GWS 202 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Public Humiliation, Moral Panic, Marriage Law

• School: University of Illinois
• Department: Gender and Women's Studies
• Course: GWS 202
• Professor: Nadeu Marianna

Document Summary

Sexual shame is not just a face of life, it is also political . Politics of shame: generates: silent inequalities, isolation, lack of public access. Moral panic: persecutions, capital punishments, allowed governments and states to use sexual coercion and violence in the name of national health, paradox: obsession and a rejection of sex in american culture , us land of sexual shame. Hierarchies of shame/sex: politics of shame affects our governance and mode of living. Marriage law, public health policies, censorship, urban zoning: a politics of sexual shame legitimizes. Rubin: thinking sex: sex has politics of its own, hierarchies of sex contra sexual variance, sexual stigmas and regulations are structured around a bad/good sex hierarchies, hierarchies echo a moralist discourse about normality and normal sex. Hierarchies of shame: courts confuse sex and sexual identity, don"t ask, don"t tell: punished act and identity, status, and conduct.