Faith and sexuality, the commodification of death, lesbian style and the English language were all spoken about in the “sexuality and culture” session.

Albie Nicol from University of Northern Iowa presented “LGBTQ+ Inclusion in the Ministry” in which he covered the intersectionalities of faith and sexuality.

Nicol identifies as a queer, transgender Christian and created an LGBTQ+ affirming faith group on his campus. He talked about how the translation of religious scripture is always through a human, which is fallible. This means that how one person views the phrasing of scripture may mean something different to another person.

Nicol brought up the personal narratives around sexuality and faith of different individuals which included a reformed Jew, a pagan and a Muslim. Their combined narratives showed that in most instances they are not supported by their faiths, so they have to make way for themselves in their faith.

“My faith has hurt people, and because it hurts I am using my faith to help people,” Nicol said.

Roslyn Gray, an Iowa State senior in biology, presented “The Future is Bright: Embracing Death Through Feminism” in which they covered the commodification of death.

Gray talked about how the average funeral today costs between $10,000 and $15,000 and how 47 percent of funerals are burials, which with current techniques such as concrete burial vaults and steel coffins, are unsustainable.

Gray said originally, funerals were done in the home and were performed by women. These women were known as shrouding women and they were raised from a young age to do the job of preparing bodies. When embalming started during the Civil War due to the large amounts of bodies that needed to be preserved in order to be sent home women were pushed out of the funeral industry due to the rise of capitalism in that industry.

Currently, there is a death positive movement which aims to make death less about the commodification of the body and more about mourning. Ways this can be done include home funerals and green burials which are both cost-effective and family-centered. Other forms can be taken the form of body donation, organ donation, tree burial pods and mushroom suits.

Erin French, an Iowa State graduate in apparel, events and hospitality management, presented “Beyond the ‘Sensible Shoes’ Stereotype: Material Culture Perspectives on Lesbian Style” in which she covered the life of an Iowa lesbian’s style.

French brought up how lesbians are stereotyped as mannish and without style, but also how they use their style and appearance to communicate their sexual identity.

French conducted a case study on Elizabeth Sedrel, a lesbian living in Des Moines, Iowa. Through the case study French learned that growing up Sedrel never really thought much about her style but her mother heavily influenced her in later years. Sedrel had four items that had significance to her, a pearl necklace from her mother which kept Sedrel grounded, a commitment ring from her wife that they exchanged on their tenth anniversary of being together, a pair of “sensible shoes” which are significant to her because they diverge from what her female co-workers wear, and her “magic” blazer which she wears to all formal work situations.

French ended with a poem that she wrote about her study on Sedrel.

Danny Cook, Iowa State senior in communication studies, presented “The Quest for L’Ecriture Non-Binaire” in which they covered the English language as binary and how people should strive to change it.

Cook’s research was to answer the question of “Do current inclusive language techniques actually empower, support and protect non-binary individuals?”

Cook found that there has been lexicon development with the use of they/them pronouns and the change of folks to folx which has been deemed more inclusive. The pronoun “they” was the word of the year in 2015 which was decided by the American Dialect Society.

Cook found that more progress was limited due to the binary nature of the English language and in order to create a more inclusive language it must be non-binary. One example of this is Lóxoro, which is a modified version of Spanish created in Peru, which is completely unrecognizable to Spanish speakers.

Cassidy Boe, Iowa State senior in nutritional science, presented “Is It Really About ‘Health?’ Exploring the Racist and Sexist Roots of the Thin Ideal” in which she covered the parallels of the AIDS crisis to the so-called obesity “epidemic.”

Boe started out by saying the realm of medicine is political and used as a form of control, such as the creation of the fat body “epidemic.” This pathologizing of fat bodies by the medical complex is similar to how HIV and AIDS positive individuals have been discriminated against by the government.

“AIDS could be considered an epidemic but obesity can’t because no one dies from being “too fat,”” Boe said.

One former surgeon general of the United States even once compared the “crisis” of obesity to 9/11, Boe said. This type of fear mongering has been used in both the HIV/AIDS epidemic and this new “crisis” of obesity. Most of the time this hysteria is created by misinformation such as when a man in a bar beat a gay man to death because he assumed the gay man drank from his glass and gave him AIDS, but AIDS is not transferred through saliva and the gay man never drank from his glass, Boe said.