-sales">scholar of premodern Christianities</a>, I am also aware of the messier realities that this statement conceals.</p>
<h2>Celebrating women’s celibacy</h2>
<p>The earliest Christian writings – the <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Corinthians%207&amp;version=NRSV">letters of the Apostle Paul</a> – discouraged marriage and reproduction. Later Christian texts supported these teachings. In a second-century text known as the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/maps/primary/thecla.html">Acts of Paul and Thekla</a>, a Christian author in Asia Minor praised Thekla for rejecting her suitors and avoiding marriage in favor of spreading Christian teachings instead.</p>
<p>In the third century, Thekla’s story inspired a Roman noblewoman called Eugenia. According to the Christian text titled the <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/select-narratives-of-holy-women-translation/3B43CAD1AA875B23551CD19B3C94A930">Acts and Martyrdom of Eugenia</a>, Eugenia rejected marriage and led a male monastery for a time. Afterward, she discouraged Alexandrian women from having children, but this advice angered their husbands. These men convinced the emperor Gallienus that Eugenia’s teachings about women’s reproductive choice endangered Rome’s military power by reducing the “supply” of future soldiers. Eugenia was executed in 258 A.D. </p>
<p>Even as the Roman Empire became increasingly Christian, women still received praise for avoiding marriage. For example, the bishop Gregorios of Nyssa, an ancient city near Harmandalı, Turkey, wrote the beautiful text <a href="https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/macrina.asp">Life of Makrina</a> to celebrate his beloved sister and teacher, who died in 379 A.D. In this text, Gregorios admires Makrina for wittily rejecting suitors by claiming that she owed faithfulness to her dead fiancé.</p>
<p>To sum up, while early Christian texts did not exactly encourage women to explore sexual experiences, neither did they encourage marriage, reproduction and family life.</p>
<h2>Choices beyond celibacy</h2>
<p>Premodern Christian women had options beside celibacy as well, although the state, the church and mediocre medicine limited their reproductive choices.</p>
<p>In 211 A.D., the Roman emperors Septimius Severus and Caracalla <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt3fh9jv">made abortion illegal</a>. Tellingly, though, Roman laws surrounding abortion were centrally concerned with the father’s right to an heir, not with women or fetuses in their own right. Later Roman Christian legislators <a href="http://nbls.soc.srcf.net/files/files/Civil%20II/Texts/Digest%20of%20Justinian,%20Volume%204%20(D.41-50).pdf">left that largely unchanged</a>.</p>
<p>Conversely, Christian bishops sometimes condemned the injustice of laws regulating sex and reproduction. For example, the bishop Gregorios of Nazianzos, who died in 390 A.D., <a href="https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310237.htm">accused legislators of self-serving hypocrisy</a> for being lenient on men and tough on women. Similarly, the bishop of Constantinople, Ioannes Chrysostomos, who died in 407 A.D., <a href="https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/210224.htm">blamed men for putting women in difficult situations that led to abortions</a>.</p>
<p>Christian leaders often gathered at meetings called “synods” to discuss religious beliefs and practices. Two of the most important synods concerning abortion were held in Ankyra – currently Ankara, Turkey – in 314 A.D. and in Chalkedon – today’s Kadiköy, Turkey – in 451 A.D. Notably, these two synods drastically reduced the penalties for abortion relative to earlier centuries.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Abortion protesters listening to clergy give speeches and praying" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410880/original/file-20210712-15-l5nbfk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410880/original/file-20210712-15-l5nbfk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410880/original/file-20210712-15-l5nbfk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410880/original/file-20210712-15-l5nbfk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410880/original/file-20210712-15-l5nbfk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410880/original/file-20210712-15-l5nbfk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410880/original/file-20210712-15-l5nbfk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Some contemporary Christians oppose abortion and contraception based on their religious beliefs. But historically the faith has sometimes supported women’s reproductive autonomy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/PlannedParenthoodProtests/af52d6f1312245dd911e4cba3f27574a">Brennan Lindsey/AP</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But over time, these legal and religious opinions did not seem appreciably to affect women’s reproductive choices. Rather, <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/abortion-and-contraception-in-the-middle-ages/">pregnancy prevention and termination methods thrived in premodern Christian societies</a>, especially in the medieval Roman Empire. For example, the historian Prokopios of Kaisareia claims that the Roman Empress <a href="https://wps.pearsoncustom.com/wps/media/objects/2426/2484749/chap_assets/bookshelf/procopius.pdf">Theodora nearly perfected contraception and abortion</a> during her time as a sex worker, and yet this charge had no impact on Theodora’s canonization as a saint.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.medievalists.net/2013/07/abortions-in-byzantine-times-325-1453-ad/">Some evidence even indicates that premodern Christians</a> actively developed reproductive options for women. For instance, Christian physicians, like <a href="https://medieval.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/catalog/person_79115278">Aetios of Amida</a> in the sixth century and <a href="https://library.princeton.edu/byzantine/subject-name/paul-aegina">Paulos of Aigina</a> in the seventh, provided detailed instructions for performing abortions and making contraceptives. Their texts deliberately changed and improved on the medical work of Soranos of Ephesos, who lived in the second century. Many manuscripts contain their work, which indicates these texts circulated openly.</p>
<p>Further Christian texts about holy figures suggest complex Christian perspectives on the acceptable termination of fetal development – and even newborn lives. Consider a sixth-century text, the <a href="https://www.oca.org/saints/lives/2016/09/16/102632-venerable-dorotheus-the-hermit-of-egypt">Egyptian Life of Dorotheos</a>. In this account, the sister of Dorotheos, an Egyptian hermit from Thebes, becomes pregnant while possessed by a demon. But when Dorotheos successfully prays for his sister to miscarry, the text treats the unusual termination of the pregnancy as a miracle, not a moral outrage.</p>
<p>Around 1,100 years later, a similar event happens in the Ethiopian <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691164212/the-life-and-struggles-of-our-mother-walatta-petros">Life of Walatta Petros</a>. According to this text, Walatta Petros, a noblewoman later canonized as a saint, married a general and became pregnant three times. However, every time she conceived, she prayed for her fetus to die promptly if it would “not please God in life.” The narrator tells us that all three of her children died days after birth, since “God heard her prayer.”</p>
<p>Certainly, Christians have a history of opposing methods for preventing and terminating pregnancies. But these premodern texts, spanning some 1,500 years, indicate that Christians also have a history of providing these services, and making them safer for women.</p>
<p>This tense and inconclusive relationship to abortion may be poorly known – or perhaps overlooked for political convenience. But that does not change the fact, as I see it, that Christians who support women’s reproductive rights are also following the historical precedent of their religious tradition.</p>
<p>[<em>3 media outlets, 1 religion newsletter.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/this-week-in-religion-76/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=religion-3-in-1">Get stories from The Conversation, AP and RNS.</a>]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162560/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luis Josué Salés does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Abortion and contraception were quite common among premodern Christians, who also celebrated women’s celibacy as superior to marriage and childbearing.Luis Josué Salés, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Scripps CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1569562021-03-31T01:41:11Z2021-03-31T01:41:11ZSure they’re comfortable, but those leggings and sports bras are also redefining modern femininity<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392386/original/file-20210329-25-2o8mu1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C0%2C5726%2C3817&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As fashion trends go, the move of activewear from gyms and fitness studios into mainstream society has been impossible to ignore. Like it or not, we live in a lycra world.</p>
<p>Tight-fitting leggings, yoga pants, sports bras and crop tops are everywhere from the catwalk to cafes. COVID-19 accelerated the trend, with working from home driving a recent surge in <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/weekend-australian-magazine/has-covid-changed-fashion-forever/news-story/306aca3fb53bfa6f9be7c72b0b9e9392">sales</a>.</p>
<p>But the activewear industry has been <a href="https://uk.fashionnetwork.com/news/Global-activewear-market-set-to-be-worth-353-5-billion-in-2020,1266665.html">growing exponentially</a> for the past ten years. While the clothing is made for men and women, it is the women’s market that has driven this phenomenal growth. </p>
<p>The trend has been widely celebrated, criticised, parodied and sometimes dismissed as simply the latest fashion trend in a society obsessed with conspicuous consumption. </p>
<p>On closer examination, however, activewear plays a fascinating role in 21st-century gender definitions, reinforcing and resisting popular ideas about femininity.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CYRENWT8lz8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>The rise of ‘fit femininity’</h2>
<p>Walk through any activewear store and you will be bombarded with empowerment and self-help rhetoric emphasising the importance of achieving a fit, healthy lifestyle with the right outfit and a positive attitude. </p>
