China
Africa
Explore chapters and articles related to this topic
Environments of Health and Disease in Tropical Africa before the Colonial Era
Published in Lori Jones, Disease and the Environment in the Medieval and Early Modern Worlds, 2022
Doctors, to use Bosman’s term, or consecrated healers, were required when attempts to mobilize folk medicinal knowledge failed, suggesting that they intervened in the second group of afflictions, those caused by humans (Janzen 1982, 13). Ludewig Rømer, an employee with the Danish West India and Guinea Company who spent 9 years on the Gold Coast between 1739 and 1749, noted this two-level healing system in Accra: When a Black wishes to ask the fetish (oracle) about something … because his family, a friend, his children, of his wife are ill … he goes to the fetish maker …. He asks if he may hear the fetish speak …. But the sick person tries first to see if he can be helped with herbs or [other] remedies known to be effective in such an illness.(Rømer 1760 (2000), 89–90).
Perspectives on olfaction in medical culture
Published in Alan Bleakley, Routledge handbook of the medical humanities, 2019
Yet despite Conan Doyle’s stipulation, fictional (or fictionalised) accounts of the olfactory experiences of clinicians are outweighed by representations of the sights and sounds of hospitals and doctor/patient encounters. Such an omission is not surprising, given the foundational difficulties in describing odours outlined above—in part, this omission merely rehearses the lack of available descriptors for smells and the placement of olfaction in the Western hierarchy of the senses. After all, qua Wittgenstein, we may be obliged to pass over in silence that which we cannot describe. In addition, the (Western) cultural history of olfaction suggest that odour tests the politic limits of what can and cannot be represented in literary discourse. A rich history of representations of odour within medico-literary texts may be lacking because of established conventions of propriety, a tendency recognised in an early review of James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916): “You can write about what you see that you don’t like, what you touch, taste and hear; but you can’t write about what you smell; if you do you are accused of using nasty words” (Heap 1917: 8). Certainly, Joyce’s critical designation as an exemplar of olfactory representation among literary modernists has been accompanied by the imputation that his evocations of odour are evidence of an underlying authorial paraphilia (Neill 2016: 116). This designation invites reference, again, to Freud’s influential disparagement of odour, and his accompanying linkage between olfaction and sexual deviance. Commenting on the appeal of “dirty and evil-smelling feet” as fetish objects, Freud further notes: “Psycho-analysis has cleared up one of the remaining gaps in our understanding of fetishism. It has shown the importance, as regards the choice of a fetish, of a coprophilic pleasure in smelling which has disappeared owing to repression” (Freud 2001b: 155).
The Sexually Disordered Couple
Published in Len Sperry, Katherine Helm, Jon Carlson, The Disordered Couple, 2019
Shannon B. Dermer, Molli E. Mercer
There are many paraphilias, but there are only eight Paraphilic Disorders: voyeuristic, exhibitionistic, frotteuristic, sexual masochism, sexual sadism, pedophilic, fetishistic, and transvestic disorders (in addition to other Specified Paraphilic Disorders and Unspecified Paraphilic Disorders). Voyeurism involves intense sexual urges and desire from observing people naked, disrobing, or engaging in sexual activity without the consent of the person/people being observed. Exhibitionists have the urge to or derive pleasure from fantasizing about or actually exposing their genitals to unsuspecting persons. There are several subtypes of exhibitionistic disorder: sexually aroused by exposing genitals to prepubertal children; exposing genitals to physically mature individuals; or sexually aroused by exposing genitals to both prepubertal children and physically mature individuals. Frotteuristic disorder manifests itself through persistent urges, fantasies, or behaviors involving touching or rubbing against a nonconsenting adult. Although sexual sadism and sexual masochism disorders are separated in the DSM-5, they are presented together here in that they are polar opposites in regard to getting sexual arousal and/or pleasure from the physical or psychological suffering of others or getting sexual arousal and/or pleasure from experiencing physical or psychological suffering, by inflicting or receiving acts of humiliation, beatings, bondage, and/or suffering. Pedophilia is sexual arousal focused on a prepubescent child or children, usually under the age of 13. People diagnosed with pedophilic disorder may be exclusively or nonexclusively attracted to children, may be attracted to males, females, or both, and may be attracted to children with whom they are related (incest) or to children with whom they are not related. Each of these can be used as a specifier. Fetishes are typified by sexual desire, arousal, and gratification associated with nonliving objects or non-genital body parts. Examples of what people may be attracted to include rubber, latex, leather, dirty undergarments, hair, feet, ankles, and ears. Clinicians should not include people who are aroused by cross-dressing in this category, nor should they include arousal and gratification associated with devices designed for stimulation of the genitals (e.g., vibrators and dildos). In the diagnosis, clinicians can specify whether the fetish involves body part(s), nonliving object(s), or other.
