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Virginie Despentes has become one of France’s most commercially successful and celebrated novelists. However, while the French press has often labelled Despentes’ novels as crime fiction (‘polars’), there has been little in-depth scholarly discussion of how her work engages and transforms the conventions of the genre. Studies of Despentes’ queer/feminist themes and rhetoric would benefit from a more sustained attention to her ambivalent appropriations of the masculinist tropes of brutal crime fiction, and studies of French crime fiction would benefit from considering Despentes as key figure in the development of French queer/feminist crime fiction. Examining novels ranging from Baise-moi to Apocalypse bébé, this article argues for the interest in reading them as crime fiction, and notably as works that underline the risks that accompany efforts to rewire masculinist genres from within and orient them towards feminist and queer concerns.

Aim: To perform phytochemical screening of Plumbago zeylanica L. root extracts and assess the claim of its use in traditional management of erectile dysfunction in Uganda through evaluation of the aphrodisiac effect of its aqueous extracts in male Wistar rats. Study Design: This study employed both qualitative and quantitative research designs. Place and Duration of Study: All research work were performed at the Department of Biological Sciences, Gulu University, Gulu, Uganda between August 2019 and December 2019. Methodology: Classical phytochemical screening of aqueous and methanolic extracts of Plumbago zeylanica roots were performed following standard methods. Aqueous extracts were administered to Male Wistar rats and the effect of the extracts on the mounting and intromission frequencies were determined. Results: Glycosides, phenols, saponins, quinones, terpenoids and steroids were present in both methanolic and aqueous extracts. Alkaloids were present in methanolic extracts only while tannins and phlobatannins were only present in aqueous extracts. Flavonoids, coumarins and anthraquinones were not detected in both extracts. Aqueous root extracts of Plumbago zeylanica produced pro-sexual stimulatory effects in male rats when administered at 150, 300 and 450 mg/kg body weight. Conclusion: The results support the use of Plumbago zeylanicaroots by indigenous people in Uganda to increase libido, treat premature ejaculation and erectile dysfunction. The extracts had low sexual enhancement in sexually inexperienced male rats and therefore, further studies using experienced animal models are needed to better apprehend the prosexual effects of P. zeylanica roots. The toxicity of the extracts as well as structural elucidation and pharmacological evaluation of the responsible bioactive compounds merit further studies.

If the literature in the history of the Soviet space program is extremely prolific since the 1960s, including regarding cosmonaut embodiment, a lack remains regarding the contemporary reality of human spaceflight in Russia. As this article discusses, based on interviews and a long-term ethnography of the Russian training of astronauts from Western Europe, North America, and Japan, becoming an astronaut is to develop a legitimate body fitting dominant cultural and gendered models. Three mechanisms serve the manufacture of “heroes” and masculine bodies through the astronaut training: the historical narrative of human spaceflight; the values and virility attributes embed as part of the training; and the instruments used in the daily activity of astronauts (such as spacesuits). This manufacture of a legitimate body, characterized by masculinity and discipline inherited from the past, is a heuristic field for corporality and studies of global politics as it underlines how an interweaving of gender, Soviet heritage, and cultural fantasies frames the bodies of a professional elite.

This article explores discourses of youth and maturity in the pseudo-autobiographical frames to Boccaccio’s own works, and in his biographies of Dante and Petrarch. It analyses paradigmatic...

The boxing film’s return amidst post-war austerity is shown to refract the nation’s growing disillusion—and dishonesty. Entering more directly into dialogue with America’s late-1940s boxing noir cycle, British boxing films illustrate the post-war crisis of masculinity with protagonists losing their sense of self-worth and drifting into crime. A sporting hybrid such as There Is Another Sun (1951) further problematises masculinity by allowing a (scarcely coded) queer reading, while even Norman Wisdom’s comic boxing exploits expose his rivals’ misleading (and dishonest) model of virility. A detailed study analyses Ealing’s return to the ring with The Square Ring (1953), its portmanteau composition aiding the summative employment of the era’s indigenous and international generic tropes and themes.

This article examines, in its first part, the symbolic aspects of the relation between horses and men, and the mythical figure of the centaur, most often assimilated to virility and male sexual drive, but also to women and their sexuality. In its second and central part, it focuses on Bartabas and Ko Murobushi’s performance, The Centaur and the Animal (2012) while raising ethical issues relating to performing animals. The essay analyzes how this play deconstructs the opposition between masculinity and femininity, as well as between animal and human, among other oppositional pairs such as reason vs. instinct, activity vs. passivity, verticality vs. horizontality or “inclination,” immunity vs. vulnerability, life vs. death, animate vs. inanimate, among others. It posits that Bartabas’s performance opens the possibility of a posthuman and postanimal perspective on the relation between human and nonhuman animals.

Ales Kot’s Image title Zero interrogates the refusal of the depiction of sexual violence, the trope of fridging as a metacritique of artistic inspiration, and the literalisation of dehumanising language as a commentary on barren cycles of masculinist violence and the narration of that violence. The function of sexual profanity that dissociates itself from reproductive or generative meaning is here reduced to referencing impotent, corporeal acts that the work consistently frames within male anxieties of conquest, virility, lineage and mortality. The latter arcs interrogate the gendered linguistic violence inherent in and essential to male narrative production. Lastly, the series conflates historical and fictional exclusion of the female, incorporating William S. Burroughs as Zero’s ‘author’ in an imaginary life palimpsest of literary and literal father–son narratives. Specifically, Burroughs’ confession to his wife’s death as vital in the development of his art is taken as Zero’s source for a metac...

This research aims to study pre- Islamic literature, an analytical study that reveals the rich social data organized by the poets about his poets, so that his study is not limited to historical analysis, which stands on the definition of the poet and poetic purposes in which he organized. This study came at the forefront of the most important features of the topic; such as the importance of the study, the reasons for its selection, the methodology followed and the plan that followed it. The first topic talked about social norms in Arabic poetry in general with the study of models of them, the second topic It was a brief definition of the poet Antara bin Shaddad between his name and its origin and qualities and morals, and then came the third topic, which revolved around the social norms addressed by the poet Antara bin Shaddad in his poetry, from the generosity and courage and nobility and chastity and virility and the father of the affliction and humiliation.