<p>Various <a href="http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=f83aa0ec-d4fb-447f-ae0b-6d2a938a3799%40sessionmgr4008&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=93789529&db=a9h">scholars</a> have shown how large activewear companies use this type of language — “get moving” and “this is not your practice life” — to reinforce the notion of women’s responsibility for their own body maintenance, regardless of any social or personal barriers. </p>
<p>Others <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/11745398.2015.1111149">have shown</a> how activewear companies’ marketing approaches encourage women to use physical activity as a means of self-transformation and a pathway towards a more fulfilled life. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/antibacterial-activewear-the-claim-is-just-as-absurd-as-it-sounds-142828">Antibacterial activewear? The claim is just as absurd as it sounds</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>It’s a version of femininity based on a woman’s consumption and the ability to maintain her own health and appearance. As feminist sport scholars have shown, society celebrates women who are “in control” of their bodies and active in their pursuit of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qgds8">femininity and health</a>.</p>
<p>In our own <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-030-46843-9_2">research</a>, we argue that wearing activewear in public is a way of saying “I am in charge of my health” and conforming to socially acceptable understandings of femininity. </p>
<p>In this sense, activewear (not to be confused with its less sporty “<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/chipwilson/2018/04/18/why-the-word-athleisure-is-completely-misunderstood/?sh=391612b24697">athleisure</a>” offshoot) has become the uniform of what we might term the “socially responsible 21st-century woman.”</p>
<h2>The idealised female form</h2>
<p>Part of the appeal of activewear is that it is comfortable and functional. But it has also been designed to physically shape the body into a socially desirable hourglass female form. </p>
<p>High-waisted leggings that sit just above the navel are marketed as having a <a href="https://www.wellandgood.com/good-looks/high-waisted-leggings-trend-2017/">slimming effect</a>. They are also often promoted as “butt sculpting”, creating the desirable “booty” that has become valued (somewhat problematically) in mainstream culture. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/dressed-for-success-as-workers-return-to-the-office-men-might-finally-shed-their-suits-and-ties-153455">Dressed for success – as workers return to the office, men might finally shed their suits and ties</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>As <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10714420490448723">some have argued</a>, this is yet another example of the appropriation of Black and Hispanic cultures for corporate profit. </p>
<p>With new materials designed to accentuate (not just support) particular aspects of women’s bodies, activewear helps promote the idealised female form as being curvy but fat-free. </p>
<p>And while this idealised form has changed over recent decades — from thin, to thin and toned, to the toned hourglass — the current ideal remains largely unobtainable for most women.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="lululemon store in a mall" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392390/original/file-20210329-17-dah2hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/392390/original/file-20210329-17-dah2hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392390/original/file-20210329-17-dah2hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392390/original/file-20210329-17-dah2hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392390/original/file-20210329-17-dah2hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392390/original/file-20210329-17-dah2hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/392390/original/file-20210329-17-dah2hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Not for every body: the lululemon brand aims for a specific target market.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">www.shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Freedom and conformity</h2>
<p>But there is another side to this phenomenon. We wanted to <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2159676X.2020.1820560">explore</a> women’s own experiences of wearing activewear. Interviewees of different ages, body types, ethnicities and cultures spoke about activewear as being not only comfortable and functional, but also liberating. </p>
<p>From corsets and long dresses in the Victorian era to the high heels of the 1950s “housewife”, the latest beauty and clothing trends have often constrained women’s bodies and movements. </p>
<p>But the women in our research group talked about the freedom they experienced in being able to move comfortably through the day, from work to school pick-up, from the gym to the cafe.</p>
<p>Even so, not all activewear-clad bodies are considered acceptable. Some, particularly larger bodies, are <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/fit-fat-feminine-stigmatization-fat-women-fitness-gyms-eileen-kennedy-pirkko-markula/e/10.4324/9780203839300-11">stigmatised</a> and criticised when they don’t meet the feminine ideal. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/your-ideal-body-and-why-you-want-it-53433">Your 'ideal' body, and why you want it</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Some even experience physical abuse or verbal harassment for wearing the “wrong” clothing in public. It’s all part of a long history of social attempts to <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/beyond-kate/story/2018666529/rights-and-ownership-over-the-female-body">regulate women’s bodies</a>.</p>
<p>Until recently, activewear marketing was primarily targeted at young, thin, wealthy white women. In 2013, lululemon founder Chip Wilson <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/lululemon-founder-chip-wilson-says-pants-don-t-work-for-some-bodies-1.2417980">openly stated</a> his brand’s leggings “don’t work” for larger body types.</p>
<p>In response to these limited definitions perpetuated by the activewear industry, some women have established their own labels. In Aotearoa New Zealand these include the increasingly popular <a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/miria-flavells-hine-collection-caters-for-women-of-all-shapes-and-sizes/3IXOMZCJEV4V5IL4OGH7A3LHPM/">Hine Collection</a>. </p>
<p>Founded by a Māori woman frustrated by the limited sizing of activewear, the brand features larger-sized models and caters to women of diverse body shapes and cultures.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/CLNE7GWAOcy","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<h2>Protest and empowerment</h2>
<p>Activewear has even been worn in protest against the policing of women’s bodies in public places such as schools, churches and shops where the wearing of leggings has been deemed not respectable and <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/04/01/letter-criticizing-notre-dame-women-wearing-leggings-prompts-campus-debate">too distracting</a> for men.</p>
<p>In 2018, there was <a href="https://www.teenvogue.com/story/college-student-ended-sexist-sports-bra-ban-odyssey-essay">outrage</a> when young track athletes in New Jersey were told they couldn’t train outside in their sports bras when the male football team was practising. </p>
<p>Other <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/women-yoga-leggings-march-protest-criticism-rhode-island-a7377271.html">protests</a> and <a href="https://80proofactivist.com/2019/04/01/this-is-my-right-to-wear-leggings/">writings</a> have made leggings and <a href="https://journals.humankinetics.com/view/journals/ssj/21/2/article-p185.xml">sports bras</a> symbols of pride and a challenge to those who seek to dictate women’s bodily choices.</p>
<p>Most women, however, choose activewear simply because it gives them the ability to move with purpose and comfort throughout their day. While this might not be an overtly political act, it is nonetheless a subtle statement that women are not going to be controlled or objectified. They have pride in their moving bodies. </p>
<p>Activewear is far from a mundane clothing choice. Rather, it contributes to our definition and understanding of femininity and gender in the 21st century.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/156956/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The booming activewear industry markets an idealised feminine form and lifestyle, but women have also been liberated by its functional and versatile clothing.Julie E. Brice, Doctoral Student in Sport Sociology, University of WaikatoHolly Thorpe, Professor in Sociology of Sport and Physical Culture, University of WaikatoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1151742019-04-16T11:06:59Z2019-04-16T11:06:59ZUpskirting is now illegal – now the normalisation of men’s sexual privilege in society must be tackled<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/269303/original/file-20190415-147483-1hohff4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Upskirting – taking a photo or filming underneath a skirt or dress without consent – has finally become a <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/upskirting-illegal-definition-crime-uk-sexual-harassment-a8864636.html">criminal offence in England and Wales</a> (it was already an offence in Scotland from 2010). Yet despite this progress, a recent report conducted by <a href="https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/what-is-upskirting">British GQ</a> reveals that one in 10 men don’t think upskirting is sexual harassment. </p>
<p>In some ways this isn’t surprising, as men’s entitlement and sexual privilege has in many ways become a cultural “right”. Take for example the response to women describing their widespread experiences of men’s sexual entitlement (#metoo), it wasn’t long before the #notallmen hashtag appeared – with many men denying and <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/metoo-men-opinion-sexual-harassment-women-a8830611.html">normalising such behaviours</a>.</p>
<p>From <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/rape-day-steam-video-game-petition-valve-sexual-assault-a8810416.html">video games developed where players (most likely men)</a> can “play” at raping women, to <a href="https://www.projectconsent.com/journal/sexualization-of-women-in-media">advertisements</a> that sexualise women’s bodies, men’s entitlement to women is just a given. This is further normalised and legitimised through pornography – which has been <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2007-14550-000">described</a> as a “mirror” – with men seeing women as sexual objects which exist for their use and pleasure. </p>
