The Netherlands is known for the way in which the maternity care system is organized. Unlike other western countries, the Netherlands has a culture in which pregnant people can choose where they want to give birth. Home birth is more common in the Netherlands than in any other western country. The ‘culture

When encountering someone, you automatically get an idea of how you will address them. Try to imagine it. By seeing certain facial or behavioral traits, your brain puts the one standing in front of you in a certain box. A box that is heavily colored by your frame of reference. That is how you know,

There is no place that is as safe as under the care of a doctor. Well, at least that's what we expect. It's also what we are promised: newly graduated doctors swear that they want the best for their patients and that they do everything they can to give them the care they deserve. To them, it doesn't

Imagine that you, as a mother, are struggling with a serious psychiatric disorder. Your children are no longer allowed to live at home with you. You would like to have another child and you even have wedding plans with your partner. Nevertheless, the judge decides that you are no longer allowed to have

Malawi has one of the highest rates of child marriage in the world. Fifty percent of the girls get married before turning 18. Theresa Kachindamoto is a senior tribal chief who is fighting to annull, and prevent, early child marriages in order to take girls back to school. Tribal leaders in

At a nightclub, a man offers a pretty blond woman a drink. She has obviously shown interest in him, but turns the drink down. He is confused - was she not interested? She then approaches him, frankly tells him that she's not thirsty…

This photo of Edward Carpenter is often used to champion gay rights:   Carpenter and Merrill by Alfred Mattison (c. 1900). Available on Wikimedia Commons. Print kept in Sheffield City Council archives, s09113. Yet it is a mysterious photo.At first sight, it simply depicts the intimacy between a

“I heard of the discovery of America, and wept with Safie over the hapless fate of its original inhabitants,” so says the Frankensteinian creature in Mary Shelley’s 1818 masterpiece. As noticed by many scholars before me (eg Burkhart 2020), some of these “red flags” in

On a sunny Friday afternoon, my friend Linsey and I walked along the Linnaeusstraat in the east of Amsterdam. We enjoyed the rustling green of the Oosterpark and recognized the Burgerziekenhuis - this is the route the horse tram once rode, towards the depot, in which after the Wibra now a high class

When I published my autiethnography “The Do less travelled by'' (about the benefits and challenges of budo for people on the autism spectrum), I was overwhelmed by the reactions. Hundreds of people reached out to me. Most of the feedback I received made me very happy, as it was about my hard work

The newest adaptation of Emma (1815) by Autumn de Wilde and Eleanor Catton brings Jane Austen’s classic to a new generation. With every new adaptation I’m curious if the makers have managed to bring across Jane Austen’s wit and sarcasm, and whether they have chosen to highlight the

Once in a while, you come across a piece of writing that deeply resonates with what lives inside you, in words you do not have yet. That happened to me. On a sleepless night I fell in a YouTube rabbit hole and ended up at a recording of Adrienne Rich’ ‘Diving Into the Wreck’, a feminist poem from 1973. It struck me that, forty-seven years later, Rich’ comparisons and images have lost nothing of their eloquence or relevance. This rich poem offers a variety of interpretations. I have found