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Chinese American men were subjected to different forms of discrimination and exclusion. The Chinese community was construed as a bachelor community, on the outskirts of the U.S. nation-state, and its men were symbolically emasculated. Consequently, Chinese American masculinity comes both as a site of submission and resistance, in which queer Chinese Americans meet the difficult challenge to conform neither to the Chinese nor to the American identity that cultural representations offer. This article explores Chinese American masculinity as a site of negotiation and resistance to such representations. To do so, we use the concept of “queer,” defined by David Eng and Alice Hom as “a political practice based on transgressions of the norm and normativity rather than a straight/gay binary of heterosexual/homosexual identity” (Eng and Hom 1998: 1). Firstly, in his movie The Wedding Banquet, Ang Lee tackles the theme of Chinese Americanness through the prism of a Chinese American closeted homosexual character. This allows us to discuss how Chinese American masculinity and identity are defined, explored, and negotiated in a queer context. On the other hand, the concept of queer can also be used as a theoretical tool which allows us to explore Chinese Americans’ imagined community and identity. This is done through the prism of Georgia Lee’s movie Red Doors, and more especially Ed, the suicidal patriarch of the family. We thus analyze the movie’s queering of ethnicity which reconfigures representations of Chinese Americans. Durant les xixe et xxe siècles, les Sino-Américains ont subi différentes formes de discrimination et d’exclusion. La communauté chinoise a été construite législativement comme une communauté d’hommes célibataires, en marge de l’État-nation américain, et symboliquement émasculés. Par conséquent, la masculinité sino-américaine s’est développée comme un lieu à la fois de soumission et de résistance, dans lequel les hommes et homosexuels sino-américains ne peuvent ni se conformer à l’identité chinoise que leur attribue les représentations américaines, ni à celles proposées dans les représentations culturelles chinoises. Le présent article se propose d’explorer la masculinité sino-américaine en tant que lieu de négociation et de résistance. Nous utilisons le concept de queer, défini par David Eng et Alice Hom comme « une pratique politique ancrée dans une transgression de la norme et de la normativité et non dans une vision binaire hétéro/homo de l’identité hétérosexuelle/homosexuelle » (Eng et Hom 1998 : 1). Tout d’abord, Ang Lee traite le thème de la sino-américanité dans son film Garçon d’honneur (1993) à travers son personnage principal sino-américain et homosexuel dans le placard, ce qui nous permet d’explorer la façon dont la masculinité et l’identité sino-américaines sont imaginées, définies et renégociées dans un contexte queer. Dans un second temps, le concept de queer est utilisé comme outil théorique qui permet d’explorer les identités et communautés imaginées sino-américaines. Cela s’effectue à travers le film Red Doors de Georgia Lee, et plus particulièrement le personnage d’Ed, le patriarche suicidaire de la famille. L’enjeu est de démontrer le fait que, dans ce film, l’ethnicité en souffrance revêt une dimension queer qui permet de reconfigurer les représentations des Sino-Américains.

BACKGROUND Despite the well-known influence of psychological and situational factors on erectile dysfunction, the influence of the physician's gender on the andrological workup has never been investigated so far. OBJECTIVES To investigate physician's gender influence on the erectile dysfunction diagnostic workup. MATERIALS AND METHODS Cross-sectional study with retrospective data collection. We evaluate a consecutive series of erectile dysfunction patients: 95 at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (UNIMORE) and 1808 at the University of Florence (UNIFI). In the UNIMORE cohort (Cohort 1), intracavernousal injection test was performed in case of suspected vascular pathogenic component. In the UNIFI cohort (Cohort 2), patients were evaluated by structured interview on erectile dysfunction and ANDROTEST. Both cohorts were divided into two groups according to the gender of the physician who performed the intracavernousal injection test or the structured interview. RESULTS In Cohort 1, patients who had the intracavernousal injection test performed by a female physician had a significantly higher probability of obtaining a better intracavernousal injection test response. In Cohort 2, patients interviewed by female physician more frequently reported to have a conflictual couple relationship and a reduced frequency of climax in their partners. However, they reported less difficulties in achieving and maintaining erection, higher frequency of autoeroticism, lower occurrence of erectile dysfunction during masturbation and lower impairment in morning erections. CONCLUSIONS Physician's gender affects the results obtained during the erectile dysfunction diagnostic workup. Men interviewed by a female physician describe a less severe erectile dysfunction probably as attempt to defend their own virility. On the other hand, the presence of a male physician during intracavernousal injection test is associated to a worse response suggesting a possible unconscious competition.

Adolescence is a stage in which social interests appear and feelings never before experienced blossom, which together with physiological changes make evident a significant transformation in this subject that little by little ceases to be a child [1].

Objetivo: Verificar a importância da atuação do Enfermeiro dentro da política nacional do homem na prevenção do câncer da próstata. Revisão bibliográfica: Segundo um levantamento feito pelo Ministério da Saúde, cerca de um terço (31%) dos homens brasileiros não se consulta com médicos regularmente para acompanhar seu estado de saúde pois acreditam em sua virilidade e que não ficam doentes por simplesmente serem fortes e a porcentagem de uma enfermidade os alcança-los é bem reduzida devido a esses motivos. A enfermagem é uma profissão que tem um papel fundamental no processo de educação em saúde, esclarecendo dúvidas, promovendo estratégias educativas de prevenção de agravos à saúde e incentivando o cuidado da população masculina. Considerações finais: A aplicação do projeto terapêutico tem como meta intervir em prol do alcance do objetivo principal que é mobilizar ações e serviços de saúde que estimulem a população masculina a cuidar mais de sua saúde.

When the art of posing was exploited by Oscar Wilde and bodybuilding performer Eugen Sandow, both achieved worldwide notoriety. While Wilde fashioned but concealed his body as the effeminate aesthete, Sandow fashioned and revealed his body as a naked Herculean god for both camera and stage. Yet after the Labouchere Amendment, when Wilde was persecuted as a poseur and prosecuted, Sandow was not censored, even though his homosexuality and homosexual following were a well-known public secret. Amidst the homophobic panic unleashed by the Wilde trials, Sandow’s posing was reframed as Sandow’s Physical Culture, repackaged as a patriotic strategy for achieving imperial manliness and National Efficiency, while providing licit new rituals for intense homosocial interaction with bared male bodies lauded by Uranists and Unisexuals. In the battle of virility over effeminacy, this article reveals how the queering of Sandow’s body cultures facilitated their circulation as multifarious signs, simultaneously aspirational and erogenous, edifying and homoerotic, permissive and perverse.

In questo saggio l’autore analizza la presenza dell’omosessualità, nonché dei suoi equivalenti simbolici della virilità lesa o diminuita, nella narrativa di Giorgio Bassani. In tale direzione, i testi bassaniani più significativi vengono considerati Gli occhiali d’oro (in cui il tragico protagonista è un omosessuale), Dietro la porta e L’airone, ma anche la figura di Alberto (e, in parte, dello stesso protagonista) nel Giardino dei Finzi-Contini e quella di Barilari in Una notte del ’43 sono oggetto di interpretazione tematica. L’autore del saggio cerca di mostrare che l’identità omosessuale non è da Bassani indagata in sé e legittimata ontologicamente, ma assume un puro valore di metafora dell’esclusione, anche violenta, quella che parallelamente colpì l’identità ebraica dopo l’emanazione delle leggi razziali in Italia. Secondo questa angolazione di lettura, il dubbio sulla “conformità” della propria sessualità, il timore di un’omologazione di essa agli stereotipi della propaganda di regime o (in Dietro la Porta) la proiezione liberatoria di questi ultimi su un personaggio antagonistico / alteregoico, sembrano abitare i protagonisti dei romanzi e dei racconti succitati e produrre, coi loro interrogativi deviati o elusi, i tormenti della falsa coscienza. In this essay the author analyzes the presence of homosexuality, as well as its symbolic equivalents of injured or diminished virility, in Giorgio Bassani’s narrative. In this direction, the most significant texts are considered The Gold Rimmed Glasses (where the tragic hero is an homosexual), Behind the Door and The Heron, but also the figure of Alberto (and somewhat of the protagonist and narrator) in The Garden of the Finzi-Contini and of Barilari in One night in ‘43 are the subject of thematic interpretation. The author claims that homosexual identity is not investigated itself and ontologically legitimized by Bassani, but takes the value of a metaphor for exclusion, even a violent one, as the one that struck, at the same time, Jewish identity after the enactment of Racial Laws in Italy. From this point of view, the doubt on the “conformity” of his own sexuality, the fear this sexuality would meet the regime’s propaganda stereotypes, or (in Behind the Door) the liberating projection of these stereotypes on an antagonistic character and alter ego seem to inhabit the protagonists of the aforementioned novels and short stories and produce, with their diverted or evaded questions, the agony of false consciousness.