<p>This is also enforced through the criminal justice system, which fails to hold men to account for rape – <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/law/2018/sep/26/rape-prosecutions-plummet-crown-prosecution-service-police">just 6% of reported cases resulted</a> in a charge in 2017-2018. This shifts the focus to women’s failure to prevent men from raping them. Women’s bodies and sexual freedoms are weaponised against them through the use of rape myths and stereotypes which serve to authorise and sustain men’s sexual privilege at the expense of women’s.</p>
<h2>Entitled to sex</h2>
<p>It’s maybe not surprising, then, that a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/law/2019/apr/03/english-judge-says-man-having-sex-with-wife-is-fundamental-human-right">recent legal case</a> in the UK saw the judge stating that for men, having sex with their wife is a basic human right.</p>
<p>The case concerns a woman with learning difficulties and centres on whether the woman has capacity to consent to sex. It has been brought by the local council who are concerned about her capacity after a deterioration in her condition. The council are seeking a court order that would prohibit the woman’s husband from engaging in sexual relations with her. </p>
<p>Although the husband offered to abstain from sex, the judge in the hearing made the decision to continue with the case and to hear arguments from lawyers on both sides. He was quoted as saying: “I cannot think of any more obviously fundamental human right than the right of a man to have sex with his wife – and the right of the state to monitor that”. He added: “I think he is entitled to have it properly argued.”</p>
<p>There has been <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/sex-man-wife-learning-disabilities-court-judge-hayden-sexual-assault-a8853141.html">public outrage on social media</a> and in the national press about the comments made by the judge. But there also appears to be some confusion about the statement, and whether there is a human right to have sex.</p>
<h2>A human right?</h2>
<p>The Human Rights Act and the European Convention on Human Rights contain a number of rights offering protection, and freedoms, to UK citizens. And under Article 8 of the Act, it states that an individual has the right to a private and family life free from interference from the state. <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/why-its-right-to-say-having-sex-with-ones-wife-is-a-human-right_uk_5ca5f43ce4b060ead9d8522d?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAFAt24fZ7ow5nPd6yhhQqRgZ8txcPWXqXL64a_K1VyNK62bN_1NGQrW_yca2GIDDIn-Q5TpGwhF_H5icHWhaJEaqMhnrdH0m-yRjErCdIQmZ89Z1pSLUgdfXQ0BgPsXbweStD3eQPkWmvNiQUfoxIHRAkFvWsUDhvdIEYdET_gnv">Some have argued</a> this right may implicitly cover the right for an individual to have sex with their partner. </p>
<p>This right however, is “qualified”, not absolute, which means it must be balanced against other rights and protections. In any event, even if it can be argued that the right for an individual to have sex with another adult is captured in Article 8, this clearly does not extend to providing adults with a general “right” to have sex. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-sex-a-human-right-ummm-yes-no-maybe-it-depends-on-what-you-mean-by-sex-really-4491">has been previously highlighted</a>, having the opportunity to have sexual intercourse in and of itself should not be seen as a human right for good reason. If this were the case, it potentially offers justification for rape or could even place a responsibility on the state to ensure that sex is supplied to those who seek it. </p>
<p>Consequently, sex must be seen as a choice rather than a right, which cannot be exercised at the expense of others. Rather, Article 8 provides individual sexual autonomy – the “right” to make choices about your own sexual relationships. And such choices must be within the law. </p>
<h2>Men’s privilege</h2>
<p>The language used by the judge in this case is concerning, as it explicitly implies there is a right to have sex – and that this extends to the right to have sex with a specified person. This may be a linguistic slip up, but it sends a powerful message about the way bodies – particularly women’s bodies – are viewed. </p>
<p>The belief that men are entitled to and have a right to sex with women – particularly those they are in a relationship with – continues to be reinforced and protected despite successive laws and policies aimed at eradicating these attitudes and beliefs.</p>
<p>In this way, <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/the-search-meaning/201406/rage-and-the-problem-male-sexual-privilege">men’s sexual privilege</a> has been built into our society. A society where women experience high rates of sexual harassment and assault but <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/06/men-underestimate-level-of-sexual-harassment-against-women-survey">men deny</a> the problem exists – a message that continues to be endorsed, even in the courtroom.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/115174/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hannah Bows has previously received funding from the ESRC and is currently funded by the British Academy. </span></em></p>From video games developed where players can “play” at raping women, to advertisements that sexualise women’s bodies, men’s entitlement to women is just a given.Hannah Bows, Assistant Professor in Criminal Law, Durham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/938212018-07-09T11:04:52Z2018-07-09T11:04:52ZWanting to live a ‘normal-perfect’ life is making women unhealthy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224950/original/file-20180626-112601-90vx3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Appearance has become entwined with our perceptions of health.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/stunning-young-woman-straightening-her-hair-538206076?src=pb82yESeC-_Jpbnif10-nQ-1-4">AlessandroBiascioli/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>These days, the health of a woman seems to be less about the absence of illness and more about being someone who works on their body and mind in order <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/22/girls-looks-teach-children-appearance-stereotypes">to meet modern society’s expectations</a> of looks and abilities. </p>
<p>This is not just a neat observation, but something we found while researching our new book, <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Postfeminism-and-Health-Critical-psychology-and-media-perspectives/Riley-Evans-Robson/p/book/9781138123786">Postfeminism and Health</a>. We analysed a range of research and media – including advice in self-help literature, government promotion of healthy weight, and the way surgeons and their patients talk about surgical technologies (such as genital cosmetic surgery). We also looked at how media and women make sense of sex, apps for pregnancy, baby milk advertisements, health promotion in developing countries, and online posts by those in fitness or <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/2016/07/01/pro-ana-websites-anorexia-nervosa-473433.html">pro-anorexia virtual communities</a>. </p>
<p>Across all of this we found health being linked to a desire to be normal – and the idea that a normal life should be perfect.</p>
<p>Actions that women do to be healthy are often linked to a desire to be normal. Being “normal” means having a body that is not too fat or thin – and a mind that’s not too anxious or too carefree. We found, for example, that being normal underpinned many women’s decisions to undergo weight loss surgery. These women hoped that being normal would free them from stigma and criticism, and let them enjoy being a “good” person. </p>
<p>This is just one way in which women are encouraged to think of their body as a problem that requires intervention to be normal. Following this logic, women’s bodies will always require work to be normal. This work is intensified by an understanding that living a perfect life is normal, too. Expecting everyday life to be optimal – what we called a “normal perfection” – puts exceptional pressure on women to do more work on their bodies and minds. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224007/original/file-20180620-137734-1k2tw1g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224007/original/file-20180620-137734-1k2tw1g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=332&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224007/original/file-20180620-137734-1k2tw1g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=332&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224007/original/file-20180620-137734-1k2tw1g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=332&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224007/original/file-20180620-137734-1k2tw1g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224007/original/file-20180620-137734-1k2tw1g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224007/original/file-20180620-137734-1k2tw1g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Society’s expectations.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/portrait-young-healthy-woman-health-care-776548324">Maksim Shmeljov/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Such is the pressure that, in today’s world, rarely can women experience being good enough. When we completed a magazine’s psychology questionnaire, deliberately getting the highest score, we were congratulated: “You are confident!” But we were also warned that we could not be too confident of our confidence: “Even those who are fairly confident often experience periods of self doubt. Or perhaps you feel confident in most areas, but still feel more nerves than you would like before a speech.” It seems that, today, women’s work on themselves is never done. </p>
<h2>Confidence, empowerment and consumerism</h2>
<p>The outcome of such constant self-scrutiny, self-critique and requirements to work on the self and the body is not good health – but anxiety and fear of failure. </p>
<p>This anxiety is intensified by the way that health is linked to an ability to consume. We can enjoy a multitude of choices within consumer culture – but this makes us vulnerable to never getting it right. </p>
<p>We found this destabilising aspect of consumerism throughout the many topics we explored in our book. For example, there was a social marketing campaign that apparently encouraged nursing women to eat healthily – but it could just as easily undermine their confidence in breastfeeding their children. </p>
<p>Against images of a breastfeeding woman who was <a href="https://metro.co.uk/2015/09/16/striking-campaign-warns-expectant-mothers-your-child-is-what-you-eat-5392560/">body-painted with fizzy drink or burgers</a>, was the slogan: “Your baby is what you eat.” The suggestion that a mother needs to have a perfect diet in order to provide healthy breast milk for her baby runs the risk of pushing her to choose infant formula. </p>
