Bex MacFife (she & they, interchangeably) is a white non-binary PhD Candidate at the University of Oregon.
Originally from the Bay Area, she has spent many years in various iterations of "sex educator," instructing audiences that range from 4th grade all the way through to graduate school and professional trainings. After earning her MA in Sexuality Studies at San Francisco State University, Bex entered the sociology doctoral program at University of Oregon, where she is now working with Dr. Jocelyn Hollander.
Her dissertation, titled "Do No Harm, Cause No Pleasure: Dis/Attending to Sexuality, Gender, and Embodiment in Pelvic Physical Therapy", looks to experiences with pelvic pt to understand how patients and providers navigate the social complexity of extended clinical genital touch in the context of biomedical framing, sensory perception, gender-based violence, and gender/sexuality norms. Her research interests also include queer and trans healthcare, medical sociology, whiteness studies, social construction of the body, and queer liberation politics. Research skills include project management, applied sociology, and qualitative and feminist methods such as interviews, focus groups, embodied ethnography, and mixed methods.
Initially inspired by their own work in the role, Bex has also researched, published, and presented on the pedagogical activism enacted by queer and allied Gynecological Teaching Associates (GTAs, or educators who teach pelvic and breast exams within medical schools by acting simultaneously as instructors and models in small group sessions.) She continues to teach as a GTA with Project Prepare.
They are a team member with the “Trans Resilience and Health in Sociopolitical Contexts Study” (transresiliencestudy.com), a longitudinal multi-method and interdisciplinary project which captured the experiences of trans people in four separate states over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 election cycle.
Outside of academia, they enjoy engaging in community mutual aid, serving the whims of their blue heeler "Dilly Pickle", and foraging for mushrooms.
bexm@uoregon.edu