This essay argues that recent male performances of disaster preparedness in reality television recuperate a preindustrial model of hegemonic masculinity by staging the plausible “real world” conditions under which manly skills appear necessary for collective survival. Representations of masculinity in uncertain times intensify the masculinity-in-crisis motif to cultivate anticipation of an apocalyptic event that promises a final resolution to male alienation. An examination of Nat Geo's Doomsday Preppers illustrates how these staged performances of everyday life cultivate a dangerous vision of apocalyptic manhood that consummates a fantasy of national virility in the demise of feminine society.

This study deals with the presence of camels in the structure of Arabic criticism discourse and its standards. These standards were taken from the behavior of camels, sush as virility, endurance and patience as descrbed by poets. Thus, the effect of camels become a method of Arab criticism.

Reconhecer o imaginário cultural rio-grandense representado em obras de grande repercussão junto ao público é uma das motivações desta pesquisa, cujo objetivo é discorrer sobre como se dá a representação da figura masculina, a partir da identificação de seu perfil, valores e ideais, em canções tradicionalistas gaúchas, compostas do final do século XX ao XXI. Toma-se como objetos de análise canções que, conforme apontam as referências bibliográficas, são consideradas populares e largamente reconhecidas pelo público ouvinte no contexto sulino, construindo-se produtos da cultura de massa. As canções selecionadas no corpus deste trabalho são selecionadas a partir da obediência aos seguintes critérios: compostas ou gravadas por José Cláudio Machado, um dos artistas mais populares do tradicionalismo gaúcho; referência à figura masculina nas letras; canções gravadas por grupos ou intérpretes que obtiveram destaque junto ao público. A pesquisa de caráter bibliográfico limita-se à análise das letras, não destacando a melodia e os arranjos musicais como ponto de reflexão. Na composição das letras dessas canções, a representação da figura masculina parece ser um elemento importante de manutenção de figura masculina ligada ao campo assim como de conservação de valores e pressupostos culturais de gênero e de estereótipos masculinos cultuados desde o século XIX no Rio Grande do Sul, de forma a manter certos traços caracterizadores da valentia, da superioridade e da virilidade do homem gaúcho. Nessa perspectiva, entende-se que a construção da memória da figura masculina está atrelada a uma visão conservadora e patriarcal, o que implica a revalorização do passado cultural.

Koro syndrome is a psychiatric disorder characterized, by severe anxiety, with grievances of a shrinking penis in men and fear of its retraction into the abdomen and consequent death. Koro is also identified as genital retraction syndrome or shrinking penis syndrome, and it was recognized in the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, fourth edition in the section of culture-bound syndromes. There are numerous reported cases of penis loss in Nigeria, the suspicion associated with penile retraction usually transforms into a severe panic attack concerning fear of loss of potency and virility in men. Psychosocial factors, cultural belief, religious doctrine, strong confidence in the mystical powers of voodoo, and present mental condition of an individual often act as stimulus in the reported cases of male genital retraction and mysterious penis theft in West Africa. Moreover, in Nigeria, it is often believed that individual genitals were stolen for ritual and occultic purposes. Patients with Koro can be treated using psychotherapy with reference to the underlying symptoms and mental disorder.

Ophelia in “Hamlet” and Lady Macbeth in “Macbeth” have several comparisons and contrasts in their personalities. Both of them suffer from madness. However, Ophelia is submissive and Lady Macbeth is commanding. In this sense, they primarily appear like two opposed persons. But, they both display resemblances as they depend on men, and devoid of this dependence, they face devastations. The over-reliance of Ophelia on Polonius, Laertes, and Hamlet directs her into insanity once they are absent. Similarly, Lady Macbeth attacks the virility of Macbeth which leads to his rejection of her, triggering her eventual suicide.

Why are some video content more viral than others are? This paper takes an exploratory approach to understanding the elements of viral videos in terms of digital marketing. Using a set of data about viral videos, case studies, and observations of viral videos, this paper provides insight on what elements should be present to achieve virility and replicate the results. To overcome a noisy market full of competitor messages, the elements in this paper will allow for a better-implemented video marketing campaign. Turning a video marketing campaign into a viral video marketing campaign needs extra effort from businesses in terms of innovation and creativity.

Virility and fertility are often put to the test. Varicocele and its treatments can be a powerful clinical response to these challenges, but not a decisive response in relation to the psyche and quality of life of patients and partners. Although clinical studies have examined more topics in the surgical and radiological fields, the impact of these treatments on the body scheme and on the virility and integrity of the patient is not so numerous. The possibility of a relapse of varicocele often calls into question the future plans of the couple and the harmony between the partners.

Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is commonly used to assess the desirability of living with wildlife. This framing usually presents ecological discomforts as pure negatives that are, however, often sufficiently balanced out by positive utilities that wildlife bring with them, mostly in the form of ecosystem services. However, in the context of CBA, it is often argued that certain animal threats can be re-interpreted as benefits. This is associated with the ‘risk is fun’ culture, where limited and controlled threats benefit individual self-realization by providing psychological stimulation and opportunities for testing ones virility, which are often lacking in the modern comfort and safety oriented culture. While this interpretation goes some way towards explaining the positive role of ecological discomforts, it delimits the role of animals as tools for human self-realization, wholly integrated within the perpetuation of the established culture and identities. Meanwhile, there are strong indications that discomforting animals are also important in moral sense, as partners who question, negate and undermine our identities and dominant cultural patterns, and as entities demanding respect in their own right.

Objetiva-se verificar transformações ocorridas na personagem de James Bond no cinema ao longo das cinco décadas em que foram produzidos os filmes de 007, em decorrência de mudanças que emergem a partir do fenômeno da midiatização da cultura que hoje permeia a sociedade, não apenas se apropriando dos fenômenos culturais, mas também afetando seus modos de representação expressiva. Serão analisados aspectos como o conforto e a virilidade da personagem do agente secreto nos cinco primeiros e no sétimo filme da saga, com o escocês Sean Connery, em contraposição aos quatro últimos filmes, com o inglês Daniel Craig, para comprovar, na evidência cinematográfica, certos intercâmbios que ao longo do tempo ocorrem entre os eventos sociais e a cultura das mídias, em sua evolução política e audiovisual, da última metade do século XX até as primeiras décadas do século XXI.