<p>The final thread in our research looked at how the desire to lead a normal-perfect life can begin to feel as if it comes from within, and is a personal desire and not a societal pressure. When we are repeatedly exposed to messages about what makes a “good person” these can become unconsciously ingrained in our thoughts. When we look in the mirror we might use a phrase or idea that we read in a magazine to think about our appearance. For example, we might look to see if we have a “thigh gap”. And once we start to use these ideas in our own thoughts, they feel like they are our own personal ideas because they are part of our personal thoughts. </p>
<p>This is especially true today, because one of the messages we are exposed to is the idea that good people make independent choices. This is one of the reasons why women who have cosmetic genital surgery see it as an <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-plasticsurgery/soaring-demand-for-female-genital-surgery-sparks-debate-in-brazil-idUSKBN1FL6B1">empowering individual choice</a> and not the result of societal pressure. Even though the more women are exposed to seeing technologically changed female genitals, the more likely they are to see them as both normal and ideal.</p>
<p>Understanding that our desires emerge from within us makes it hard to challenge the commercial interests that are invested in us having these desires. It also allows consumerism to be understood as a solution to, rather than a causal factor of, women’s lack of self and body confidence. </p>
<p>Our desire to be healthy seems progressive, essential even. But when we realise that health is also a consumer practice – linked to identity and the ability to live an ideal “good life” – we have a very limited vision of it. A life worth living, it seems, will always be just beyond our reach.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93821/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A woman’s work on her body will never be done if she wants to live a normal life.Sarah Riley, Reader in Psychology, Aberystwyth UniversityAdrienne Evans, Coventry UniversityMartine Robson, Lecturer in Psychology, Aberystwyth UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/878522017-12-17T19:22:28Z2017-12-17T19:22:28ZFrom reproducers to ‘flutters’ to ‘sluts’: tracing attitudes to women’s pleasure in Australia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196585/original/file-20171127-2038-157mb6r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Titian's 1583 painting Venus of Urbino: historically, pleasure was not the only, or even the main, expectation from sex for women.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In our sexual histories series, authors explore changing sexual mores from antiquity to today.</em></p>
<p>In our contemporary world, the idea that sex is pleasurable is rarely questioned: pleasure is a key way of understanding what sex is and what it means. Yet this was not always so. Historically, pleasure was not the only, or even the main, expectation from sex for women, and there were significant changes across the 20th century.</p>
<p>When Australia federated in 1901, women were imagined largely as reproducers, rather than lovers. As the prominent Melbourne gynaecologist <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/balls-headley-walter-2926">Walter Balls-Headley</a> had professed a few years earlier, “the raison d’etre of women’s form” was “the propagation of the race, the production of the ensuing generation”.</p>
<p>Sexual reproduction and pleasure were split. When sex was discussed in the public world, it was rendered meaningful through concepts of family, reproduction and population. Sex was procreation with an emphasis on order, morality and virtue.</p>
<p>That individual women could feel pleasure should have been self-evident. But the procreative model remained powerful, even dominant, because it was tied neatly to the way gendered bodies were culturally, politically and scientifically constructed. White women were encouraged to breed for the good of the new white nation.</p>
<p>Pleasure – if it occurred at all – was to stem from either the reproductive or maternal aspect of a woman’s sexuality, or at the most from her feelings for an individual man. So too, female same-sex desire remained hidden, and lesbians were unnamed.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196055/original/file-20171123-6020-1ycawso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196055/original/file-20171123-6020-1ycawso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196055/original/file-20171123-6020-1ycawso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196055/original/file-20171123-6020-1ycawso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196055/original/file-20171123-6020-1ycawso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196055/original/file-20171123-6020-1ycawso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196055/original/file-20171123-6020-1ycawso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196055/original/file-20171123-6020-1ycawso.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Egon Schiele’s 1913 painting Friendship.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimeda Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Women who felt too much pleasure were suspect, perhaps unnatural. This was a particular risk in the hot climates of Australia: women were believed to reach puberty earlier and more violently, rendering them more open to pathology, even nymphomania.</p>
<p>There were practical reasons, too, why a woman may not have felt pleasure, or attempted to curb her desire. Heterosexual women were constrained by the ever-present fear of pregnancy, a powerful inhibitor against women’s erotic thought. </p>
<p>Ex-nuptial pregnancies and hurried marriage show that many young women did have sex before marriage, yet the palpable shame, fear and scandal of an unplanned pregnancy almost certainly impacted on their enjoyment of sex. For married women, too, the fear of yet another pregnancy – yet another child – meant many avoided sex as much as possible, whatever their desire.</p>
<p>None of this means, of course, that individual women did not enjoy sex, or seek it out for recreation or release, or find comfort in love and sex with men or women.</p>
<h2>Hints of sexual feeling</h2>
<p>The historical record has left us only the vaguest hints of early 20th century women’s sexual feeling. The poet <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cross-zora-bernice-may-5828">Zora Cross</a>, for instance, gave voice to a passionate, libidinal woman: here, we find an erotic subject. At the most, she even hinted to orgasm:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I was a little breathing thing,<br>
Half-clay, half-cloud,<br>
Fluttering a feeble wing.<br></p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196007/original/file-20171123-6044-15juy2s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196007/original/file-20171123-6044-15juy2s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196007/original/file-20171123-6044-15juy2s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=839&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196007/original/file-20171123-6044-15juy2s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=839&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196007/original/file-20171123-6044-15juy2s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=839&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196007/original/file-20171123-6044-15juy2s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1054&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196007/original/file-20171123-6044-15juy2s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1054&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196007/original/file-20171123-6044-15juy2s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1054&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Zora Cross.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Hers was an active sexuality, a woman who sought and found pleasure. But this record was unusual, and most women left no trace of their sexual feelings, fears, desires, or thoughts on sex or reproduction.</p>
<p>By the 1920s, ideas from the British birth controller <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Stopes">Marie Stopes</a> were well established in Australia, including her promotion of the “companionate marriage”. Increasingly, convention allowed for female pleasure and desire, but only within the bounds of legitimate heterosexual marriage. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196009/original/file-20171123-6055-14lxdne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196009/original/file-20171123-6055-14lxdne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196009/original/file-20171123-6055-14lxdne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=746&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196009/original/file-20171123-6055-14lxdne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=746&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196009/original/file-20171123-6055-14lxdne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=746&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196009/original/file-20171123-6055-14lxdne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=937&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196009/original/file-20171123-6055-14lxdne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=937&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196009/original/file-20171123-6055-14lxdne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=937&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Marie Stopes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Before marriage, girls were expected to have no natural, physical sexual feelings (boys, in contrast, were expected to feel desire). But after marriage, as Stopes established, it was expected that a women would not only endure her conjugal duties, but enjoy them. To do so was seen as central to a happy married life.</p>
<p>The second world war momentarily disrupted conventional ideas of marriage and family in Australia. For a brief time, young girls and women sought pleasure before marriage, often with the <a href="https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/encyclopedia/homefront/us_forces">American soldiers</a> who visited Australian shores. There was dancing and romancing, and sometimes sexual encounters. Pleasure took on new forms, and while young women did not always have sex, they flirted, socialised and drank with men in ways unknown to previous generations. </p>
<p>Such fun was, however, short-lived. By the 1950s – perhaps as a response to the freedom of the war years – pleasure was once again relegated to marriage.
