The Trouble with Technology: Africa, the Machine Gun and Clinical Trials
In my very first blog on the topic of circumcision, I talked about how weird it was that the US medical community was sponsoring mass circumcisions in Africa. A recent comment from a reader recently reminded me of the Africa angle and I thought it would be interesting to re-address it since my worst fears [...]
A Dialogue with Ass Sex
I was recently talking to a friend who, for religious reasons, is against gay marriage. While working in the fashion industry in the early ’80s, she had been an eye-witness to the ravages of the disease and remains quite upset at AIDS for taking her friends. At the peak of our discussion about the rights [...]
Sex Positive: An Epitaph?
“Safe sex came from activists, porn stars, sex workers and their community driven efforts.” This quote comes from the webpage of a documentary I just Netflixed, or put on my Netflix® queue (out of respect for their trademark), called Sex Positive, about Richard Berkowitz, a S/M-huslter turned AIDS-activist who was one of the inventors and [...]
Triangle Trade in Foreskins, Part 3
So many great comments were made on both sides of the circumcision issue that I started doing research into the literature and added a part 3. I view studies that highlight the advantages of male circumcision with the same suspicion that I, and most people, would view a study implying an advantage to female circumcision. [...]
Triangle Trade in Foreskins, Part 2
It is no accident that the effort to circumcise men in HIV crisis areas of Africa came to the fore during the long reign of Bush’s Global Gag Rule. His administration’s sex-negative “health” policies erected barriers to condom distribution, limited the ability of organizations to educate populations about safer sex practices and preferentially funded abstinence-only [...]
Triangle Trade in Foreskins, Part 1
US exportation of male circumcision to Africa seems like a creepy continuation of our centuries-long fetish about Black male sexuality.
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