Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies, First Edition. Edited by Nancy A. Naples.
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781118663219.wbegss668
2 FEMINIST THEOR IES OF THE B ODY
17–18). The body is instead “interwoven bodies, monitor their behaviors, and measure
with and constitutive of systems of meaning, the success of their femininity. Arguing that
signification, and representation”; this cat- feminist preoccupation with cosmetic surgery
egory, in which I include Grosz herself, is expand beyond the internalized male gaze
generally wary of sex/gender distinctions and theory, Victoria Pitts-Taylor’s book Surgery
“less interested in the question of the cul- Junkies: Wellness and Pathology in Cosmetic
tural construction of subjectivity than in the Culture urges us to resist the binary of cos-
materials out of which such a construction is metic surgery as oppressive/empowering and
forged” (Grosz 1994, 18). elucidates “how in cosmetic surgery the body
Menstruation, reproduction, the medical- becomes a zone of social conflict, coded on
ization of women’s bodies, motherhood, body the one hand as a sign of interior wellness and
image, beauty practices, disordered eating, self-enhancements and on the other hand as
cosmetic surgery, sexuality, sexual assault, a sign of moral, politics, or mental weakness”
women’s health, media representations, and (Pitts-Taylor 2007, 7).
countless other thematics animate feminist One of the early fundamental contribu-
attention to the body. Although not academic tions of feminist theory that remains central
in nature, the Women’s Health Movement of to discussions of the body is the distinction
the 1970s and onward marks an important between sex and gender. This unhinging of
moment in the history of feminist discourse sex from gender enabled feminist theorists
about the body in that it sought to dissemi- to assert that sex has a frequently neglected
nate accurate health information to women political aspect and that women’s subordina-
and encourage them to become experts on tion is the product of unequal social, political,
their bodies, health, and sexualities. Similarly and economic relations rather than inferior
resisting individualistic and medical models embodiment. Cleaving sex and gender,
that pathologize disordered eating, in her although it has been analytically useful, can
book Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western falsely fix sex as a self-evident biological truth.
Culture, and the Body, Susan Bordo contends However, sex is not a precultural fact but, like
that disorders such as anorexia nervosa and gender, a construction of cultural, political,
bulimia must be understood in relation to and scientific discourses that is ideologically
the specific cultural contexts from which informed by the very gender norms it serves
they emerge (Bordo 2003). She asserts that to naturalize. Far from being natural truths
seemingly extreme and gendered disciplinary unearthed by objective methodologies, fem-
body practices such as restrictive eating and inist analyses elucidate how the information
cosmetic surgery should not be viewed as generated by the positivist, empiricist tradi-
“bizarre or anomalous, but, rather, as the log- tion of scientific knowledge production about
ical (if extreme) manifestations of anxieties the body is actually socially constituted and
and fantasies fostered by our culture” (Bordo situated. For instance, in her piece “The Egg
2003, 15). In the same vein, Sandra Lee Bartky and the Sperm,” Emily Martin analyzes the
employs a Foucauldian analysis of women’s ways in which heteronormative conventions
disciplinary body practices in her essay “Fou- of sexuality and gender inform both scientific
cault, Femininity, and the Modernization of and popular understandings of reproduction
Patriarchal Power” (Bartky 2003). The docile and fertilization (Martin 1991). In a survey
body is often a feminized body wherein of science textbooks, Martin finds that the
women have internalized a patriarchal male egg is described as passive “damsel in dis-
gaze through which they view their own tress” while sperm are imagined as active and
FEMINIST THEOR IES OF THE B ODY 3
aggressive in ways that obscure the complex repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory
biological processes at work. Moreover, Anne frame that congeal over time to produce the
Fausto-Sterling’s important scholarship illu- appearance of substance, of a natural sort of
minates how scientific knowledge about being” (Butler 1990, 45). Gender, then, is a
gender, sex, and sexuality is not only con- verb – a series of acts and reenactments of
structed but has also become naturalized in learned behaviors, dress, mannerisms, and
our cultural environment (Fausto-Sterling so on that only in their ongoing repetition
2000). “The truths about human sexuality cre- come to feel and appear to us as natural.