<a href="http://www.australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-story/changing-face-of-modern-australia-1950s-to-1970s">The 1950s</a> was a notoriously conservative decade in Australia. Gendered attitudes to women and sexuality remained strong. Before marriage, society demanded girls remained pure and virginal. Married women, on the other hand, were expected to enjoy marital sex after their wedding night.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196011/original/file-20171123-6039-p2cnux.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196011/original/file-20171123-6039-p2cnux.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196011/original/file-20171123-6039-p2cnux.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196011/original/file-20171123-6039-p2cnux.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196011/original/file-20171123-6039-p2cnux.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196011/original/file-20171123-6039-p2cnux.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196011/original/file-20171123-6039-p2cnux.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196011/original/file-20171123-6039-p2cnux.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Family group Everton Park.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Queensland State Archives</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Any wife who did not experience pleasure - and the elusive mutual orgasm from penetrative sex - was seen as a problem: a frigid woman whose lack of sexual response threatened her marriage and the wider social order.</p>
<h2>The pill and popular culture</h2>
<p>Attitudes towards heterosexual pleasure shifted considerably after the introduction of the <a href="http://www.nma.gov.au/online_features/defining_moments/featured/the_pill">contraceptive pill</a>, which reached Australia in 1961. The pill took some time to be widely available, and especially to trickle down to the young and the unmarried. Nonetheless, it went some way to reshaping the sexual landscape, in a time of broader social and sexual revolutions. <a href="http://www.womenaustralia.info/leaders/biogs/WLE0139b.htm">Women’s liberation</a>, <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/topics/sexuality/agenda/article/2016/08/12/definitive-timeline-lgbt-rights-australia">gay and lesbian liberation</a>, and the increasing libertarianism opened up many possibilities for pleasure for young women.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196016/original/file-20171123-6072-sdjnra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196016/original/file-20171123-6072-sdjnra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196016/original/file-20171123-6072-sdjnra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196016/original/file-20171123-6072-sdjnra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196016/original/file-20171123-6072-sdjnra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196016/original/file-20171123-6072-sdjnra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196016/original/file-20171123-6072-sdjnra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196016/original/file-20171123-6072-sdjnra.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=613&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Model of a contraceptive pill, 1970.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The ready availability of the pill meant women were increasingly expected to be sexually available to men. Yet at the same time, the pill opened up opportunities for sexual pleasure. Without the fear of pregnancy, and with social taboos about sex and marriage changing, many women were relatively free to experiment sexually and follow their desires in a range of relationships beyond the bonds of matrimony. Pleasure, perhaps more than ever, was intimately tied to sexual experience.</p>
<p>As this brief romp across the 20th century has shown, ideas of female pleasure are complicated, and often relate more to social and cultural conditions than to experiences of the body itself. We might think of women’s pleasure as static, but it was and is shaped by society and culture. </p>
<p>Today, almost 50 years after the sexual revolutions of the 1970s, young women’s sexual behaviour (and sexual pleasure) is still scrutinised, moderated and open for discussion - in the school ground and on social media.</p>
<p>Young women are subject to multiple and conflicting views on female pleasure: on one hand, popular cultures urges young women to be sexually attractive, willing, and open to experimentation. But on the other hand, they can still readily be constructed as “sluts” and, at worst, vulnerable to rape cultures. </p>
<p>Female pleasure remains at the forefront of the public imagination of teenage girls, but at the same time, young women’s own feelings and desires are all too often stifled. Concepts of women’s sexuality remain mediated by a broader culture that continues to be uncomfortable or troubled by female desire and sexual pleasure.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87852/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lisa Featherstone receives funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC DP150101798). </span></em></p>Australian women were once largely seen as reproducers, rather than lovers: sexual pleasure was suspect. Attitudes have changed, yet our culture is still troubled by female desire.Lisa Featherstone, Senior Lecturer in Australian History and the History of Sexuality, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/856532017-10-26T19:47:17Z2017-10-26T19:47:17ZGender and climate change: pictures that speak for themselves<p>Above these words you can see a January 2017 picture of the US President, Donald Trump, signing one of his first presidential decrees. It reinstated the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/23/trump-abortion-gag-rule-international-ngo-funding">global “gag rule”</a> forbidding US funding for international NGOs supporting abortion in any way, directly or indirectly. The decree applies to contraception as well.</p>
<p>Below is another photo, taken on June 1 the same year, on the lawn of the White House on the occasion of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2017/jun/01/donald-trump-us-will-withdraw-from-paris-agreement-video">announcement by Trump</a> that he would withdraw from the COP21 Paris Accord on climate change. The picture was taken in front of an audience that was both selected and representative.</p>
<p>These two photos show several characteristics of the political agenda of the Trump administration that appear to be a perfect expression of dominant masculinity:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>The absence of women in both the staff and the audience.</p></li>
<li><p>Those present are almost entirely white men whose average age is likely to be above 55.</p></li>
<li><p>The majority of those attending wear two-piece, grey suits.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2>Male domination and ownership of women’s bodies</h2>
<p>Beyond the intentional curation with regard to gender (no women), race (no non-white individuals), social class (no blue-collar workers) and age (no young people), these pictures show two additional codes of virility.</p>
<p>First, there is a total absence of emotion – the faces are closed and stern. The few visible smiles appear to be the result of poorly controlled emotions. Second, the masculinity is structured in the quasi-military way, with strict alignments in the audience on the lawn of the White House and in the Oval Office.</p>
<p>Such <a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-menace-les-droits-des-femmes-aux-etats-unis-et-dans-le-monde-74006">solemn affirmations of male domination</a> also refer to appropriation schemes that are easily recognisable – in particular, of women’s bodies and on nature.</p>
<p>Indeed, the first picture shows the fully assumed display of a political-ideological structure designed restrict women’s rights. In a rather cynical way, it’s a staging of the claim of ownership over women’s bodies and the affirmation of men’s right to use them as they wish. Such a staging is a provocative remake of the <a href="https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/ref/2009-v15-n1-ref2894/029587ar/">archaic patriarchal model</a>: the biological characteristics that allow women to give birth are reversed into the obligation to give birth, even against their will.</p>
<p>Over human history, this obligation has been used to deprive women of rights over their own bodies as well as the foetus they may carry. Just when women and their reproductive rights are at the centre of legal and media controversies, they become invisible and <a href="https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/la-grande-table-2eme-partie/le-corps-des-femmes-quels-enjeux-politiques">disappear from the picture</a>, literally.</p>
<h2>Nature as both a dominated and unlimited resource</h2>
<p>The President’s announcement he would seek to withdrawal the United States from the Paris Accord on Climate was full of nationalist rhetoric and <a href="http://www.europe1.fr/international/accord-sur-le-climat-les-contre-verites-du-discours-de-donald-trump-3348842">not supported by the facts</a>. In addition, it broke with <a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/cop21/visuel/2015/11/30/les-negociations-climatiques-internationales-en-10-dates_4820353_4527432.html">20 years of international negotiations</a> that have contributed to a global awareness on the importance of fighting climate change. By their actions, Trump, his aides, supporters and followers reaffirmed a traditional view of man’s ownership of nature and his right to unlimited exploitation. This has been expressed in two opposing ways since the 17th century:</p>
<p>Positively by <a href="https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/d/descartes/rene/d44dm/complete.html">René Descartes</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“But as soon as I had acquired some general notions respecting physics, and beginning to make trial of them in various particular difficulties, had observed how far they can carry us, and how much they differ from the principles that have been employed up to the present time, I believed that I could not keep them concealed without sinning grievously against the law by which we are bound to promote, as far as in us lies, the general good of mankind. For by them I perceived it to be possible to arrive at knowledge highly useful in life; and in room of the speculative philosophy usually taught in the schools, to discover a practical, by means of which, knowing the force and action of fire, water, air the stars, the heavens, and all the other bodies that surround us, as distinctly as we know the various crafts of our artisans, we might also apply them in the same way to all the uses to which they are adapted, and <strong>thus render ourselves the lords and possessors of nature</strong>.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Critically by <a href="http://www.ethicadb.org/pars.php?parid=3&lanid=3&lg=en">Baruch Spinoza</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Most writers on the emotions and on human conduct seem to be treating rather of matters outside nature than of natural phenomena following nature’s general laws. <strong>They appear to conceive man to be situated in nature as a kingdom within a kingdom</strong>: for they believe that he disturbs rather than follows nature’s order, that he has absolute control over his actions, and that he is determined solely by himself.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The two photos are thus an arrogant expression of an outdated anthropological and ecological model that appears to be more and more discredited.</p>
<p>From an anthropological point of view, gender equality and the recognition of the universality of human rights, including sexual and reproductive rights, are both conceivable and part of an effective transformative agenda. From an ecological point of view, the ravages and devastations caused by pitiless competition, rampant consumerism, growth-at-all-costs thinking and unsustainable consumption of non-renewable natural resources have left little space for our learning to collectively and wisely manage them.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178465/original/file-20170717-6052-1mhtrjt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178465/original/file-20170717-6052-1mhtrjt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178465/original/file-20170717-6052-1mhtrjt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178465/original/file-20170717-6052-1mhtrjt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178465/original/file-20170717-6052-1mhtrjt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178465/original/file-20170717-6052-1mhtrjt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/178465/original/file-20170717-6052-1mhtrjt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An oil pipeline under construction.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/113842093@N02/19153010824/">NPCA/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The perspective of sustainable and gender-sensitive development</h2>
