Sexual diversity, human rights addressed in Stice Lecture

The Rise of Sexual Diversity and Human Rights after the Cold War is the title of this year’s Earl and Edna Stice Memorial Lecture in Social Science, scheduled for 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 3 in 301 Miller. The lecture will be presented by Gilbert Herdt, professor of anthropology at San Francisco State University.

According to Herdt, gender has occupied a critical place in the formation of civil society and policies regarding equal rights since at least the French Revolution. But gender as a definer of identities and roles reached its apex during the Cold War. Since then, Herdt argues, sexuality has increasingly displaced gender as the main ideological focus of debates over social power and individual civil rights.

Late 20th Century civil rights, Herdt says, represented sexual diversity as the norm, and then sought equal protection and rights for new sexual cultures. And as new sexual cultures have emerged in the United States, sexual rights have expanded into other cultures.

In addition to his faculty position, Herdt is Director of the Human Sexuality Studies Program and the Institute on Sexuality, Social Inequality and Health at San Francisco State. His master’s degree is from the UW; he earned his doctorate at the Australian National University. He was the Founding President of the International Association for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, Culture and Society.

The lecture is free and open to the public.