This paper argues that Thomas Dekker, in his pamphlet The Wonderful Year , and Thomas Middleton, in his play The Revenger’s Tragedy , rely heavily upon King James’s succession propaganda but in a way that challenges its legitimacy. Their works accept the premises upon which James’s succession project was founded; their virgin-queen figures are not idealized, and their king figures are marked by royal pomp and fruitful virility. However, Dekker and Middleton force the royal propaganda from its sanctioned beginning to much darker conclusions that question the promise of the Jacobean regime. Behind their subtle subversions of the king’s strategy lurks an even more radical suggestion: the very system of hereditary succession insidiously promotes the decay and demise of the sociopolitical structures it is meant to uphold.

Men holding so-called “women’s” jobs have received little attention in academic studies of the effects of gender diversity on the sexual division of labour and careers. This article explores this issue based on studies of people in greeting work, emphasizing how the body and sexuality, which are particularly solicited by this activity, have an impact on gender relations. Two ethnographic studies in different greeting contexts (receptionists and special event hosting) show that gendered conceptions of the body participate in the establishment of a sexual division of tasks, which leads to greater freedom of action and less supervision for men in everyday work. “Flirting” at work has differential effects on greeters depending on their gender. It helps men preserve a traditional, heterosexual definition of virility, while allowing them to avoid the subordination and marginalisation resulting from their position in the division of labour and employment. At the same time, it keeps female greeters in occupational isolation. In conclusion, the study of greeters’ careers is used to evaluate the possible existence of a “glass escalator” for men.

Sant'Ippazio (St. Hypatius of Gangra) is a saint, martyr, and advocate in cases of impotency, inguinal hernia, and other abdominal disorders. In Tiggiano, a small town at the southernmost point of Italy, Sant'Ippazio, bishop of Gangra, is venerated as a patron saint. According to legend, during an excited dispute on the question of the Arian heresy at the synod of Nicaea (325 AD), Bishop Ippazio was kicked in the lower abdominal region by an Arian presbyter, which caused an inguinal hernia. Therefore, his help is sought for relief and cure of hernia or impotency. Every January 19th, the day of the parish fair, particular carrots (the "pastinache") which have a reddish to violet color are sold. They are said to be similar to the saint's penis after the kick. Also described in this article are other pagan fertility rituals which have been christianized by the veneration of a saint and which are still kept alive among local populations.

Hair has always played an important role in the history of mankind. Egyptian hieroglyphics are testimony of the paramount importance of hair for this ancient civilization, not only because of the visual effect, but also because of the erotic symbolism connected with hair. For the ancient Romans hair was not only a question of fashion but was used as a symbol of beauty, virility, class and intellect. In modern western culture having a full head of hair is often associated with desirable qualities such as youthfulness and vitality. Most people experience changes in hair and scalp health as they age. Subsequent hair loss may cause significant distress that deeply affects people’s life causing social anxiety and interfering with their well being. Genetic and hormonal changesareimportantfactorsinhairloss, butweatheringandgrooming habits take a toll on our hair as well. A recent advisory board comprising twelve experts in hair fibers and hair loss was formed to review hair loss in relation to heredity, aging and environmental factors emphasizing measures that may slow alopecia. The following information is a summary of their discussions on these topics.

“Peer pressure” is associated in the scientific literature with a range of risky sexual behaviors and with undermining public sexual health messages. Interventions are instituted encouraging young people to resist peer pressure or to model positive peer norms. Taking a discursive psychology perspective, we show how young people themselves use the discourses of “peer pressure to have sex” and “peer normalization of sex” to explain and justify youth sexual activity. Using data from focus group discussions about youth sexualities with students at a South African further education and training college, we show how participants outlined a need for young people to be socially recognizable through engaging in, and talking about, sex and how they implicated peer norms in governing individual sexual behavior. Both discourses pointed to a gendering of peer-endorsed sexual norms: masculine virility, the avoidance of shameful virgin or gay positions, and multiple sexual partners were emphasized for men, while the necessity of keeping a boyfriend and avoiding a “slut” position were foregrounded for women. These discourses potentially undermine the aims of public sexual health programs targeting youth. Nuanced engagement with peer group narratives, especially how sexual activity is explained and justified in a gendered fashion, is indicated.

The primary obscenity futuo (‘the male part in sexual intercourse with a woman’) is unsurprisingly rare in literary Latin. Apart from a single occurrence in Horace's Satires (1.2.127, in a passage evoking the adultery mime), its usage is limited to the even lower genre of scoptic epigram, as represented by Catullus, Octavian, Martial and the Priapeia, though it frequently occurs in graffiti. Adams has shown how it tends to be a neutral and even affectionate term, lacking any sense of aggression, though not of the assertion of conventional virility. Nevertheless, it is used almost exclusively of recreational, extramarital and/or illicit sex. This may be in part a function of the way in which its obscenity and low linguistic register (closely equivalent to its English equivalent ‘fuck’) restrict it to the low genres which tend to deal with such subject matter, but this is a potentially circular argument and, whether chicken or egg came first, the undeniable result is an association of the verb with intercourse which is not primarily or even in any way aimed at procreation. It is striking and anomalous, therefore, when Martial uses futuo, on five occasions, in contexts relating to the production (or avoidance of the production) of children. Of course, on a purely logical and biological level, the connection between futuo (specifically the penetration of the vagina by the penis, carefully differentiated by Martial in particular from sexual practices involving other orifices and/or members, such as pedicatio, fellatio and cunnilingus) and the engendering of children is an obvious one. Nevertheless, the aforementioned strong associations of the verb with sex aimed at everything but procreation renders its use in this context jarring. This incongruity and clash of registers is, of course, characteristic of Martial's technique, and the obscenity gains an added spice from being applied to respectable marital relations. The jarring quality is an end in itself and accounts for itself. Yet I wish to argue that there is a further dimension to this discordant association of ‘fucking’ and ‘begetting’, based on a bilingual wordplay between futuo and its near-homonym, the Greek verb φυτεύω. By means of this pun, Martial mischievously suggests not only that ‘fucking’ can be mentioned in the context of ‘begetting’, but also that the two are—in accordance with biology but against all decorum—identical.

This paper considers the historical antecedent of Cardinal Latino’s specific interdiction against women’s clothing that exhibited frontal exposure as evoked by Forese Donati in Purgatorio 23, situating this interdiction within the history of sumptuary counsel and legislation. This gendered aspect of Dante’s history of Florence is informed by the political discourse of sumptuary excess amongst Florentine elite families and the tensions amongst such families, both those which had true claims to nobility (such as the Donati), and the upwardly mobile mercantile elite (such as the Cerchi). Dante’s choice of Forese Donati as the speaker of this invective carries implications for Dante’s political thought, as it reflects the concerns of the popolo more than those of elite families. This essay relates the intersection of political critique, concupiscence, and virility to the insufficient covering of Nella in the tenzone between Dante and Forese Donati and elsewhere in the Purgatorio, reading the exposed f...

Adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a psychosomatic issue which comprises of complications like problem in paying attention, hyperactivity and impulsive behavior. Our obtained results indicated that the general incidence rate of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in adult population is low that out of 100 undergraduates 36% were ADHD, 53% were non-ADHD and 11% were possible ADHD. Besides it was also revealed from this study that attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is widespread in adult males than in females this is probably due to the constricting emotional nature of males’ influenced by the perceived stereotypic virility. However it is crucial to identify ADHD as a serious mental health issue in adults for early treatment and personality management.

ResumenAl hablar de salud reproductiva es necesario enmarcar el papel de la planificación familiar. El auge de los métodos anticonceptivos en los países desarrollados se da en la década de 1960 con la revolución sexual. El involucramiento del hombre en la planificación familiar apareció en la Conferencia Internacional sobre Población y Desarrollo de 1994, donde se pretendía un papel equitativo en el control de la natalidad. Desgraciadamente, la participación del hombre en la anticoncepción es muy limitada, debido a posturas machistas, miedo a una disminución de su hombría, virilidad y potencia sexual, así como el desconocimiento de las ventajas de los métodos anticonceptivos para hombres. La vasectomía en un inicio se usaba para conocer sus efectos sobre la próstata, después como rejuvenecimiento quirúrgico masculino y finalmente como método anticonceptivo. El Dr. Li Shuguang, en 1973, desarrolló la vasectomía sin bisturí para reducir el temor de los hombres ante este procedimiento. En el mundo hay 37 millones de hombres que optaron por la vasectomía, principalmente en países desarrollados.Las razones por las cuales la vasectomía no es tan preferida en países subdesarrollados tiene que ver con temores que principalmente son de índole sexual, los cuales se fundamentan en el desconocimiento del procedimiento, además de pensar que la anticoncepción es cosa de mujeres y que es mejor que ellas se operen. Es importante que el hombre se implique en la planificación familiar como parte de su salud reproductiva y no solo como una opción que podría o no tomar.AbstractWhen speaking of reproductive health it is necessary to define the role of family planning. The contraception boom in developed countries occurred in the 1960s thanks to the sexual revolution. The involvement of men in family planning appeared in the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, which was intended to encourage an equal role in birth control. Unfortunately, male participation in contraception is very limited because of macho posturing and fear of a reduction of their manhood, virility and sexual prowess, as well as ignorance of the benefits of contraception for men. The vasectomy was used initially for its effects on the prostate, then as male surgical rejuvenation and, finally, as a contraceptive. In 1973 Dr. Li Shuguang developed the no-scalpel vasectomy to reduce men's fear of the procedure. Worldwide, there are 37 million men who chose vasectomy, mainly in developed countries.The reasons why vasectomy is not as preferred in developing countries have to do with fears that are primarily sexual in nature, which are based on ignorance of the procedure, as well as thinking that contraception is just for women and that it is best if they get operated. It is important for men to be involved in family planning as part of their reproductive health and not just as an option that they may or may not choose to take.

The CA is a coherent poem, Beer argues, contra those who have celebrated its lack of coherence: the tales and the conclusion lead to a single consistent lesson. And that lesson is about the rejection of love in this world, contra those (such as the reviewer) who have found in the poem a complex but coherent lesson on the ethics of human love. In the conclusion to the poem, when Amans looks into the mirror and sees that he is old, he is also reminded that he must die: that life is transient, and that love is transient as well. This is the absolute that constitutes the final and this defining moral lesson. "Amans must turn away from vice and toward virtue not simply because he happens to be old now but because of the 'last things,' because he will die and be judged and pass into the afterlife. . . . According to Gower, the uncertainty of the world, and the inevitability of death, should drive us to the certainties of the Christian faith, to that invariable abstract form of the good which is God" (240-41). "Amans's love must and will be transcended and replaced by Christian love" (242). To demonstrate how the exempla in the preceding seven books support this lesson, Beer examines a sequence of four tales in Book V (V.4431-5495) and argues that the real lesson in each case differs from the ostensible lesson on Amans' conduct. When Amans complains, in the discussion of Usury, that he receives less in rewards from his lady than he feels he has earned, Genius replies with a statement on the essential arbitrariness of love which concludes, "Forthi coveite noght to faste, / Mi sone, bot abyd thin ende, / Per cas al mai to goode wende" (5.4564-66). "Amans should not covet too fast," Beer writes, "because he will not get what he covets; he should abide his end because one day (whether that day comes soon or not) he will die, and then it will matter a great deal whether or not he coveted too fast" (246). The tale of Echo that follows, while offering a warning against the use of "brocours," also offers, in the figures of Echo and Jupiter, images of the instability and deceptiveness of love, and in Juno, a model for the disillusionment that Amans experiences, as "both of them find out that their own idealized view of their love relationships have been divorced from the truth" (248). As a lesson on avoiding Parsimony, the tale of Babio and Croceus would seem to be irrelevant to Amans, since he has just insisted that his lady will not accept his gifts. The tale is less about material gifts, however, than it is about Babio's--and Amans'--lack of virility (in Gower's source, Babio is clearly old), and the surrounding discussion alludes to the difference between the "gifts" one offers a woman and those that one offers to God. Genius' definition of "Unkindeschipe" (V.4903-05) sounds very much like his earlier description of the arbitrariness of Love's rewards. In the tale that follows, Adrian serves as the example of the sin in question, but the real lesson for Amans lies in Bardus. "This is the story of a man who trusts that he will garner a material reward for his conscious and voluntary service to another person but is instead spurned by that person and rewarded far beyond his desert by those he had not consciously set out to help. . . . Amans, like Bardus, serves devoutly in the hope of a modest reward but he will get nothing from the person he serves. However, the virtue that he displays and nourishes in doing such service (provided it is 'honeste') will garner rewards in heaven" (253). And "while Bardus received an unlooked-for reward in exchange for his good deeds, the tale of Ariadne [which immediately follows] offers the bleak prospect of misdirected devotion going completely unrewarded" (260). Amans' "misguided love leaves him as vulnerable to the assaults of Fortune as was the otherwise reasonable Ariadne, once she had surrendered herself and her agency to Theseus" (259). Genius' final comments to Amans in Book V, while seeming to offer sympathetic encouragement, also contain a reminder of transiency in the allusion to the seasons (V.7823-31) and another anticipation of the final moral lesson in its references to "grace" (V.7832). Genius' role, Beer concludes, is to unfold the lessons of the poem gradually. "Genius is intimately associated with those feelings that have governed Amans, which is why he keeps Amans company for so long, why he is an unstable figure in some ways, and why he departs once those feelings have disappeared. By exploring such feelings in great depth and detail, Genius gradually exposes certain uncomfortable truths about them. He points toward, without quite encompassing, the full understanding of these truths that Amans finally attains when he looks into the mirror: just as that vision brings Amans to knowledge of himself, so Genius's exempla have worked to show Amans the truth about his own condition" (263). [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 34.2]

In both the Gospel of Mark and The Thunder: Perfect Mind, paradoxically powerful voices sound through broken bodies thrown into contact with other broken bodies and social outcasts. While Mark brings a (semi-)divine man into contact with the suffering, sick, and hungry multitudes as he journeys through Galilee and Judea on his way to eventual death at the hands of Roman authorities, Thunder’s (semi-)divine speaker contains these multitudes, inhabiting or being inhabited by them, speaking as many, Legion-like, with no particular narrative climax. Through gender dynamics that express and instigate feelings of vulnerability and humiliation, as well as claims to triumph and divine association, Mark’s Jesus and Thunder’s speaker exemplify and confound social, gendered inflections of vulnerability, virility, and divinity. As texts composed in the midst of cultural upheaval and anticolonial anguish, Mark and Thunder function as trauma narratives that present pained and creative responses to violence and oppression. Following Ann Cvetkovich’s work on public feelings and affective archives, I treat Mark and Thunder as archives of feeling that enable or mark the vital traces of new practices and publics and gesture toward counterpublic responses to trauma.

