Reading Group: Medicine, Sexuality and Reproduction

1 July 2022

This reading group provides a space to explore the relationship between medicine, sexuality and reproduction, in both the UK and non-UK contexts.

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Organiser

Arthur Davis (arthur.davis.21@ucl.ac.uk)

Overview

This reading group provides a space to explore the relationship between medicine, sexuality and reproduction, in both the UK and non-UK contexts. Drawing on texts from across disciplines, as well as on personal, professional and academic experience, group members are invited to critically consider the healthcare experiences and outcomes of gender and sexually diverse individuals. While impossible to ignore the historical (and continuing) criminalisation, pathologisation and othering of sexual minorities in healthcare environments, group members will also be invited to reflect on the emancipatory potential of well-designed healthcare services, and the place for sexually diverse subjectivities within them.

Intended Audience

This group is open to all, regardless of training or disciplinary background. The most important qualities to bring to this group are openness, curiosity and a willingness to grow. Through both structured and unstructured discussions of the medicalisation of sexuality and the sexualisation of medicine, this reading group will be a space to rupture rigid knowledge categories and tease playfully at the conceptual borderlines that divide healthy bodies from deviant bodies.

Planned Reading List

I. Sexual Others: Medical Geographies of Blame

Main reading:

McKay, R. M. 2017. “Chapter 2” in Patient Zero and the Making of the AIDS Epidemic. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Additional reading:
McKay, R. M. 2017. “Chapters 0 & 1” in Patient Zero and the Making of the AIDS Epidemic. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Campbell, D. 1998. “Introduction & Chapter 4” in Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

II. AIDS: A Pandemic of the Past?

Main reading:

Díaz, R. M., Reisen, C. A.,& Zea, M. C. 2003. “Methodological Issues in Research on Sexual Behaviour with Latino Gay and Bisexual Men.” The American Journal of Community Psychology 31 (3-4): 281-291. Additional reading:
Bersani, L. 1987. “Is the Rectum a Grave?” October 43: 197-222.
Crewe, T. 2018. “Here Was a Plague”. London Review of Books 40 (18).

III. Migration and Sexual Health: Production and Measurement

Main reading:

Burns, F., Evans, A., Mercer, C. H., Parutis, V., Gerry, C. J., Mole, R. C. M., French, R. S., Imrie, J., & Hart, G. J. 2011. “Sexual and HIV risk behaviour in Central and Eastern European migrants in London.” Sexually Transmitted Infections 87: 318-324.
Mole, R. C. M., Parutis, V., Gerry, C. J., & Burns, F. M. 2014. “The impact of migration on the sexual health, behaviours and attitudes of Central and East European gay/bisexual men in London.” Ethnicity & Health 19 (1): 86-99. Additional reading:

Evans, A. R., Parutis, V., Hart, G., Mercer, C. H., Gerry, C. Mole, R., French, R. S., Imrie, J.,& Burns, F. M. 2009. “The sexual attitudes and lifestyles of London’s Eastern Europeans (SALLEE Project): design and methods.” BMC Public Health 9: 399.
Evans, A., Burns, F., Mercer, C. H., Parutis, V., Gerry, C. J., Mole, R. C. M., Imrie, J., & Hart, G. J. 2011a. “Central and East European migrant men who have sex with men: an exploration of sexual risk in the UK.” Sexually Transmitted Infections 87: 325-330.
Evans, A., Burns, F., Mercer, C. H., Parutis, V., Gerry, C. J., Mole, R. C. M., & Hart, G. J. 2011b. “Factors associated with genitourinary medicine clinic attendance and sexually transmitted infection diagnosis among central and east European migrants in London.” Sexually Transmitted Infections 87: 331-336.

IV. Transness and Transition: Acceptable Otherness and the Medical Gaze

Main reading:

Aizura, A. Z. 2018. “Introduction” in Mobile Subjects: Transnational Imaginaries of Gender Reassignment. Durham, NC: Duke UP. Additional reading:
Puar, J. K. 2015. “Bodies With New Organs: Becoming Trans, Becoming Disabled”. Social Text 33 (3): 45-73.
Illich, I. 1982. Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health. New York City, NY: Penguin Random House.

V. Intersex Subjectivities: Life at the Border Main reading:

Carpenter, M. 2018. “The “Normalization” of Intersex Bodies and “Othering” of Intersex Identities in Australia”. Journal of Bioethical Enquiry 15: 487-495.

Additional reading:

Anzaldúa, G. E. 1987. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books.
Puar, J. K. 2012. ““I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess”: Becoming-Intersectional in Assemblage Theory”. PhiloSOPHIA 2 (1): 49-66.
Scherpe, J. M. 2017. The Legal Status of Transsexual and Transgender Persons. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP.

VI. Lesbian Motherhood and Experiences of IVF

Main reading:

Gregg, I. 2018. “The Healthcare Experiences of Lesbian Women Becoming Mothers”. Nursing for Women’s Health 22 (1): 40-50. Additional reading:
Kellas, J. K., & Suter, E. A. 2012. “Accounting for Lesbian-Headed Families: Lesbian Mothers’ Responses to Discursive Challenges”. Communication Monographs 79 (4): 475-498.

VII. Deviant Reproduction: Men Who Give Birth

Main reading:

Hoffkling, A., Obedin-Maliver, J., & Sevelius, J. 2017. “From erasure to opportunity: a qualitative study of the experiences of transgender men around pregnancy and recommendations for providers.” BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth 17 (332). Additional reading:
Armuand, G., Dhejne, C., Olofsson, J. I.,& Rodriguez-Wallberg, K. A. 2017. “Transgender men’s experiences of fertility preservation: a qualitative study”. Human Reproduction 32(2): 383–90.
Lampe N. M, Carter S. K.,& Sumerau, J. E. 2019. “Continuity and change in gender frames: the case of transgender reproduction.” Gender & Society 33(6): 865–87.
Reis, E. 2020. “Midwives and pregnant men: labouring toward ethical care in the United States”. CMAJ 192 (7).
Wingo, E., Ingraham, N.,& Roberts S. C. 2018. “Reproductive health care priorities and barriers to effective care for LGBTQ people assigned female at birth: A qualitative study”. Women’s Health Issues 28(4): 350–7.

VIII. Correcting Sexual Deviance: Conversion and Conversion Therapies

Main reading:

Candy, B., King, M.,& Wright, T. 2018. “Conversion therapies and access to transition-related healthcare in transgender people: a narrative systematic review”. BMJ Open 8. Additional reading:
Kinitz, D. J., Goodyear, T., Dromer, E., Gesink, D., Ferlatte, O., Knight, R.,& Salway, T. 2021. ““Conversion Therapy” Experiences in Their Social Contexts: A Qualitative Study of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity and Expression Change Efforts in Canada”. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 1 (11).

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