HLTH 333 Museum
The HLTH 333 Museum explores sexuality with a view to understanding it as a key aspect of contemporary political, economic, and social life. The displays in the museum were curated by students in a course called Contemporary Issues in Sexuality taught by Mary Louise Adams at Queen's University. Each object in the museum was chosen by a student as a means of representing an important aspect of a particular sexual culture in the present day.
About HLTH 333
HLTH 333 is a third year course in the undergraduate Health Studies program at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Queen's University is situated on Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee Territories. We acknowledge the Territories as a way of showing respect and gratitude to the Indigenous peoples who have lived in good relation with this land since long before the arrival of Europeans. We acknowledge the Territories also to remind non-Indigenous peoples of the necessity of learning about the ongoing impact of colonialism and of building new, non-exploitative, respectful relationships with Indigenous, Inuit and Métis peoples.
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Thanks to Teaching Assistants Orlaith Croke-Martin, Amy Hanes, Mustafa Karaçam, and Jill Takacs who assisted with this project.
What's with all the onions?
In HLTH 333 we aim to understand how sexual behaviours, sexual feelings, sexual and gender identities, sexuality moralities, and sexual politics are shaped by particular historical and cultural contexts. We see sexuality not as a simple matter of biology, but as a social construction, something that is a product of institutions like medicine, science, law, religion, and education. It is shaped by the economy, by belief systems, by government policies and programs, and by social categories like race, class, gender, physical ability and age. The onion, with its many layers and no central seed, is an image that encourages us to think of the layers of context out of which sexuality emerges. We are concerned with huge structural forces like capitalism, settler colonialism, and patriarchy, but also with aspects of everyday social life like popular media, sex education programs, marriage legislation, medical and legal definitions of gender identity, social media trends or religious teachings . One of the key assumptions of our course is that sexuality is culturally and historically specific. We hope that the objects in this museum will help you see what this idea means in practice and why it is important.