This study explores the construction of Forese Donati’s gendered identity in Dante’s tenzone with Forese and, to a lesser extent, in the Purgatorio. The contradictory Forese episodes are analyzed in terms of gender practice and performance, and shown to be complementary representations of masculinity. I argue that as an aggressive contest for verbal dominance, the tenzone with Forese captures the dynamic struggle to assert hegemonic virility within Florence’s urban aristocracy. Viewed through the lens of a society that placed specific demands upon the men entrusted with the care of their households, Forese’s maleness is measured against his (in)ability to physically, economically, and affectively satisfy the needs of his wife. A gendered approach provides new insights into the nature of Dante’s comic insults, and casts doubt on some of the basic assumptions behind palinodic readings that connect the two encounters with Forese.

Increases in international travel, trade, and immigration have led to enhanced global health interdependence. The United States has also experienced an expansion of the mosaic of diverse cultures, languages, and health values. In this context, it is imperative that physicians conceptualize health in a global context to address such issues as infectious disease control, refugee health, treatment of trauma-related conditions, and the tremendous burden of mental health and substance use disorders worldwide (2). For example, depression ranks as the third leading contributor of disease burden globally, yet this disorder has historically been conceptualized as a disorder of westernized industrial cultures (3, 4). Physicians require an understanding of the cultural complexity of health care to effectively address the needs of the patients they treat. The stigma attached to mental illness and the patients suffering from these disorders is a major obstacle to the identification and treatment of mental health disorders worldwide. This stigma is thought to be most prominent in lower-income countries, but it is also rampant among the public in highincome countries and even among health andmental health physicians. The casual use of diagnoses, although necessary within a health care environment, may inadvertently lead to negative attitudes and assumptions toward the patient carrying a mental health diagnosis. Being conscious of the power of diagnosis and of the labeling processmay be helpful in this regard. Another misconception that leads to stigmatization is the erroneous notion that mental health disorders are lifelong and cannot be effectively treated (5). Within the culturally competent psychiatrists’ armamentarium is the awareness of, and openness to, understanding each individual and his or her uniquenesswithin the context of family and culture. The so-called “culture-bound” syndromes include characteristic emotional, behavioral, and cognitive symptoms that are manifested within a given culture, cause distress, are deviant from usual behavior, and are labeled as an identifiable entity within that culture. One example is Dhat, primarily found in India, in which a man’s loss of vitality and virility is attributed to the loss of semen. There are many other examples of culturally bound functional somatic syndromes as well (6). It is important to be aware of the breadth of symptoms that may be consonant with cultural beliefs and to ask about the meaning of the symptoms for the individual and within his or her culture.

In El beso de la mujer arana, Manuel Puig encourages a “tercera lectura,” informed by both cinema and literature. He creates a cinematic language reinforced by the spirit of “synthesis” and then incorporates a conceptual discourse which is beyond cinema because of the “limites de atencion” of a “lector cinematografico.” Puig expects readers to draw their own conclusions about the themes which emerge. I argue here that both the themes and aesthetic of the novel can be read as a challenge to the form and content of a literary and filmic “cult of virility.”

This paper examines how men's reproductive bodies are problematised in rural northern Malawi as access to biomedically defined diagnoses of the health of men's sperm contribute to the visibility of male infertility. Ethnographic research with infertile and fertile men explored pathways into the sexual health and fertility services offered in district hospitals, men's clinical engagements and masculine imaginaries. The research suggested that men's willingness to be referred for semen analysis is an extension of intensive and persistent help-seeking for childlessness instigated by couples and encouraged by families. Within the laboratory, acceptable social arrangements for semen sample collection are negotiated between male clients and laboratory staff, which emphasise heterosexual and marital virility. Following diagnosis, counselling by clinical officers, without any significant therapeutic interventions, focuses on compassion in marriage. This paper considers: what is the role of semen analysis within public health facilities and why do men participate? How do men experience an infertility diagnosis and what do they and their partners do with this knowledge? In addition, how do these practices shape gendered relationships in families and communities? The analysis builds on Inhorn's (2012) concept of ‘emergent masculinities’ to better understand the connections between male subjectivities, medical technologies and the globalisation of male reproductive health, as they relate to men's lives in rural Malawi.

To what degree is an old man identified as a man? Is he seen more in terms of his gender or his age? According to Edward H. Thompson, men who are old are relatively invisible in contemporary culture. As a result, discussions of old men and their masculinities in gender studies in general and in the field of men's studies in particular are rare. most of the available research is in gerontology, which emphasizes men's aging processes and the medical problems they face as they get older, but eschews gender issues. Therefore, because of "[a]ging scholars' inattention to old men combined with men's studies lack of concern with old men" (Calasanti and King 4), contemporary discourse on how old age shapes masculinity is scarce. This is particularly so in literary studies, where the analysis of representations of men that are old is minimal. The old man married to a younger wife is a conventional figure of European, mainly comic, drama, traced all the way back to antiquity. The senex (as he is known in classical Roman literature) is usually associated with decrepitude and sexual impotence. He is portrayed as tyrannical and is therefore hated by those around him, particularly his wife who wants to be rid of him. Simultaneously, he is also constructed as an object of ridicule and laughter with whom his wife and others can have their mocking revenge in the long run. Anthony Ellis, in his book Old Age, Masculinity and Early Modern Drama, has studied the development of this figure during the early modern period, particularly in Italian and English drama. Early modern Spanish plays, influenced by the Italian commedia dell'arte, featured the old man--the vejete--as one of its stock characters as well. In two of his comic and satirical entremeses, El juez de los divorcios and El viejo celoso, Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) deploys the character of the old man to critique societal values, such as marriage, honor, honra, and the role of men and women in society. Influenced by Cervantes, 20th century author Federico Garcia Lorca's (1898-1936) farsas, La zapatera prodigiosa and Amor de Don Perlimplin con Belisa en su jardin, has recourse to the figure of the senex as well in order to address issues of his time dealing with personal integrity, public reputation, constructions of gender, and the relationships between men and women. However, his is a different treatment of the character of the old man than Cervantes's viejos. Whereas Cervantes's old men tend to be negatively portrayed, Garcia Lorca's characters are more sympathetically treated. Garcia Lorca's is a deconstruction of Cervantes's old men. Though scholars have studied Cervantes's and Garcia Lorca's old men in these comic plays separately and jointly in the past, (1) none have examined them as men that are old. (2) They tend to emphasize their age rather than their gender. Through Cervantes's and Garcia Lorca's comic plays, this essay examines continuities and discontinuities in early modern and modern intersections between old age, masculinity, and sexuality and how they are mutually constructed. While the viejos in Cervantes's entremeses adhere to a traditional model of masculinity that constructs them as "failed" men to critique early modern society's preoccupations with genital virility, Garcia Lorca's old men reflect a creative understanding of aged masculinity that emphasizes intimacy over sexual performance. Both Miguel de Cervantes's El juez de los divorcios and El viejo celoso and Federico Garcia Lorca's La zapatera prodigiosa and Amor de Don Perlimplin con Belisa en su jardin deal with unhappy marital situations because of age differences. In El juez de los divorcios, the first couple to appear before the judge consists of an old man, the Vejete, from whom his younger wife Mariana seeks separation because "no pued[e] sufrir sus impertinencias, ni estar contino atenta a curar todas sus enfermedades, que son sin numero" (45). In the other entremes, el viejo celoso, old Canizares's jealous possessiveness of his much younger and sexually dissatisfied wife Lorenza results in her sneaking in a much younger lover under the old man's nose without him realizing it. …