The Effects of Prostate Cancer Treatment on Role-In-Sex in Gay and Bisexual Men: Mixed Methods Results from the Restore-1 and Restore-2 Studies
Published in The Journal of Sex Research, 2023
Alexander Tatum, B. R. Simon Rosser, Christopher W. Wheldon, Maria Beatriz Torres, Alex J. Bates, Ryan Haggart, Badrinath R. Konety, Darryl Mitteldorf, Elizabeth J. Polter, Michael W. Ross, Kristine M.C. Talley, William West, Morgan M. Wright, Ziwei Zhang
Other participants found a way to engage in fetish and bondage. This last practice allowed an individual who considered himself a top, to enjoy the exercise of a dominant sex role over his partner: I’ve gotten into the fetish scene, that permits me some outlet in terms of playing with somebody or being with somebody in a pseudo-sexual way, with touching and being sexually aroused. Not to the point of orgasm, certainly, but at least I’m not dead. [Respondent 23]I had the mind-set of a top. I have one sex partner who likes to be submissive, so, when I have sex with that sex partner, I can be very dominant. We can play bondage games. He’s very satisfied. He doesn’t want to be penetrated, but there are other ways that I can fulfill or satisfy my needs of being a dominant top and he is satisfied by being submissive, and it just can work even without the anal penetration. A lot of guys aren’t even into that. Also, I tend to be a person who likes to give pleasure. I think a lot of tops have that mind-set, too. I can derive my own pleasure by pleasuring another man. [Respondent 28]
“Almost Looks Illegal”: Family Dick’s Daddy’s Little Boy Gay Pornography Series and Its Too-Young Look
Published in Journal of Homosexuality, 2022
The ubiquity of this material on sites such as Pornhub suggests one of two things (or, more likely, a combination of both): a financial agreement between tube sites (especially sites owned by porn giant MindGeek) and Charged Media designed to promote the series, or incredible viewing figures that would invariably skew the algorithms that underpin these sites. The political-economic relationship between tube sites and porn studios/networks should be acknowledged as part of any analysis of digital porn (see Paasonen, Jarrett, & Light, 2019), in particular in so far as the algorithmically enabled visibility of this material seemingly creates its own gravitational “pull.” In other words, audiences do not need to go in search of “barely legal” extreme porn such as this. It does not have to be your “fetish” or “kink” for you to stumble upon it. The popularity algorithms will ensure it enters your purview. Though further consideration of such conditions is outside the scope of the present study, whose object is text- and audience-based, such “industry” considerations—text, audience and industry objects of which make up the complete picture of media research (Stokes, 2013, p. 60)—demonstrate how tube sites are “complicit” in moving the needle (as it were) on what is considered “mainstream” gay porn.
Feeling Like a Fetish: Racialized Feelings, Fetishization, and the Contours of Sexual Racism on Gay Dating Apps
Published in The Journal of Sex Research, 2022
Lawrence Stacey, TehQuin D. Forbes
Jared also felt that he could not form a connection with many users because of the manner in which they would approach him. “I just feel like on … It was more about men just wanting to have sex with a Black man. It wasn’t … I mentioned hanging out. ‘Oh, I don’t want to hang out. I just wanted to have sex.’ And it’s just like, ‘Whoa … alright then. It was real nice [talking to you].’ [laughs] And then I’d probably stop replying.” In this instance, a conversation was halted immediately after a user admitted to only wanting Jared for sex, which prevents users who might otherwise share commonalities from bonding. Later in the interview, Jared spoke about how he and his friends commiserate over feeling fetishized: Most of my friends do have similar experiences actually. They don’t really like it for the same reasons. It’s just … a lot of this sounds like we are used as a fetish, and who wants to be just used for a fetish? Can we actually get a connection? Can we at least be cordial? Be friends? And you just want to get your rocks off because I’m a Black man. I’m not cool with that.