Female genital mutilation and postcolonial struggles are in fact intimately and historically linked.
Tag: castration
The Problematic Priestly Body: Celibacy, Sexuality and the Trials of the Medieval Clergy
Katherine Harvey Although Notches is a blog about the history of sexuality, as a historian of the late medieval Church I spend most of my time thinking about a group of men who were not supposed to engage in any form of sexual activity: the medieval clergy. The ideal of […]
Hyperbole and horror: hijras and the British imperial state in India
Onni Gust Nineteenth-century British travel writers and colonial officials rarely passed on the opportunity to prefix some derogatory hyperbole to the word ‘eunuch.’ Frequently they offered extensive defamation, referring to eunuchs as “the vilest and most polluted beings” and commenting on the “revolting” practices that they imagined, but could rarely […]