A minor motif, the record player, has significance beyond simply being part of Vertigo’s mise en scene. In the works of other filmmakers, mainstream and avant-garde alike, turntables serve as devices that generate anxiety and symbolize sexual activity and violent acts. In Vertigo, however, they cast light on the possibility that there is a rich vein of risque humor in the film, serving to disguise an underlying meditation on masculine virility as a wobbly rhythm of psychosexual loss-replacement-loss-replacement, and so on.

The increasing levels of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) in sub-Saharan Africa have seen more women being infected by HIV. This article explores the interplay between culture, HIV transmission and disclosure experiences. The setting for the study was Magunje, a rural village in Zimbabwe. Using a semi-structured interview schedule, the interviews were conducted with women living with HIV/AIDS. It emerged that culture condones male promiscuity, since virility is judged by the number of partners that men have, while women face many challenges with regards to disclosure.

According to our literature analysis, there are no data focused on spermatozoa emotional representations in childless men and data on the emotional repercussions of a diagnosis of infertility on men are still scarce. Thus, in this work, we investigated what the presence or absence of spermatozoa in the semen symbolize for men.To answer this question, 441 childless heterosexual men participated in an anonymous, prospective, Internet-based survey.In response to the question "What would having a high or normal sperm count symbolize for you?" the most frequent answer was "ability to father a child". Men living with a partner were significantly more likely than single men to answer "ability to father a child" (These preliminary results should help us to improve (i) the way that male infertility is announced (it is easier to find the right words if one understands the possible importance of having a high sperm count) and (ii) the psychological, marital and sexual counselling provided to men with a diagnosis of infertility.Dans la littérature, peu d'articles traitent du ressenti des hommes vis à vis de leurs spermatozoïdes. Que signifie pour un homme “avoir ou non des spermatozoïdes”? Voilà la question que nous nous sommes posée.Pour y répondre nous avons élaboré un questionnaire qui a été rempli en ligne par 441 hommes hétérosexuels âgés de 18 à 45 ans et sans enfants.A la question, “que signifie pour vous avoir des spermatozoïdes?”, la majorité d’entre eux a répondu “être père”. Les hommes en couple ont statistiquement répondu plus fréquemment “être père” (Ces résultats préliminaires doivent nous aider à mieux comprendre le ressenti des hommes vis à vis de leurs spermatozoïdes et nous aider, nous spécialistes de l’infertilité, à mieux annoncer des infertilités par azoospermie ou oligospermie en adoptant une démarche de conseil psychologique, sexuel et conjugal dans l’annonce de cette infertilité masculine. En effet “ne pas avoir un nombre élevé de spermatozoïdes et a fortiori ne pas en avoir du tout” peut avoir un impact négatif sur l’homme en termes d’humeur, de culpabilité et d’estime de soi.

Prostate cancer and its outcomes are a real threat for health and well-being for men living in the Western world. The number of men with a diagnosis of prostate cancer, before the age of 65 years, has increased in recent decades. The aim of this study was to explore how some of these Swedish men experienced and talked about their sexuality. Four focus group discussions were performed in the context of associations for prostate cancer. Using qualitative content analysis, it was identified how the diagnosis was a threat to their male identity; the men’s vulnerability as a group in society was made explicit. Their sexuality was diminished by their illness experiences. These experiences were difficult to share and talk about with others and therefore connected with silence and sorrow. As a result of this, the informants often played a passive role when or if they discussed issues related to sexuality with someone in the health care organizations. The possibility of voluntarily joining a cancer association was probably highly beneficial for these men. During the sessions, several men expressed the opinion that “it is always great to talk.”

This article studies the gendered meanings of Galician national discourse with particular focus on the notion of masculinity. The first part of the article analyzes cultural writings in the early stages of Galician regionalism and establishes how the metaphor of Galicia as feminine (and, as a consequence, of Galician manhood as marked with the notions of sentimentality and submissiveness) gradually became an important stumbling block for nationalism’s emergence as a viable political movement. In the second section, the author studies how the early texts of Galician political nationalism reacted against such metaphors by means of a heightened masculinist discourse bent on recasting national insurgence as a question of virility. Finally, the author analyzes Ricardo Carvalho Calero’s Historia da literatura galega contemporánea (1963/1981) in line with this rhetoric of national virility and as an example of what the author will call the masculine excess present in the seminal texts of Galician cultural nationalism.

Ethnopharmacological relevance Traditional remedies from plants have been use to treat male reproductive related disorders for ages in South Africa. Aim This study reviewed the current status of medicinal plants used in male reproductive healthcare as well as their effectiveness as a mode of treatment. Methodology A detailed literature search was done by consulting books, peer-reviewed papers, scientific databases such as Scopus, Science direct and PubMed, and Google scholars. Keywords such as aphrodisiacs, conception, erectile dysfunction, fertility, infertility and sterility in relation to medicinal plants were used during the search. Plant species were selected based on their traditional use in different aspects of male reproductive healthcare. Results A total of 61 plants species were found to be used in treating male impotency or as aphrodisiacs. However, only six species have been evaluated scientifically and these plants showed significant activities either in promoting conception by improving fertility and promoting erection or in contraception by decreasing sperm motility, virility and membrane integrity. Conclusion The importance of herbal products in the treatment of male infertility and related sexual disorders is undeniable. Scientific evaluations of the six species have proved the empirical use of these plants in the improvement of male sexual disorders as well as validating their traditional uses.

