现在性和性别研究

Works of sexual expression are often considered taboo, in common parlance. In academia, pornography remains a topic of research that while nominally acceptable, can still prompt questions about the personal qualities of the person pursuing the research. In her essay for our “Sexuality & Gender Studies Now” series, Celine Parreñas Shimizu details the history of her experiences as a research expert in boundary-breaking pornographic cinema. She brings our focus onto crucial social science questions, not only analyzing the gaze and production of these works, but also revealing the social biases that may challenge sexuality researchers when their subject itself breaks from the norm.

我们使用的单词重要吗？克里斯汀·拉布斯基（Christine Labuski）认为他们确实做到了，特别是我们用来描述我们的性器官的词。对于我们的“性与性别研究”系列，她挑战了社会在描述妇女的性身体部位时不愿意使用正确的术语，将“阴道”用作全面的术语。通过她的研究，Labuski引起人们对不使用更精确的“外阴”一词对女性有多么有害的关注。此外，她强调需要对外阴（医学）进行更多跨学科研究，以便与性别，性，性，文化和妇女身体的政治方面进行严格的联系。

Pablo Mitchell illustrates the importance of mentorship in fostering new generations of academics, in particular in emerging fields. As part of the “Sexuality & Gender Studies Now” series, he reflects on the role his mentors played in cultivating his scholarship on the history of Latinx sexuality. Highlighting the importance of researching the history of sexuality of minorities within the broader history of the Americas, Mitchell looks to the future of the field and advocates for increased research on Latinx sexuality.

在她的贡献“性与性别斯图dies Now” series, Anne Esacove highlights the Trans Literacy Project (TLP) and its work at the University of Pennsylvania. Created by a group of students, activists, and scholars to cultivate and expand conversations on trans and gender inclusivity, the TLP hosted a series of events and workshops to bring to the forefront concerns and issues facing the trans community in academia. Esacove uses this opportunity to bolster the voices of the project’s participants. Six of the TLP conveners, Ava L.J. Kim, Davy Knittle, Kel Kroehle, Aylin Malcolm, Monique Perry, and Brooke Jamieson Stanley, summarize key points learned from the TLP experience, which can be used to enrich academic learning and provide a more inclusive experience for trans students and scholars.

Narratives of abuse and violence that women experience play a crucial role in prosecuting perpetrators. However, as Shonna Trinch explains in her contribution to the “Sexuality & Gender Studies Now” series, the representations of these narratives are susceptible to distortion by legal actors recording stories of said encounters or detail discrepancies on the part of victims. Building from her research on Latinas’ retellings of their abuse, Trinch argues these omissions create stereotypical and androcentric narratives that hurt women’s chances at justice and remove their agency. She concludes by highlighting the Seeing Rape project and class, programs she started alongside playwright Barbara Cassidy, to perform and problematize representations of gendered violence.

Reflecting on her Sexuality Research Fellowship Program experience and how it shaped her career, Lynn Comella explores the evolution of and growth in the feminist sex-toy retail industry since the 1970s. Through ethnographic research across different field sites around the United States, she interrogates how these women-friendly shops and the larger industry around them went from a peripheral phenomenon to mainstream in the span of a few decades, normalizing women’s sex lives and their sexual desires. In her research, she argues that by co-opting consumer culture, sex-positive feminists were able to spread their message of sexual empowerment; however, Comella also highlights potential challenges of “practicing sexual politics through the marketplace.”

Dawne Moon为我们的“性与性别研究”系列写作，分析了新教福音派人士在LGBTQ+社区的观点的演变，以及LGBTQ+基督徒如何开始在教会中为自己创造一个空间。通过她的性研究奖学金计划（SRFP）资金，她首先开始研究福音派在1990年代后期对LGBTQ+社区的看法，导致她目前在LGBTQ+基督徒中了解“圣礼羞耻”的工作。她的结尾是关于SRFP如何影响自己职业的反思。

Writing for the “Sexuality & Gender Studies Now” series, Catherine Fosl reflects on her current work on the queer public history of Kentucky. She traces how she uncovered the state’s LGBTQ history, in particular that of Louisville, and how the Sexuality Research Fellowship Program (SRFP), which sponsored research on the oral history of a local LGBTQ organization, led her down this path. Through her work as a public historian, Fosl has shined light on an aspect of this community’s history, culminating in the state’s first LGBTQ historic context statement, coauthored with the Fairness Campaign.