Bodily Integrity, Embodiment, and the Regulation of Parental Choice

Controversy continues to surround the age-old practice of virginity testing, which in South Africa made a visible comeback around the time of the country’s first democratic elections when most South Africans began to feel free to practise their cultural beliefs without fear. It coincided with the period when the HIV pandemic began to take hold. It is practised mainly in some countries of Asia and Africa, and in South Africa it is practised mainly amongst amaZulu. It is believed that this practice prevents unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), especially HIV/AIDS, as well as engendering a sense of pride in teenage and young females, in particular. However, some individuals, organisations and sectors of the community frown upon the practice because it violates constitutional laws that protect the right to equality, privacy, bodily integrity and sexual autonomy. The purpose of this article is to present current discourse on the cultural practice of virginity testing and the controversies surrounding this discourse. This article draws its arguments from the existing literature on virginity testing.

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The Right to Bodily Integrity

10.1093/oso/9780190901516.003.0007 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Alison Brysk

Keyword(s):

Sexual Assault ◽

Sexual Violence ◽

Public Space ◽

Transitional Justice ◽

The United States ◽

Bodily Integrity ◽

Global Pattern ◽

Popular Resistance ◽

Wide Range ◽

The Right

In Chapter 7, we profile the global pattern of sexual violence. We will consider conflict rape and transitional justice response in Peru and Colombia, along with the plight of women displaced by conflict from Syria and Central America, and limited international policy response. State-sponsored sexual violence and popular resistance to reclaim public space will be chronicled in Egypt as well as Mexico. We will track intensifying public sexual assault amid social crisis in Turkey, South Africa, and India, which has been met by a wide range of public protest, legal reform, and policy change. For a contrasting experience of the privatization of sexual assault in developed democracies, we will trace campus, workplace, and military rape in the United States.

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Yakir Englander and Avi Sagi, Sexuality and the Body in New Religious Zionist Discourse, trans. Batya Stein. Boston: Academic Press, 2015. 298 pp.

10.1093/oso/9780190912628.003.0056 ◽

2018 ◽

Keyword(s):

Public Sphere ◽

The Body ◽

Academic Press ◽

Jewish State ◽

Bodily Integrity ◽

The Enlightenment

This chapter reviews the book Sexuality and the Body in New Religious Zionist Discourse (2015), by Yakir Englander and Avi Sagi, translated by Batya Stein. Sexuality and the Body in New Religious Zionist Discourse examines the positions and debates about “sexuality” in one area of the Jewish public sphere in Israel—religious Jewry—and specifically that of the Israeli religious Zionists who, following the notion of “Torah ’im Derech Eretz” first formulated by Samson Raphael Hirsch as an answer to the Enlightenment, are now struggling in a Jewish state to combine halakhic commitment with the values of modernity. Englander and Sagi focus on questions of sexuality as defined by rabbinic notions of gender attraction and bodily integrity/autonomy: those dealing with homosexuality, lesbianism, masturbation, and the relationships between the sexes.

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Cohort analysis of the state of female genital cutting in Nigeria: prevalence, daughter circumcision and attitude towards its discontinuation

BMC Women s Health ◽

10.1186/s12905-021-01324-2 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 21 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Babatunde M. Gbadebo ◽

Adetokunbo T. Salawu ◽

Rotimi F. Afolabi ◽

Mobolaji M. Salawu ◽

Adeniyi F. Fagbamigbe ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Birth Cohort ◽

Cohort Analysis ◽

The State ◽

Female Genital Cutting ◽

Birth Cohorts ◽

Bodily Integrity ◽

Factors Associated ◽

Female Children ◽

Genital Cutting ◽

Female Genital

Abstract Background Female genital cutting (FGC) inflicts life-long injuries on women and their female children. It constitutes a violation of women’s fundamental human rights and threats to bodily integrity. Though decreasing, the practice is high and widespread in Nigeria despite efforts towards its eradication. This study was conducted to perform cohort analysis of the state of FGC between the years 2009 and 2018 in Nigeria. Results The study found that that FGC has reduced over the years from 56.3% among the 1959–1963 birth cohort to 25.5% among 1994–1998 cohorts but a rise in FGC between 1994–1998 cohorts and 1999–2003 cohorts (28.4%). The percentage of respondents who circumcised their daughters reduced from 40.1% among the oldest birth cohort to 3.6% among the younger cohort. Birth-cohort, religion, education, residence, region, and ethnicity were associated with FGC. Factors associated with the daughter’s circumcision were birth-cohort, religion, residence, region, ethnicity, wealth, marital status, FGC status of the respondent, and FGC required by religion. Similar factors were found for discontinuation intention. Conclusions The practice of FGC is still high but decreasing among younger birth-cohorts in Nigeria. There is no significant change in the perception of the discontinuation of FGC. More awareness about the adverse effects of FGC, particularly among women with poor education in Nigeria will greatly reduce this cultural menace’s timely eradication.

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Teachers’ versus parental choice and the tracking distribution of students: a natural experiment

Applied Economics ◽

10.1080/00036846.2015.1080808 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 47 (60) ◽

pp. 6529-6542

Author(s):

Marlies Kornfeld ◽

Carsten Ochsen

Keyword(s):

Natural Experiment ◽

Parental Choice

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The Determinants and Consequences of Accurate Beliefs About Childhood Vaccinations

American Politics Research ◽

10.1177/1532673x17745342 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 47 (3) ◽

pp. 628-649 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Mark R. Joslyn ◽

Steven M. Sylvester

Keyword(s):

Educational Attainment ◽

Survey Data ◽

Party Identification ◽

Motivated Reasoning ◽

Parental Choice ◽

Practical Significance ◽

The Public ◽

Policy Attitudes ◽

The Individual ◽

The Impact

In this article, we examine the individual predictors that are responsible for accurate beliefs about the link between vaccinations and autism. We then show how these beliefs affect policy preferences about vaccines. We derive two hypotheses from motivated reasoning theory and test these on national survey data from Gallup and CBS News. Republicans were less likely to report accurate beliefs than Democrats. In addition, educational attainment modified the impact of party identification. The gap between Republicans and Democrats in likelihood of reporting accurate beliefs was largest among the most educated portion of the public. Finally, we show that accurate beliefs about vaccines, independent of statistical controls, are important predictors of policy attitudes about unvaccinated children attending public school and parental choice about the decision to vaccinate. We discuss the theoretical and practical significance of these findings.

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Abject spaces and mimicry: rethinking the embodied effects of spatial containment in trafficking for sexual exploitation

Cultural Geographies ◽

10.1177/1474474017719067 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 24 (4) ◽

pp. 555-572

Author(s):

Amy M Russell

Keyword(s):

Human Trafficking ◽

Sexual Exploitation ◽

The Body ◽

Bodily Integrity ◽

Public And Private

The spaces of trafficking for sexual exploitation have profound effects on the embodiment of women who are forced to live within them. This article argues that the spaces of human trafficking can be understood as abject spaces, and as such, they trouble multiple boundaries including those between hidden and exposed, domestic and commercial, and public and private. This article provides a theoretically speculative engagement with notions of abject space and mimicry to add a further dimension to the debate on the nature of the spaces of trafficking. These abject spaces, and the sexual exploitation that takes place within them undermines women’s notions of bodily integrity, yet I argue there is agency to be found in the loss of embodied identity. The basis for this engagement is an analysis of a series of documents written by women who were trafficked from post-Soviet countries to Israel. It will conceptualise the ways women survive in such a space by challenging bounded notions of the body.

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