Sex Loves Justice
Abortion as a (good) form of killing, queer care in the time of monkeypox, and more
September 1, 2022
Welcome to the Fall 2022 semester at Public Seminar! We’re back to our usual publishing schedule: new writing on politics, ideas, art, and ideas every week, rounded up in our weekly Thursday issue.
In this week’s issue, our writers tackle the intersection of sex and justice. Bonnie Eissner shares the story of the female Republican lawmaker who led the legalization of abortion in New York. Sophie Lewis and Natasha Lennard discuss the violence of human gestation. Will Clark encounters the ebullient discourse of queer camp in a vaccine queue. Mitchell Abidor considers Harvey Weinstein’s adolescence. And Sophie Boulter examines the new face of fascism in Europe: female.
We’re not giving up and neither should you!
“Abortions produce feelings of relief and cared-for-ness in the short-term, and boost things like financial security and reported life satisfaction over the long-term. Given all this, why do we infantilize ourselves and others by avoiding the facts of the matter? Goddamnit, abortion is good. And what is abortion? Abortion is killing. Yes! I know! That sounds confusing! Like: How can that be? Well, we need to talk about it. Let’s ponder, philosophically, why, unlike the vast majority of forms of killing, abortion is a form of killing that contributes to the good life.” Feminist scholar Sophie Lewis sits down with Natasha Lennard for a conversation about the realities of reproductive freedom. (August 30, 2022)
Will Clark discovers queer resilience and camp camaraderie in a queue for a monkeypox vaccine clinic operated by a Berkeley bathhouse. “In our second hour of waiting, a car pauses and the driver asks what the line is for. ‘For the Monkeypox vaccine, baby!’ shouts my neighbor, and with a pitying look somewhere between a smile and a grimace, the driver wishes us luck, and rolls on. We exchange glances: What did he think the line was for, a new iPhone?” (August 31, 2022)
“Hormones were raging, free love was everywhere, but for those of us living in the Gotham equivalent of the boondocks, good Jewish boys all, surrounded by good Jewish girls, it might as well have been happening on another planet.” Reviewing Ken Auletta’s new biography of Harvey Weinstein, Mitchell Abidor reflects on his own adolescence in an outer borough community unmoved by the sexual revolution of the 1960s—a neighborhood eerily similar to those in which both Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein grew up. (August 31, 2022)
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From Italy’s Giorgia Meloni to Poland’s Beata Szydło, far-right women are rising to power across Europe, writes Sophie Boulter. “Meloni illustrates the delicate balance such women must maintain. Her supporters claim that ‘she has guts,’ but is also ‘charismatic and sincere.’ Teetering between populism and fascism, she presents as a moderating influence on her party, but can’t moderate its positions too much lest it loses its appeal.” (August 31, 2022)
“New York today is a paragon of abortion rights, but that wasn’t always true. Between 1828 and 1970, the state banned all abortions other than those necessary to save a mother’s life. Although by the late 1960s, a handful of states had carved out exceptions to their bans, such as in cases of rape or when the health of the child or the mother was at risk—so-called therapeutic abortions—New York did not.” Bonnie Eissner outlines how Republican lawmaker Constance E. Cook fought for New York to legalize abortion and taught women how to be their own lobbyists. (August 29, 2022)