Transgressive Mexicana sexualities and the promise of progress

Sexualities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (7) ◽  
pp. 1097-1112
Author(s):  
Anahi Russo Garrido
Keyword(s):  
Mexico City ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Linear Process ◽  
Sexual Education ◽  
Sexual Practices ◽  
Sexual Morality ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
The Past ◽  
Queer Spaces

Latin American and Latina women's sexualities have often been represented, and theorized, along the terms of sexual morality, restraint and emancipation. In this article, I explore how sexual norms have changed for women in queer spaces in Mexico City over the past two decades. I suggest that sexual practices that were characterized as transgressive in 2000 became normalized in lesbian circles in the following decade, in the 2010s. Ten years of public discussions on sexual education, abortion, anti-discrimination laws, same-sex unions, and in lesbian circles on polyamory had taken place transforming gender and sexual subjectivities. Ultimately, as I reflect on change regarding gender and sexualities, I caution against the tendency of depicting social transformations in a linear process, which risks drawing on teleological narratives of progress.

Of Taming Carnal Desire

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-100
Author(s):  
Serawit B. Debele
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Sexual Practices ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
The Past ◽  
Penal Codes ◽  
Dominant Narratives

Abstract Focusing on Ethiopia, an empire off-center, this article argues against dominant narratives that link the regulation of sexual practices to colonial (Western) imperial relations. Within this context, the paper investigates struggles over the past by contrasting two versions of history, discussing how different groups mobilize the past in contemporary Ethiopia. It begins by exploring the imperial, Christian roots of the country’s penal codes, interrogating how the state mobilizes such histories to criminalize same-sex desires and practices. The article then focuses its attention on those deemed “outlaws” by such legislation, exploring their search for histories silenced by empire, and their assertion as longstanding, integral parts of the country’s past.

Trends and Patterns in Latin American Criminality

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcelo Bergman
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Comprehensive Evaluation ◽  
Property Crime ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Upward Trend ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Country Differences

This chapter presents a comprehensive evaluation of Latin American trends in violent and property crime over the past twenty-five to thirty years, displays short and long time series for different countries, and describes various types of crimes in the region. Different data sources depict the clear upward trend in criminality and country differences in the intensity of crime. This chapter also discusses the merits of transcending homicide data to fully assess the social transformations occurring in the region. Finally, it describes the dependent variable of this book.

scholarly journals Do changes in divorce legislation have an impact on divorce rates? The case of unilateral divorce in Mexico

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Edith Aguirre
Keyword(s):  
Mexico City ◽  
Latin American ◽  
State Level ◽  
Medium Term ◽  
Difference In Differences ◽  
Family Structures ◽  
The Past ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Divorce Rates ◽  
Unilateral Divorce

Abstract In 2008, Mexico City was the first entity to approve unilateral divorce in Mexico. Since then, 17 states out of 31 have also moved to eliminate fault-based divorce. In this paper, I investigate the effect of the changes in unilateral legislation on divorce rates in Mexico, given the remarkable growth of divorce rates over the past few decades in the country, but especially after the introduction of unilateral divorce. Following a difference-in-differences methodology, two models are developed using panel state-level data. The results indicate that divorce on no grounds accounts for a 26.4% increase in the total number of divorces in the adopting states during the period 2009–2015. Moreover, since no-fault divorce has been implemented gradually in the country, the rising trend in divorce rates is expected to continue over the coming years. Unilateral legislation has proved to be an effective tool in modifying family structures in Mexico, so it is important to be aware of the short- and medium-term consequences of the shift toward divorce on no grounds, in order to improve the delivery of these policies in the country. This is especially important at this point in time, when 14 remaining states may potentially adopt unilateral legislation. This paper is the first one to address the effect of adopting unilateral divorce in the context of a Latin American country.

