Mix-Ups, Mistake and Moral Judgement: Recent Developments in U.K. Law on Assisted Conception

Hard cases make bad law. In a matter of months, two such cases involving assisted reproduction have appeared before the U.K. High Court and legislation has been enacted. The common threads between them are consent and fatherhood. The first case concerns a ‘mistake’ resulting in sperm from the wrong man being used to create an embryo for a couple and the second the revocation of consent by a man to his former partner being allowed to use an embryo they created together. Furthermore, Parliament has intervened, passing legislation which sets out when sperm from a dead man may be used by his former partner to generate an embryo. This note argues that the three developments cannot be reconciled with one another and that the cases in particular, decided on a narrow legal basis, convey contradictory messages, leading in at least one instance to a gross injustice.     

妇女与社会政策--论妇女地位在北欧国家的变迁

从性别角度研究福利国家,为研究者提供了一个把握妇女和国家社会政策之间复杂联系的方法。这一维度的研究被北欧女权主义学者所发展,它强调妇女对发展福利国家的巨大贡献。然而本研究将考察妇女与国家联系的另一个方面:即国家的社会政策是如何影响妇女在社会中的地位的。为了说明这个问题,本研究将讨论妇女作为家庭主妇、母亲、配偶和公民的角色,揭示北欧国家社会再生产体系的转型,考察北欧国家的社会政策发展及其如何将妇女从家庭中解放出来使她们成为社会公民。由此,本研究为思考在中国实现男女平等的现实道路提供了可借鉴的经验。     

Facial soft tissue depths in craniofacial identification (part I): An analytical review of the published adult data

With the ever increasing production of average soft tissue depth studies, data are becoming increasingly complex, less standardized, and more unwieldy. So far, no overarching review has been attempted to determine: the validity of continued data collection; the usefulness of the existing data subcategorizations; or if a synthesis is possible to produce a manageable soft tissue depth library. While a principal components analysis would provide the best foundation for such an assessment, this type of investigation is not currently possible because of a lack of easily accessible raw data (first, many studies are narrow; second, raw data are infrequently published and/or stored and are not always shared by some authors). This paper provides an alternate means of investigation using an hierarchical approach to review and compare the effects of single variables on published mean values for adults whilst acknowledging measurement errors and within-group variation. The results revealed: (i) no clear secular trends at frequently investigated landmarks; (ii) wide variation in soft tissue depth measures between different measurement techniques irrespective of whether living persons or cadavers were considered; (iii) no clear clustering of non-Caucasoid data far from the Caucasoid means; and (iv) minor differences between males and females. Consequently, the data were pooled across studies using weighted means and standard deviations to cancel out random and opposing study-specific errors, and to produce a single soft tissue depth table with increased sample sizes (e.g., 6786 individuals at pogonion).     

Material Feminism and Epigenetics: A ‘Critical Window’ for Engagement?

ABSTRACT

While there is increasing interest in gender and sex issues in the medical field, most research in medicine can still be defined as operating with a binary of sex/gender. Epigenetics presents a marked challenge to such binaries as it operates across many tightly held boundaries, blurring the lines between the biological and social. Feminist scholars are paying attention to this new field and reconsidering relationships between the politics of matter, biologies and the social in new ways. The aim of this article is to investigate how theoretical insights from material feminism might enhance epigenetic research. Rather than repeat important critical arguments that point to the dangers of reductionism and biological essentialism, we make a case for examining the ways that material feminism can engage with epigenetic research by broadening ideas of reproduction (beyond in-utero effects) to relational and political views of gender and sex within a materialist framework. In conclusion, we suggest that a focus on material-discursive co-formations has the potential to contribute to an established body of feminist theory and science work; increasing awareness of the intra-action of gender and sex in relation to exposures, and increasing political leverage in supporting health-enhancing environments.     

Eggs on Ice: Imaginaries of Eggs and Cryopreservation in Denmark

While Denmark is widely known as a global exporter of cryopreserved sperm, Danish women’s eggs face a very different fate. This paper combines legal and rhetorical analyses with the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries. In establishing the genealogy of the sociotechnical imaginaries that shaped Danish regulation of the cryopreservation of eggs, we analyse the relevant Acts, Bills, preparatory work, and readings in Parliament, along with the concurrent public and ethical debates that over time relaxed the legal limit for the cryopreservation of eggs to the current five years and today continue to ignite discussions on elective egg freezing. We rely on welfare-state perspectives to discuss why reproduction, in the Danish context, is seen as a legitimate and appropriate sphere to regulate, and we turn to feminist theorizing to discuss the gendered implications captured in the sociotechnical imaginaries of the “Moral State”, “technologies to be tamed”, “the nuclear family”, and “technology as equality and hope”. We end by discussing how an interdisciplinary approach enriches our understanding of the legal, cultural, and political entanglements related to putting eggs on ice.     