In an era—ours—for which the (current) symbol of male potency may be found in small blue pills or, by displacement, in various coy and not so coy advertisements about enhancing the so-called “experience,” one can rightly muse about the line between maintaining dignity and risking ridicule in the domain of male virility. Of course, this line, at times fine, at others coarse, was apparent well before the arrival of pharmaceutical enhancements, and I propose to look briefly at constructions of masculinity and virility in several figurations of the troisieme âge in nineteenthcentury French fiction. To do so, I start with an all-too-cursory typological outline, attempting to encompass the range of such possibilities. The implicit purpose of this outline is to suggest that just as our contemporary trope of virility has taken on particular modes of expression, the desiring impulsion that both makes and undermines male virility and dignity is a subject in nineteenth century French fiction that has been taken as a given rather than addressed and problematized fully. Focusing on two characters among many likely examples—from Stendhal’s La Chartreuse de Parme, le comte Mosca, and from Zola’s Nana, le comte Muffat—I consider briefly how these figurations crisscross the fine line between dignity and ridicule, and to what narrative ends. 2 To start, I refer to the appendix for a quick overview of the typology that I have developed with the generous assistance of a number of colleagues in nineteenth-century French studies. The list includes a range of possibilities, from the start to the end of the century, and more need to be added, notably from Maupassant’s tales, for example, “La Petite Roque” and “Yvette.” What one notices in this typology is a trait that I will develop shortly in remarks on Mosca and Muffat, that is, how political and social power is undercut or in some ways compromised by the forces of desire, and how this collision often results in an implicit or explicit mise en question of virility, of effective potency in terms of desire as

In this article, I contextualise Bacon’s representations of homosexuality — that is, same-sex relations between men. The male nude made its appearance in Bacon’s work in the early 1950s, a time when the nude was not a popular subject in painting and when, perhaps more critically, homosexuality was illegal in Britain. Other British contemporary homosexual artists, such as Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde, steered clear of representing homosexuality, whilst others, such as Keith Vaughan, depicted homosexuality in their art in an ambiguous and diffuse fashion, often with recourse to the homoerotic. Vaughan’s studies of men exercising focused on the strength and virility of the male nude, and were erotically charged without being overtly sexual. In contrast, Bacon chose to be more explicit in his depictions. He did not simply allude to, but pointed to the homosexual act of copulation. Given that Bacon was painting at a time before the legalisation of homosexuality, how can these images be explained and wh...

In Atwood's "Death by Landscape," two young girls, Lois and Lucy, spend five summers together paddling canoes, swimming, and hiking: they are camp buddies. On their last outing together while hiking up the trail to Look Out Point, Lucy vanishes without explanation. That indeed is the mystery that haunts Lois for the rest of her life--so much so that she collects landscape paintings that actually portray the wooded scene where her friend disappears. Noting the "pinkish island, in the lake, with the intertwisted trees," Lois reflects that it is the "same landscape they paddled through, that distant summer" (117). Hardly a simple tale, though, Atwood's "Death by Landscape" is highly nuanced and layered. Lois's landscape paintings, referenced in the beginning and at the end, suggest that the power of representation is essential to this story. After all, it is landscape that kills, not nature itself. All the artists represented in Lois's collection, except for David Milne, are part of a Canadian group of painters, the Group of Seven, and its usually noted inspiration, Tom Thomson, features heavily in this story. (1) The mystery surrounding Thomson's disappearance and death, the uncertainties surrounding his remains, and the woods with which he became so associated all resonate in the mystery surrounding Lucy's disappearance, thus linking Lucy to Tom Thomson, but with a twist. With the exception of the brief commentary on Lois's condominium, Lois's collection frames "Death by Landscape." Between this framing are Lois's memories of summer camp, where the gendered camp rituals function as an odd inverted puberty initiation rite in which the Manitou girls learn to be "braves," not "squaw[s]" (108). The artwork thus frames a memory of a transformative camp experience that privileges the masculine. Yet literary and visual frames further intertwine, with the artwork (mostly from the Group of Seven) also reinforcing the masculine--this time through a depiction of a northern virility that becomes inextricable from an identity that is defined by gender. Calling attention to the power of myth and art to confine and transform possible experiences, "Death by Landscape" shatters patriarchal representation by linking Lucy to both Tom Thomson and to a landscape that ultimately becomes connected distinctly to a subversive female identity. Most previous readings of Atwood's tale have insightfully focused on how representations of nature are linked to a labyrinthine image of Canadian cultural identity--one that is colonized and feminine and another that is imperialistic and masculine. As Eva Mackey notes, the Group of Seven, the Canada First Movement, and Northrop Frye attempted to throw off the shackles of European influence by forging a new association with a "virile" Canadian North. Such an association, however, ignores the indigenous populations who once occupied that land. Commenting on what she calls a settler mentality in Atwood's "Death by Landscape," Mackey queries: "Would being lost in the 'unknown territory' of the wilderness be a central metaphor for Indigenous writers?"(129). Coral Ann Howells observes how the Canadian wilderness mythology is both a rejection of European colonization and an enactment of colonization, since the concept of the wilderness was produced by those who settled Canada and wrote about those settlements ("Writing" 10). Faye Hammill places the story within the post-colonial gothic by connecting "Death by Landscape" with The Journals of Susanna Moodie, where the settler's image of nature as "freedom and adventure" gives way to a "hostile, haunted, and horrifying" forest (59). Thus, for Hammill, those elements are the "unseen presences" or the "ghosts of empire" peering through Lois's paintings (58-59). Also suggesting an imperialistic critique of empire, Lauren Rule sees Lucy as becoming conflated with the Indian she pretends to play--that in moving outside the parameters of the story, Lucy becomes symbolic for the vanishing and displacement of Aboriginal peoples (640-41). …

Les albums pour enfants participent a la construction des representations corporelles des jeunes generations. Si les Comics (1938) donnent directement acces a la figure idealisee de la virilite americaine, les fillettes francophones beneficient de la parution de Martine, des 1954, forme d'identification beaucoup plus nuancee, voire realiste. En un demi-siecle, le scenariste et l'illustrateur de la serie n'ont pas change. Pourtant, de Martine en voyage (1954) a Martine – Princesses et chevaliers (2004), l'heroine evolue. Ses pratiques corporelles aussi, et leur representation inevitablement. Cette etude vise a elaborer un outil de lecture pluridisciplinaire des aventures de Martine centrees sur ses pratiques corporelles. Les analyses quantitatives et qualitatives de l'ensemble des dessins de la serie sont l'occasion de montrer en quoi le livre illustre Martine est un medium complexe qui met en constante dialectique une image stereotypee et traditionnelle de la gent feminine et une vision relativement avant-gardiste d'une petite fille en qu'te d'activites physiques pionnieres et emancipatrices. Illustrated children's books contribute to the construction of the physical representations of young generations. Comics (1938) provided direct access to an idealized figure of American virility, but starting in 1954, young Francophone girls began to benefit from the publication of Martine, which presented a significantly more nuanced and even realistic form of identification. The same writer and illustrator produced the series for half a century. However, from Martine en voyage in 1954 to Martine – Princesses et chevaliers in 2004, the heroine evolved. Her physical practices also, along with their corresponding representations. This study develops a multidisciplinary tool for interpreting the adventures of Martine centred on her physical practices. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of the corpus of drawings from the series demonstrate the extent to which the illustrated book Martine is a complex medium creating an ongoing dialectic around the stereotypical and traditional image of the female gender versus a relatively avant-garde vision of a young girl in search of pioneering and liberating physical activities.