Latina/o Sexuality

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo Mitchell ◽  
Xavier Tirado
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Activity ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Intimate Relationships ◽  
Sexual Coercion ◽  
Sexual Intimacy ◽  
Central Feature ◽  
Sexual Rights ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of

Sexuality has been a central feature of the lives of people of Latin American descent since the beginning of Spanish exploration and conquest in the Americas in the late 1400s. The history of Latina/o sexuality encompasses courtship, marriage, and reproduction; sexual activity including same-sex sexual intimacy, sex within and outside of marriage, and commercial sex such as prostitution; as well as various forms of sexual coercion and violence. Attempts to define, control, and regulate sexual activity and the shifting meanings and understandings attached to sexuality have also played an important role in the sexual lives of Latinas/os over the past five centuries and have helped to establish sexual norms, including appropriate masculine and feminine behavior, and to limit and punish sexual transgressions. While Latinas/os have at times been targeted as sexually improper and even dangerous, they have proven to be strong defenders of their sexual rights and intimate relationships in their communities.

Queer heterotopias in “straight(ish)” spaces: The case of Korean spas

Sexualities ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 136346072094732
Author(s):  
Kendall Ota
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Practices ◽  
Public Forum ◽  
Sexual Freedom ◽  
Cultural Shift ◽  
The Past ◽  
Queer Spaces

The cultural shift leading to increased tolerance for diverse sexualities over the past few decades has transformed the landscape of traditionally queer spaces. Given the mainstream trend towards homonormativity and respectability politics, this paper examines the consequences of these changes for the articulation of queer intimacy and sexual freedom. Drawing from comments posted to an online public forum, I consider how men engage in the queer occupation of Korean spas by reimagining these businesses as places for queer sex. I position Korean spas as a “queer heterotopia” allowing men space to violate the centering of homonormative subjectivity. While the sexual practices of these men resist queer normativity, they simultaneously mobilize hegemonic racialized discourses, ultimately threatening the queer heterotopic potential of the space. Thus, this work offers instances of both queer promise and failure where normative structures are simultaneously challenged and upheld.

INNOVATIVE SOCIETY: A SOCIAL CREDIT SYSTEM IN CHINA

2020 ◽  
pp. 50-59
Author(s):  
Weichzhen` Gao
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Credit System ◽  
Educational Mission ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
Social Credit ◽  
Road Project ◽  
Patterns Of Behavior ◽  
The One ◽  
And Behavior

The basic principles of SCS implementation are as follows: Formation of sustainable social structure and its operational management; Monitoring and correction of social transformations and behavior of the general population: transparency as a major factor in the life of an innovative society; Stimulating competition as a motivation for success. Due to the transparency of social life, different patterns of behavior in different conditions are published in the information space of the society. Accordingly, actionable life scenarios are made available to the general public, which is fulfilling an educational mission regarding adaptation mechanisms in an innovative society; the SCS system is a significant component of the national strategy of integration and consolidation of the Chinese innovation society; carrying out softpolicy foreign policy: The positive experience of the Chinese innovation society in implementing SCS is a prerequisite for expanding its area of application in Asian, African and Latin American countries, especially the countries participating in the One Belt One Road project. SCS covers all spheres of social life of the modern Chinese citizen, forms a sustainable form of accountability to the society for the content and flow of their daily activities, aspirations and preferences.

Uncommon Grounds

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Lawrence
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Historical Novel ◽  
Latin American Literature ◽  
Historical Account ◽  
American Novel ◽  
Song Of Solomon ◽  
The Past ◽  
The North ◽  
The Us

This chapter turns from a historical account of the development of the US literature of experience and the Latin American literature of reading to a textual analysis of the US and Latin American historical novel. Hemispheric/inter-American scholars often cite William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! (1936), Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), and Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon (1977) as exemplifying instances of literary borrowing across the North–South divide. As I demonstrate, however, each of the later texts also realigns its predecessor’s historical imaginary according to the dominant logics of the US and Latin American literary fields. Whereas the American works foreground experiential models of reconstructing the past and conveying knowledge across generations, García Márquez’s Latin American novel presents reading as the fundamental mode of comprehending and transmitting history.

