E12 | We Give It So Much Cultural Power

Masculine Birth Ritual

In E12 I talk with Greta LaFluer. Greta is an Associate Professor of American Studies at Yale University. They're the author of a book called The Natural History of Sexuality in Early America. In this conversation, she and I talk about western medical ideas about gender and approaches to birth in this period, the ways that genderqueer and Masculine of Center people are found (or not found) in the colonial archives, how legacies of white supremacy and violence are historically tied to white genderqueer AFAB masculinities, and the way sex and gender were understood in the 18th century colonial U.S.