<p>As early as 1987, a report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, <a href="http://www.un-documents.net/our-common-future.pdf">“Our Common Future”</a> highlighted the linkages between the three pillars of sustainable development – social, economic and ecological – required to “meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” The approach presented was based on a critical analysis of geographical inequality (north/south), as well as anthropological (women/men), demographic (current generation/future generations) and social (rich/poor).</p>
<p>All this assumes the creation and reinforcement of an innovative institutional architecture at the global level. As the expression of a collective political will aiming at overcoming the obsolescence of the current anthropological and ecological status quo, such an architecture could produce new international norms, representations and behaviours.</p>
<p>Donald Trump and all people who share his views and positions refuse to engage into such a process. In that way, they demonstrate the legitimacy and the urgency of a new approach that combines gender equality and environmental sustainability.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85653/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Serge Rabier ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>In public events Donald Trump has displayed the traits of a dominant masculinity. Yet the American president’s policies represent an anthropological and ecological model that’s outdated.Serge Rabier, Chercheur associé en socio-démographie, Université Paris CitéLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/708242017-01-09T07:42:07Z2017-01-09T07:42:07ZIn Sudan, movies made by researchers change the way people see female genital cutting<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152104/original/image-20170109-23453-gbr27k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Screenshot of a fiction movie researchers used to debate genital cutting among families they worked with in Sudan.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">C.Efferson/Unicef-Sudan</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs241/en/">Female genital cutting</a> and the <a href="https://books.google.ch/books/about/Female_circumcision_in_Africa.html?id=rhhRXiJIGEcC&redir_esc=y">international response</a> surrounding the practice represent incompatible cultures coming together in a shrinking world. According to UNICEF, in 2016, an <a href="http://data.unicef.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/FGMC-2016-brochure_250.pdf">estimated</a> 200 million girls and women have been cut in 30 different countries. </p>
<p>Though an incomprehensible practice to some, cutting <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/04/female-genital-mutilation-cutting-anthropologist/389640/">makes sense</a> to people socialised in practising cultures. Whatever one’s cultural background, however, cutting arguably represents a <a href="http://www.sjph.net.sd/files/Vol6N2/Brief%20Communications1.pdf">violation of universal human rights</a> that supersedes culture. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151676/original/image-20170103-29222-34v0kl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151676/original/image-20170103-29222-34v0kl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151676/original/image-20170103-29222-34v0kl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=273&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151676/original/image-20170103-29222-34v0kl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=273&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151676/original/image-20170103-29222-34v0kl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=273&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151676/original/image-20170103-29222-34v0kl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151676/original/image-20170103-29222-34v0kl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151676/original/image-20170103-29222-34v0kl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting worldwide.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/2013_Female_Genital_Mutilation_Cutting_FGM_World_Map_UNICEF.jpg">UNICEF 2013/M Tracy Hunter/Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These alternate views place international agencies promoting the abandonment of cutting <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1548-1433.2008.00028.x/abstract">in a dilemma</a>, trapped between conflicting commitments to cultural tolerance and universal human rights.</p>
<p>This dilemma is exacerbated by the common view that cutting is a locally pervasive practice based on a <a href="https://books.google.ch/books/about/Female_circumcision_in_Africa.html?id=rhhRXiJIGEcC&redir_esc=y">deeply entrenched social norm</a>. An influential version of this view suggests that, where cutting is practised, families must match the local norm to ensure good marriage prospects for their daughters. When most families cut, under this view, incentives favour cutting. When most families do not cut, incentives favour not cutting. Incentives like this could be present because, for example, a family that deviates from the local norm is ostracised and hence their daughters cannot grow up to marry good husbands. </p>
<p>If correct, this view implies that abandoning cutting requires efforts that introduce or even impose foreign values onto a cutting society. </p>
<p>But a successful programme can change incentives in the marriage market by shifting a sufficiently large number of families away from cutting. Such a shift means that the incentives for families to coordinate with each other can switch from favouring cutting to favouring abandonment. Once this happens, the need for families to coordinate takes over and accelerates the process of abandonment.</p>
<p><a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/349/6255/1446">My colleagues and I</a> have been examining these ideas in Sudan, a country known for both a high overall cutting rate and extreme forms of the practice that bring risks of infection, haemorrhaging, and obstetric complications. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uvz3nxqlnGs?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">UNICEF Saleema campaign in 2010 against female genital cutting. Source: UNICEF-Sudan.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="http://data.unicef.org/resources/female-genital-mutilation-cutting-country-profiles/">Much of Sudan</a> is estimated to have a cutting rate above 80% for women and girls aged 15-49. Infibulation, which involves removing large amounts of tissue and sewing the edges of the vulva and the wound closed so they heal to leave only a small opening, is also believed to be common. </p>
<p>What we have found may come as a surprise to some. Cutting is not always a deeply rooted norm, and it is possible to change attitudes towards the practice through the surprising medium of entertainment.</p>
<h2>Local diversity</h2>
<p>In direct contrast to the prevailing view of cutting, we have found that attitudes and practices vary tremendously over small areas. We have worked in dozens of farming communities along the Blue Nile in the state of Gezira, south of Khartoum.</p>
<p>We have found that communities consist of a thorough mix of cutting and non-cutting families, and a mix of people who are relatively positive and relatively negative about uncut girls. This finding has broad implications for both our understanding of why parents cut and how to promote the abandonment of cutting.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151680/original/image-20170103-18665-11oco1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151680/original/image-20170103-18665-11oco1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151680/original/image-20170103-18665-11oco1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151680/original/image-20170103-18665-11oco1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151680/original/image-20170103-18665-11oco1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151680/original/image-20170103-18665-11oco1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151680/original/image-20170103-18665-11oco1v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Changing parent’s views on female genital cutting might require new methods, here in Burkina Faso.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Changing_parents'_views_on_Female_Genital_Mutilation-Cutting_(FGM-C)_(12344755205).jpg">Jessica Lea/DFID</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We developed a number of methods for measuring attitudes and practices related to female genital cutting. One method was based on the fact that girls have henna applied to their feet the day they are cut, and this is the only circumstance in which a young girl would have henna on her feet. For the several weeks that henna remains on the toenails, it thus provides a reliable and easily observed indication that a girl has been recently cut. </p>
<p>We essentially counted girls with henna on their feet and combined these figures with other sources of data to estimate the prevalence of cutting in each community.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151691/original/image-20170104-18679-19s3qjz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151691/original/image-20170104-18679-19s3qjz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151691/original/image-20170104-18679-19s3qjz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151691/original/image-20170104-18679-19s3qjz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151691/original/image-20170104-18679-19s3qjz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151691/original/image-20170104-18679-19s3qjz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/151691/original/image-20170104-18679-19s3qjz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Toe nails painted with henna, Sudan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">UNICEF Sudan/C.Efferson</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>With respect to both behaviour and attitudes, we developed our methods to minimise the risk that participants would simply tell us what they thought we wanted to hear. Henna on a girl’s foot, for example, provides a ready indication that a girl has recently been cut without a data collector having to ask the girl’s parents how they feel about cutting. </p>
<p>We also used implicit association tests: psychological measures that rely on reaction times and have been specifically designed to minimise the potential for respondents to misrepresent their attitudes.</p>
<p>Our results show that a diversity of views on genital cutting is not only present, but typical, in the area we studied. This is in direct contrast to the working assumption of international agencies that promote the abandonment of cutting. Put simply, cutting is not locally pervasive. Those who cut and those who do not are often neighbours.</p>
<p>We did find that in most communities, many people claim it is important for men and women who marry to come from families with the same cutting practices. Such a commitment to coordinated cutting practices in the marriage market could promote locally homogeneous attitudes and practices. </p>
<p>But this is reliably true only if families are similar in terms of the intrinsic value they place on cutting. Families might be similar in this way, for example, because they all have the same opinion about whether Islam requires cutting. Or perhaps all families have similar views about the health risks of cutting. </p>
<p>Families could be dissimilar because one family believes Islam requires cutting, while another does not. Or maybe one family is preoccupied with the health risks of cutting, and another family is not. </p>
<p>Policy-wise, this means that international agencies cannot initiate a process of behaviour change and then expect social pressure among families in the target population force to accelerate the process of giving up the practice.</p>