ated by scholars in general and by biologists In response to critiques that her theory of
in particular,” she insists, “are one component
gender performativity fell into the postmod-
of political, social, and moral struggles about
ernist trap of focusing on the discursive at
our cultures and economies. At the same
the expense of seriously considering lived,
time, components of our political, social,
embodied experience, in Bodies that Matter
and moral struggles become, quite literally,
embodied, incorporated into our very phys- she elaborates that “the regulatory norms
iological being” (Fausto-Sterling 2000, 5). of ‘sex’ work in a performative fashion to
Fausto-Sterling’s argument that scientific constitute the materiality of bodies and more
knowledge is both culturally constructed and specifically, to materialize the body’s sex, to
naturalized in the social milieu is perhaps materialize sexual difference in the service of
most clearly demonstrated in her discussions the consolidation of the heterosexual impera-
of intersexuality. She discusses the arbitrary tive” (Butler 1993, 2). Much of Butler’s text is
distinctions between properly sexed and in conversation with other feminist theorists
abnormally configured genitals, as well as such as Fausto-Sterling as she argues that
the heterosexist assumptions that inform the sex has been gender all along in so far as the
surgical “correction” of intersexed infants. materiality of the body and its sex difference
Scientific and cultural knowledge about sex- are always already inscribed with gendered
ual difference is therefore socially constructed meaning. In Bodies the Matter, Butler also
and, in the case of intersexed infants, liter- contributes the concept of the heterosexual
ally landscaped on and in turn naturalized matrix, which outlines the appropriate bina-
through the materiality of the body. ristic categories of sex, gender, and sexuality
The arrival of postmodern theory in the as well as the socially acceptable combina-
1990s unsettled and expanded upon early
tions of the aforementioned, and determines
feminist sex/gender distinctions and exam-
who is within the realm of intelligibility.
ined the relationship between discourse and
Those who fall outside this realm of intelli-
materiality. Judith Butler’s work on gender
gibility are the objects of heteronormativity.
performativity has profoundly shaped fem-
inist theory’s understanding of gender as a The fear of the abject prompts a distancing
discursive production. Butler notoriously from it and therefore a reaffirmation of gen-
argues in Gender Trouble that gender “has no der/sexed/sexual normalcy for those who
ontological status apart from the various acts are within the heterosexual matrix. More-
that constitute its reality” (Butler 1990, 185). over, those who occupy the social location
Resisting the notion that one harbors a core of abjection have difficulty accessing what
gender identity, she employs the example Butler calls a livable life, which includes social
of drag to illuminate how gender is “the and political recognition, the support of loved
repeated stylization of the body, a set of ones, access to employment, and so forth.
4 FEMINIST THEOR IES OF THE B ODY
and feminist disability studies, have emerged disability studies’ reinvention of the wheel
that make vital contributions to and pro- through its failure to engage with feminist
foundly transform feminist theorizations theory as it developed its own study of iden-
of corporeality. For example, pioneering tity. In addition to disability studies’ failure to
transgender studies scholar Susan Stryker’s engage meaningfully with concepts of gender
1994 essay “My Words to Victor Frankenstein and feminist theory, feminist theory fails
Above the Village of Chamounix: Performing to recognize disability. Feminist disability
Transgender Rage” argues that trans people studies, as Garland-Thomson asserts, are not
possess a queer relation to nature; “while doc- simply an additive endeavor; instead, femi-
tors landscape the aesthetic of naturalness on nist disability studies not only draw from and
their skin, their very existence highlights that critique both fields, but also emphasize that
the ‘natural’ itself is a fabrication” (Stryker the integration of disability can and should
2006). The lesson that trans people have transform and expand feminist theorizing
to share, Stryker insists, is that nature and on representation, the body, identity, and
the body are constructed and technological activism.
products for all people. Feminist disability
studies attempt to challenge, expand, and SEE ALSO: Body Politics; Cosmetic Surgery in
transform the ableism of feminist theory the United States; Eating Disorders and
and feminist philosophy more specifically Disordered Eating; Feminist Disability Studies;
Gender Performance; Mind/Body Split; Sex
by putting it into conversation with the
Versus Gender Categorization
emergent field of disability studies and the
lived embodied experiences of people with
physical disabilities. In The Rejected Body, REFERENCES
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connections I saw between feminist analy- University Press.
ses of gender as socially constructed from Bartky, Sandra Lee. 2003. “Foucault, Femininity,
biological differences between females and and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power.”
In The Politics of Women’s Bodies: Sexuality,
males, and my emerging understanding of
Appearance, and Behavior, edited by Rose Weitz,
disability as socially constructed from bio-
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this knowledge did not inform theorizing ed. Berkeley: University of California.
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6 FEMINIST THEOR IES OF THE B ODY
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