2023 – Page 11 – Manchester Historian

In 1970, black revolutionary Angela Yvonne Davis was prosecuted for three capital felonies including first-degree murder, though she was not present when any violence took place. Davis was a professor of philosophy at UCLA just a year before, where she was fired on the grounds of being a communist.

When Pêro Vaz de Caminha arrived in Brazil on the 22nd of April 1500 aboard Pedro Alvares Cabral’s voyage of ‘discovery’, he was awestruck. The letter he wrote to the Portuguese King Manuel I is in stark contrast to those written by other explorers of the period.

When we think of xenophobia, often we are susceptible to oversimplifying it, without considering the intersectionality of gender and race. Historically, antisemitism has largely existed within a repressive hetero-normative framework of gender identity and sexuality. Considering Antisemitism in Victorian England then, it’s important to take on a gendered perspective, looking at the relationship between Judeophobia and conceived ‘masculinity’.

For almost 40 years, throughout the Franco dictatorship, the Sección Femenina was the organisation in charge of controlling Spanish women. Every aspect of women’s lives were politicised in order to promote ideal femininity centred around motherhood and domesticity. This article will explore to what extent the Sección Femenina contributed to the creation of these gendered ideals, and to what extent these ideals were disempowering.

Without any parliamentary notice, the disgusting ‘Contagious Diseases Act’ was suddenly passed in 1864. Effectively ‘legalising’ prostitution and placing it under police control, it allowed the stop and search of any woman suspected of being a prostitute. Such a ‘search’ included a bodily examination, totally violating and humiliating anyone forced to participate.