<h2>Changing attitudes with movies</h2>
<p>Local diversity came as a surprise to us, but it can be used to design a different kind of intervention. Accordingly, we produced four fiction feature-length movies that show an extended family in Sudan as family members arguing about whether to continue cutting.</p>
<p>In our films, some family members favour continuing the practice; others favour abandonment. Because the debate about cutting is strictly within an extended family, the films situate the antagonism between cutting and abandonment as locally as possible.</p>
<p>The four movies differ in terms of the types of arguments family members bring for and against cutting. One movie was a “control”. The control movie consists entirely of an entertaining main plot that does not address cutting in any way. The other three movies include 27-minute sub-plots that dramatise the family’s internal conflict about cutting. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mv8hUUhkluE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Opening scenes of “The Yard, (الحوش)”</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One movie emphasises values. Some family members worry that cutting is necessary for the moral development of girls, for example, while others are preoccupied with the health risks. </p>
<p>Another emphasises the effect of cutting on the future marriage prospects of girls. Some family members speculate that their daughters will not grow up to find good husbands if they are not cut. Others argue that times are changing fast, and their daughters will not grow up to find good husbands if they are cut.</p>
<p>The third movie has a combined plot. It includes arguments based on values related to health, religion, and moral development, along with arguments based on how cutting affects marriage prospects. We used the four movies as treatments in two separate experiments. </p>
<p>In one experiment, we randomly assigned individuals within communities to watch one of the four movies, while in the other we randomly assigned entire groups of communities in a given area to watch one of the four movies. </p>
<p>We worked with around 8,000 randomly selected adults in 127 communities. We found that all three movies about cutting improved attitudes toward uncut girls, but one movie in particular produced relatively <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v538/n7626/full/nature20100.html">persistent changes</a>. </p>
<p>The movie with the relatively persistent effect was the combined movie, that dramatises the full suite of arguments for and against cutting. In addition to the basic effects of the three movies about cutting, we also found that families with a history of nomadism and animal herding were more negative about uncut girls. Although somewhat speculative, this correlation could follow from the fact that families with a highly nomadic past place more value on cutting because it potentially increases certainty about the paternity of children. </p>
<p>Our research in Sudan has shown that cutting is not necessarily a pervasive and deeply entrenched norm. In our case, we produced movies that dramatise a Sudanese family grappling with its own internal conflict about whether to continue cutting. </p>
<p>Using a measure of implicit attitudes, we found that these movies significantly improved people’s view of uncut girls. Like other <a href="http://didattica.unibocconi.it/mypage/upload/49273_20160519_034132_564.PDF">recent studies</a> showing that entertainment can change attitudes and specifically reduce gender bias, our results show that entertainment can lay the groundwork for socially beneficial behaviour change.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70824/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charles Efferson has received funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the Swiss National Committee of UNICEF. </span></em></p>In Sudan, female genital cutting is common among many communities. The use of movies that debate this question could change people’s opinions about the practice.Charles Efferson, Senior Researcher, University of ZurichLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/613422016-06-27T22:56:48Z2016-06-27T22:56:48ZUn-Trapped: Supreme Court strikes down Texas law limiting abortion<p>The U. S. Supreme Court on Monday invalidated two Texas provisions that <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/20/upshot/how-texas-could-set-national-template-for-limiting-abortion-access.html?_r=0">would have closed at least seven of 17</a> abortion clinics in the state, saying that neither provision had a positive effect on women’s health, and that both existed primarily for the unconstitutional purpose of restricting access to abortion. <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/27/politics/supreme-court-abortion-texas/index.html">Some</a> are calling the 5-3 ruling one of the most important Supreme Court rulings on the right to abortion in almost 25 years. </p>
<p>Both provisions were part of a new body of legislation known generally as <a href="https://www.guttmacher.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/spibs/spib_TRAP.pdf">TRAP laws</a>: Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers.</p>
<p>The ruling in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstadt will affect states’ powers generally to limit women’s access to <a href="http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/previable">pre-viability abortion:</a> it <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/28/us/supreme-court-texas-abortion.html">throws into question</a> the validity of laws in at least <a href="https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/targeted-regulation-abortion-providers">24 other states</a> with similar requirements. </p>
<h2>What the provisions mandated</h2>
<p>At issue in the case were two requirements in Texas Law HB 2. </p>
<p>First, the law required that doctors working at abortion clinics have admitting privileges (be considered on-staff with a right to admit a patient) at local hospitals. Second, the law required that buildings housing the clinics meet the standards of ambulatory, or outpatient, surgery centers in the state. These standards include a specified width of hallways, temperature controls, and staffing requirements. </p>
<p>Both provisions are difficult and expensive for clinics to meet and, advocates of abortion access successfully claimed, unnecessary for the health and welfare of women seeking care. </p>
<p>Whole Woman’s Health, a privately owned company that offers gynecologic health care to women in several states, provides abortions. According to its website, the <a href="http://wholewomanshealth.com/about-us.html">company</a> had to close two clinics in Texas – one in Austin, the second in Beaumont – as a result of HB2. </p>
<h2>An important win for those who support choice</h2>
<p>The decision to invalidate Texas law was not entirely unexpected. Justice Kennedy – <a href="http://www.vox.com/mischiefs-of-faction/2016/6/26/12031874/justice-kennedy-abortion-politics">thought to be the potential swing vote</a> – has frequently sided on behalf of abortion rights when examining state restrictions on pre-viability access, and asked questions at oral argument that indicated he was suspicious of Texas’ intent in passing HB2. </p>
<p>The decision is important. In fact, many are calling it <a href="http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/whole-womans-health-vs-hellerstedt-what-the-supreme-court-is-deciding-in-most-important-abortion-ruling-in-decades/">the most significant case </a>on abortion access since 1992’s <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1991/91-744">Planned Parenthood v. Casey</a> –- a ruling that is instrumental here. </p>
<p>Certainly, the Texas case has been in the spotlight ever since <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/abortion-rights-under-fire-why-wendy-davis-filibuster-matters-20130626">Wendy Davis’ failed filibuster</a> on the floor of the Texas House opposing HB2, the law overturned with today’s decision. </p>
<p>But even though those interested in abortion rights and abortion restrictions were holding their breath this morning, the decision is not much of a surprise. Although <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/supreme-court-voids-texas-abortion-regulations-1467036610?mod=e2tw">Justice Alito</a> argues otherwise in his spirited dissent, today’s decision is in keeping with a long line of Supreme Court decisions regarding access to reproductive health care and abortion.</p>
<h2>The historical record</h2>
<p>In its 1973 landmark decision, <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1971/70-18">Roe v. Wade</a>, the Court balanced the legitimate interests of the state in the health and welfare of its citizens against the legitimate interests of women and their physicians, in private decision-making regarding abortion.</p>
<p>Following on the heels of decisions that expanded women’s access to birth control (<a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1964/496">Griswold v. Connecticut</a> and <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1971/70-17">Eisenstadt v. Baird</a>), the Court in Roe established a jurisprudence that gave women more rights to decision making regarding termination in the first trimester of pregnancy, and the state more power to regulate abortion in the final trimester – leaving the middle 12 weeks of pregnancy in a relative muddle, in terms of regulatory power.</p>
<p>Since then, anti-abortion activists have focused energy on enacting state level restrictions on abortion, while also using direct action to interrupt women’s access to clinics. As Joshua Wilson, assistant political science professor at the University of Denver, has <a href="http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=22575">chronicled</a>, efforts to restrict front-of-clinic protests have been largely successful, as pro-choice advocates framed abortion access as part of a right to health care and argued successfully that clinic entrances cannot be blocked. </p>
<p>In the absence of powerful avenues for direct action protest, state legislatures have been aggressive in passing laws that limit women’s access. These laws have, since the 1980s, been frequently at issue before the Supreme Court. </p>
<p>Among the provisions upheld by the Court are extended waiting periods prior to termination and laws requiring that minors have either parental or judicial consent prior to abortion. The Court has also upheld laws restricting both state and federal funds for the procedure.</p>
<p>The Court has rejected, however, several other provisions limiting women’s access to abortion. In particular, the Court has held that spousal consent and notification requirements constitutes, in the words of Justice O’Connor in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, “an undue burden” on the right to abortion established by Roe.<br>
The question before the Court Monday was whether the Texas laws constituted an undue burden or legitimate state protections on women’s health. </p>
<h2>Court didn’t agree that law protected women’s health</h2>
<p>Justice Breyer’s opinion makes clear that the Court was not swayed by Texas’ argument that these laws were passed in order to protect women’s health.</p>
<p>TRAP laws, which were skewered by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRauXXz6t0Y">John Oliver in an episode</a>, fared only a little better with the Court. TRAP laws, Breyer wrote, provide “few, if any, health benefits for women.” Breyer’s opinion notes that most pre-viability abortions are not surgical. Ginsburg’s concurrence further specifies that complications from non-surgical abortion are quite rare in comparison to complications from childbirth or from surgeries not related to reproductive capacity.</p>
<p>Abortion rights advocates have been concerned, and both global and historical experience bears them out, that when clinics close, women do not decide not to abort. Rather, they choose, by necessity, <a href="http://prospect.org/article/what-happens-when-abortion-outlawed">less safe options for abortion</a>. Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2016/06/27/scotus-abortion-ruling-highlights-from-the-majority-and-dissenting-opinions/">concurring opinion</a> in Whole Woman’s Health makes it clear that she found this argument persuasive. </p>