Latin America and the League of Nations

1926 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-30
Author(s):  
Percy Alvin Martin
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Latin American ◽  
The United States ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Treaty Of Versailles ◽  
Post War ◽  
International Status

To students of international relations it has become almost a commonplace that among the most significant and permanent results of the World War has been the changed international status of the republics of Latin America. As a result of the war and post-war developments in these states, the traditional New World isolation in South America, as well as in North America, is a thing of the past. To our leading sister republics is no longer applicable the half-contemptuous phrase, current in the far-off days before 1914, that Latin America stands on the margin of international life. The new place in the comity of nations won by a number of these states is evidenced—to take one of the most obvious examples—by the raising of the legations of certain non-American powers to the rank of embassies, either during or immediately after the war. In the case of Brazil, for instance, where prior to 1914 only the United States maintained an ambassador, at the present time Great Britain, France, Italy, Belgium, Portugal, and Japan maintain diplomatic representatives of this rank.Yet all things considered one of the most fruitful developments in the domain of international relations has been the share taken by our southern neighbors in the work of the League of Nations. All of the Latin American republics which severed relations with Germany or declared war against that country were entitled to participate in the Peace Conference. As a consequence, eleven of these states affixed their signatures to the Treaty of Versailles, an action subsequently ratified in all cases except Ecuador.

scholarly journals The evolution of Darwinian sexualities

BJHS Themes ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Erika Lorraine Milam
Keyword(s):  
Gay Rights ◽  
First Century ◽  
Sexual Practices ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Sexual Preferences ◽  
The Past ◽  
Sexual Behaviours ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
New Generation ◽  
Descent Of Man

Abstract Charles Darwin's Descent of Man was suffused with questions of courtship, mating and sex. Following in his footsteps, biologists throughout the twentieth century interrogated the sexual behaviour of humans and animals. This paper charts the fate of evolutionary theories of sexuality to argue that – despite legal and social gains of the past century – when biologists used sexual selection as a tool for theorizing the evolution of homosexual behaviour (which happened only rarely), the effect of their theories was to continuously reinscribe normative heterosexuality. If, at the end of the nineteenth century, certain sex theorists viewed homosexuality as a marker of intermediate sex, by the late twentieth a new generation of evolutionary theorists idealized gay men as hyper-masculine biological males whose sexual behaviours were uncompromised by the necessity of accommodating women's sexual preferences. In both cases, normative assumptions about gender were interwoven with those about sexuality. By the twenty-first century, animal exemplars were again mobilized alongside data gathered about human sexual practices in defence of gay rights, but this time by creating the opportunity for naturalization without recourse to biological determinism.

scholarly journals Beads, Pixels, and Nkisi: Contemporary Kinois Art and Reconfigurations of the Virtual

2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-40
Author(s):  
Katrien Pype
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Phone ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
The Past ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Art Works ◽  
Stereotypical Image

AbstractIn the 2016 Abiola Lecture, Mbembe argued that “the plasticity of digital forms speaks powerfully to the plasticity of African precolonial cultures and to ancient ways of working with representation and mediation, of folding reality.” In her commentary, Pype tries to understand what “speaking powerfully to” can mean. She first situates the Abiola Lecture within a wide range of exciting and ongoing scholarship that attempts to understand social transformations on the continent since the ubiquitous uptake of the mobile phone, and its most recent incarnation, the smartphone. She then analyzes the aesthetics of artistic projects by Alexandre Kyungu, Yves Sambu, and Hilaire Kuyangiko Balu, where wooden doors, tattoos, beads, saliva, and nails correlate with the Internet, pixels, and keys of keyboards and remote controls. Finally, Pype asks to whom the congruence between the aesthetics of a “precolonial” Congo and the digital speaks. In a society where “the past” is quickly demonized, though expats and the commercial and political elite pay thousands of dollars for the discussed art works, Pype argues that this congruence might be one more manifestation of capitalism’s cannibalization of a stereotypical image of “Africa.”

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