Counterpublic and counterprivate: Zoe Leonard,David Wojnarowicz,and the political aesthetics of intimacy

In this paper we explore the space that dyadic intimacy plays within the counterpublic world-building of political activism. We reflect on a particular encounter between the artists and ACT UP activists Zoe Leonard and David Wojnarowicz by offering two readings of what we call the “counterprivate” relation between the two. In the first part of our argument, we contend that the counterprivate couple form (found in our case study of Leonard and Wojnarowicz) occasions a space of provisional leave from the normative affective, aesthetic, and identity-based impulses which tend to emerge in social movement group formation. Despite established critiques of the private, dyadic intimacy of the couple within social movement theory and queer and feminist cultural studies, we highlight the value of counterprivate couples – not in place of the collective world-building that is made possible by political organizing and collective identity, but as a necessary aesthetic complement to collective, participatory politics. In the second part of our argument, we read the intimacy between Leonard and Wojnarowicz as a private moment of expressed doubt that has subsequently been institutionalized into a public discourse through the context of art. Here the counterprivate couple form in turn becomes a counterpublic mode of collective world-making once more. This transformation from counterprivate relation to public discourse occasions a practice of collective subject formation (in the institutional terrain of art) that affirms doubt, curiosity, and poetic beauty as part of the reproductive labor involved in political participation.     

The Validity of Ear Prediction Guidelines Used in Facial Approximation*,†,‡

Abstract: This study examined eight previously published ear prediction methods by Welcker, Gerasimov, Fedosyutkin and Nainys, and Broadbent and Mathews. Computed tomography scans of 78 living adults (n₁) did not support any of these previously published recommendations. Free earlobes were found to accompany protruding supramastoid crests (Pearson’s χ² < 0.05); and ear length [l] and width [w] differed by sex (p < 0.05), correlated with age (r = 0.38[l]; 0.32[w]), and correlated with facial height (r = 0.37[l]; 0.30[w]). New regression equations (for ear length and width) were generated using these variables in several samples and, where possible, cross‐validated using independent data (n₁ = 78, n₂ = 2190, n₃ = 1328, n₄ = 1010, and n₅ = 47). As a result of these analyses, four valid and tested methods for ear prediction were identified, but large degrees of error continue to make accurate prediction of the ear, from the skull, problematic.     

“My World Is Upside Down”: Transnational Iraqi Youth and Parent Perspectives on Resettlement in the United States

The U.S. war with Iraq led to the displacement of millions of Iraqis, many of whom have resettled in the United States as refugees. We explore the challenges Iraqi families face after resettlement, with a particular focus on the agency of refugees and challenges/opportunities of familial social reproduction in a transnational context. We conducted 181 qualitative interviews with 38 Iraqis (11 youth, 27 adults) and 5 service providers. Our findings highlight the importance of exploring refugee agency and illuminate how the interplay between structure and agency in transnational contexts is a useful framework for understanding transformations around social roles.     

贵州苗族刺绣中的母体崇拜

苗族同胞以自然万物来歌颂对女性神的神秘生殖力量崇拜,在贵州苗族刺绣作品中,可以发现大量对母体生殖繁衍力量的隐喻与崇拜。在这些作品中,受到崇拜和隐喻的母体或化身为植物,或化身为动物,或化身为自然界的其他物象,通过刺绣把对大母神及其生殖繁衍力量的崇拜以借喻、隐喻的方式表达出来,而在具体的苗族民俗传承中,这种崇拜体现为对生殖意念的张扬和人丁兴旺的渴求。     

社会再生产语境中的女性受压迫问题——《马克思主义和女性受压迫——迈向统一的理论》评述

莉丝·沃格尔在《马克思主义和女性受压迫-迈向统一的理论》一书中尝试为分析女性受压迫问题构建一个稳定而恰当的理论体系.她认为女性受压迫的基础是她们在劳动力再生产中的独特地位.具体到资本主义社会中的女性受压迫现象,她主张将这一问题置于社会再生产语境中,从家务劳动和平等权利两方面来分析.