Gender and the Body Technologies of the Gendered Body (Week 3)
Feminism and the body Long-standing concern with the body –Our Bodies, Ourselves (Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, 1973; –“the personal is political” –Body image –Reproduction –Domestic violence –Division of labour –Distribution of resources
Feminism and the body Contested issue within feminism –Equal bodies –Different bodies –Discursive bodies
Feminism and the body Common themes: –Treating the body as significant –Politicising the body –Centralising women’s bodies –Taking experience seriously –Challenging prevailing ideas / scientific beliefs about the sexed / gendered body
The one-sex body Pre-enlightenment Male and female bodies are, fundamentally, a single entity Female reproductive organs are the same as the male organs, but inverted.
Key differences… (Galen) men are hot and women are cold Distinguished by reproductive capacity Women are presumed to be unable to produce fertile seed “underdeveloped” genitals Inferior brains But… a woman could become a man (e.g. by coughing), but men can’t become women.
The two-sex body C18th – male and female bodies seen as entirely different (Lacqueur 1992; Shildrick 1997; Schiebinger 2000) Justification, through science, for social inequalities Intense research interest in sex difference, not just at the superficial level, but down to the skeletons, brains, hormones etc.
Importantly…. For Schiebinger, this is not a progress narrative – not a product of “improved” vision / better science “Ideology, not accuracy of observation, determined how they were seen and which differences would matter.” (Lacqueur 1992: 88)
Sex hormones Charles-Edouard Brown- Sequard 1889 – reported results of self-medication to Societe de Biologie (Paris) Self-injection with crushed guinea-pig and dog testicles “a marked renewal of vigour and mental clarity” Organotherapy
Hormonal hurricanes “Even a Congresswoman must defer to scientific truths…there just are physical and psychological inhabitants that limit a female’s potential… I would still rather have a male John F Kennedy make the Cuban missile crisis decisions than a female of the same age who could possibly be subject to the curious mental aberrations of that age group” Dr Edgar Berman (personal physician to VP Hubert Humphrey (1970)), cited in Fausto-Sterling, 1992: 91
Professor Spector, cited in The Independent (28 Sept, 2006) “The longer the ring finger, the more butch you are.”
Speaking with certainty… “Many – perhaps most – of the mysteries of how the brain works have yet to be unravelled, but the differences between the brains of males and female – and the processes by which they become different – are now clear. There is more to be known, more detail and qualification perhaps to add – but the nature and cause of brain differences are now known beyond speculation, beyond prejudice, and beyond reasonable doubt.” (Moir and Jessel 1989: 11)
Challenges from feminism Anne Fausto-Sterling Challenging “scientific” evidence /scientific process (see also, Birke 1999; Oudshoorn (ch. 3 in Schiebinger (ed.) 2000) Medical management of intersex children
Challenges from Feminism Lynda Birke (1999) Anatomical diagrams show a very partial view Women’s bodies included only in relation to reproduction (see also, Visible Human Project, Waldby 2000) Knowledge produced / mediated by technology and professional “translators”
Challenges from feminism Emily Martin The egg and the sperm (1996) Metaphors of production / waste (1989)
Conclusions Feminists have always had a strong interest in the body as a central focus of study Beliefs about sex / gender and the body are always changing There is strong contemporary interest in sex difference research Feminists have challenged these understandings of sex difference as lacking in sound evidence, as perpetuating problematic ideologies of gender, and as constructed through profoundly gendered metaphors and “ways of seeing”. Technologies of visualisation and modification are inseparable from those understandings