Tag: sex

From Candle to Dilator: Treating Vaginismus in Turkey

Aysel brought out her candles wrapped in stretch wrap and put them on the coffee table in the middle of our interview. She was very proud of showing her progress to me through these home-made candle dildos. When she brought them out to the living room, I was still sipping my tea and my half-eaten piece of cake she baked for me was now sitting next to her candles on the coffee table. She made these dildos herself with the help of her sister-in-law, her elti,  in her kitchen by shaping them, melting them thinner, and combining them together for different sizes so she could use them as apparatuses to treat her vaginismus, the inability to engage in penile-vaginal intercourse. (read more...)

When Sex Becomes a Matter of the State: Peciagraphy as a Qualitative Method for Examining Legal Cases

For the past ten years, I have been conducting ethnographic research on the Federal Supreme Court’s (STF) decisions on sexual identities in the Brazilian legal system. Despite the variety within this realm, I have always had the same guiding question: how do the STF and social movements perform sex as a matter of the state? (read more...)