<p>Ginsburg writes, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>When a State severely limits access to safe and legal procedures, women in desperate circumstances may resort to unlicensed rogue practitioners … at great risk to their health and safety. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ginsburg’s concurring opinion also makes clear the scope of today’s ruling. Had the conservative justices been in the majority, the TRAP laws in the Fifth Circuit would have withstood constitutional scrutiny. But a conservative majority would only have impacted Fifth Circuit jurisdictions. </p>
<p>Today’s holding on behalf of Whole Woman’s Health – striking down these Texas laws – has wider impact. It has the potential to touch all states with TRAP laws in place or pending. As Ginsburg makes clear, Roe lives another day – TRAP laws do not.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/61342/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Renee Cramer receives funding from the National Science Foundation for her work on the regulation of out-of-hospital birth in the United States.</span></em></p>TRAP laws – targeted regulation of abortion providers – have been a way for states to limit abortions. The Supreme Court Monday struck down a Texas TRAP law, saying it did not protect women.Renee Cramer, Professor of Law, Politics and Society, Drake UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/536382016-02-07T19:06:57Z2016-02-07T19:06:57ZVulvas, periods and leaks: women need the right words to seek help for conditions ‘down there’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110279/original/image-20160204-3006-bmq1dj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Girls are socialised early and told normal functions of the female body must be spoken of, if at all, in strictest privacy, indirectly, and not to men.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">from shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This is the first in our series examining hidden women’s conditions. You can also read today’s pieces on why women <a href="http://theconversation.com/why-women-see-their-gp-more-than-men-49051">see their GP more often</a> than men a look at <a href="http://theconversation.com/we-need-a-cure-for-bacterial-vaginosis-one-of-the-great-enigmas-in-womens-health-50850">bacterial vaginosis</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<blockquote>
<p>I think it would be folly to expect that women will ever dominate or even approach equal representation in a large number of areas simply because their aptitudes, abilities, and interests are different for physiological reasons.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So said Tony Abbott when he was a university student, reflecting the historical view that <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674543553">men’s bodies are the standard</a> from which women’s deviate. As prime minister and minister for women, Mr Abbott <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2010/s2846485.htm">refused to say</a> he had changed his opinion.</p>
<p>Given this traditional acceptance of a woman’s body as inferior, when it malfunctions it can produce an acute sense of shame. No wonder then that women often find it embarrassing to deal with problems “down there”. </p>
<p>That coy term exemplifies euphemisms used in our culture to describe women’s bodies and their functions. They deny women the accurate, unambiguous language to communicate about their bodies with confidence.</p>
<p>Women need access to language that is appropriate for different circumstances: formal (in public), anatomically correct (with a doctor), intimate (with a sexual partner), and casual (with friends).</p>
<h2>Talking about vulvas</h2>
<p>When it comes to menstruation, a girl isn’t supplied with appropriate language for her experience. Girls have <a href="https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1P3-34153040/keeping-their-secret-safe-menstrual-etiquette-in">long been taught</a> that periods must be spoken of, if at all, in strictest privacy, indirectly, and not to men. </p>
<p>Periods have generated a variety of mundane and vivid euphemisms: “that time of the month”, “on rags”, “aunt Flo visiting” and “painting the garage” are just some of them. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110272/original/image-20160204-2998-1jd85te.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110272/original/image-20160204-2998-1jd85te.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110272/original/image-20160204-2998-1jd85te.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110272/original/image-20160204-2998-1jd85te.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110272/original/image-20160204-2998-1jd85te.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110272/original/image-20160204-2998-1jd85te.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110272/original/image-20160204-2998-1jd85te.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The proper name for a woman’s outer genitals is the vulva.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">from shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is an <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9481.00148/abstract">extensive lexicon</a> of derogatory, aggressive, and cute words for female genitals, most of which <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224490109552082#.Vq__3EIqv8s">would be unhelpful</a> and inappropriate in a medical consultation. </p>
<p>Many women use the term “vagina” (the passage between the uterus and external genitals) inaccurately to describe the vulva (the outer genitals). Even Eve Ensler, creator of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vagina_Monologues">the Vagina Monologues</a>, failed to use “vulva” when naming her play, despite claiming to free up discussion of women’s genitals.</p>
<p>If you can’t name a body part, how can you seek medical help if something appears to be wrong with it? </p>
<p>A major contributor to healthy discussion is someone who will listen and talk. If women are concerned about a gynaecological symptom, they need a doctor prepared to listen, respond helpfully, and ask the right questions. </p>
<h2>Damned whores or God’s police</h2>
<p>Society has a binary view of women, seeing them as either violating or upholding social morality; or in the words of Australian feminist and writer <a href="https://theconversation.com/damned-whores-and-gods-police-is-still-relevant-to-australia-40-years-on-mores-the-pity-47753">Anne Summers</a>, as “damned whores” or “God’s police”.</p>
<p>Ailments of the vulva or vagina, especially related to infection or discharge, have often been assumed a result of a woman’s <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277539599000072">(usually promiscuous</a>) sexual activities. One of us interviewed a woman diagnosed with cervical cancer who had asked a nurse how it could have been contracted. The nurse replied, “All I can say is that nuns don’t get it”.</p>
<p>If you grow up absorbing such ideas, it can be difficult to speak about normal functions such as menstruation or to recognise symptoms indicating need for clinical care, without fearing judgement.</p>
<p>It doesn’t help that it’s challenging for a woman to have a close look at her own vulva. Men’s experiences at urinals have no female equivalent, meaning that few women have seen another’s genitals. This leaves them to question whether their own appear “normal” (questions now answered by the <a href="http://www.labialibrary.org.au">Labia Library</a>). </p>
<p>Women’s bodies also tend to be defined by their reproductive capacity. In Western cultures at least, <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13697130601181486?journalCode=icmt20">women can feel inadequate</a> or like ex-women after menopause. <a href="http://researchdirect.westernsydney.edu.au/islandora/object/uws:8361">Gynaecologist Robert Wilson once described</a> a woman’s life after menopause as “the horror of this living decay” in which she was “no longer a woman”. </p>
<p>Then there is the powerful narrative that <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Leaky-Bodies-Boundaries-Feminism-Postmodernism/dp/0415146178">women’s “leaky” bodies</a> require concessions and extra care. In seeking support for women who are pregnant, breastfeeding, or experiencing <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25183531">conditions such as endometriosis</a>, we take the risk of reinforcing the belief women will be a burden to their employers and to men.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110282/original/image-20160204-2998-1d2y6dl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/110282/original/image-20160204-2998-1d2y6dl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110282/original/image-20160204-2998-1d2y6dl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110282/original/image-20160204-2998-1d2y6dl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110282/original/image-20160204-2998-1d2y6dl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110282/original/image-20160204-2998-1d2y6dl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/110282/original/image-20160204-2998-1d2y6dl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">It’s difficult for a woman to see her own vulva.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">from shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When causes are not understood and cures not found, there is a tendency to blame women’s problems on their volatile emotions or their poor psychological state. Until too recently, any cause of infertility not fully understood was <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2939458/">described as having a psychological origin</a>.</p>
<h2>Men’s bodies have problems too</h2>
<p>American feminist Gloria Steinem <a href="http://ww3.haverford.edu/psychology/ddavis/p109g/steinem.menstruate.html">once asked</a> what it would be like if men menstruated. She suggested it would be celebrated and identified as a heroic act, perhaps a subject of pride. </p>
<p>As it stands, women’s <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-25/joe-hockey-says-he-will-put-tampon-tax-question-to-states/6496512">sanitary products are taxed</a> as luxury items in Australia. Their purchase can still cause embarrassment, requiring a quick check of the supermarket aisle to make sure nobody is watching. </p>
<p>But it is wise to keep in mind that men’s bodies can also be sources of shame. They can deliver involuntary erections at inopportune moments, grow breasts, be subject to prostate problems, and <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21972905">even arouse disgust</a> when they’re generously donating semen. </p>
<p>Men and women both experience hormonal changes throughout life and both can be troubled by similar problems, <a href="https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/conditionsandtreatments/incontinence-and-continence-problems">such as incontinence</a>.</p>
<p>All bodies need extra care and attention from time to time. We need to find ways to enable informative, helpful conversations about women’s bodies that don’t stigmatise them (as individuals or as a group) and that contribute to their physical and mental health.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/53638/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maggie Kirkman receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council, Family Planning Victoria, Melbourne IVF, Monash IVF, the Victorian Government Department of Health and Human Services, the Royal Women's Hospital, Jean Hailes for Women's Health, Women's Health Victoria, and philanthropic and not-for-profit organisations .
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jane Fisher receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Australian Research Council, the Australian Government, the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services, Jean Hailes for Women's Health, Family Planning Victoria, Women's Health Victoria, Monash Health, the Australian Federation of Medical Women, the Parenting Research Centre, Melbourne IVF, Grand Challenges Canada, Australian Rotary Health; the L and H Hecht Trust, the Jack Brockhoff Foundation and the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia.</span></em></p>There are endless euphemisms for women’s conditions and body parts. If you can’t name a body part, how can you seek medical help if something appears to be wrong with it?Maggie Kirkman, Senior Research Fellow, Jean Hailes, Monash UniversityJane Fisher, Professor & Director, Jean Hailes Research Unit, School of Public Health & Preventive Medicine, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.